Director

Janet is passionate about the need to balance our digital 2-D daily existence of information saturation with the sensory, immediate, and shared 3-D experience of story – you know, the “Right-Here-Right-Now-Sitting-Beside-Strangers-and-Friends-with-our-phones-off” kind of experience.

She values innovation, ensemble collaboration, and igniting the story in the space – respecting the text in equal balance with dynamics of space + time, and the company’s imagination. Using ensemble-based, contemporary performance approaches, she works closely with the entire company to create live performances that may ignite, provoke, inspire, and resonate with the audience.

Janet’s directing credits reveal her interest in myth, transformation, and the beauty human journey – pieces like Metamorphoses, Big Love, Eurydice, The Ash Girl, Peter and the Starcatcher, Romeo + Juliet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, As Like You Like It, My Children! My Africa!…and a hip-hop Antigone, forged in collaboration with UM-Flint students and alumni rappers Vertigo/Josh Clark, and Vaughn Kelsey Davis in 2020.  Her debut directing assignment, Master Harold…and the Boys by Athol Fugard received the honor of performing at the Kennedy Center’s American College Theatre Festival Region III conference. Professionally, Janet has directed Jungle Book and Huck Finn (both Wilde Award Nominees for Best TYA). 

Janet’s credits in Theatre-Making and Devising include works in Glenwood Cemetery, the Riverbank Park Grand Fountain in downtown Flint, and 9xNourished: The Flint Farmers’ Market Project, which was produced by Flint Youth Theatre and co-created with nationally acclaimed playwright/theatre-maker Michael Rohd. Janet is a passionate advocate for the values of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI), and believes that theatre is fundamentally a civic engagement experience, which can delight, challenge, and activate empathy within an individual and society.