Ten Young Artists You Should Know
Jen Rosenblit
Choreographer, 27, Crown HeightsPeter Ksander
Scenic Designer, 34, GreenpointLori Guilbeau
Soprano, 24, UWSWendell Cooper
Dancer, 26, Bed-StuyThe Debate Society
Theater CompanyAmy Yao
Artist, 33, ChinatownMichi Barall
Playwright, 39, Cobble HillReyna de Courcy
ActorLee Isaac Chung
Filmmaker, 31, Boerum HillShane Caffrey
Artist, Art Handler, 32, Clinton Hill
Jen Rosenblit
Choreographer, 27, Crown HeightsSince moving to New York a month after graduating from Hampshire College, the Maine native has choreographed short pieces for herself and longtime dance partner Addys Gonzalez (known collectively as the BottomHeavies) that have been met with growing acclaim. For Dance Theater Workshop's 2008 Fresh Tracks, a proving ground for the city's emerging choreographers, she premiered a piece to the tune of Lil Wayne's "A Milli." This year, in her darkly funny pas-de-deux piece, "When Them" at Danspace, she improvised live harmonica. She's got big plans for her DTW resideny in March.
The L: What role does music play in your work? From what I've gathered you tend to employ musical compositions only very sparingly, and when you do they're very unconventional, almost abstract scores; what, for you, are the strengths of that type of score, and are there other types of accompaniment (even other media, like video or sculpture) that you'd like to incorporate into your work?
Jen: Music has worked its way in and out of my work and ideas and every time I begin a new process I still re-negotiate my feelings on its relationship to dance and performance. I grew up choreographing to songs, beginning to end. Without fully understanding, I relied on this already composed piece of work that someone else made for not only my compositional structure, but also some vague relationship or context for my movement. I went to Hampshire College and was forced to make silent studies in composition class. It was super boring to me at first but after some time of just my body in space, I started finding expanded structures and means for assembling, even making up movement. It wasn't as easy but it began my process of making dances, which to me is different than my previous process of assembling movement together.
Making dances opened up this new world with pretty much no rules. Time became something non-metered, indescribable, unattainable. What I took from classes with Tere O'Connor was an understanding of the histories of how we hear music and see dance. They are not parallel yet we apply them as such. I don't think that that old proverb about music and dance being born together applies to contemporary dance making. They are separate forms and metered music applied to dance is often dominating and limits the creative exploration of dance. In my experience it can also limit an expansive exploration for the performer onstage if there is sound that gets to the point right away.
The idea of music was and is still so present based on my negotiation of time, but it is not laden to a culturally clear system of metered reading. I used Lil Wayne's "A Milli" in my work that premiered at Dance Theater Workshop for the Fresh Tracks series. To be quite honest I used it as a bit if a trick. I was auditioning and I knew that the panel of adjudicators had seen a lot of dance that day and if anything this song would help them see my work in that moment. The process of making that work was about creating endless distraction from seeing anything valid or finding any understanding in the work. There was nothing there, but by creating distractions it seemed like there should be something important behind them. The drama, history of hearing hip-hop and rap and the very dominating sensation of that loud song were already existing props that I used. I can really only artfully claim carving out the space for the music to work in, finding context for my work in it. The usage of music in this way is a bit problematic, but there is also something so satisfying about artists who use it in the right way. Recently I have been creating sounds that really come from or are born from the work itself. In When Them as part of Danspace Project's 2010 Platform I used a harmonica to generate similar aural sensations that the performers were carving out. Being created at the same time created a very cohesive performance experience.
There is still a place in my work for experiencing 4/4 or something very popular and even, but understanding it rather than just applying it has made all the difference to understanding how to craft art, performance and the body. Music holds an element of drama that I will be the first to admit, is hard to get at with movement. When I put on Antony and the Johnsons I am immediately where I want to be and I know who I am! When making a dance finding myself in it or feeling something every time or even right away is not guaranteed. Contemporary dance and performance is a very subtle art form for me. It is not always immediately pleasurable, sometimes it leaves you with nothing, but for the times it supplies you with everything it feels like the only valid form to craft.
The L: You seem to use your body in a very empowering way in your work; how has not having the stereotypical dancer's body enriched your career and choreography?
Jen: I have the body that I have. I have been upset by it, rebellious with it, anxious about it, but it comes down to the realness that it is what it is. I am round, larger than most other women in this field but really feel strongly about the history of the dancing body. Modern dance has a history of unconventional female bodies. Loie Fuller was draping big sheets of material over her strong body and lighting spaces as performance in the early part of the twentieth century. Isadora Duncan was a softer body, Martha Graham was by no means fat but was creating a style for the thick-legged, strong-centered moving body. I don't make fat positive dance but I think by being seen and being artful I create a statement about the body and dance. Through honing my work I have found that I work best with others who can evoke an experience with their own body that needs constant negotiation. I am rarely comfortable but it is a process of moving toward locating comfort where I think the word empowerment is valid in my work.
The L: Your work seems to incorporate gestures and movements that vary immensely both in style and scope; to what extent are you deliberate about creating contrasts and juxtapositions within your work, or do those varied elements emerge organically from your process?
