Art Works
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I have been an artist and arts activist for over twenty years. My artistic communities have included Northern California, San Francisco, New York and Minneapolis. I am trained as a theater director and theorist and have directed scores of new works in collaboration with playwrights and performance artists. Early in my career, I began to adapt, write and direct productions that asked questions about the role of language and linear narrative. Under the influence of Jerzy Grotowski, I began to explore the ways in which meaning could be expressed without spoken language. I created two Shakespeare productions in the woods where performers used only gesture and sound to communicate.
As an extension of these ideas, I began to incorporate choreography, still images, tableau, and sound compositions in my work. My recent projects have been installation pieces that utilize live performers, animals, and found texts. These pieces pose questions about the construction of memory and history against the backdrop of "lived" events. I created four pieces on this subject over the past several years and used theater spaces and art galleries as venues. A recent piece was an installation in a photo gallery. It involved the choreography of sound, speech, film, trees, mice, projected images and lighting.
Currently, I find myself most attracted to the form of installation. The form allows me to create new relationships with an audience that the performance model did not permit. As part of my on-going interest in bringing artists together, I founded Minneapolis' Center for Performing Arts, where I have spent 12 years managing a converted convent where dozens of artists and hundreds of students from different disciplines work, teach, and learn. I also created performance festivals in San Francisco and New York City. I was the co-director of the West Coast Women's Theater Conference in San Francisco and Co-Creator of the first Performance Studies International Conference at NYU. I taught at Macalester College and St. Thomas University in St. Paul, MN and New College of California in San Francisco. I've been a Visiting Scholar at the University of Minnesota, Center for Advanced Feminist Studies. I am currently part of the faculty in Goddard College's MFA Interdisciplinary Arts program. |
