The son of two moms and a proud native of Lombard, Illinois, I left the small town life to study Slavic Languages & Literature and Theater at Princeton. It was there that I began fusing my passion for scholarship with my love of the performing arts.

​

   After Princeton, I headed to Glasgow, where I received my M.A. in Acting from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. While there, I performed in brand new works by Scottish playwrights and completed a residency at the legendary Shakespeare's Globe.

​

   In 2016, I moved to NYC, where I staged my award-winning solo show MADMAN Off-Broadway, performed as Hamlet in Central Park, and donned a dozen professional hats as a research assistant, Russian Language teacher and translator.

​

   In 2019, I served as TA for Princeton's Global Seminar in Moscow with Prof. Simon Morrison, and in 2021 I began a PhD program at Oxford University, where I am writing my thesis "Stages of Captivity: Professional Theater in the Gulag Capitals of Vorkuta & Magadan" under the supervision of Profs. Polly Jones and Dan Healey. 

​

   As I wrap up my PhD, I look forward to the next stage of my life, as I continue to weave together the rigor and intellectual curiosity of my academic research, my imaginative and interdisciplinary approach to teaching history and language, and the human-centered, creative work of my theatermaking. I was recently brought on as a Teaching Fellow in Russian History at the University of Warwick, where I am teaching a Soviet history course for final-year students called "Socialist Bodies: Dreams & Realities of the Physical in Soviet Russia." I am also developing a brand new play, Songbird, which centers the life and music of repressed queer Soviet cabaret star Vadim Kozin in dialogue with the escalating repression of queer communities in today's Russia. On top of all that, my drag alter ego Saundra Lezzenbaum has just debuted her one-woman spectacular in Oxford and is jazzed to keep saving love lives from New York to Old York and everywhere in between!