Ooh! Secrets!
Here's more about me:
Film & Television
2018 Acting Reel
Together with my name-sharing friend Josh Cisewski, we two Joshes own a production company called Drawbridge Collective, where we recently produced and directed the pilot episode for our first web series, Hidden Falls alongside Star Map Players. We have written, produced, and directed several other award-winning short films including Bear, Dust & Ashes, We Are Kickball, Kowalski's, and The Last Station.
I am also a video editor, voice actor, and talent for commercial, social media, radio, and training industrials for clients such as Dairy Queen, Health Partners, ACR Homes, Roosters MGC, Eagle Brook Church, and Excelsior Covenant Church. Contact NUTS ltd. or Moore Creative Agency for more info.
Theater
After earning my BA in Acting/Directing at Bethel University, I toured with the National Theater for Children, Juggler & Mime, and Prairie Fire Children's Theater—acting and directing musical and improv-based theater for youth and children in Arizona, Florida, southern California, and across the Midwest. When I returned, I directed a few backyard and high school theater productions and began calling myself a "playmaker." I then took an internship as an assistant director at the Children's Theater Company, and began broadcasting, performing, and hosting in-person, live-stream, and YouTube shows for children with Lalo's Lunchbox and Eagle Brook Church.
"Josh and Beka"
Credits
"Rosebird"
I love to maintain an enthusiastic, collaborative, and playful work ethic. My style is quirky, kind, and colorful (if this website didn't tell you that enough). Before I became a full-time freelancer in 2019, I was the Creative Design Director at ACR Homes, creating over 80 different videos facilitating the training and hiring of staff working with people with disabilities. I've performed in 60 different productions, but my favorite theatrical credits include The Arkansaw Bear (Mime), A Midsummer Night's Dream (Demetrius), Fat Cat Fall (Bawa), and Little Shop of Horrors (Seymour). I am the recipient of the 2015 Best Original Monologue Award from the National Fine Arts Festival, Best Non-Shakespearean Soliloquy from the MN Theatre Choice Awards, and an academic scholarship from the New York Center for Arts and Media.
Background and Style
My philosophy is "vulnerability, humility, and a touch of paprika for playfulness." Whether in work, family, or life, I approach everything with a lighthearted sense of goofiness and compassion. I grew up in Pine City, Minnesota; a town oversaturated with Christianity. At its peak, there were 30 churches in this town of 3000 people, many of which were founded because of a church splitting in two. When the churches came together over a kickball tournament, each church played the game like how they led a service; the Catholics had strict rules and the Evangelicals were loud. To me, the tournament symbolized how people believed that competition over whose lifestyle had more "spiritual authority" was more important than love and connection (which is pretty dumb).
I lost a lot of friends during this time because I, too, had learned to lift myself up upon a pedestal of authority. I thought I knew the best and only way to live, and this feeling of supremacy let me judge others instead of loving them. This division taught me to desire unity and reconciliation and inspired my short film We Are Kickball. Through my liberal arts degree at Bethel University; travels across the USA, South Africa, and Poland; and marriage to a wonderful Puerto Rican woman, I deconstructed my faith and worldview and have been reconstructing it ever since. Films and plays like "Waiting For Godot," "White Snake," "Threepenny Opera," "Lord of the Rings," and "Goofy Movie" helped me realize how absurd life really is, and that it is possible to look past our differences in religion, politics, personality, race, and orientation in order to truly connect and grow.
Today, I make work about intimate friendships, the power of community, and the pursuit of kindness, forgiveness, and reconciliation (meaning "the coming back to relationship"). I am determined to tell new and respectful stories that replace the injustices of my own and my culture's past with positive hope for healing and intimacy. I hope that these new stories will teach us (and myself) to be in touch with our feelings, pursue strength through humility, and maintain a willingness to learn, communicate, and serve others.
Or something important like that. On Mondays, I play video games.
Oh, and that woman I married? She's a photographer, and together we run the Twin Cities Photo Bus.