About

London & Paris-based theatre artist & communication expert.

Before assuming my current role as Artistic Director of the video communication platform mmhmm, I was the Founding Director of the Program in Speaking and Learning at Harvard University and Assistant Professor of Performance in the Department of Performing and Media Arts at Cornell University.

At mmhmm, I lead the experimental research arm of the company. As a member of the product team, I collaborate with design, engineering, sales, customer support, and marketing to research and implement a wholistic vision for mmhmm as a radical new medium of communication for the hybrid world of work. I look for ways to integrate the core elements of compelling communication: storytelling, interaction, visual engagement, and captivating delivery within augmented virtual ecosystems. My goal is to make videos intuitively and seamlessly theatrical, dialogic, communal, and versatile. To read more about my work at mmhmm see my blog: “Restaged: Connecting in a Distributed Age.”

I have been a communication consultant and voice & speech coach for actors, politicians, executives, religious leaders, artists, academics, educators, and anyone for whom public speaking plays a key vocational role.

As a theatre artist and translator, I have received grants and commissions from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Fulbright Scholar Program, the Doris Duke Foundation Building Bridges Program, the Mellon Foundation’s TCG Global Connections award, the Radcliffe Institute, the Huntington Playwriting Fellows, the Einaudi Center for International Studies, and the Catalyst Collaborative @ M.I.T.

I have directed productions and workshops at the Huntington Theatre Company, the American Repertory Theater, PEN America World Voices Festival, Golden Thread Theatre, the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University, Vanderbilt University, Cornell University, and Rose Bruford College. As a voice, speech and dialect specialist, I have coached on Broadway, in regional theatres and consulted for film and television. I have taught acting, voice & speech, and drama in translation.

My first book, Tahrir Tales: Plays from the Egyptian Revolution (Seagull Books) is an anthology of new plays in translation. I am currently working on a second anthology of translated plays, Khashabi Theatre in Haifa: Palestinian Consciousness in an Era of Neoliberal Globalization.

I earned my BA in Drama and Theatre Arts from Columbia University, an MFA in acting from the Moscow Art Theatre School, and a Graduate Certificate in Advanced Theatre Training from Harvard. I am certified in Voice and Speech Pedagogy by the Fitzmaurice Institute.