Featured Projects
Primary Trust
With Boise Contemporary
Directed by Susan Dalian
Written by Eboni Booth
Stage Manager: Elena Maddy
Scenic Designer: Nico Hewitt
Costume Designer: Cassandra McCarty
Lighting Designer: Diana Herrera
Sound Designer: Harper Justus
For 15 years, Kenneth has been working days at the bookstore in his small town outside of Rochester, New York, and enjoying mai tais with his friend Bert at night. When the bookstore closes, Kenneth, now 38 years old, is forced to make changes that push past his comfort zone – sometimes that means reconciling with the past, and sometimes that means making new friends.
The Unknown Variable
With Momentary Theatre
Directed by Jacob Schuler
Written by Nahal Navidar
Stage Manager: Nihan Baysal
Scenic Designer: Amy Gilman
Costume Designer: Allyson Leisure
Lighting Designer: Ellie Fey
Sound Designer: Harper Justus
Separated from her bābā in Iran and living in a strange new land, a determined young girl contacts the President, Santa Claus, and God to determine the unknown variable – when her father will be granted a Visa from the United States so they can be reunited.
We were incredibly lucky to have access to original sources of audio from the playwright's childhood in Iran, before she immigrated to America- sounds like her playing as a little girl and her bābā humming and singing to her. Integrating these recordings and using the physical nature of playing them was vital to the production.
We used the fractured nature of time and memory to examine familial separation and to find a window into the future and the lifelong trauma of a parent and child being stripped of their most instinctive needs.
How To Transcend A Happy Marriage
With Redtwist Theatre
Directed by Elizabeth Swanson
Written by Sarah Ruhl
Stage Manager: Shay Gordon
Scenic Designer: Rose Johnson
Costume Designer: Marquecia Jordan
Lighting Designer: Eric Watkins
Sound Designer: Harper Justus
Movement and Intimacy: Sarah Scanlon
Dramaturg: Korey Pimental
George is meandering through the American dream - she has a house in the suburbs, a loving husband, and a young daughter. What more could she want? Isn’t she on the road to a happy ending?
How to Transcend a Happy Marriage challenges the white picket ideal, blurs the line between friends and lovers, and asks us to grow beyond the constraints of monogamy.
The sound of this production was found in the balance between the straight (haha) and narrow and the absolute, buck-wild, debauchery. Changing from sounds of flesh tearing and of debasing pleasure to the cool waters of white noise and Beethoven's Ninth in an effort to right the ship.
MEDEAMEDEAMEDEA
With Theatre Evolve
Directed by Anna Rachel Troy
Written by Olivia BuntAINE
Stage Manager: Gabby Owns
Scenic Designer: Rose Johnson
Costume Designer: Janna Lynn Casey
Lighting Designer: Ellie Fey
Sound Designer: Harper Justus
Choreographer: Jessica Ragsac
Dramaturg: Hayley Scott
Intimacy: Ali Foley
MEDEAMEDEAMEDEA rips open Euripides' tragedy to reveal the woman beneath the legend- powerful, divine, and dangerously overlooked. In this new adaptation, Medea is no longer just the scorned woman history remembers but a force of nature wrestling with the impossible: self versus sacrifice, revenge versus righteousness, being right versus doing right.
Using the moans and cries of the performers and unending shifting waves, we captured the sound of a God trapped in the body of a disrespected mortal woman. More explicit sounds of the violence that would come to pass at the end of the play highlighted the cyclical nature of telling stories as old as these, scoffing at Medea's effort to change the ending.
VINEGAR TOM
With UC San Diego
Directed by Allie Moss
Written by CARYL CHURCHILL
Stage Manager: alina novotny
Scenic Designer: Eleanor Williams
Costume Designer: Ting Xiong
Lighting Designer: Taylor Olson
Sound Designer: Harper Justus
Music Director/Composer: Kyle Blair
The subject of my MFA Thesis project, Vinegar Tom is two worlds colliding. One world contains a story of social control and the restriction of women. The other is a bright, loud, fuck-you, punk band serving as a Riot Grrl Greek Chorus.
Digitized vinyl meditation/environmental recordings make up the textural underscore of the play, with whispers and strings moving between episodic, disjointed scenes. These whispers were composed of text from the Malleus Maleficarum (1486), a witch-hunting guidebook used for centuries to justify the torture and murder of women.
We also recorded an EP! With Churchill's original lyrics, composer Kyle Blair built eight songs with influences ranging from Poly Styrene, to Amy Lee, to Kate Bush- using a six-piece rock band to bring it to life.
Recorded in UC San Diego's Conrad Prebys Music Center.
Live mix by the wonderful Chloe Lias
The promise
With UC San DIEGO
Directed by Ludmila De Brito
Written by José Rivera
Stage Manager: Stephanie Carrizales
Scenic Designer: Eleanor Williams
Costume Designer: anabel olguin
Lighting Designer: Vida Huang
Sound Designer: Harper Justus
Choreographer: Jessica Ragsac
cultural consultant: nic Rodriguez-Villafañe
Dramturg: haïa B'chiri
Theatre Auntie: Siobhan brown
In Patchogue, NY, 1989, a Puerto Rican man tries to break his family's cycle of poverty by marrying his daughter, Lilia, to a rich man. The Promise shines light on the unsustainable nature of colonization and the human sacrifices in the middle of it all.
