Automatic Fiction at Montgomery college performing arts

This fall, I had the privilege of directing a staged reading at Montgomery College, working with six incredible students from their performing arts department to create something truly special. We took Dostoyevsky's The Double—a dense, psychologically twisted novella about a man whose doppelgänger slowly usurps his life—and transformed it into a devised theatricalized movement piece.

The project was entirely my baby from conception to execution. I adapted the text, breaking down Dostoyevsky's paranoid prose into something physical and performable. I led the devising process with the ensemble, choreographing movement sequences that could capture the protagonist's unraveling mind. Beyond directing, I handled all the production logistics, scheduling rehearsals around everyone's availability, coordinating with the college's theater department, and managing the technical elements for our presentation.

What made this project so rewarding was watching these students, some of whom had never done experimental or movement-based theater, completely commit to the strangeness of the piece. We built something visceral and unsettling together, finding ways to make Dostoyevsky's internal horror visible on stage. It was exhausting and exhilarating, and exactly the kind of collaborative, ambitious work I love making.