The Multi-Hyphenate Artist: A TDM Career Chat

This Career Chat will be an opportunity for students to hear practical advice from TDM faculty and staff working in theater and dance about building a career as a multi-hyphenate artist. Specific topics for this interactive panel conversation will include how to brand yourself as an artist, what steps to take to begin networking in different artistic lanes, and how to find balance in your life and career.

Guests for this Career Chat include Andy Russ, Cassie Chapados, and Aislinn Brophy '17.

This event is open to Harvard students only.

If you anticipate needing any type of accommodation to attend, please contact Theater, Dance & Media at tdm[at]fas.harvard.edu.

ABOUT  THE PANELISTS

Andy Russ is an interdisciplinary artist, designer, producer, and educator, based in Providence, RI. For over 30 years, Andy has been making and helping others make art. Originally from North Carolina, with degrees in music and dance from Oberlin College, he spent 10 years in New York City, surfing the downtown dance scene, while acting as Music Supervisor for the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. In 2005, he relocated to Rhode Island to take on the role of Artistic Coordinator for cellist Yo-Yo Ma's Silk Road Project, with whom he produced the Grammy nominated album Off the Map. As a designer, he has created soundscores, lighting, and projections for over 100 dance, theatre, film, and radio productions, including work with Mikhail Baryshnikov, Hal Hartley, David Neumann, Lionel Popkin, Jordan Fuchs, The Wilbury Theatre Group, Clever and Vainglorious Kings, and Harvard University. He is a founding co-director of Motion State Arts, alongside Ali Kenner Brodsky and Lila Hurwitz. Since 2014, his home for personal invention is Passive Aggressive Novelty Company.  http://www.passiveaggressivenoveltycompany.com/

Cassie Chapados is a director, production manager, and technical director originally from small town Wisconsin. She joined Harvard’s Theater, Dance, and Media program in September 2023 after nearly six years at Central Square Theater in Cambridge. There she worked in various roles, including Technical Director, Production Manager, and Director of Production.

As an artist and educator, she is passionate about the stories of young people, particularly young, queer, women and femmes, and has focused largely on this work as a director. Some favorite local directng projects include: She Kills Monsters (Watertown Children’s Theater), Snowgirl (The Nora Theatre Company), honeyhole (Moonbox New Works Festival), Idawalley (Fresh Ink Theatre), and Meet Me in the Bathroom (Boston Conservatory).

In addition to her directing work, she has served as a technical director/supervisor, scenic designer and painter, fight choreographer, and intimacy director with a variety of local companies and educational insitutions including Flat Earth Theatre, Hub Theatre Company of Boston, Boston College, Lesley University, Tufts University, Arlington Catholic High School, Boston Playwright’s Theatre, Off the Grid Theatre Company, Central Square BID, and Open Theatre Project.

Aislinn Brophy ’17 is a queer writer and theater artist whose work seeks to explore hard truths about our world with empathy, joy, and magic. They graduated from Harvard University with an A.B. in Theater, Dance & Media, and are proud to have been a part of Theater, Dance & Media’s very first graduating class. As an actor, they have appeared on stages all across the East Coast. Some of Aislinn’s acting credits include: Nat in Morning, Noon & Night with Company One, Rosalind in Playing Mercury with ISLE Theater Company, Mariana in Measure for Measure with Brown Box Theatre Project, and Ellen/Mrs. Saunders/Cathy in Cloud 9 with Central Square Theater.

Aislinn is a cross-genre writer who works as both a playwright and an author. The world premiere of their play with music, Water, Water Everywhere, was produced by ISLE Theater Company. In 2022, they published their debut young adult novel How to Succeed in Witchcraft with Penguin Random House. How to Succeed in Witchcraft received a starred review from Publishers Weekly, was included on YALSA’s 2024 Best Fiction for Young Adults list, and was chosen as a 2023 honoree for the American Library Association’s Rise: A Feminist Book Project. Their second novel, Spells to Forget Us, was published in 2024. It was nominated for an Ignyte Award for Outstanding Novel: Young Adult, long-listed for a Massachusetts Book Award, and was a finalist for the New England Book Awards.