Jen: What emerges organically are big fluid dance phrases because I love to dance and look good and feel good and experience my technique that I have worked on my whole life. Making dances is very deliberate and different than loving to dance. I make endless choices. I apply inorganic moments to see what happens. I am constantly creating rules or questions that might offer new shades to a gesture or an unending investigation to keep us working. I go into the studio and push myself to explore new ways of moving and by working with other people visuals outside of my scope emerge as well. I would say my process is partly about determining what is organic and what is applied, how do they leave space for each other and what then becomes organic in the next moment.
The L: Could you describe your process for creating a dance piece? Do you start with a gesture or a movement, and build up from there; do you choose a theme, motif or idea and construct the piece around it; how would you describe your way of working?
Jen: I think a lot before I get in the studio with performers. I write, I watch a lot of other work. There is normally some new thing that I've learned that really applies to dance and I let it settle and saturate my thoughts. Addys (the male performer in all of my works) recently told me about a visit he had to a woman's studio where she makes dies, soaking pennies pre 1970 to get green, so on and so forth. Super interesting! Dying is a constant process of stopping the process at the right saturation. We have been in the studio a few times, made up some dance stuffs, haven't yet really rendered this idea but it is floating around the air.
I don't work with motif and I don't think I have ever constructed a piece around something. Ideas come and they go, they are relevant for a day then not. Whenever I talk about Tere O'Connor it feels like I am a stalker but he said if dance is about anything it is about time passing. That is enough for me. That is where I begin and end. That is where I start again. Just to be pretty frank though, we go into the studio, I show some ideas, we workshop them. We talk about them. We see what they do over time and then I begin to see what the work calls for coupled with what I want it to call for.
The L: What are you working on next, and how do you see your career changing over the next five years?
Jen: I have a studio series residency at Dance Theater Workshop with showings on March 25 and 26, 2011 in the studios. I am working with some new performers, which is exciting and scary. I am going to use the residency to work with more bodies because I rely heavily on the organic relationship Addys and I evoke for performance. I want to see that potentially on other performers. I also have a superficial goal of creating an evening-length work. My longest dance has only been 30 minutes and I think it will be a huge challenge to sustain a work over 45, 50, 60 minutes! I am always in awe of seeing older artists who are at that level, such dedication. I don't know about my career. In the next five years I will probably make 5, 6, or 7 more dances! A larger commission might be nice. I would like to teach more and begin relationships with venues and presenters abroad. Hopefully just finding a bit of sustainability here? I'm not too worried about dance, I feel like there are good people looking after me and my peers are exciting and I am invested in this. If I can find a food service job that doesn't make me crazy I will be set for life! So, the next five years are about letting the roots sink deeper, spreading, and feeling like it will take more than a strong wind to knock me over.
The L: If you could collaborate with any other New York City artist (living or dead), who would it be, why, and what would you create together?
Jen: I make my dances with Addys Gonzalez. I wouldn't have it any other way. Over the past five years we have really fleshed out what collaboration means. Who brings what, what it feels like when it is uneven, getting too close, being too far apart. He is the only person I really trust to let the work drive him crazy. No one else.
Peter Ksander
Scenic Designer, 34, GreenpointWorking with virtually every major downtown performance artist—including Richard Foreman, Jay Scheib and Lisa D'Amour—the sculptor and designer (with a theatrical design masters from CalArts) has developed a daring and distinctive aesthetic that effectively turns shows inside out, revealing unexpected tensions and textures. Ksander often accomplishes this quite literally, deploying cameras, TVs and live video projections to create compounding experiences of live spectatorship. This year he went from way Off-Off Broadway gigs at the Kitchen and Chocolate Factory to collaborating with Kara Walker on the sets for Lincoln Center's On The Levee. See his work on Sheila Callahan's Roadkill Confidential this month at 3LD.
The L: Your production designs often incorporate video projections, screens and multiple performance areas; to what extent is this fairly consistent aesthetic informed by your interests, those of the actors and directors with whom you collaborate, or dictated by the demands of the text with which you're working?
Peter: I think that the use of media in performance is prevalent in the conversation right now. So it's the times we live in that dictates how much of it is present in my work. We as a society are trying to work out what our relationship to media is. Sure it's been around for a century but the balance of how much of it we consume on a daily basis and how much of our time is consumed by it has changed radically in the last few years. I think that performance is responding by flirting with, embracing, rejecting and investigating that shift. The technology has almost become affordable and so there are more and more people exploring it. I'm not really a media or video designer but am interested in how they impact the spaces we inhabit.
The L: You've frequently incorporated live video into your production designs, offering audiences different and otherwise impossible vantage points onto the action on stage, strategies that call to mind not only cinema and television but also online video; how do you use such technological mediations to change the nature of live performance?
Peter: I think it puts into relief what is important about what it means to be live... For me the cornerstone of performance is the audience-performer relationship and to include a live feed is a kind of realtime cubism, allowing for multiple perspectives at the same time. I'm interested in the rhythm of picture with picture or that live feed act as a counterpoint to the live action.
The L: You're also a sculptor; could you describe that work? To what degree is your visual art informed by your work in scenic design, and vice-versa? Your design work for the stage seems very conscious—arguably more so than most other designers—of the expectations and vision of the audience; how do the very different conditions of art spectatorship inform your sculptural work?
