Ingrid is an Associate Professor of Playwriting at James Madison University. She has worked as an actor, director, playwright and teacher. She has her MFA in Acting from UNCG and has been teaching at the university level for over a decade. As a director and actor she has performed in churches, theatres, prisons, cafeterias and wherever else a great play makes a big difference. She has received grants to create edgy, challenging plays on such topics as: refugees in the Balkans (Torba), survivors of violent crime (A Body in Motion), stories of faith created with inner-city youth (WhaChaGonnaDu?), and most recently a play about a former student living with cancer (Sarah & the Dinosaur). She is Artistic Director and Founder of Fifth Wall Productions, a company dedicated to creating, producing, and supporting work in theatre that addresses the important themes of our lives in the most creative and exciting forms. CV available upon request.
Click HERE to listen to an interview of Ingrid
on NPR with host Martha Woodroof.
on NPR with host Martha Woodroof.
Ingrid's Philosophy on Theatre
I enter a theatre with great anticipation. Waiting for the shift in my soul, waiting for that moment of "Ah-h! So this is what life is about." These moments make it possible for me to walk out into the world with some newfound understanding. A bit shaken from something. I believe theatre should do nothing less. Pull us in and shake us up. Do something to us. Grab us. Give us a silent moment, a connection, a passion on stage that demands our involvement. Make it impossible for us to fall asleep, to think about the dessert at home that waits for us, or the television shows we are missing. Theatre should take us somewhere. It should move us. That is, after all, why I am a part of this theatre thing. I want to be a part of those moments of movement. A theatre is one of the last places on the planet where we expect people to turn off their cell phones, quiet down, and engage their minds and bodies and imaginations. To be still in order to be moved. This is what I love most about theatre... the possibility to create movement in a room. That’s why I "do" theatre.
Collaborators & Special Thanks
The best thing about theatre is that it can't be done alone.
Please click HERE to read about the many amazing people in my life with whom I am blessed to regularly collaborate.