Audio, Video & Print Journalist
In August 2017, I moved to Asheville, NC, to launch the position of Arts & Culture Producer with Blue Ridge Public Radio.
Here’s the best place to catch up on the latest stories I’ve produced, and here’s a more curated sampling.
I cover Asheville’s fertile arts community through broadcasts, video and online written articles. I’ll soon co-host a weekly podcast about contemporary music from North Carolina and, perhaps sometime in mid-2019, host a weekly on-air program, dedicated to the arts.
I’ll always be grateful to the Asheville Improv Collective for welcoming me with wide-open arms just after I arrived to town. I spent 2018 as a member of AIC’s first resident troupe, Blank Slate, and of the duo I formed with Haley Bri Cohen, called The Aftermath.
In 2019, I’m focusing on The Aftermath and a new small-cast project, building up to improvising full-length, two-act plays this coming spring and summer.
In 2016, I relaunched 3-Minute Egg, the Twin Cities arts video program I first produced between 2008-10. After producing occasional episodes in 2016, I plan to ramp up to two videos most weeks during 2017.
A growing intrigue with Facebook Live inspired me to conceive “The Steering Committee,” an hourlong talk show on the Twin Cities arts scene taking place entirely from my car.
I drive to the artists’ studios or workplaces, open my car door to them, and we talk about their work while driving to pick up the next artist. This is a four-camera, four-mic production, and I handle all the mixing and camera-switching on the fly (usually while parked). If all goes well, by the end of the hour, I’ve interviewed three distinct artists, started some crosstalk in the car and taken comments and questions from people watching online without causing an accident.
I produced four episodes during fall 2016 am happy with how this show looks and works. Here’s one of the complete episodes.
I won’t continue producing “The Steering Committee” through Facebook, which rewards short and distracted attention spans and is the wrong platform for an extended interview program. I’ll look into YouTube’s livestreaming capabilities and relaunch the show in early 2017.
I spent six months following the dancers of the Cincinnati Ballet’s Second Company as they worked to win jobs with the principal company. Watch my documentary and step inside the rarified world of professional dance. “The Apprentice: Dancing for Careers with the Cincinnati Ballet” went online April 30 at WCPO.com.
This past winter, I produced a four-part video series documenting the creative process of Cincinnati’s MamLuft & Company Dance. Those four parts, which premiered online over consecutive days, are now wrapped into this single video.
As Ohio inches inevitably toward marriage equality, I thought I might post this from two years ago, when I spent a fun afternoon in front of the Minnesotans for Marriage booth at the 2012 Minnesota State Fair, talking with people opposed to gay and lesbian couples from marrying. This organization pushed for a constitutional amendment to define marriage as solely between one man and one woman. That proposal went on to fail at the November ballot, when Democrats also swept the Minnesota House, Senate and governorship in that election. Enjoy!