Peter: Sculpture is the forming or arranging of masses in space, right? So in my sculptural work I arrange in service of my own taste and interests and on stage the arrangements still follow things I'm interested in of course, but also are influenced by the particular needs of the event being made, the other artists involved and the script at hand. The core ideas remain the same, my taste doesn't change from set to sculpture, but maybe I become more selfish when I'm not working in the theater. I'm not concerned about the audience for the visual art whereas in performance the audience-stage space relationship is everything.
The L: What are you working on next, and how do you see your career changing over the next five years?
Peter: I'm working on several new plays, some old plays and an opera. In the next few years I'm hoping to find a way to work on bigger and on fewer projects simultaneously. It's a contradiction I want to solve. I want the time to commit more fully to fewer projects. It ends up being boring and economic.
The L: If you could collaborate with any other New York City artist (living or dead), who would it be, why, and what would you create together?
Peter: Manray, (who's from Williamsburg, naturally,) who could be seen as the patron saint of working artists/technicians. He always thought of himself as a painter, but made his living (as well as more art) as a photographer, even going so far as to keep both a painting studio and a darkroom at different addresses while in Paris, but we know him almost exclusively for his photography and his messing about with the process of processing photos. Maybe we could have coffee and then mis-use some technology and see what happened.
Lori Guilbeau
Soprano, 24, UWSSince the 1950s, winners of the Metropolitan Opera's National Council Auditions have become the biggest names in opera. Add to that list hometown favorite Lori Guilbeau. The 24-year-old soprano, one of 2010's five winners and a Louisiana native, came to NYC to earn both her bachelor's and master's degrees from the Manhattan School of Music. Allan Kozinn has praised her "beautiful tone and... graceful sense of phrasing," though he went on to poke fun at her acting. A little improvement on the dramatics couldn't hurt, but we're not too worried about her future. In opera, The Voice trumps all—and that's what Guilbeau's got.
The L: How did you get into opera? I imagine a taste for it must have been unique among your peers.
Lori: Although my parents aren't musicians they've always exposed me to different types of music. I took a liking to classical music from a very young age. I knew I wanted to sing and my voice always had an operatic quality. Yes, it was definitely a unique taste coming from a small town in south Louisiana!
The L: What made you come to NY to study? What do you think of the music scene here, classical or otherwise?
Lori: The first time I visited New York, I knew I had to live here. I felt so inspired. One of the main things that drew me to move to New York is the active music scene.
The L: At the competition, you sang arias by Verdi and Barber, two composers with very different styles. Is there a style you prefer, or that you find yourself gravitating toward as you get older? How does a singer determine such a move?
Lori: I feel that because I'm so young and I haven't had the chance to perform every style so I can't really say which I prefer. I think of myself as a versatile singer and enjoy working on many different styles. Right now I am having a great time working on Richard Strauss' Vier Lezte Lieder. I love Strauss! I definitely see myself singing this repertoire as I get older. As far as determining which direction my voice goes in, I have a having good team of people that I trust to help me with those decisions.
The L: In a review of Penelope, Allan Kozinn ribbed you on your acting. How hard does an opera singer work on her acting, compared to her singing? (That is, how seriously do you take the theatrical aspect of opera in comparison to the musical?)
Lori: I take the acting aspect of opera very seriously, especially with today's high standards of the visual in opera. My path with singing started from a musical aspect not from a theatrical one. With that said, there are still many things I would like to work on as a singing actress. I believe that just like many things, this will come with experience.
The L: If you could collaborate with any other New York City artist (living or dead), who would it be, why, and what would you hope to create together?
Lori: Choosing just one is difficult. I would have to say Maestro James Levine. I had the great pleasure of singing on his master class at Carnegie Hall last January and it was amazing. Creating any music with him would be incredible.
The L: What's next for you?
Lori: In this year I have a concert with the Monterey Symphony and a recital with Carnegie Hall's Neighborhood concert series. I'm also preparing Leonora in Verdi's Il Trovatore for Den Nye Opera in Bergen, Norway. Despite all this travel, I'll still be living in New York.
Wendell Cooper
Dancer, 26, Bed-StuyThe Pittsburgh native and George Washington grad made magic as contributing choreographer and dancer in Nicholas Leichter's hit The Whiz: Obamaland last season. When he's not performing with the city's foremost contemporary companies, Cooper choreographs his own pieces, which range from mystical solo experiments incorporating elaborate costumes, elemental projections, sparse soundscapes and sudden outbursts of spastic movement, to more fluid pieces melding hip-hop, modern and vogue dance styles. We can't wait to see how the two meet during his upcoming Dance Theater Workshop residency.
The L: Could you describe your process for creating a dance piece? Do you start with a gesture or move, and build from there; do you choose a theme, song, visual motif or idea and construct the piece around it; how would you describe your way of working?
Wendell: Each piece can be experienced as a field. What defines the boundaries of this field? If we look at creating art as a means of communicating experience, then we have to look at the components that make up one's experience. The field of a work is the coherent resonance between a moment's thoughts, feelings, physiological state, sensory awareness, etc., and the content of a work as experienced through various mediums.
