She co-founded the Los Angeles Actors' Theatre and directed stage productions there, as well as at the Mark Taper Forum and in the Midwestern United States.
[1] Having become interested in acting during her adolescence, she studied theater at the University of Michigan, gaining her bachelor's and master's degrees in the field.
[3] Two of her Mark Taper Forum productions, The Vienna Notes (1979) and Passion Play (1984), won the Drama-Logue Award for Outstanding Direction.
[6] She also directed the films My Champion (1981), Please Don't Hit Me, Mom (1981), Mother's Day on Walton's Mountain (1982), My Town (1986), Necessary Parties (1988), Majority Rule (1992), and Something Borrowed, Something Blue (1997).
[7] In 1991, she directed the world premiere of Jeremy Lawrence's play Uncommon Ground at the Northlight Theatre in Evanston, Illinois, starring his husband Moffat and Anna Gunn.