I am a theater scholar, composer/lyricist, and theater educator. In all three arenas, I tell stories about the past in order to better understand the present. 

I am Associate Professor of Theater at Baruch College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York. My research focuses on Yiddish theater and drama, theatrical travel, artistic networks, and immigrant theater. 

My first book, Yiddish Empire: The Vilna Troupe, Jewish Theater, and the Art of Itinerancy, was published by University of Michigan Press in 2018. Yiddish Empire received awards from the Theatre Library Association and the ​Modern Language Association. My second book, The Dybbuk Century: The Jewish Play That Possessed the World, a collection of essays from scholars and theater practitioners co-edited with Rachel Merrill Moss, was published in 2023. My writing has also appeared in Theatre Survey, Theatre Journal, Modern Drama, Comparative Drama, New England Theatre Journal, Performance Research, Pakn Treger, and American Theatre Magazine. ​I am currently working on a new biography of the legendary Yiddish performer and lyricist Molly Picon.

​I am also a composer/lyricist, translator, director, and dramaturg. Currently, I am working on writing a new musical about members of the Paper Brigade. My directing, dramaturgy, and translation work has appeared at Target Margin Theater, the New Yiddish Rep, the Baruch Performing Arts Center, CUNY's Center for the Humanities, Harvard University, the Yiddish Book Center, and the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene. From 2008-2009, I was the founding director of the Harvard Yiddish Players.
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With Joel Berkowitz, I co-founded The Digital Yiddish Theatre Project, a research collective that applies digital tools to the study of Yiddish theater. I regularly apply Digital Humanities tools to my research, and write about DH in theater. 

I currently serve on the boards of Luna Stage and the Yiddish Book Center. 

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