My pieces begin as an impression in my consciousness. Perhaps a strong experience in dream, meditation, or waking life brings up feelings or questions that need to be released/expressed. Once I have a sense of the essence of the piece, then I can develop the other elements. The various inspirations that come to me—expressed through different mediums—have a rhythm of their own. I mainly work with dance, electronic and traditional music, rapping and singing, video projection, and fashion. As I move between them, they influence one another within the evolving world of the piece.
My dancing has been influenced by many different styles and philosophies of movement. Whether in choreography or improvisation, movement language from breakdancing, house, drum and bass, capoeira, vogue, contemporary modern, Hawkins technique, contact improvisation, Lindy hop, Butoh, and yoga may be present in a work. With such a broad range, my approach to dance is defined by the context and world of the piece. In an improvised urban dance vocabulary, I rely the balance between letting the mind/body in an instant remember everything it has ever learned about dancing, and in the next moment, be a blank slate acting spontaneously in 'open space.'
My research in urban dance is in combining elements from various dance styles and techniques while simultaneously engaging with subtle energy skills. I want to develop an original style that pulls from different techniques to answer questions I have about the body's relationship to gravity, and the mind's relationship with the body. And at the same time, since each style carries its own politics, I wind as many questions around gender, power, spiritual presence, and freedom as I can into this improvised practice. All of this, within the context of subtle energy and consciousness study, gives me plenty to play with.
My inspiration for choreography comes from a dialogue with the world of the piece. What kind of approach to the body in dance will address the same or harmonic questions as my first impressions? Are their rhythmic or movement qualities particular to this range of experience? What does it sound like in this world? How can video expand an audience's ability to directly experience the world of the piece? I enjoy creating a space in dance performance where I am at my edge physically, finding new potentials, at my edge as a performer, using voice and movement, in a dynamic space with video installation, and also tracking the subtle energy and consciousness shifts in the room. Once the elements of a piece are created (choreography/improvisation structures, music/voice, video, costume) then my role is to play in and embody the world of the piece with as deep a sense of continuity in my consciousness as I can muster.
The L: Some of your pieces incorporate up-tempo music, while others feature traditional or classical music, recorded or performed live, and some nearly no music at all; what role does music play in your work?
Wendell: As a teenager, I was performing spoken word with poet Renée Alberts and making hip-hop with the Dreadnots, in Pittsburgh. Then, in college at the George Washington University, studying choreography, performance art, and religion, I electronically scored my performance works (with a Korg Electribe). This was around the same time that I started studying yoga, energy-bodywork and meditation. I began teaching meditation seminars with my mother, Wynne Brown, M.D., FACOG, R.Ac. As accompaniment to guided meditation workshops and yoga practice, I played quartz crystal singing bowls; creating durational, tonal fields to deepen meditation spaces. So, early on I was involved with music in very different contexts. When I am making something new, I consider the world of the piece and go from there. Often, ecstatic flight in performance is a goal or motivation for me, so the journey of the piece is the particular path toward that state. Sound has a strong influence on us in terms of our sense of "place"—that particular rumble in the subway, or certain silence near water—so I use the sound score to articulate and facilitate the journey.
The main music/dance/video project I am working on right now is Specimen001 (a solo figure who also performs with Yozmit and Her Specimen). Specimen001 is a shamanic, club-culture creature in a world of Contemporary Urban Dance, colorful couture, and ecstatic ritual. This is where rapping, chanting, and jazz vocal styling intersect as a genre/gender blend.
Also, my older brother, Jerry Cooper, is a DJ (Poochie La Fever) and a skateboarder and exposed me to a lot of music at an early age.
The L: You often use elaborate costumes, props and lighting in your pieces; do you always design those elements of your performances yourself? How do you pick your collaborators?
Wendell: Sometimes I develop the choreography, music, costume, and video (light) myself. But I often collaborate, and when I do I work with people who I feel have enough of a shared purpose and vision that we can perform together and all fully express our perspectives.
I am currently performing a lot with Yozmit. The costuming in Yozmit's pieces is always elaborate and often acts as a set.
The L: Most of your recent pieces have been solos and duets; what do you prefer about working on such relatively intimate scale? Are you interested in working with creating pieces for a larger group or ensemble?
Wendell: While sometimes it feels like I work in a variety of mediums, I acknowledge that ultimately my consciousness—and my ability to express that consciousness—is my primary medium. For whatever is being created, I have to be immersed in that energy to render the object. On one hand, working solo allows me to stay as close to the source of the inspiration as possible. Working long-term as a duet (Transport with Nicholette Routhier, Kinaesthesia with Mathew Heggem, Yozmit and Her Specimen with Yozmit) allows us to both have a firm foot in the world of the piece. On the other hand, I am happy to work on a lager scale when those opportunities come up!
The L: What are you working on next, and how do you see your career changing over the next five years?
Wendell: My next performance is in Monstah Black and Ashley Brockington's Cabaret Cataplexy (September 27th at Haven). It is a part of the Come As You Are Festival by Queer Art Impact.
