Meet Rebekah
I am a theatre artist, educator, director, and curriculum developer whose work centers embodied learning, ensemble practice, and what I call “joy as rigor.” My teaching is grounded in a Play–Process–Return approach in which students learn through experimentation, reflection, collaboration, and repetition. Whether teaching Shakespeare, acting, sketch comedy writing, improvisation, or script analysis, I believe students learn most deeply when they are actively engaged in the process of discovery.
I currently teach sketch comedy writing through the Rodney Dangerfield Institute at Los Angeles City College Extension and have taught at The Second City since 2008, where I teach sketch writing, improvisation, comedy television writing, musical improvisation, and acting. Across these spaces, I translate professional rehearsal and performance practices into clear, collaborative pedagogy that supports rigorous artistic growth without sacrificing care, curiosity, or sustainability.
My classrooms are highly participatory, rehearsal-centered spaces where students build technique through play, embodiment, listening, writing, ensemble practice, and active experimentation. I approach teaching as both an artistic and relational practice grounded in consent-forward collaboration, accessibility, accountability, and shared responsibility. I believe rigor and care are not opposites, and I strive to create environments where students can take meaningful creative risks while feeling supported, challenged, and connected to the ensemble around them.
As the former Artistic Director of Bare Boned Theatre in Chicago, I co-created and executive produced The Ville, a long-running live LGBTQIA+ soap opera developed with and for Chicago’s queer community during a period of limited queer media representation. My acting and directing work includes regional theatre, devised performance, comedy, Shakespeare, and ensemble-based new work development, and I was formerly an artistic associate of The Actors' Gang.
I hold an M.F.A. in Performance Pedagogy from Loyola Marymount University and a B.A. in Theatre Arts from San José State University. My thesis research explored embodied and ensemble-based approaches to classical actor training.
My Pedagogy
Teaching Philosophy
My teaching is grounded in embodied rigor, ensemble practice, and what I call a pedagogy of joy. I understand joy not as ease or forced positivity, but as the conditions that allow students to engage deeply and sustainably in creative work: curiosity, safety, challenge, collaboration, and meaningful participation. I design learning environments that balance structure with play, rigor with care, and individual discovery with collective responsibility.
I approach acting and performance training as embodied, relational practices developed through repetition, experimentation, rehearsal, and return. Students learn by doing: speaking text out loud, moving, listening, improvising, writing, collaborating, and revisiting discoveries through active practice. Across my teaching, I use a Play–Process–Return framework in which students first explore through experimentation, then reflect on what they discovered, and finally return to the work with greater specificity and awareness.
Global Majority performance traditions are treated as foundational ways of knowing rather than supplemental content. I am interested in expanding theatrical training beyond Eurocentric defaults while maintaining rigor, specificity, and deep engagement with craft.
Inclusive & Ethical Practice
I approach inclusive and ethical practice as ongoing work grounded in reflection, accountability, collaboration, and care. My teaching is shaped by graduate study in Equity & Diversity in the Classroom, Healing Pedagogies, and Intimacy and Consent practices, as well as years of experience facilitating ensemble-based creative work across university, conservatory, community college, and professional training environments.
In practice, this means creating classrooms and rehearsal spaces with clear expectations, transparent communication, shared responsibility, and room for curiosity, experimentation, and repair. I strive to build environments where students can take meaningful creative risks while understanding that their identities, lived experiences, boundaries, and perspectives are treated with respect and seriousness.
I teach students with varied educational backgrounds, learning styles, identities, and levels of artistic experience, including students encountering theatre training for the first time. Rather than assuming a single “correct” way of learning or performing, I create multiple points of entry into the work through embodiment, discussion, writing, observation, rehearsal, and collaborative inquiry.
I believe instructors and directors also carry responsibility for tending to their own positionality, biases, and regulation so that care flows outward rather than being extracted from students or collaborators. Inclusive practice is not a static achievement, but an ongoing process of listening, reflection, revision, and active engagement with the communities we serve.
Courses & Areas of Instruction
Courses & Areas of Instruction
- Beginning Acting for Non-Majors
- Acting
- Scene Study
- Script Analysis
- Shakespeare & Classical Text
- Voice & Movement Integration
- Improvisation (Shortform & Longform)
- Sketch Comedy Writing
- Writing the Comedy TV Pilot
- Devised & Ensemble-Based Performance
- Theatre History & Performance Studies
- Performance Pedagogy & Curriculum Development
Research
Playing Shakespeare & the Play-Process-Return Model
My research investigates embodied and ensemble-based approaches to theatre pedagogy, with a particular focus on Shakespeare, rehearsal-based inquiry, improvisation, and collaborative performance training. I am especially interested in how play, repetition, movement, voice, rhetoric, and ensemble practice support learning across varied cognitive styles, artistic backgrounds, and lived experiences.
