Credits: Producer; Sound Designer

From playwright Patrice Danae Bell and director Olivia Ragan, The One With Violets In Her Lap is a full-length play with music based on the fragmented poetry of Sappho, the prolific Greek poet whom Plato referred to as The Tenth Muse.

In this queer modern take on the greek tragedy, we find Sappho lamenting to Aphrodite about her latest lady love. Little does Sappho know, the Goddess is actually listening. And she just might be in the mood to help a Lesbian out. Weaving contemporary dialogue with Sappho’s own fragmented poetry, The One With Violets In Her Lap is a play about women, specifically women who love women, and finding our place in a world meant for neither. The One With Violets In Her Lap premiered off-off-Broadway at The Flea's Siggy Theater in May 2024.

Credit: Additional Graphics

SUNDANCE 2024 OFFICIAL SELECTION

War Game sweeps audiences into an elaborate future-set simulation that dramatically escalates the threat posed by the January 6, 2021 insurrection. The film follows a bipartisan group of US defense, intelligence, and elected policymakers spanning five presidential administrations as they participate in an unscripted role-play exercise. Portraying a fictional President of the United States and his advisors, they confront a political coup backed by rogue members of the US military in the wake of a contested 2024 presidential election. Like actors in a thriller, but with profound real-world stakes, the players have only six hours to save American democracy.

Credit: Associate Producer, Production Manager

NOW STREAMING ON NEW YORK TIMES OP-DOCS

Emmy Nominated, Outstanding Short Form Documentary

OSCARS® Shortlisted, Best Documentary Short Subject

TAKEOVER explores the twelve historic hours on July 14, 1970, in which fifty members of the Young Lords Party stormed the dilapidated Lincoln Hospital in the South Bronx, drove out their administrative staff, barricaded entrances and windows, and made their cries for decent healthcare known to the world. They raised the Puerto Rican flag atop the building, as well as a banner reading “The People’s Hospital” - a nom de guerre still used today. Through archival footage, seamless reenactments, and modern-day interviews, we follow the Young Lords’ resistance against institutions curated by wealth and white supremacy, and their fight for the most basic of human rights: the right to accessible, quality healthcare.

TAKEOVER endeavors to capture the imagination of a new generation of activists, and suggest actions that ordinary citizens can take to change the conversation -- and the country. It is more vital than ever before that the bravery and behavior of the Young Lords be shown, celebrated, and built upon today.

Credit: Director

Self Producing Artist Residency | The Players Theatre, May 2023

Winner, Audience Favorite Award | Soho Playhouse Lighthouse Series, May 2022

Official Selection | Emerging Artists Theater’s New Works Series 2021

For her 75th birthday, Academy Award-winning actor Stella Howard is gifted a futuristic device that allows the user to revisit one day in their past. But when Stella is unwittingly transported back to New York City in the long-ago year of 2021, she is forced to confront the day that - unbeknownst to her past self, but all too clearly now - changed her life forever. Time Biter, a hilarious & heartbreaking new play written by and starring Caroline Dunaway, made its world premiere in October 2021 at the Emerging Artists Theater.

Credit: Producer

Earth Complex is a growing collection of stories about people and planet shared through broad perspectives and a local lens. The debut episode “Why Are Wildfires Getting Worse in the American West?” was directed by Nick Stone Schearer and produced by Laura.

Credit: Senior Producer

A Peabody Award-nominated 10-part podcast that investigates the lynching of a wealthy black farmer in Arkansas at the dawn of the Civil Rights movement. Available on Apple, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen.

In June 1954, three weeks after the momentous Supreme Court decision that overturned segregation, Isadore Banks was kidnapped, tortured, chained to a tree and set on fire. Banks’ murder terrorized the black community on the Arkansas Delta, foreshadowing a wave of white violence that would soon sweep the broader South. In his hometown of Marion, Banks’ killers worked quickly to steal his land and erase his name, while intimidating those who had begun standing against oppression.

