Affiliation: Director of LON 360° Indigenous Education Initiative, Artistic Producer of Celebration of Nations, Executive Producer of RUMBLE: The Indians Who Rocked The World
Areas of Expertise: Non-profit Charitable Management and Museum Management (Smithsonian Institution), Historic and Contemporary Public Art Curation
Board Committee(s) Serving on: Major Projects Steering, Equity, Diversity & Inclusion
Personal Statement: When at its best LIVE theatre at The Shaw provides a shared social experience that serves to elevate individual and group consciousness by nurturing (and often provoking) the exchange of perspectives, viewpoints, and ideas through the performing arts. Theatre is a fascinating and entertaining genre of communication that when done well educates, promotes literacy, and advances the humanities. Howard Shalwitz, cofounder of the Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, said “theatre is a sophisticated expression of a basic human need, one might call it an instinct, to mimic, to project stories onto ourselves and others, and to create meaning through narrative and metaphor.” In the Niagara Region stories carrying meaning and metaphor extend back some 13,000 years. When and where we identify shared values within stories, whether told by Indigenous peoples through millennia, or playwrights such as George Bernard Shaw, or Chekhov, Wilde, Coward, Tolstoy, Brighouse, Williams, Moscovitch, or others whose works rise to the standards of insight, intelligence, inclusion, and empathy, we locate our common humanity. It is for the experience of excellence in written and performed expression that I greatly value and support the Shaw Festival.