I recently choreographed a music video for recording artist Gordon Voidwell. The single "Ivy League Circus" is being released by Cantora Records and the video produced by The Wilderness. It was a great process and I really enjoy working with recording artists, choreographing for stage shows and music videos. So, hopefully more of that will come my way.
This year I am a Studio Series Artist in Residence at Dance Theater Workshop. So, I am using this time to develop media content for my blog and to develop my curriculum for Expanding Your Art Practice, a course in using subtle energy and consciousness skills to create artwork.
My mother Wynne Brown, M.D., FACOG, R.Ac., recently founded an educational non-profit organization, The Original Medicine Institute for the Healing Arts. So this could be an outlet for teaching EYAP. I have taught various meditation workshops with her in the past and find that to be a rich process.
I am currently a member of Nicholas Leichter Dance, and will perform in his remixed version of The Wiz (this version titled The Whiz), created in collaboration with Monstah Black. We recently performed at Joe's Pub, Abrons Art Center, and in the Lincoln Center Out of Doors Festival. I did some additional choreography for the piece and have a section I created as Specimen001. The piece is touring to seven cities in 2011.
Otherwise, I just want to continue to travel for teaching, choreography and performance, and play in bigger venues for more people.
The Debate Society
Theater CompanySince director Oliver Butler saw co-writers and actors Hannah Bos and Paul Thureen do a reading in the Drama Book Shop basement just over half a decade ago, the three Brooklyn transplants, known collectively as The Debate Society, have earned virtually every accolade for which a young theater company could hope. Now six shows deep, including their biggest hit to date with this spring's clever, half-parody yet completely earnest police procedural, Buddy Cop 2, the trio seems poised for big things, and that much isn't up for debate.
The L: How did the three of you meet, and what made you decide to start a theater company together?
Hannah Bos: I don't know these guys. And I didn't know I was in a theater company. Weird.
Oliver Butler: You know us.
Hannah: Oh, yeah...You guys!
Paul Thureen: Hannah and I have been best friends since college and have been writing and performing together since then. Oliver we met through mutual friends and he came to a reading of our first play A Thought About Raya.
Oliver: I saw their reading in the basement of the Drama Book Shop and I loved the play. The friend who I brought with me said "You have to work with those guys!" So I approached them to ask them to let me work with them. They told me that they didn't want to work with a director—
Paul: We didn't.
Oliver:—but I courted them and they eventually agreed to work with me.
Paul & Hannah: We did.
Hannah: Oliver's a very good cook. So we did A Thought About Raya together and it went well so after that we decided to make things formal and became The Debate Society.
Paul: That was in 2004.
The L: If you had to describe your work in no more than two sentences, how would you describe it? Or rather: You have to describe your work in no more than two sentences. Go.
Paul: We do unexpected stories set in intricate, imaginary worlds. They are dark, funny and sad.
Hannah: Plays that are new made by the three of us. We try to make play.
Oliver: We make plays that start with a voice-over and end with a spotlight. The middle part is different.
Hannah: Whoa.
Paul: Wow . . . that's actually totally true. I never realized that.
Hannah: Oh my God. Stop the interview. I'm going home.
Oliver: It's an e-mail interview Hannah.
Hannah: Oh.
The L: Many of your plays draw on other media and art forms (mythology in The Snow Hen, medieval literature in The Eaten Heart, film in Cape Disappointment, police procedurals in Buddy Cop 2); do you set out to deliberately create pieces that are in dialog with other works; do these relationships emerge through your writing, work-shopping, reading and rehearsing processes; or do these other texts just happen to be what you're reading, watching or listening to at the time?
Hannah: We collect things that interest us and that spark a new idea for a play...and that can come from anywhere; another story or genre, a painting or anything. And then text grows out of a long period of research and experimentation.
Paul: In the end it's not so much of a dialog with another form or existing work as much as it is a theatricalization of a mood or feeling or idea, the seed of which we found buried in something else.
Oliver: I think we also like to play with expectations of genre and form...for example, the title Buddy Cop 2 purposefully sounds like either a parody of, or an homage to 80s buddy cop movies—schlocky, ironic and over the top. But the audience shows up and it's a small town Christmas mystery, slow and metered, really detailed. It's never in service of ostracizing the audience, but I think we really believe that part of the enjoyment of the play is being surprised that the world or characters don't meet your expectations.
The L: In addition to these non-theatrical influences and sources of inspiration, which theater artists, movements or traditions have been particularly strong influences on your development as writers, directors and performers?
Hannah: For me, Steppenwolf, Piven Theatre Workshop and the Moscow Art Theater.
Paul: Hannah and I both studied in Moscow and I think that the dark humor, life and death commitment to the work and super richness of detail in performance that we saw there really has been a huge influence. And for me personally: working with Theatre de la Jeune Lune in Minneapolis, with their focus on creativity and making magical theatrical moments.
Oliver: Theatre de la Jeune Lune, Darko Tresnjak—my mother is an actress, so I literally grew up backstage. She was always doing shows at The Long Wharf, Hartford Stage, some other theater in Boston. Mostly classics—Night of the Iguana, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Tobacco Road, Madame Butterfly, Long Day's Journey into Night—and I was with her watching the plays from an empty seat (over and over again) or I was listening to them from inside the dressing room. Anyway, what I am saying is that while I love being a part of an experimental aesthetic now, I do have a very standard theatrical upbringing. I like a story that is told really well, but I also like experimenting with how a simple story is told.