Sixty-five years later, we investigate Banks’ murder, joining his family in their attempt to restore his legacy and solve the crime before the story goes cold forever. Combining the stylistic turns and documentary scope of S-Town and West Cork with the deep reporting of In the Dark, this podcast illuminates one man’s life and explores the system of white supremacy that surrounded him. What we find—in forgotten court records, fading FBI files, and testimony of elderly witnesses—will shake a small town from its half-century silence and reveal the divisions that lie at the heart of America’s unfinished business.

Created and reported by Taylor Hom and Neil Shea. Executive produced by Lynn Nottage, Tony Gerber, and Peter Clowney. Produced by Stephanie Kariuki and Laura Colleluori

Credit: Dramaturg

Ancient and legendary African elephant, Mlima, is struck down and his massive tusks stolen as trophies. His ghost is ever-present as the tusks change hands many times and travel the world from Kenya, to Vietnam, to Beijing. Set against the backdrop of the black market ivory trade, and written by two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner, Lynn Nottage, Mlima’s Tale explores complex questions of global consumerism, ancestral history, and human greed. Directed by Tiana Kaye Blair for Second Thought Theatre in Dallas, TX.

Credit: Production Manager

A three-part documentary feature on the Arctic Wolves of Ellesmere Island. Available on Nat Geo WILD and Disney+.

Credit: Producer, Audio Editor

Black Public Media 360 Incubator

PRX/Google Podcast Creator Program

A limited series podcast for the Philadelphia Citizen featuring food and drink historian Tonya Hopkins, a.k.a. The Food Griot. Tonya chronicles the often untold stories of the black culinarians responsible for many of our favorite dishes.

Credit: Dramaturg

Drunk Enough to Say I Love You? is a one act play in which Guy, a man, falls in love with Sam, a country. Written by the legendary Caryl Churchill, dubbed “the greatest living English playwright” by Tony Kushner, this taut, elliptical, and unforgettable short play was presented as part of the Drama League’s 2019 DirectorFest. In collaboration with director and Drama League Fellow Tara Elliott.

Credits: Dramaturg, Associate Director

Alice Birch’s Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again. at Second Thought Theatre in Dallas, Texas. Christie Vela directed as well as performed in the form-bending, rule-breaking, patriarchy-destroying production, along with co-stars Lydia Mackay, Jenny Ledel, Tia Laulusa, and Max Hartman.

Credits: Co-Creator, Director

Laura was selected as one of eleven resident directors to participate in the Drama League's inaugural Art+Party series. On the fourth Friday of March 2018, Laura worked with a team of actors, as well as with visual artist Jack Ball and director and musician Whitney White, to devise a piece that would spark a conversation across mediums. The resulting work, Hatori's Nighttime Movers, was an original, interactive exploration of the power we have to construct, deconstruct, and reimagine our identities.

Credit: Director

Set in a universe slightly different from our own, in the far-away land of New Hampshire in the long-ago time of January 2008, a woman named Hillary is running to become President of the United States. But between falling poll numbers, a superstar primary opponent, and a husband who could be her greatest ally or her greatest liability, Hillary must confront the possibility that she will not win - at least, not in this universe. Listed by D Magazine as one of the "Five Plays Not to Miss This Year," Laura's production of Hillary and Clinton took an uncompromising look at political titans and the fates even they cannot control.

Laura served as the Company Manager/Talent Manager for The Drama League's 2016 Benefit Gala Honoring David Hyde Pierce and 2017 Gala honoring Steve Martin. Laura managed all paperwork and communication with performers, coordinated travel and space, stage managed rehearsals, and provided day-of onsite assistance. She also got to meet Kermit the Frog, and can now die happy.

Babel is a documentary theater piece about guns in the United States, created by Mara Richards and the teens of Cry Havoc Theater Company. In 2018, Laura built and maintained a digital dramaturgy site associated with the show and updated it throughout the year as the company traveled the country to figure out why when it comes to guns, everyone seems to be speaking a different language.

In 1922, the Gruber family was found brutally murdered in their home, a small German farmstead miles from the nearest town. Their killer, who remains unknown, continued to live in the house, feed the animals, cook in the kitchen, and tend the fireplace for days after the slaughter. These continued signs of life in a home where everyone has died inspired Hinterkaifeck, a surreal, elegiac meditation on depression, trauma, and loneliness written by Dante Flores. This haunting new play takes an unexpectedly poetic look at one of the most gruesome and bizarre unsolved mysteries of the twentieth century. A portion of this script, directed & designed by Laura and performed by Liz Ramos, was presented at the Art is Cool Salon in the fall of 2017.  

