What are you most looking forward to with your new role and why/ Why are you most excited to join the Grand?
I’m excited to become part of something that has so much history behind it and so much life ahead. I grew up in the arts and I think there is something almost sacred about creating and most importantly sharing spaces for creatives across disciplines to express and connect. We must have spaces to dream and create and the work of making sure those spaces last and those moments aren’t forgotten is a special part of the human experience that I am lucky enough to do for a living.
If you had to pick just one song you could play for the rest of time, what would it be (and why)?
Mango (freestyle/process) by Orion Sun
It’s the kind of song that does whatever I need it to do when I need to do it. It’s a song I can listen to and think of my relationship with myself or my daughter or my mother or grandmother. It’s a song I can listen to mourn or celebrate, restive or motivate. The kind of song that can either move me or ground me, if I want it to and if I let it. Equal parts a vibe and a bop.
What’s some advice you received that you keep close to your heart/try to live by?
Maybe not advice directly towards me, but Audre Lorde has this essay The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action that lives in my head rent free:
“It is never without fear — of visibility, of the harsh light of scrutiny and perhaps judgment, of pain, of death. But we have lived through all of those already, in silence, except death. And I remind myself all the time now that if I were to have been born mute or had maintained an oath of silence my whole life long for safety, I would still have suffered, and I would still die. It is very good for establishing perspective.”
Fun fact/hidden talent?
Fun fact: I used to work nights at a prison.
Hidden talent: I’ve written (what I think at least are) some beautiful poems about it.
Which Grand show are you looking forward to and why?
Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. My mom loves going to watch this every year, and I’m looking forward to bringing her to watch it at The Grand for the first time.