This thesis explores my evolving relationship to preparation; how my training at UCSD gave me the tools to better express my directorial point of view and create a more sustainable process as an artist.

In this paper I discuss how I went beyond commonplace, rational ways of theater-making and relied on certain “extreme”, irrational gestures to create my production of Charles Mee’s Orestes 2.0. I discuss the circumstances that led me to unlock my subjective artistry, the manner in which I tackled and fulfilled my “directorial concept”, and how I created a production that challenged the tyranny of rationality both on the stage and within the culture of the theater department. 

I relate personal experiences entering school during a time of national suspicion, and I discuss how a more expansive artistic outlook developed in response to my environment. I go through the execution of my directorial concept and show how I “projected a world” from my interior into the theatrical concrete, drawing on the work of master Polish director Tadeusz Kantor. I describe the “rules” of my theatrical world in terms of its diegetic reality, its method of construction, and its aims. I then describe the rehearsal process, highlighting the ways that irrational methods and a focus on body and imagination drove the process. I discuss my creative state of mind, my performance as the character Farley, and the way in which I hoped authority and sense-making functioned in the audience experience of the performance.

Throughout, I accompany my ideas with supporting quotations from Mee’s play and the writing of French theorist, poet, and director Antonin Artaud, situating my use of the power of the irrational inside the theatrical tradition and the play-text.

This thesis explores how identifying and following my impulses led me to stronger work at each step in my directorial process.

Proceeding from the perspective that theory can be utilized in practice, this thesis chronicles the making and production of the University of California San Diego production of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, Part Two: Perestroika in 2016, directed by Jon Reimer. Through the examination of queer theory to justify definition of textual ambiguity, the establishment of queer spirit as a guiding lens of conceptual perspective provides clarity in the directorial decision-making process, as well as a framework for other collaborators to make choices within the interpretive parameters. In applying queer spirit for understanding vague concepts, the workload on the director actually lessons as the rehearsal process continues, emboldening with confidence the other collaborators to justify their choices at a deeper level. The identification of a unifying theory to address the centralized question of the play -- What is God and the Divine in Perestroika? -- demonstrates the efficacy of theory for not only simplifying but also streamlining the tasks of the director in production development.

This thesis explores my experience directing X by Alistair McDowell as a lens through which I identify, meditate on, and codify directorial challenges and experiences that feel unprecedented, but are in fact essential and deeply rooted parts of my process.

This thesis aims to imagine with the great Cuban-American playwright María Irene Fornés. To do this, I perform an investigation of my virtual, live production Fornés’ Letters from Cuba by revisiting images that remain. This production was produced in the Fall of 2020, at the height of the pandemic and political uncertainties. These digital ephemera are the trappings that remain from my first musings of the play, sketches from my notebook, stills from the media tests, notes from rehearsals, and varied scrawled moments. By putting myself in conversation again with these images, I return in order to move forward. I wade through these images and reflect on the discoveries they represent in order to ask “how can imagining with Irene launch us into the theatre of now?” How does her practice of living and theatre-making inform, guide, and instruct us on how to meet our current moment as artists?Assembling and moving through this collected archive asks me to reflect on the ways Fornés invites us to reframe our relationship to our intimate self, the audience, innovation, and our imaginations, and even love itself. Ultimately, Fornés asks us to join her as brave visionaries to create the world in which we want our art to exist.

This thesis explores my celebration of the multiplicities within Latinx performance. I document my direction of Blu by Virginia Grise and the creation of The Stars Through The Smog Showcase with the tools of movement, community-building, and metaphors I developed in the process.

This thesis is a reflective piece delving into my process for editing and directing The Rogue’s Trial by Ariano Suassuna. My work with this classic Brazilian play serves as a case study as I reflect on my journey as a director invested in the transformative power of our stories.I am a storyteller, and I am Brazilian. I grew up nurtured by my grandma's tales about her indigenous father. I also grew up getting blessed by old ladies with herbs, benzedeiras (healers), and eating pirão while also removed from any physical connection to my grandma’s ancestral homelands. All I have are the oral stories, the taste of her food, and a stubborn belief that no matter how many times they cut the tree, remove the tree, the land has memory, and the roots find their way back into the soil. As I have come to understand, our stories are not just narratives but acts of resistance, survival, and permanence. The irony of the ephemeral being what makes it all continuous is a concept that never ceases to fascinate me. Oral stories have kept ancestral knowledge alive for millennia; this tradition I’ve inherited, and it is my job to work on the craft. In my thesis production, I set out to merge the tools and techniques I have honed as a director with the ancestral technologies that compose my identity. The Rogue’s Trial, an Epic story originally written in Portuguese - O Auto da Compadecida, features a playwright who calls himself a clown, critiques the institution of the church, includes a scene of mass murder, and calls out the hypocrisy of those afraid to acknowledge that racism is alive and well. Its unconventional comedia del arte style and folkloric structure boldly juxtapose the grotesque and the sublime, forcing us to confront our reality and embrace the complexity and contradictions of being human. Hypocrisy, religious corruption, and violence were relevant to 1950s Brazil and, sadly, remain strikingly pertinent in 2025 America. The title 'The Rogue's Trial' refers to the protagonist's journey of self-discovery and societal critique, a profoundly flawed protagonist set on a journey that is both a trial and a testament to the resilience of the human spirit. Ah, and it is a comedy! To me, a play will never feel finished - it is a living thing, like a fire - I will always find more places where the story can get stronger and sharper. Yet, whether I like it or not, there is a moment in the process when the play takes on a life of its own - and that is the beauty of it: it ignites and burns on, like gathering around a fire. Kim Senklip Harvey said it best; she names directors as Fire Igniters and Tenders1. And that speaks to me deeply - we find the spark and gather the sticks to fire it up so that the fire can warm those who choose to join the circle. I often find myself thinking about the line from the clown; “I trust that all of you here will profit from the moral lessons of this play and reform your lives. But I’m sure you are already veritable saints, exemplary in virtue and in your love for God and for your neighbor, without wickedness, without meanness, incapable of passing judgment on others or speaking ill of them, generous, without avarice, ideal employers, model employees, sober, chaste, and long-suffering. It is enough, although it may be little. Music” Circus music. Exit clown, dancing. 2 This line holds the impossibility of an idealized way of living and the beauty of our striving towards it; to seek the impossible is enough, although it may be little and we might never do it. I will always hold my hunger for directing with the hope of a clown, reaching towards all a story can possibly be, with the love and craft it deserves, knowing there is always more work I can do. As a director, I dedicate my life to getting people to care. To have hope is to resist. To tell stories and to insist on community is to resist. Sure, theatre might not immediately feed those who are hungry. But pretending misery doesn’t exist is part of the problem, so there is something powerful about talking about these things within the community you are in, and as Augusto Boal3 believed, we can maybe ask the right questions to the right people who might actually be able to do something about it. Ultimately, my thesis is a personal and artistic exploration of the role of a director as a storyteller and a catalyst for meaningful dialogue within the community.