Tell me about your academic major at UM. I have always been a kind of resistant student. In studying theater, I felt like I was really studying sociology. In studying philosophy, I felt like I was studying theater. I am a music major at the  University of Montevallo and I have never known what music is. That is, I can't remember the last time I felt comfortable distinguishing a structuralist binary of music and not-music. And yet, I imagine that the world consists of music schools and music classes wherein the hinge question requires the determining of the nature of just that binary. In that sense, I have been willfully, often compulsively naïve.

My official major has been Music and I've learned an incredible amount from this. The faculty of the UM Music Department is honestly first-rate, each teacher an impressive practitioner of that which s/he teaches.

What made you get involved in the theatre program at UM?  I came to Montevallo with a preconception of what theater as an institution is, an institution made up of all the mediocre shows I'd  seen in my youth and all the performance philosophies inherent in those shows. Given my limited experiences with theater proper, which I forlornly compared to my limited experience with contemporary art and my reading knowledge of contemporary classical music, I then viewed theater as a primarily historical practice--the embodied conservation of archaic locution strategies and the canonized gestures that substantiate the transaction for the everyday audience: "I asked for theater and I got it. They talked and sounded like theater." Theater has not been able to benefit from the gallery system of institutionalized contemporary art--if it experiments, its witnesses are often small in number and can never reproduce the work for others.

Seeing new forms at UM has helped me cope with the sadness of theater's difficulties. My preconceived notions disappeared, for example, when I, as a freshman, saw both Lips Together, Teeth Apart and Three Sisters. These still feel vivid to me.

What have been your most memorable experiences with UM Theatre? For some, the most important aspect of the UM Theatre experience will inevitably be the important routines and precedents established for the future: this is how I audition, this is how I find my action in a scene, this is how I get through cue-to-cue, etc. For me, the most important, memorable experiences have involved images of the will. The first example of this occurred for me with our production of The Serpent in 2003, directed by Dr. Callaghan. The Serpent is a strange show in the typical educational theater context because the script for such a show tangles itself with the archives of the first performers and first performances of the  show. Our combined will to find a way to embody both the haunting archive as well as the context of the now taught me more than any historical lecture could hope to cover.

Later, doing my first independent piece with Steven Latham really knocked me out. It took a kind of struggling will for us to see it through. We certainly had our concessions: we were given a stage and lighting. These were major. But an independent show is somewhat different from any show corralled in by the total officiality of a department. One feels far more alone. One feels the contours of one's own will and one must revise any collapsible aspects of one's will into the world.

A few years after this I took the Documentary Theater course with Dr. Callaghan and the Mask Work course with Vladimir Rovinsky. Documentary Theater opened me to the possibilities of the world as script. Where isn't there material? What cannot be manipulated, as we learn every day from news media? This class unhinged my reliance on the centrality of the paper text.

A quilt can be a script, as can an interview, a gesture recorded at a party, the cadence of an upstairs neighbor's footsteps as he enters drunk at night.

Vladimir's Mask Work class got me seeing faces everywhere. How to stand behind these faces? How to move? There is no neutral body. A class with Vladimir ensures this realization. Both classes involve a will to be with the world--to not hide in a theater nor to hide in one's own body, behind one's own face, as if anyone had but one face anyhow.

The last experience I'll mention is the most recent: stage managing & assistant directing Molly Sweeney. The process was very smooth and relaxed and everyone involved operated at a high level of focus and ambition. But again: relaxed. I detected less worry during this process than in any other show I've been part of. There I saw a will to allow--a will to let the show live, to coax it out rather than to kill it by forcing it into a preconceived notion. This, I think, will follow me from here on out.

Can you discuss your past original pieces? What led to your decision to create new work while still a student?  I have always considered the independent works I've done to be lattices between the various entrances I've found into the world: sociology, philosophy, art, communication theory, critical theory. Initially, I have tended to be led into a piece by the ignition I receive upon meeting the right collaborator. I need someone to talk to. I need a conversationalist with which to manipulate information. I need someone else who is willing to go somewhere difficult and tread water there for a while.

Much of your work seems to be influenced by contemporary theory from a variety of disciplines--how did that evolve during your time at UM? The Serpent certainly bloomed my connection to avant-garde theater. Before my involvement with theater as such, I'd long been obsessed with the experimental in music. Theater itself led to a more  intensive focus for me with experiments in behavior. But the point to move past is the desire to re-present the canon of avant-garde techniques. For me, to experiment means to risk--more importantly, it means to actively 'not know'. The Greeks referred to a state like this as aporia. To be unfounded, unsure. To unlearn. And the more various UM experiences have led me to a mystery, the more I myself have been willing to un-know and to share this view through a glass darkly.

As you near graduation, what's in your future? In November I move to New York City where I plan to live for a while  and experience as much of the face-to-face with other people as possible. I intend to apply to NYU for Performance Studies for Fall 2009 and would like to add Linguistics Studies to this further along. In addition to these things, I have five different sociological/theatrical pieces I am planning which will involve lots of intensive research in various communities in NYC.

What were the origins of THE PRIVATE BODY? Is there anything you would like to say about the piece prior to performances next week? THE PRIVATE BODY began in my mind during the MOLLY SWEENEY process. I began to think about the idea of facing the unknown. That was all I had at that point--which turned into a desire to deliver some  monologues. Over time, I erased myself more and more. As I progressively researched the ideas of contemporary post-dramatic and post-choreographic theory, I began to see more and more what might be possible, what might stick to these walls. I became less and less interested in myself, more and more involved in the lives of others and the life of the Reynolds Building. I saw two performances in Ohio--both of a production by Societas Raffaello Sanzio called Hey Girl!  Castellucci, the director, rehearses very little. He also doesn't centralize a text nor an actor as the vertebrae of the work. He attempts to listen and unleash the icon from wherever it might spout out. The first performance was merely interesting to me--the second moved me greatly.

I don't want to predict or predetermine what the audience should experience for this show. This is the risk of interest: I'm actually very interested in how an audience member feels, not merely in whether or not she felt what I intended to send. My intentions have yet to be revealed to me. That will be up to anyone who sees the show.