Our dreams are too large to be contained, in this play, psychology explodes in the form of theatricality. This is what Magical Realism is in Latin America, a tool for resistance.
This is a story about colonial violence, about the patterns of dominance against women and the land, and at its core, it is a love letter to those who have had their homelands colonized, an acknowledgment of the sacrifices that are made every day in order to survive in this country.
नेहा AND NEEL
With UC San Diego
Directed by Rosie Glen-Lambert
Written by Ankita Raturi
Stage Manager: Katherine Davis
Scenic Designer: Raphael Mischler
Costume Designer: Anabel Olguin
Lighting Designer: Shelby Thach
Sound Designer: Harper Justus
Dramaturg: Rishika Mehrishi
Neha (नेहा) fears she has failed to pass her language and culture down to her seventeen-year-old son, Neel (नील) and a summer trip to visit colleges could be Neha’s last chance!
नेहा & Neel asks what we lose with every generation in America, and if it’s ever too late to connect with your roots.
As a visual exercise in scale and dimension, sound must create and move between contexts and environments at breakneck speed.
The scenery being a visual exercise in scale and dimension, sound must create and move between contexts and environments at breakneck speed. From the home, to the car, the airport, to the car, to the restaurant, to the car, to the gas station, to the car, to a college tour, to the car, to the hotel, to the car, to the other college tour, to the car- how does the sound of travel fill a space?
The ferryman
With New Village Arts
Directed by Kristianne Kurner
Written by Jez Butterworth
Stage Manager: Nathan waits
Scenic Designer: Doug cumming
Props Master: Alyssa Kane
Costume Designer: jojo siu
Lighting Designer: Annelise Salazar
Sound Designer: Harper Justus
cultural consultant: Amanda Doherty
Presented at New Village Arts for the first time since running on Broadway and the West End, The Ferryman asks what happens to a
family unit- and a community at large-
entrenched in generational violence. In the
thick of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, an eclectic (and massive) family must deal with
their carefully arranged walls of normalcy crumbling down and the past, present, and
future nearly imploding.
The screams, wails, and cries of the women of the cast were used to create the screaming Banshee that haunts the play and finally arrives in the final moments, overtaking the space and echoing around the home.
Dance Nation
With uc San diego
Directed by Emily Moler
Written by Clare Barron
Stage Manager: Gillian Lelchuck
Choreographer: Mia Van Deloo
Scenic Designer: Raphael Mischler
Costume Designer: Zoe Trautmann
Lighting Designer: Shelby Thach
Sound Designer: Harper Justus
Composer: Salvador Zamora
Dramaturg: Tova petty
Cuteness is death. Pagan feral-ness and
ferocity are key.
Dance Nation is the journey of a preteen dance team competing to make it to Nationals in Florida while trying to discover who they truly are, who
they will become, and who they make themselves up to be. Weaponizing the resonant frequencies
of the space and the sounds evocative of and created by the human body, we attempted to capture all of the intensity, hope, rage, shame,
and extreme uncool-ness that comes with being a twelve-year-old girl.
Dance composition by the amazing Salvador Zamora.
Natasha, Pierre, and the great comet of 1812
With Tantrum Theatre
Directed by Alan Patrick kenny
Written by Dave malloy
Stage Manager: Erin joy swank
Music director: brent Frederick
Technical Director: Luis silva & Nicole hankins
Scenic Designer: Chris reese
Props Master: julia lisowski
Costume Designer: Shirlee idzakovich
Lighting Designer: Jennifer fok
Sound Designer: Harper Justus
Dramaturg: Eryn Mcvey
Produced by the playwright's alma mater in tandem with Tantrum Theatre, our production of Comet was both the eastern premiere and the first collegiate production of the rock opera. With the cast and production team being a mix of AEA professionals and students, this show held a 16-speaker arrangement, a cast of 29, and a 19-piece orchestra.
Live mix by the outstanding Simon Marland.
Pluto
with ohio university
Directed by Dustin Brown
Written by Steve yaki
Stage Manager: Raine DEdominici
Technical Director: Jaxon Medadows
Scenic Designer: Stephanie Kesterson
Props Master: Ariel Lacey
Costume Desinger: Maggie Hortsman and Cody Prell
Lighting Designer: Howard Leuthold
Sound Designers: Harper Justus and Abigail Coppock
Dramaturg: Jill Iverson
Pluto is a story of loss, pain, and the endurance of love. Our biggest question in the conception of Pluto was how to sonically exemplify this without drowning the world of the play. In collaboration with my co-designer, Abigail Coppock, I used harmonic, binaural beats and drones to bring us out of our world, and a vibrational system installed in the set to shake the stage and bring us back down.