The L: What are you working on next, and how do you see the Debate Society changing over the next five years?
Paul: We're just starting work on two new plays.
Oliver: Very early, but we can tell you the next play is set during the 1893 and 1933 World's Fairs in Chicago.
Hannah: And our next next play is a thriller based on a medieval myth.
Paul: In the next five years we want to tour internationally, get some permanent office/rehearsal space and make better and better plays.
Oliver: Yeah, I wanna be in Berlin with The Debate Society.
The L: If you could collaborate with any other New York City artist (living or dead), who would it be, why, and what would you create together?
Oliver: Regina Spektor. I want her to write the music for a TDS musical.
Paul: We're all really interested in Steele MacKaye right now, this actor/playwright/inventor who designed and built crazy theaters in NYC in the late 1800s.
Hannah: Stages on elevators, things like that.
Oliver: He figures into our World's Fair play.
Paul: He feels like our style. Someone we'd love to make something with.
Hannah: And the mole people.
Amy Yao
Artist, 33, ChinatownAmy Yao has had a busy year. Following her solo show at Jack Hanley Gallery this winter, she was included in PS1's Greater New York exhibition, now on view through October 18th. She also maintains a four-page animated gif-happy website complete with bouncing happy faces, dancing bananas and a smiling bone. None of the meaning is particularly clear, but that's ok. Yao's page includes text that claims "It's not about ideas." Given the amount of cut up newspaper stories that end up in her work, we're sure that's not entirely true. It's mostly about re-contextualizing and manipulating found material.
The L: How long have you lived in New York?
Amy: About 3 years.
The L: How did PS1 curators find your work?
Amy: They saw my work in a show my friend David Sherry curated at Bellwether Gallery last year and emailed me.
The L: What is the relationship between your animated gif-friendly, scroll bar workout website and the doors and clown weapons?
Amy: I think of the animated gif and jpg websites as being like my collage work on paper. All are taken from random images that I find online, junk mail (both virtual and in my post box), and from other media and are rearranged in a way that is funny and or meaningful to me. Collage is a fast and easy way for me to relate to what I see in media and is a thinking tool for my other projects. It also keeps me on my toes and alert to what is being produced and put out into the world.
The L: Is there a specific narrative or interpretation you wish viewers to come away with?
Amy: Not really a narrative or interpretation but perhaps a sense of the attitude of the work. Artwork is always specific in its materials, images and attitude whether one chooses it or not. The work at PS1 is especially colorful and I was referencing certain subcultures and film when making it though not wanting to do so using representational means. There was no "message" per se, but a beginning and starting point.
The L: If you could collaborate with any other New York City artist (living or dead), who would it be, why and what would you create together?
Amy: Oh, too many! David Benjamin Sherry and I have always talked about doing something together. I love Anne Truitt's work, Le Monte Young, Allen Ruppersberg, Djuna Barnes, Charlemagne Palestine, Elsa Von Freytag-Loringhoven. I think Niki de Saint Phalle lived in NY for a while. Collaborations... I'd have to have a chat before knowing what we'd make together!
Michi BarallPlaywright, 39, Cobble Hill
Also an accomplished actress, Barall writes radically unsentimental re-imaginations of classical narratives. Defying today's trend towards magical realism, the Brooklyn-based playwright and doctoral candidate deploys an intensely stylized, self-reflexive and intellectual postmodernism—at intermission of every performance of this spring's Rescue Me, extracted from Euripides' obscure Iphigenia in Tauris, an invited Classics scholar expounded upon the texts' portrayals of class difference and celebrity gossip. She's workshopping another unconventional legend: How We Became Nomads, a multimedia puppet play about the life of Genghis Khan. Don't miss that miniature invasion.
The L: You were a successful actress for many years, what made you decide to become a playwright?
Michi: I never really decided to become a playwright. In 2005, I had an idea for an adaptation of Iphigenia in Aulis and I asked my husband if he would write it for me. He had already been working on an Atreus cycle and had his own ideas about Aulis and so he very politely refused. I was an unemployed actress at the time (so much for being successful!) so I resolved to write the adaptation myself. I can't remember what I meant to do with Iphigenia in Aulis, because in the course of doing research I fell in love with Iphigenia in Tauris and that was that. Euripides is a wonderful playwriting professor because his plays are so deeply strange—at least for a 21st century American—but they feel very accessible. And the way he structures his plays is so surprising and so deft. I've always thought that everything we think about plays would be completely different if Euripides had written a Poetics. In any case, I wrote my adaptation and I kept going. I was very lucky. I started studying playwriting with Tina Howe soon after I wrote the adaptation, and she did the best thing a teacher can really do: she gave me permission to follow my own interests and instincts.
The L: You're also a scholar, a vocation that was especially evident in your most recent play, Rescue Me, which managed to be entertaining, engaging and (for lack of a better term) educational all at once; what were your greatest challenges in bringing these often-antithetical styles of writing together?
