Hi, I’m Mandy.
I’m an artist coach who helps mid-career creative women wholeheartedly invest in their art, voice, and vision.
But first: I’m a maker.
The Artist
For over two decades, I’ve been creating and touring original solo shows—physical comedy, clown theater, interactive performance. I’ve played everywhere from Bogotá to Montreal, from the New York Clown-Theatre Festival to the White House.
In 2022, I was named the Maine Arts Commission’s Performing Arts Fellow, recognized for artistic excellence and “a joyful spirit for ferocious play.”
My shows include:
Go Bananas (2024) — “Brings its clowning A-game…participation in this show is infectious” — PortFringe Review
Pretty Face: An American Dream (2018-2020) — “Funny as hell, with a turnaround that leaves you nailed to your seat…a real tour-de-force” — Yves Sheriff, Clown Expert and Scout at Cirque du Soleil
The Soirée (2008-2014) — “Huotari is a powerhouse of improv. The laughter rarely ceased!” — Portland Press Herald
A Woman Alone (2003-2022) — Nearly 20 years touring this outrageous comic melodrama.
I’ve created immersive shows that transform entire towns, collaborated with international ensembles, and toured solo performances that invite audience members to join me center stage.
For 15 years I served as Executive Artistic Director of Celebration Barn Theater, Maine’s thriving international hub for physical theater training. There, I had the pleasure of hosting thousands of artists from around the globe and co-facilitating workshops to deepen creative exploration, support risk taking, and amplify the uniqueness of each artist’s voice.
Currently, I collaborate with Maine Inside Out, facilitating theater creation with system-impacted artists and community leaders. Throughout 2025, we toured Broken Clock to prisons and colleges to ignite conversations and social change. Our next original production will premiere in June 2026.
I make work. I tour work. I live what I teach.
What I Know Now
Creating isn’t something you sneak in after you’ve taken care of everything else.
Creating is how you take care of yourself.
It’s what makes the rest of your life possible. It feeds you. It’s a renewable resource.
When you prioritize your creative work the way you prioritize food, something shifts. You stop running on empty. You stop collapsing. You start producing work that actually matters to you.
But here’s the other thing I learned:
You cannot do this alone.
Isolation doesn’t nourish. Creative impoverishment creates collapse. And refusing to receive resources—refusing to let people help you, refusing to build your creative ecosystem—that’s what creates creative impoverishment.
The Shadow Artists
Now I work with artists who are ready to fully embrace their own creative emergence.
Mid-career creative women who are brilliant, talented, celebrated—and floundering.
They’ve been using their skills to advance other people’s visions. They took tangential gigs where they could get paid. The gigs turned into years. Now their own work keeps getting pushed to “someday.”
I call them shadow artists. And I help them step into the spotlight.
What I Believe
You are a creative force of nature. When that force is blocked, it metastasizes into pain. The opposite of suffering is creating.
When you fully embrace your creative nature, you become the artist in residence in your own life.
And the voice you’re longing to hear? It’s your own.
The Integration
As a certified yoga instructor, bring mind-body practices into my coaching to help you manage anxiety, align head/heart/body, and embody your fullest expression.
And I lead retreats—group and custom—in Mexico, where we combine creative work with nourishment, community, and the medicine of sacred place.
My work—on stage, on the mat, and in coaching sessions—is about one thing: freedom. Creative freedom. Emotional freedom. The freedom to flourish.
