BIO: 

Manon McCollum is a senior Theatre Directing major at Fordham University Lincoln Center. Born and raised in Dallas, Texas, he graduated from Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts in the Theatre cluster. Manon has worked as a stage manager, assistant director, devising collaborator, and theatre administrator in both New York City and the Dallas-Fort Worth area, and produced and directed a production of Jen Silverman’s The Moors last year. He has made art in venues like The Performing Garage, Alchemical Studios, and Intar Theater, and with directors like Kaneza Schaal, Kara Lynn Vaeni, and Joel Ferell. 

 

ARTIST STATEMENT:

My theater journey started when my parents met – while my mom was teaching my dad’s improv class. They are now divorced (of course). My “aunts and uncles” were playwrights, actors, and directors in the Dallas theatre scene. When I wasn’t doing or watching theatre in my community, I was connecting with weird artsy queers on the internet, reading fanfiction, theory, and plays, and developing a deep well of diverse cultural inspirations to pull from. I have since found new communities to create with and realized that conversations – both those with my collaborators and those that happen on walks to subways after the curtain drops – are the driving force of my practice. After many such conversations, I know I want to trap people in a room full of strangers for a living. Here’s hoping that, at least for 90 minutes, those strangers, my collaborators, and I can become a theatrical community of our own.