Creative Direction & Original Work

I develop projects from the first "hey, what if we" to the moment the audience is back outside zipping up their coats.

That means I've spent a lot of time writing and performing stories, producing live shows and podcasts, developing visual identities, designing promotional campaigns, directing collaborators and making all the pieces feel like they belong to the same world.

I’m available for creative direction, campaign development and multidisciplinary content roles with arts and cultural organizations, creative agencies and unconventional brands.

This work is also the way that I approach storytelling and communications. I didn't just read a bunch of books about business storytelling and hang out a shingle. I've bombed at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, produced shows at punk clubs, comedy theaters and SXSW, been told by Ira Glass that he loved one of my stories and he'd never in a million years broadcast a different one and stood on NYC street corners to bark in audiences.

I’ve had to hold live audiences, make emotionally complicated material into entertainment, establish a distinct voice and carry that voice through writing, design, production, performance and promotion.

I bring that same artistic judgment and practical understanding to executives, speakers and organizations.

I moved to New York City in 2007 and something didn't feel right. I loved going to weird bars, cool rock shows, underground comedy shows and art openings but I still felt empty, like an extra in someone else's cool life.

Then I went to The Moth in early 2008 and it was like pulling a sword out of a stone. All I wanted to do was get better and better at telling stories and for the next eighteen years I had two driving creative mottos:

• “It's better to be onstage in a bad show than front row at a good one."

• "Never let your IQ get in the way of a good time."

Ever since then I’ve written essays, produced and performed in my own variety show, made comedy albums, built a solo show, and played drums in a loud two-person rock band. At the peak of my productivity I was getting onstage to tell jokes or a story between 5 and 10 times a week.

Most of that work made people laugh, some of it made people cry. Sometimes I failed to make people laugh so spectacularly that I cried. At its best, my work made people reconsider what they thought they knew about testicular cancer, caregiving, corporate life, or what aging punk rock has to offer.

All of this experience taught me that an audience's attention is a precious, conditional gift and to honor that attention by finding the part that matters, recognizing when an audience would rather be anywhere else and earning their trust one line at a time.

Storytelling & Stand-Up Comedy

My stories have appeared on This American Life and PBS’ Stories From the Stage. Two of my stories have been featured on The Moth Podcast. I’ve also released two comedy albums, And I Am Not Lying and Why You Should Be Happy, built from years of telling stories and jokes on stages - mostly in New York City but really all over the place.

Making Waves: An Empathetic Screaming Match on the NYC Subway

Comedy Albums

I released my first album, And I Am Not Lying, through Comedy Dynamics in 2017. It reached #1 on the iTunes comedy chart, and I produced a limited edition on hot-pink vinyl distributed by Dischord Records. Why You Should Be Happy followed through 800 Pound Gorilla Records in 2020.

Because I’m determined to use my art degree every chance I get, I also designed the album covers and promotional materials for both releases, collaborating with poster artist Fred Struckholz on the cover of Why You Should Be Happy.

And I Am Not Lying: The Variety Show

From 2010 until 2019, I produced, performed in and promoted And I Am Not Lying, a monthly late-night variety show combining storytelling, stand-up comedy, burlesque, sideshow and live music.

Originally co-produced with burlesque power couple Brad Lawrence and Cyndi Freeman, creators of The Slipper Room’s Hotsy Totsy, the show bounced from Brooklyn’s Union Hall to Theater Under St. Marks before finally finding a home at UCB Theatre East from 2013 until 2019.

We took the show to SXSW several times, Underground Arts in Philadelphia and Washington, DC’s legendary punk club The Black Cat, where we sold out multiple performances.

Across its nine-year run, the show featured performers including Michael Che, Josh Johnson, Kate Berlant, Sasheer Zamata, Aparna Nancherla, Gary Gulman, Mark Normand and Kyle Kinane.

I developed the show’s concept, voice and visual identity, then carried that identity through its production, design and promotion. I created a new poster for every show rather than working from a fixed template.

I thought of each poster as an artifact from its own strange little world while still belonging to the same wild, ridiculous show.

During the show’s first few years, I collaborated with designer David William, aka D.Billy, on its visual identity. I generally created the imagery while he developed the type treatments. His typography appears in the archival videos on this page.

After those early collaborations, I designed the posters independently. Every poster in the gallery below is entirely my own work.

