How did you get into the industry?
A dear friend, Petra Kolber, asked me to direct her TEDxSyracuseUniversity. I said yes because it was an opportunity to work with someone I admired, and I thought it would be just like all the one-woman shows I had directed. I did script analysis with her script, I directed her using objective and action, the same technique I use with my actors (David Mamet’s style), and I blocked the talk with movement and choreography, just like all of my shows.
Before I knew it, I had all these speakers asking me to work with them and no place to put them. As a theater producer, I produced shows, and the best show for speakers that I knew of at the time, was TED. I applied for my TEDx license and became the executive producer of TEDxLincolnSquare in New York City. I produced that event for two years and started building my company, The Big Talk.
