I moved to Los Angeles 12 years ago and began working in Los Angeles as a freelance director. My personal history begins in Poland, where I was born. Later I moved to Germany, Michigan, Pennsylvania, California, Pennsylvania, New York, and then back to California again to pursue theatre directing. There, I freelanced as well as became the Co-Artistic Director of The Vagrancy, a theatre company specializing in bringing 'duende' back to the theatre and in new play development in general. 'Duende' was coined by Lorca and is the feeling one gets when listening to a beautiful piece of music. Chills, in other words. A transcendence from the mundane to emotion and beauty.
In my moving about, I have found my passion to be new play development, and I tend to work with the playwrights just about as much as I do with actors. Recently, I have been working teaching Drama to Thai children in Bangkok. I felt restless creating theatre in Los Angeles and spent the next 8 years traveling around the world teaching English and Drama. I have to say, it felt good learning about different cultures experientially and learning how to perceive subject matters from different angles as a director. In defining what kind of theatre it is I want to do, the answer is "the kind that tells good stories." And that, in my opinion, can be very difficult. Above all, I am a storyteller, and my work tends to be very story-driven as I am a stickler for real things. I like new playwrights just as much as the old. I like dialogue just as much as silence. I believe that the only antidote we have to the pain in the world is to create beauty whenever we can.
I like the following playwrights:
John Osbourne
Anton Chekhov
Romulus Linney
Tommy Smith
Sarah Kane
Maxim Gorki
Caryl Churchill
Maria Irene Fornes