I start the year off with a new hosting gig here in good ol’ Barcelona. Joining a friend of mine hosting an open mic in the Gothic Quarter every Friday night.
Then this spring I head south to Valencia to join Narrativa Improv Fest as their light board operator.
Additionally I’m back to the drawing board…or rather the writer’s board covered appropriately in sticky notes and scribbles to reconstruct a play from the vaults of my hard drive.
We’ve got some more projects in the works, too! Including going for round two with an old student on her new work-in-progress solo comedy hour and a new mysterious creative project with a friend abroad…well, if Austria counts as abroad?
Stay tuned and catch me teaching corporate workshops and private lessons on communication, narrative, and presentation.
Left: a headshot taken my third year in uni (2019-20); Right: a headshot taken under a lighting grid I designed and installed (2025)
It’s been over 5 years since I’ve walked onstage as someone other than myself.
After a two and half year hiatus after uni, I began my stand-up career and returned to the stage as an improviser, musician, and vocalist. But I had yet to add traditional acting back into the mix…until today. Today I take the stage in my original piece, Where We Die; a piece I’ve spent the last three months as director, dramaturg, and lighting designer. But tonight I’ll step into the role of Sophie, a broken young girl from America who has lost more than her sister in the last five years. Now she finds herself among strangers, and we’ll see if in them, she can find herself.
I feel somewhere between anxiety and pride to be stepping back under the lights. I’m grateful to be joined by five other incredible, hard-working cast members. And while I’m excited to get to play, I’m nervous to “put my money where my mouth is” as it were; with minimal rehearsals yet speaking the words I, myself, wrote, a pressure weighs on me to be more than good.
But this is what I’ve been trained to do. Beginning at the age of eight, I’ve been in countless productions of drama, comedy, varying lengths and intensities, some with song and dance, some with puppetry and movement. I’ve almost two decades of stage time with the years between age 13 and 21 being the most intense, doing 2-6 productions every year complete with rehearsal, memorization, and of course, performances. I know what to do when something goes wrong, when you miss a line, when you get lost. This, too, is a play I know intimately as it was birthed from my own brain, the characters splinters of myself.
I have no idea what awaits me onstage tonight, but I know that the curtain will rise, and it will fall.
Opening image from “Where We Die”– photo by David Caldwell
What a ride this project has been – and it’s not over yet! Where We Die SOLD OUT its debut show at the Barcelona Fringe on November 4th! But it wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows…
Just days before our premiere, we unfortunately had to part ways with a cast member which resulted in some quick and dirty reconstructive surgery to the text. As we couldn’t replace the actor on such short notice, I made last minute edits to cut the character entirely from the piece. The cast pushed through but their nerves did, understandably, get the better of them in a couple of instances. But overall the show was well-received by audiences, some of whom quickly purchased another ticket to come back and see it again!
Last night was the first of our return run at The BCN Studio in Poble Sec and though the audience was thinner, the cast was phenomenal! With a little space to breathe, the actors found themselves and each other – the collaboration that’s needed in an ensemble show of this kind. I am very happy with all their hard work and am very excited to see it three more times!…well, I’ll see it two more times…
You can read our opening night review from Europeancomedy.com here.
This fall catch us at the second ever Barcelona Fringe Festival October 31-November 9th with our performance November 4th at 20:00 of Where We Die in The BCN Studio.
Originally a thesis project, Where We Die is a new play from Brielle that made its staged reading premiere in February of 2021 in Salisbury, North Carolina U.S.A. Now it’s been edited and updated to be brought back to the stage this November. You do not want to miss this!
Outfitted with a brilliant cast, this play tells the story of seven strangers from around the world who get stuck together in the strangest of circumstances: Purgatory. Where the language barrier falls away, will these characters be able to come together across cultural barriers to solve the world’s problems – along with their own?
Early this spring, Brielle was teaching a beginning acting class for stand-ups and improvisers here in Barcelona.
In this workshop, Brielle takes students through the classics of acting teachers and techniques with a concentration on Sanford Meisner and Susanna Bloch’s Alba Emoting along with an overview of all the names you’ve heard but never truly known: Stanislavski, Grotowski, Strasberg, Artaud… Laugh, cry, and scream through the 20th century of acting philosophies while learning their secrets along the way and how to apply them to whatever you do onstage. This course is perfect for beginner actors or seasoned stand-ups and improvisers – even if comedy is your calling, this class gives you a brand new foundation of performing and tons of new practices to add to your toolkit!
