Susan’s Journey to Directing

Susan’s first experience directing was for a church Christmas pageant in California. It was a whirlwind production she put together where she operated as director, composer, and choreographer all at once. That first show grew into a series of original scripts she wrote and directed for church Christmas pageants over the following 10 to 12 years, drawing on whatever local talent her faith communities had to offer.

In the years that followed, Susan kept finding her way back to directing in small ways. She staged an original production for her daughter’s first-grade class and also assisted with staging for a Chicago-based opera touring company long before she thought of herself as a professional director.

That changed when she took on A Christmas Carol with Arts Express in Tucson, her first professional directing credit. Arts Express was her first real experience of working inside a full production company, with a stage manager, music director, and producer supporting the rehearsal process. It taught her the protocols of collaborative theater-making like how to hold the creative vision of a show while also engaging closely with a production team on casting, set design, costumes, and staging. She’s grateful to have grown alongside Arts Express as a company, watching it expand from three shows a year to eight (plus two junior productions each summer!)

In the 2025-2026 academic year, Susan served as interim Director of Opera Production at the University of Arizona, a role she stepped into after shadowing the current director during a production of The Marriage of Figaro and being recommended for the position. Over two semesters, she directed Cendrillon by Pauline Viardot, reimagined in 1950s Paris with a pop art aesthetic, and a double bill of Menotti’s The Telephone and Mozart’s Der Schauspieldirektor. She also taught the Opera Workshop courses, working with students ranging from complete beginners to seasoned singers.

At the center of Susan’s directing work is the same instinct that started with her first pageant: a love of creating a world.

She savors the process of imagining how a story can live on stage, and developing that vision collaboratively with actors, musicians, designers, and crew.

Having spent so many years as a performer herself, Susan knows what it takes to find depth in a role, and works to draw that out of every actor she directs.