In the late fall of 2017, Laura worked as an administrator/assistant teacher with The Drama League's inaugural Summer Professional Theatre Intensive. The students worked in New York City and in the mountains of Hawley, Massachusetts to deepen their understanding of Shakespeare as young actors and directors. Laura facilitated much of their programming and travel, and was also able to direct a piece of their final Macbeth presentation under the tutelage of Shakespeare and Company's Founding Artistic Director Tina Packer. Selections from Laura's direction of Macbeth pictured above. 

In the summer of 2017, Laura escaped New York City for a few months to teach theater at Nantucket’s Dreamland Cultural Center. Over the course of five weeks, Laura directed five youth performances with students aged 9-12.

In early 2017, Dallas’s Second Thought Theatre produced Grounded, a one-woman show about a fighter pilot who, upon returning from her maternity leave, is redirected to the “chair force” - she becomes a drone pilot. The play, written by George Brant, deals with the psychological consequences of international warfare as a 9-to-5 job. This production was directed by Alex Organ and starred Jenny Ledel. Laura served as the dramaturg and assistant director.

In late 2016, Laura worked with Romanian theatre artists Catinca Draganescu and Valentina Zaharia to workshop their play Raw Vegan for an American audience. Using music and poetry, Raw Vegan is a powerful feminist allegory disguised a children’s story about a family of goats who migrate to Italy. This workshop was produced by the Drama League through their partnership with the Bucharest International Theatre Platform.

Laura assisted director Christie Vela on a production of Marsha Norman's Pulitzer Prize-winning 'night, Mother. The show was produced by Echo Theatre in Dallas, Texas.

While working as the Education Fellow at Dallas Theater Center, Laura managed the theater’s SummerStage youth program and directed one of the summer’s youth shows. Laura was bored by the majority of scripts written for young actors, and had the inkling the young actors might be, too. So she created an adaptation of Pyramus & Thisbe - as it was performed, of course, by the Rude Mechanicals in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Produced by Second Thought Theatre in 2016, A Kid Like Jake is the story of two parents trying to decide what is best for their four-year-old son, and facing impossible choices that may alter the course of his entire life. Laura stage managed as well as assistant directed this production helmed by Matthew Gray.

Deferred Action, a world premiere play about immigration, DACA, and what it is to be a Dreamer, opened at the Tony Award-winning Dallas Theater Center in 2016. Laura served as the assistant director to David Lozano.

As the Education Fellow at Dallas Theater Center, Laura managed the theater’s Spring Break program for middle schoolers. The week-long camp culminated in a performance, which Laura co-directed with Leah Harris. Laura adapted the script from the book The Kid Who Ran for President, a children’s book by Dan Gutman.

For two years, Laura worked at the Tony Award-winning Dallas Theater Center as a fellow in the Education & Community Engagement Department. During that time, Laura managed a wide variety of programming, including children’s summer camps, acting classes for teens and adults, and Project Discovery, an initiative which engages thousands of high schoolers from all across North Texas, and which received the 2013 National Arts and Humanities Youth Program Award. She also worked as a teaching artist for many of the above listed programs, and also co-moderated DTC’s book club, which was featured in American Theatre Magazine.

For her capstone project in college, Laura directed a full production of Red by John Logan. Along with friends and collaborators Sam Neagley and Dalton Maltz, Laura was able to close this chapter of her academic career with a profound meditation on what it means to be an artist.

In the summer of 2013, Laura interned with the Tony Award-winning Lookingglas Theatre Company in Chicago. She collaborated with teaching artists to lead classes, games, and exercises, and to create and execute final performances.

While studying in Bologna, Italy, Laura interned with Elena Galeotti of Compagnia Teatrale Cantharide. She helped to coordinate special performances for national holidays and visiting artists, and assisted in the devising of new play about fear with middle schoolers at Zola Predosa’s Francesco Francia school. She completed the internship entirely in Italian.