about us
How we do the Work
education program
In-School residencies
Community production
on-site workshops
Trish Denton
Artistic Director
Trish Denton hails from the spaces in between Detroit and Flint, Michigan. The interdisciplinary artist crafts original works for the stage, borrowing from folklore, magic realism, and the oral storytelling tradition. A first generation college student, Trish put herself through school as a working artist receiving a BA from Goddard College. Following Goddard, she was the Artistic Director of ClothingChange, an organization that facilitated collaborations between artisans in developing nations with young, urban makers. The project partnered with The Green Festival, Pure Detroit and Marketplace: Handwork of India to tour and produce fashion shows as advocacy events. Relocating to Burlington, Trish joined the artistic team of the prolific youth theater company, Very Merry Theatre, where she directed and/or designed for countless large-scale musicals. She served as co-host to the rabble-rousing Spielpalast Cabaret from 2008-2011 and toured with the company to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. The Fringe inspired Trish to write and direct the silently surreal production Orkestriska’s Box. A collaboration with Thought Faucet and Porter Music Box Museum, this multimedia production premiered in November 2012. It was Orkestriska’s Box that sparked the conception of In Tandem Arts. The following year, Trish collaborated with the Vermont Birth Network to stage BIRTH, a documentary-theater piece based on several hundred interviews concerning birth in America. True to ITA’s style, the production featured a mixed cast of doctors, nurses, performing artists and newcomers to the stage. With the success of BIRTH, Trish founded ITA in 2013.
Also in 2013 Trish was selected with a small cohort of top teaching artists in the state for the pilot of ArtsConnect, an equity-based professional development program for senior teaching artists. She went on to train with master artist Ping Chong to expand ITA’s toolkit for adapting documentary storytelling for the stage. To further this expertise, she pursued an advanced degree from Dartmouth College from 2014-2017. There, Trish was involved with Telling My Story, a project using theater and testimony in correctional and rehabilitation facilities. While based in the Upper Valley, she also joined the production team at JAG Productions, a Black theater company founded in 2016 by Jarvis Anthony Greene. With an MA in Pedagogy and Performance, teamed with professional training from the Flynn Center for The Performing Arts, St. Micheal’s College, The Kennedy Center, and Vermont Folklife Center, Trish is skilled in the design of innovative arts and education programming for museums, schools and cultural institutions. To round out her on-the-ground experience with documentary media-making and storytelling, Trish served as an Education & Community Engagement Specialist at The Vermont Folklife Center from 2018-2020, where she worked statewide with community members, educators, and students to produce community-based projects. In 2021, she was fortunate to be a consultant & production team member of the statewide documentary-theater project Listen Up! Vermont. As the director and production designer of Brundibar: A Musical Tale (2016), Retro Spec (2020), and X-Votive (2021), Trish has been called “an auteur” for her identifiable blend of pop culture with surrealism and folk traditions. Currently, Trish serves as a creative coach with Parallel Narratives, which uses storytelling and the folkloric imagination for self-discovery and is the Artistic Director of In Tandem Arts.
In Tandem in Action
lineage & influences
advisory board
Allan Nichols
Allan F. Nicholls is a veteran of the film industry having produced, directed, acted, and composed music for the past forty years. He is most noted for his collaborations with Robert Altman, Tim Robbins, and John Madden. He has taught screenwriting at Burlington College, NYU’s Tisch Asia School of The Arts (Singapore) and served as the Artistic Director of New York Film Academy-Abu Dhabi. To Allan’s credit too is a five-year Broadway career in several rock musicals including Hair and Jesus Christ Superstar.
Pamela Formica
Pamela Formica has been involved in theater for 30 years. She is co-founder of Small Potatoes Theater Company and has served on the board for The Off Center. Pamela enjoys directing and performing, as well as playwriting. She recently wrote the play, “Aurora House” and is busy working on a series of shorts. Pamela has practiced as a psychotherapist for about 20 years and is transitioning from her role in direct service to care for her family and focus on mentoring and coaching creativity in the next generation of therapists.
Cathleen Carr
Cathleen is an artist, educator, and nonprofit leader working to connect disconnected communities through the arts. The Director of Innovation and Engagement at Opening Act in NYC, she has a B.A. in Performance Studies from Goddard College, was a 2015 New York Community Trust Leadership Fellow, and is studying Arts and Culture Strategy at the University of Pennsylvania. Cathleen loves to make people laugh. She studied improvisation at The Second City and performed at Improv Asylum for many years.
Mitch Marois
Mitch is Associate Producer with Ruth Hendel Productions (Broadway: Beetlejuice, Mean Girls, Ain’t Too Proud. In Development: A Walk on the Moon, Monsoon Wedding). Previously, he served as Director of Sales and Marketing, New London Barn Playhouse; Associate Producer, JAG Productions; Associate Teaching Artist with The National Dance Institute; and Song Performance Coach with MTCA. He has a BFA in Acting/ Musical Theatre from Carnegie Mellon, and is originally from St. Petersburg, Florida.