Michi: I think, I hope, that my bio says that I'm a scholar-in-training. Because I am by no means an actual scholar! I'm really just a perpetual student. I took ten years off after graduate school for acting to do regional theatre, act and try, generally, to behave like a grown up. But I returned to school because I love being in a classroom. At their best, classrooms are very dramatic and theatrical environments where ideas really matter. Part of what I really wanted to do in Rescue Me was to puncture the academic packaging and stuffiness often associated with Greek tragedy (and classics in general), while at the same time activating the excitement of, effectively, classroom learning. Greek drama is also very much about education, and so it seemed appropriate to create a forum in which both learning and debate were an explicit part of the evening. I don't know that I felt like bringing the two forms of writing together was a particular challenge, since I tend to like shifting the tone of a piece, although I remember it made me anxious. I was scolded more than once for being a "smart aleck," which wasn't what I meant at all. I think I was mostly inspired by Anne Carson. She's really my hero, both as an artist and as an academic. I'd probably give up an organ to be able to think or write like Anne Carson for just one day.
The L: Your plays tend to be very elaborate and stylized, which can be a risky proposition for Off and Off-Off Broadway companies with relatively modest means; to what extent are you preoccupied by technical and logistical details while you're writing?
Michi: I'm incredibly lucky because Ma-Yi Theater Company took a chance with Rescue Me. And they never once said, "we can't afford TVs, forget about the TVs, or can't you do without the dancers?" They produced an 8 character play, which is unheard of these days. When I wrote Rescue Me, I was mostly thinking about what I wanted to see. I never really imagined anyone would do it. I try now to remember what it felt like to write that way, to write without concern for cost or feasibility. And it seems that it is just my instinct to write seemingly unproduceable plays because the only naturalistic play I've ever written, with one set and four characters, was completely inept. The projects I'm working on at the moment all call for many characters and some degree of spectacle. I'm just a sucker for spectacle. This said, I don't think I write pieces that require huge budgets. I'm interested in low-tech options that point to the technologies in use. I always think that the best theatre magic is the kind that's completely exposed.
The L: How have your experiences as an actor shaped your work as a playwright and scholar?
Michi: It seems weird to say it, but I think that my experiences as an actor have been most valuable to me as an academic, because I was trained to think of plays as production texts or texts-for-production and not literary works. I'm always aware of the practical demands and opportunities of a text.
I don't feel a real overlap between my work as an actor and my writing, but I do think that in the room I'm very aware of the needs of the actors. Mostly, I try to respect the acting process. It's really really hard not to make changes or give notes, especially in previews; you're finally seeing the whole thing come together and you begin to hear the rhythm of the piece and you want (or at least I wanted) to cut about on quarter of the text and give acting notes all over the place. I think that my time as an actor helped to keep me in check. As much as I want to intervene at times, I know that the actors will benefit most if I just let them take the play and run with it.
The L: What effect has your relationship with your husband Charles L. Mee, another very adventurous playwright, had on your work?
Michi: Chuck has been incredibly supportive of my work—as an actor, a writer and as an academic. I tend to think out loud and he's been very gracious—putting up with endless babbling about whatever it is I'm learning or working on. I also have a kind of manic-depressive work cycle. I get very very excited about something and do lots of research and then get really stuck and putter and complain and generally get no work done at all until Chuck finally cajoles me into actually working. So Chuck is very important to the process. We also see a lot of work together and we talk about theatre and art (Chuck loves visual art and could spend all day every day in an art gallery), although much less so since we adopted our beautiful toddler. Lately we talk a lot about poopy diapers and the architectural merits of various playgrounds. Still, on occasion we manage to resume our ongoing conversation about form and writing across media. Chuck also has a lot of courage. He wants to write what he likes. And he refuses to say that there's any formula. Having been an actor I tend to want to "take direction" and I'm a people-pleaser. So Chuck helps me to stay true to whatever it is I'm hoping to do (if I can actually figure out what that is.)
The L: What are you working on next, and how do you see your career changing over the next five years?
Michi: I have three projects in the cooker, which is more than I can really manage right now. I wish I could work on something in a very dedicated way for months at a time, but the way my life works I grab time when I can and then I have to let things sit for a while. I've convinced myself that the time in-between is very useful because it gives me a little distance, but sometimes you can lose your original (and perhaps strongest) intention or thread. Right now, I'm collaborating with two great friends, Jan Leslie Harding and Michael Littig, on a multi-media puppet spectacular about Genghis Khan. Jan (a fabulous actress in her own right) is building the puppets. Michael spent a year in Mongolia on a Fulbright, studying shamans, and he's brought back amazing material (including himself). This piece has been a real joy because it's a true collaboration and we're all finding the piece together. I'm also working on two plays that I think of as relatively "normal" plays although they both incorporate other media and are overtly theatrical in one way or another. The first one is about transnational surrogacy, with a focus on India, and the second is about women in the global factory, with a focus on Chinese workers in multinational corporations. I have to say that it surprised me when I realized one day that all my plays had "Asian" content. It's not something I set out to do out of some political obligation or cause, I think it just grew out of the context in which I live and in which I tend to make work. I tend to think of my work as being "about" globalization and transnational dwelling spaces. As an academic, my focus has become commercial productions in global markets (think Disney or Cirque du Soleil), so I'm thinking all the time about the relationship of theatre to nationalisms and transnationalisms and cosmopolitanisms, to sound, I know, hyper-academic.
