PRODUCTIONS

THEATRICAL PERFORMANCES
Production, stage direction, and direction of photography for Pippin by Stephen Schwartz, Live in Front of a Studio Audience: Wesleyan University, 2023.

A club-produced show which incorporated a triple live-camera setup. Encompassing the tech needs of a full scale musical and film set, Pippin took nine months of hard work to bring to the stage.  


Our musical was meant to offer an alternative interpretation of Sondheim’s dark circus troupe--What if the voyeurs forcing Pippin to chase his dream were in fact a camera crew, staging his life as a reality show? What if we could see this show as it was made?

We scaled up as far as possible, renting two Hollyland wireless video transmitters for ease of movement. We would construct an entire film, night after night, with the shots and cuts preplanned. This would mean that every night of tech we had to build three C100 cameras, >10 lights, eight lavalier mics, a Roland video switcher, tripods and transmitters and monitors and all the cords to connect them--and subsequently strike it all.

I took on the role of director of photography,  meaning that it would be my job to “call” each shot and cut, directing both the camerawork and live editing, and leading three camera operators and a video switcher operator.
Photos by Max Soley 

 Production and direction for The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe by Jane Wagner: Wesleyan University, April 2025.

A series of monologues originally designed as a one-woman show with minimal technology, we reinterpreted Lily Tomlin’s Broadway debut as a series of vignettes with eight different actors. The connecting thread, as opposed to the actress herself, would be a full tech setup.  

Mimicking Lily Tomlin’s miraculous power to shift worlds as she shifts characters, our design aimed to imitate these “time travel” powers with a reliance on visibily moving parts and gaudy projection work. We rigged three projectors, two front and one rear, and mapped them carefully to a cubic set inspired by Blender’s 3D designs.  

Along with gaudy audio design and lots of flash warnings, our aim was to transition through worlds physically: clunkily, loudly, and very brightly.  
Rear-projection of the outside of a moving vehicle to simulate a car scene.
Projection of a pre-filmed segment, matched to blocking, to recreate a mirror effect in an aerobics studio.


MUSICAL PERFORMANCES
Production of a show for the NYC band PincLouds: Wesleyan University, 2024.

Facing pushback from administration at our University–we planned to put on a concert in a theater, which apparently broke some rule of performativity–we branded our production a “puppet show,” and it became just this.  

Already having negotiated a contract for the band,  which was out of our club’s intended purview as an arts collective, we stubbornly set out to design a false proscenium intended to imitate a children’s puppet theater.  If we had a puppet stage, we thought out loud, how could it be a concert?

Many students were confused when they entered the Patricelli ‘92 Theater, were handed wristbands, and saw what could be called a punk concert.  

A documentary about the process of bringing PincLouds to Wesleyan. By John Earling and Mae Cohen, 2024.



  Production of a “Karaoke Night”/DJ set for Andrew VanWyngarden, 1/2 of the band MGMT: Wesleyan University, 2025.

When our club was approached to host one of Wesleyan’s most famous alums for their 20 year reunion, who had never previously been willing to return to campus, we tried to be cool.  

When we heard that it really wasn’t a concert, we knew they were in the right hands.  




DRAG PERFORMANCES
Tech oversight and creative production for DRAG 101 with the Queen St. Divas: Wesleyan University, 2025.

 The last drag show on Wesleyan’s campus occurred in 2021, staging three performers. It was three years later that we realized forming a resilient drag collective would first be about understanding–and then sharing–what drag was.

When a long-admired acquaintance reached out to me during fall of our senior year, I was both honored and so, so scared that I wasn’t the right person, that no one would be interested, that it was too late. At the same time, it was something I’d been wanting to do for years.

We went ahead, and opted for the theme “DRAG 101”: A means of reintroducing the possibility of a group existing on campus, starting with the very first steps.

Photos by Jasmin Wong. Featuring Nolan Lewis, Nettie Hitt, Minyoung Huh, Georgia Reed-Stamm, Mae Cohen, Evelyn Grandfield, and Harmony Hoogs.