ABOUT

Rasmussen is a multi-disciplinary theater director, choreographer and community artist. She worked professionally in the San Francisco, Bay Area from 2005 to 2015 before relocating to Cincinnati, Ohio to take on the role of Director of Education and Community Engagement for the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park.

Rasmussen is a working director, producer and administrator for regional and independent theaters. In 2007, her focus moved from creating and producing in traditional theatrical formats and began making work that would appeal to her peers in the Millennial Generation (birth years 1978-2000) and consumers of popular culture.

Rasmussen began her artistic education as a dancer at the age of 5. From a young age she expressed herself through dance, theatrical performance, and writing as a way of coping with complicated family dynamics, adolescence and pain. It wasn't until college that she began to think about pursuing theater as a career. The desire ran deeper than just making plays; Rasmussen wanted to change the world through theater and moved to Liverpool, United Kingdom to pursue a path in community Arts. She was the first American accepted into the Community Arts course at the Liverpool Institute of Performing arts.

At the root of her work, Rasmussen grapples with loss stemming from losing three friends at the age of 17, the closest of which took his own life. Through this experience, she began to explore the power of choice and the effect that one person's choices have on other people.

Rasmussen's work seeks to find answers to:

How can one adjust after experiencing loss? What change does loss cause within a person? Are those changes irreversible? Can you choose not to change as a result? Are we masters of our own fate or is there a larger force driving the circumstances of our lives?

Rasmussen believes that we live in a time that encourages participation and engagement through a multitude of mediums. Her work taps into those mediums to create theatrical experiences that enable the audience member to become a participant and collaborator in the art making process.

Rasmussen is currently working on a series of public theater art projects designed for Young Professionals for Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park's Off the Grid program, including her most recent projects, including a Nancy Drew inspired Zoomdunnit which takes place online in an interactive format where audience members work together to figure out whodunnit. Her philosophy around public theater art is that theater doesn't solely belong to the art makers but to the community as well. She believes that all people should be given the opportunity to create theater and engage with their own creativity.

Rasmussen launched her exploration into making theater in public spaces in the fall of 2011 when her team created and presented a Zombie themed theatrical flashmob in San Francisco. Following the foray into flashmob storytelling, she created a format for an episodic blog play. In doing so, she questioned the basic concept of what theater is by examining how far you can go before it isn't theater anymore but new ways of telling stories for a new generation of adults. The format became the basis for #SelfieThePlay, produced in 2016-2017 at Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, incorporating elements of the episodic model and visual style of television, and popular forms of text based communication in addition to live performance.

“Theatre is the most perfect artistic form of coercion.”

- Augusto Boal

Artist Statement

I am a theater director, choreographer, producer and community artist focusing on the relationship between dialogue and visual storytelling in public spaces. Through my work, I explore how theater can adapt to meet the ever changing technological landscape, shortened attention spans and the increasing desire for integrated audience participation in the art making.

Theater belongs to not only the art makers, but to the community in which it's made. We live in a time that encourages participation and engagement through a multitude of mediums and my work taps into those mediums to create theatrical experiences that enable the audience member to become a participant and collaborator in the art making process. If the public values the work, they will support it.

I use existing models such as flash mobs, block parties, blogs, the episodic model of television, social media and interactive theater to create formats for each of my pieces. All people should be given the opportunity to create and participate in theater but in order to do that access must be made possible through recognizable means to start with. To do this I start with a model that exists and is already accepted culturally, such as the form of the flashmob or reality television. Once familiarity and general acceptance has been granted for the work, the model can expand more, subsequently enlarging the understanding of potential for storytelling and theater making. If the audience has a stake in the work, they will be more invested and seek out opportunities for engagement.

As a visual narrator, my responsibility is to serve the story first and foremost and to create movement that is organic to the body of each actor. I use dance as a functional extension of the text, creating movement that is authentic to the body of each performer in service of the story being told over a demonstration of technical agility. I work from the premise that dance can explore difficult and abstract concepts of emotion in one of three ways; the inner psychology of a character, the relationship(s) between two to three characters, and setting the tone of a scene.

As an educator, my approach to teaching is student centric. The educator's role shifts over the course of the learning experience from teacher to facilitator to mentor. Students must be given the opportunity to take on more ownership as their skill level increases and the opportunity to grow into autonomy. My class and programmatic structure takes form through an arc of skills based training, guided participation and finally practical application.

In my work, I grapple with the concept of loss stemming from losing three friends at the age of 17, the closest of which took his own life. Through this experience, I began to explore the power of choice and the effect that one person's choices have on other people. Through my work I seek to find an answer to the question: are we masters of our own fate or is there a larger force driving the circumstances of our lives?