About Laura
Raised by back-to-the-land hippies in the western USA, Laura was primed from a young age to follow a path of radical expression.
In 2004 she co-founded The Ricochet Project with Cohdi Harrell. Their production Smoke and Mirrors, received the 2015 Total Theater Award for Best Circus (Edinburgh Festival Fringe). Their work gained international traction performing at the Montreal Completement Cirque (Canada) and as the first American company to present at Festival du Cirque Actual Circa, Auch (FR). Described by Donald Hutera of The Times, "At once personal and political, an adult drama that shapes up into a meditation on the state of the world. It's circus that shakes you up.”
Laura has been based in Berlin for the last 9 years, where she founded the Nowhere Nowhere Shows, a performance series that provides a platform for established artists to take new risks (funded by the Berlin Senat). Since 2019, she has appeared as a guest artist in the annual tours of Le Grand Ordinaire (Meret Becker).
Concurrent with her circus career, Laura has been deeply involved with improvisation and somatics practices, she is honoured to have worked closely with contact improvisation pioneers, Steve Paxton and Nita Little for the last 20 years.The unique hybrid of her circus & improvisational skills brought her to a leading role in Mathew Barney’s 2019 film, ‘Redoubt’.
In 2020 her duo hair hanging act with Francesca Hyde, was the recipient of the Médaille d’Argent, the Dragone Award, and Cirque du Soleil Award for Innovation at the Cirque du Demain Festival in Paris (FR).
As a performer and co-devisor she joined Florentina Holzinger’s production, TANZ (2019-2023 u.a. Nestroy Preis, Nominiert für den Faust Preis, TheaterTreffen 2020, Inszenierung des Jahres Theater heute.)
Laura spent the last few years developing a solo show, CALL ME A PUSSY, (funded by Fonds Darstellende Künste) which successfully premiered in Berlin in December 2021, has since toured the USA and is now playing again in Berlin at Ballhaus Prinzenallee.
Laura brings a deeply human and holistic perspective to circus, infusing virtuosity with emotional resonance. In her workshops, she uplifts students by fostering individual expression while balancing technical excellence and boundary-pushing imagination. Her performances focus on issues in their unresolved embodied complexity, highlighting the questions of our times and residing between their contradictions.