I recently completed an M.F.A. in Performance Pedagogy at Loyola Marymount University, where my thesis, Playing Shakespeare: An Embodied Approach to Classical Acting, examined how embodied and rehearsal-centered pedagogies can help students access classical text through experimentation, reflection, and active performance practice rather than memorization or purely literary analysis. Developed through the teaching of an upper-division Shakespeare course, the project introduced a Play–Process–Return framework in which students first engage material through embodied exploration, then reflect on discoveries, and finally return to the work with greater specificity, awareness, and collaborative responsiveness.
The research draws from Michael Chekhov Technique, Laban/Bartenieff Movement System, Viola Spolin, Cicely Berry, Augusto Boal, and ensemble-based performance traditions emphasizing rhythm, storytelling, call-and-response, and communal learning structures. Across this work, I investigate how performance practice itself can function as a site of inquiry, discovery, and authorship rather than simply the demonstration of knowledge already acquired.
My broader research interests include comedy pedagogy, devised theatre, Global Majority performance traditions, accessibility and inclusive rehearsal practices, ensemble creation, practice-as-research methodologies, and the relationship between joy, rigor, and sustainable artistic process. I am particularly interested in building theatre training environments that balance challenge with care while encouraging curiosity, collaboration, experimentation, and meaningful creative risk-taking.
Community-Centered Shakespeare
A Midsummer Night's Dream at East LA Rep
Director
This production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream was conceived as a love letter to East Los Angeles: a culturally specific, community-centered adaptation honoring the neighborhood’s humor, rhythms, visual language, and collective imagination. Developed as a nine-actor cut, the production explored how Global Majority performance vocabularies can function as foundational actor training rather than decorative framing layered onto classical text.
The fairy world was reimagined through Mexican-American archetypal figures drawn from East Los Angeles community life. Titania was inspired by Frida Kahlo, Oberon by Chicano zoot suit culture, and the fairy ensemble incorporated folklórico-inspired movement traditions that grounded Shakespeare’s fantasy in culturally specific rhythm, power, and embodiment. Bottom became a contemporary fame-seeking actor, translating Shakespeare’s comic ego into a recognizable performance culture archetype.
Rehearsals centered ensemble authorship, embodied play, archetype exploration, and collaborative storytelling, inviting actors to integrate personal and cultural knowledge into the work. The project reflects my broader interest in re-activating classical texts through local knowledge, shared imagination, and embodied training practices that move beyond Eurocentric defaults in actor training.
LGBTQIA+ Performance & Community Storytelling
The Ville — Live LGBTQIA+ Soap Opera (Chicago)
Co-Creator, Head Writer, Director
The Ville was a long-running monthly live LGBTQIA+ soap opera staged at Mary’s Attic above Hamburger Mary’s in Chicago. I served as Head Writer and directed 11 of the 18 hour-long episodes, leading a repertory ensemble during a period when queer representation in television and film remained limited and marriage equality existed in only a handful of U.S. states.
Named after Chicago’s Andersonville neighborhood, one of the city’s longstanding LGBTQIA+ cultural centers, the series was created for and with the local queer community. Episodes blended comedy, drama, music, movement, and serialized storytelling while engaging questions of identity, kinship, survival, and chosen family. Audiences were invited to laugh with us, at ourselves, and through ourselves while recognizing familiar community dynamics onstage.
The production operated on a rolling repertory model in which writers developed upcoming episodes while actors simultaneously rehearsed future material and performed current episodes. This fast-paced process demanded adaptability, collaboration, rapid memorization, and ensemble trust. Writers and performers worked closely together, shaping characters collaboratively and integrating performer strengths directly into narrative development.
In addition to writing and directing, I participated in producing, recruiting artists, coordinating creative teams, marketing performances, and contributing to grant and resource development. The project explored queer community storytelling, serialized live performance, and repertory collaboration as both artistic practice and ensemble training.
Sketch Comedy & Improvisation
The Second City — Chicago & Hollywood
Faculty, Instructor, Director (2008–Present)
For nearly two decades, I have taught, directed, and developed curriculum at The Second City, working across acting, improvisation, sketch writing, musical improvisation, and comedy television writing. Alongside teaching, I have directed a wide range of ensemble-based graduation revues, devised performances, musical sketch revues, and fully improvised musicals.
My directing and teaching practices emphasize authorship, ensemble intelligence, adaptability, repetition, and sustainable creative process. Across rehearsal rooms and classrooms, I guide performers through fast-paced collaborative creation processes that develop responsiveness, specificity, musicality, and long-term artistic confidence.
This sustained professional work continues to shape my research and pedagogy in performance training, particularly my interest in how structured play, repetition, and ensemble-based learning support artistic growth, collaboration, and embodied skill development across performance contexts.