Selected Show Posters

My Mom Busted Me With This Centerfold Twice, 30 Years Apart

My mom found this Playboy centerfold in my room in 1988 and when she told me, I tore it up in a mix of shame and rage. Thirty years later I was visiting for the holidays and found the pieces stashed in an issue of Savage Sword of Conan on the shelf in my childhood bedroom.

I had to make a show poster out of it. Then I forgot to take the pieces off of my mom's scanner and she found it again.

Corvette LeFace + Batalá Washington

I knew Batalá Washington’s bandleader, Alison Rodden, from college, where we were close friends and housemates. I knew New York burlesque performer Corvette LeFace separately and thought they belonged onstage together.

I brought them together for a sold-out 2013 edition of And I Am Not Lying at The Black Cat in Washington, DC, which I produced, hosted and performed in.

I booked the band, gave Corvette recordings to rehearse with and arranged time for her and the musicians to work together in the empty club before the show. I also booked the camera crew, supervised the edit and recorded the introduction heard here.

CareGiver

CareGiver is an Off-Broadway stand-up and storytelling show I wrote and performed at SoHo Playhouse.

It grew from two colossal and frankly horrible experiences happening simultaneously: my wife and I going through IVF to become parents while I helped care for my father as ALS took away his independence.

The show follows my family’s fight to get him the care he was legally entitled to, the physical intimacy and indignity of caregiving, and my efforts to become a father while losing my own.

It's a comedy.

It seems counterintuitive, but grief, rage, bureaucracy and love are the things I'm a lot more interested in finding funny than, say, airline travel or online dating.

I developed this material over several years and created the show’s visual identity and promotional artwork. After an initial run in December 2024, CareGiver returned to SoHo Playhouse for an extended run in May 2025.

The Story That Became CareGiver

I performed this 11-minute story at The Artichoke in Beacon, New York. It’s a distilled version of the story that I later expanded into CareGiver, before the full Off-Broadway show brought the caregiving, IVF and fatherhood threads together.

The Reluctant Phoenix

The Reluctant Phoenix was a podcast I created and hosted about people who had restarted their lives, whether or not they really wanted to in the first place.

A phoenix has to burn to be reborn, and it probably screams like hell on the way out.

I developed the concept, sourced and booked guests, conducted the interviews and created all of the show’s imagery. I worked with co-producer and editor Kara McGuirk-Allison (one of the founding producers of NPR’s Hidden Brain) to shape the episodes, listening to edits and giving detailed notes on where to pause, what to cut and how each story should move.

Creative Writing

I write personal essays and humor about family, grief, illness, work and whatever else I can manage to get published. My work has appeared in The Paris Review Daily, Newsweek and Talkhouse.

Have Faith in RoboCop

Talkhouse, May 29, 2020

A personal essay about the role Paul Verhoeven’s RoboCop played in my childhood, cancer recovery, divorce and the process of rebuilding a life.

I Survived Cancer and a Surprise Divorce, I Know We Can Make It Through the Pandemic

Newsweek, June 2, 2020

A personal essay about surviving cancer, a sudden divorce and the first months of the pandemic, and what those experiences taught me about being changed by a crisis rather than returning to normal.

Royal Quiet Deluxe

The Paris Review Daily, October 13, 2014

A personal essay about my very real, non-fictional country-rock band, in which I played typewriter as percussion while two chickens pecked toy pianos, and what it taught me about being weird and believing in myself when other weirdos didn’t.

The Cronkers

The Cronkers are a two-piece band I formed with my childhood friend Eric Browne. Eric sings and plays guitar; I play drums.

When we were in kindergarten, I knew how to read and write and Eric already knew all the main curse words. We teamed up on the playground: I’d spell them in the dirt with a stick to show the other children, then he’d scribble them out when we saw teachers coming.

The Cronkers are the natural outgrowth of that collaborative, Promethean creative spirit.

We had a band together from 2001-2003, then took a 23-year break and now we’re back, a legacy act without an actual legacy. Our music draws on garage rock, punk, 1970s dub and the strange details we’ve accumulated across more than four decades of friendship.

I also develop the band’s visual identity and promotional work. I created and edited the video for our first single, “Modern Reflection,” entirely from found footage, and I design our show artwork and promotional materials.