Behind the Scenes: Elephant & Piggie
Directed at Salt Lake Acting Company.
Working with young-audience material at a major regional theater — a different kind of precision is required when the stakes are wonder, not irony.
Directing
Solo and collaborative direction — the work of arranging the looking rather than being looked at.
For most of my twenties, the question was always: how do I look onstage? Not in the vanity sense — in the Stanislavskian sense. How do I make my presence legible, honest, specific? How do I occupy the frame of someone else's attention and make it mean something?
Directing inverts that entirely. You're no longer the object in the frame — you're the one deciding where the frame goes. What gets illuminated, what gets left in shadow. When a line should land and when it should dissolve. It's a fundamentally different relationship to the material, and honestly it took me a while to find the version of myself that could inhabit it. Not the part of me that needs to be seen, but the part that wants the whole thing to work.
I'm interested in direction that doesn't announce itself — that trusts actors to do their work and trusts audiences to find the meaning without being led by the nose. The best directing, I think, is the kind you don't notice until it's gone.
Solo Directed
2022
2020
If It's Good Enough For Costco
Directed at Salt Lake Acting Company.
A short-form work — directing at SLAC meant calibrating tone and pacing within the specific acoustics and audience expectations of that house.
These Latter-er Latter Days
Directed at Salt Lake Acting Company.
A Utah-specific story about Mormon culture and queerness — directing it was about holding space for honesty in a community where both the play's subject and its audience have complicated relationships to it.
How to Transcend a Happy Marriage
Scheduled for Salt Lake Acting Company. Production canceled due to COVID-19.
This production never made it to stage. The work of preparation — table reads, blocking notes, design meetings — disappeared into the cloud in March 2020. Some directing is the work you don't get to see.
2017
Melancholy Play
Directed a staged reading at Avrec Art House.
Sarah Ruhl's work demands a sensibility that balances the clinical and the whimsical. A staged reading format strips away most directorial handholds — the directing happens in what you tell actors to let go of rather than hold onto.
2016
Hamlet and Ophelia Go Swimming
Directed at Salt Lake Fringe Festival. Also wrote the script and composed the musical interludes.
“Rasmussen and Librizzi had excellent chemistry and played their roles earnestly and convincingly. Rasmussen's musical interludes were lovely and maintained an air of wistfulness.” — Julia Shumway, Utah Theatre Bloggers
This is where the directing instincts crystallized — a two-person piece I had written, at a fringe festival where you have maybe three days before opening. Directing your own script introduces its own complications: you have to split yourself between the author's attachment and the director's willingness to kill what isn't working.
2014
Hamlet and Ophelia Go Swimming (Edinburgh)
Directed at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
“Exceptional script, powerful direction.” — Megan Librizzi
Taking this piece to Edinburgh meant translating it into a context where nobody knew the names, the references, or the inside jokes of the Salt Lake theater scene. The directing work became about finding the universal nerve inside a very local story — and managing the logistics of staging a two-hander in Edinburgh with whatever tech you could beg, borrow, or steal.
Collaborative Direction
Grassroots Shakespeare Company operates on an ensemble model — every production is collaboratively directed by the entire company. There is no single director's chair. Rehearsals happen in the round, literally: the ensemble sits in a circle, reads, blocks, debates, and makes decisions together. The direction emerges from the group rather than flowing from above.
2016
The Revenger's Tragedy
Played Spurio. Collaboratively directed by the Grassroots Shakespeare ensemble.
“This couple is so revolting, each using the other for their own gain and a kick to their egos, and these actors play this out very believably.” — Jennifer Mustoe, Front Row Reviewers
Antony & Cleopatra
Played Antony. Collaboratively directed by the Grassroots Shakespeare ensemble.
“Rasmussen brought a very masculine energy to the role. Rasmussen's grasp of the language afforded for ease in understanding the character.” — Kat Webb, Utah Theatre Bloggers
2015
Twelfth Night
Played Sir Andrew Aguecheek. Collaboratively directed by the Grassroots Shakespeare ensemble.
Romeo & Juliet
Played Mercutio. Collaboratively directed by the Grassroots Shakespeare ensemble.
2014
Taming of the Shrew
Played Bianca. Collaboratively directed by the Grassroots Shakespeare ensemble.
“Rasmussen's gum-chomping valley girl Bianca was delightfully simpering, and her Twilight t-shirt was a stroke of genius.” — Julia Shumway, Utah Theatre Bloggers
Much Ado About Nothing
Played Don John. Collaboratively directed by the Grassroots Shakespeare ensemble.
“Rasmussen's sulky villainy as Don John paired together with hilarious synergy, and I was always thrilled to see them on stage together.” — Julia Shumway, Utah Theatre Bloggers
2013
Macbeth
Played Malcolm. Collaboratively directed by the Grassroots Shakespeare ensemble.