Hello! I'm Matt
I am a stage director currently in his last year of my MFA directing program at the University of Southern Mississippi. I have worked regionally in theatre for over 10 years. I love to travel, probably a side effect of having lived in 12 different states.
My focus in rehearsals is to maintain a joyous energy and hone that aura towards the art. By prioritizing the health and wellness of the actors, I drive my art towards success every time. I aspire to always be learning and growing.
To quote Walt Wittman, “Keep your face always toward the sunshine - and shadows will fall behind you.”
My Unique Theatrical Journey
Robert Frost said, "Two roads diverged in a wood, and I — I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference."
My theatre journey has not been straight, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Oct, 2011
I joined the theatre community at The University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Leading me to the decision of double majoring in Theatre and Marketing. I finished both in just 4 years, graduating in 2014.
Aug, 2014
I earned an apprenticeship with Skylight Music Theatre as a stage manager. This led me to working regionally as a stage manager in New York, Chicago, and Colorado. It paid the bills, but it drained me. I was losing my passion for the role, but never the art.
Jan, 2018
I stopped working in theatre for a while to work in sales for a push-to-talk communications company. I then left to work as a Senior Associate in Bugs and Labeling for TikTok. All the while dreaming of finding a way back to theatre, but as a director. I began looking into graduate programs.
Aug, 2022
I began my MFA directing track with The University of Southern Mississippi under the guidance of the late Lou Rackoff. He passed my second semester but left me with a fountain of knowledge and a passion to keep going. His final words to me were, “Don’t let the light go out.” I won’t.
May, 2025
I am set to graduate with my MFA in Theatre Direction. I will have written a thesis document of The Lieutenant of Inishmore and directed the theatre’s largest show of the season Big Fish. From here I plan to work regionally as well as teach and mentor the young aspiring artists of the next generation!
Ethos
I acknowledge my white, CIS, heteronormative, educational, and economic privileges. I acknowledge the benefit I have from the systems built on the oppression of enslaved people.
I commit to using my privilege and power to promote social justice by fostering inclusive spaces around me. I commit to empowering voices and valuing experiences different from my own.
I commit to dismantling systems of oppression that I benefit from. I commit to universal and accessible practices in my classroom and design practices.
I pledge to continuously check my implicit bias, to engage in active dialogue with BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, and disabled people around me, and to use my academic and industrial platforms to promote inclusive and anti-racist practices.
I have inhabited the ancestral land of the Choctaw people while attending Graduate School. As well as, I have inhabited the land of the Cherokee while studying at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and while working in Nashville. I acknowledge that these lands were stolen from their ancestral land and that I have benefited from their oppression.
As a white male I grew up blind to the advantages I was afforded simply based off my demographics. However, through education, real-world experience, and being shown the vast disparity of equity of opportunities between races I have affirmed to promote an environment of equity and inclusion for all.
The courses I teach afford me the opportunity to introduce a new standard for theatre education that involves the inclusion of brilliant modern and post-modern playwrights like Lorca, Wilson, and Nottage. I have a responsibility to my students to introduce them to material focused on BIPOC, LGBTQ+, and women’s stories.
This same duty is present in my productions. The need for diversity onstage and in the rehearsal room, is paramount to telling a full-bodied story. Allowing diverse audiences to be able to see themselves within the story only heightens the power of the art we create and the commentary we make as a society on the downfalls of the current political climate. As an artist, I work to establish true equity in the theatre space that allows for the flourishing of all art.
Selected Works
I've worked all across the States with a variety of different artists and organizations.
