Professor Becomes Artistic Director

Professor LaMoreaux had a more unconventional path to teaching. She graduated early from a Catholic school in Michigan and traveled to Switzerland along with a group of other students after getting her diploma. While in Switzerland she lived with a host family (whom she has gone back to visit several times) and learned German. 

Similar to many students at community college, she often worked two or more jobs. These jobs include shelving books at a public library or working the desk at a racquetball center. “Because I had always worked while in school, I understand what that’s like for a lot of [community college] students”. 

After graduating from college, she faced the same uncertainty that almost all recent graduates experience. She had worked in corporate America in computer and word processing using programs such as WordPerfect and Lotus 1-2-3. Professor LaMoreux has had an interest in theater and performance art that has lasted for many years. After leaving the corporate world, her old playwriting professor got her in touch with an off Broadway theater where she interned. Around the same time she became an assistant in the Joffrey Ballet and New York Philharmonic. She said, “[Pursuing] different things worked well for me”. 

It wasn’t until she started volunteering for school functions and organizations through her daughter that she considered a career in teaching. She started an alternative path to getting a teaching certificate by taking night classes. Now, her favorite part about teaching is “seeing students improve, especially with public speaking. I love working with adult students here [at Middlesex College] because I feel like I can relate and understand them more.” 

In 2014, she started a multicultural theater company called Dragonfly Multicultural Arts Center, located in Metuchen, NJ. Before becoming an artistic director, she collected props, costumes, and miscellaneous items in her basement for years, believing in this dream of hers. She shared an anecdote about trying to put on a play centered around people of color being interviewed about their experiences and interactions with the police. Ultimately, the town did not want the play to be performed because of the subject matter, despite the importance of the story. 

For the Dragonfly Multicultural Arts Center there is an upcoming play written by her husband called “Certifiably Yours”.  This play is about a psychiatrist who wants to build a Utopian society in which members can sponger off of their relatives rather than having a career or job of their own. The play will run at the duCret Center of Art in Plainfield from March 30-April 2.