About

Born in Manhattan, Kansas, Blake grew up watching Twin Peaks with her parents and going to her dad’s folk & roll shows. She attended her first session of the Manhattan Experimental Theater Workshop for High school students in 1997, which began her life-long obsession with experimental performance. She graduated from the University of Kansas with a degree in theater, then set off for urban adventures.

2006 - 2007: NYC, where she interned and ran the box office for Wake Up Mr. Sleepy, Your Unconscious Mind is Dead at Richard Foreman’s Ontological-Hysteric Theater.

2007 - 2009: Blake moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota, where she worked as the Administrative Manager for Theater de la Jeune Lune, co-founded the theater company Savage Umbrella (later the Umbrella Collective), and assisted on projects for Skewed Visions.

2009 - 2011: Blake taught pre-school and elementary school children in Seoul, South Korea. She performed (The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee) and directed (Wintertime) with Seoul Players, and collaborated on a simultaneous Seoul/Twin Cities workshop of a new play for Savage Umbrella called The Ravagers.

2011 - 2015: Blake moved back to Minneapolis, where she continued to collaborate with Savage Umbrella. Works during this time include The Ravagers (co-writer, director), Emma Woodhouse Is Not a Bitch (director), Rain Follows the Plow (performer), Leaves (director), and These Are the Men (co-writer, director). She worked on Skewed Visions’ Ex (production manager) and participated in their performance series 3Play with a piece titled We Are Where. In 2014, Blake spent a month in NYC performing in Title:Point’s Everything of Any Value, and performed two dance pieces at the inaugural SalOn!

2015 - 2017: Blake headed back to NYC, joining Title:Point for Never Odd or Even (AD/SM), Biter (Every Time I Turn Around) (AD/SM), and Chroma Key (collaborator, sound engineer).

2017 - 2025: A long rest. What was supposed to be a 6 month hiatus became an 8 year semi-retirement from the theater. Blake attended a lot of shows, participated in 2 virtual MXTW workshops, picked up the guitar and the piano, and spent a significant amount of time on her personal dramaturgy.

2025 - present: Inspired by the attendee-led workshops on the JoCo Cruise in early 2025, Blake began working on an hour-long lecture about the history of experimental theater from the 1890s-2000s. Blessed with a month-long sabbatical from her day job, she researched for her lecture and began to explore ideas for performance. In 2026, she went headlong into Festival Season in NYC, started Splash Zone with Theresa Buchheister to talk about experimental performance, started writing her Substack, and joined Staff Picks. She has presented her Experimental Theater History 101 lecture 5 times (so far): at Brick Aux, on the 2026 JoCo Cruise, at an Introduction to Theater Arts class at Baruch, at the Manhattan (KS) Public Library, and at the Lawrence (KS) Public Library.

For a full list of past productions, click here.