The Red Balloon just opened at Adventure Theatre this weekend and runs all through May and into June. It is an exquisite ensemble piece in which I have the honor of performing and have also designed the costumes! And it’s at Glen Echo Park which is a beautiful spot to visit this time of year [...]
I’ve quietly been working away over the last year learning to dance on an aerial rope. It’s a fabulous feeling and I eagerly continue my studies, but just for the fun of it I’m posting a little video of my progress in my most recent class with my fabulous teacher Kiebpoli Calnek. She teaches in [...]
…Is the title of my most recent venture- a ritual theater piece told through movement, puppetry and song. We just performed it’s first incarnation at HERE Arts Center where I have been in residence with my collaborator and puppeteer Lindsay Abromaitis-Smith. The show was a great success- sold out both nights to audiences excited and [...]
This is a piece I developed with the jazz funk duo The Mimetiks (featuring Akie Bermiss and Kyle Jaster). I’ve performed it in a variety of settings- in prosceniums and on rooftops. It’s a delightful little piece- an encounter, a memory, a love story. Here is a video of the piece taken at the Sidwell [...]
An exciting outdoor renegade production of this incredible classic. Emma plays Stella alongside her old highschool co-star David Gerson as Stanley Kowalski. No better neighborhood for this show than around the community garden-turned-theater on the LES where the colorful personalities of our neighbors jive seamlessly with the welcome trumpeter practicing across the street each night.
After India I went on to Taiwan where I met up with U-Theatre- the company of traditional drummers I had met last summer in a workshop at Robert Wilson’s Watermill Center for international artists. When I first met them I felt right away that they had something I had never seen before and I knew [...]
As yet untitled, I just finished the shoot of a short film created by my friend Nathan Austin. A story of a girl and her father after the mother’s death. It is currently in post-production but we are hoping to have it ready to send to festivals in the fall. These are some stills from [...]
My first assignment working at Amherst College after graduation was to design costumes for a production of The Pillowman. I was given relatively free reign on the design and really had a blast putting it together. It is the story of a story-teller in a police-run dictatorship (and lots more). Our production had puppets play [...]
This piece was created by Happenstance Theater (the company created by my father Mark Jaster and his wife Sabrina Mandell) for the first DC Fringe Festival. The role of the puppeteer was originated by Lindsay Abromaitis-Smith (a fascinating artist and puppeteer whose work is worth following). When they re-mounted the show for the Peabody Essex [...]
My Senior Honors Thesis for completion of the Theater and Dance major at Amherst College. I started brainstorming ideas in June of 2006 with no idea what the show would be, only that I had to make one. As I worked through the fall I developed a duet with a ghost puppet which eventually became [...]