How will my career change? I suppose the only thing I know right now is that I have to finish my degree and I hope, hope that in five years I'll be done. I kind of doubt it, but that's my hope. Since our daughter is still a little tyke, I imagine I'll be writing more and acting a little less, although I certainly miss acting. As a writer you're always on the outside. Still, it's something you can do, whenever you can steal time, as long as you disable your Facebook page.
The L: If you could collaborate with any other New York City artist (living or dead), who would it be, why, and what would you create together?
Michi: Everybody. I'd like to collaborate with everybody. I'd like to make a piece with a mass movement chorus and 10,000 puppets and singers and dancers and clowns and actors in the middle of Times Square. But of course I have my theatre crushes and secret hopes. Since I've spent the week thinking about spirit possession in Mongolia, I'm too superstitious to name anyone. If I don't say it, maybe it will come true.
Reyna de Courcy
ActorBoth times we've seen de Courcy portray an adolescent—most recently this spring in Christopher Wall's Dreams of the Washer King—she brought enough charm and nuance to her part to tip the narrative balance in her favor. It's no wonder the Oregon native and Rutgers grad keeps getting cast as a teenager: she plays the most complex adolescents we've ever (felt like we've) known. She'll venture beyond that apparent comfort zone for Gregory S. Moss's gothic fairy tale Orange, Hat & Grace at Soho Rep later this month.
The L: In both plays in which I've seen you perform—Colin McKenna's The Secret Agenda of Trees and Christopher Wall's Dreams of the Washer King—you played an abused teenager; what do you differently to cope with such psychologically and emotionally taxing roles?
Reyna: Well, I dunno...I don't think I've ever worked on a project where the net positive energy didn't eclipse whatever sad things might happen mid-story, so the monsters don't follow me home. It also helps that there are so many wonderful fun people around. Even if, during the show, a cast-mate has to hit me (or worse), later I'll find myself chasing that same guy around the theatre with a booger or something... figuratively speaking, of course.
The L: What would be your dream role or play to perform?
Reyna: Attn casting directors of the world: Please cast me in some science fiction! I just love those stories so much. I think my interest in acting can be traced back to when LeVar Burton brought Reading Rainbow to the set of Star Trek: The Next Generation for a behind-the-scenes tour of the whole creative process. It was this great moment of clarity when the two best shows on television came together to tell me that one can make a career of telling stories.
The L: You've been doing some film and television work recently, how different or similar have those experiences been to your work in theater? Do you have a preference between working on stage or screen?
Reyna: Well, for one thing, in film you watch it later and see yourself... which I find bizarre and alarming... and extremely educational. When you sit down with a bag of popcorn and watch like an outsider, you have the opportunity to get a much clearer idea of what your place in the world of storytelling might be. I would hate to choose between screen and theatre. I love them both in different ways.
The L: What are you working on next, and how do you see your career changing over the next five years?
Reyna: I've just started rehearsal for a play with Soho Rep called Orange, Hat & Grace by Gregory S. Moss directed by Sarah Benson. I'm thrilled to be a part of it. It's a beautiful play, an amazing team, and the world of the story is definitely wild terrain—a role to add to my "dream role" list. In terms of the next five years, my crystal ball is totally foggy. I love what I'm doing now, so I'm just going to keep at it.
The L: If you could collaborate with any other New York City artist (living or dead), who would it be, why, and what would you create together?
Reyna: For some time now I've been collaborating with fellow NYC actor Kate Kenney on a project that can perhaps be described as a narrative audio sculpture. (Yep—it's experimental.) Kate is a great actor and a great friend, and it's been an amazing adventure so far. It's a place where we get to really cut loose creatively, and run with the ideas that are the strangest, and the wildest, and the most foolish, and blasphemous, and fun.
Lee Isaac Chung
Filmmaker, 31, Boerum HillFilmmaking is by nature a collective, often social endeavor, sure, but consider Chung a special case. His much-lauded Munyurangabo was made with a crew from a filmmaking class he taught in Kigali, where he was volunteering alongside his relief-worker wife; the empathic group effort is mirrored in the film, about friendship and reconciliation in genocide-scarred Rwanda. Coming up: Lucky Life, a recent Tribeca selection concerning contemplative young Brownstone Brooklynites, whose production Chung describes as "a gathering of friends�€� in a setting that made us reflect." His company, Almond Tree Films, is also currently producing short films in Rwanda.
The L: The process that led to Munyurangabo's creation—much of the crew came from a filmmaking class you taught in Kigali, where you were volunteering as a relief worker—is a fascinating backstory that many critics have used to contextualize the film when discussing it. I'm curious to hear your thoughts on the relationship between process and product in general, and whether, what and how your filmmaking process might matter to the viewer who comes in cold.
Isaac: I think about that a lot because I don't like the idea that the story behind the film could overwhelm the work itself, but then again, none of us create films without an intricate context. It's the same reason we obsess about the biographies of artists and create myths around them. In any case, I feel the story behind Munyurangabo's creation could be taken as a simple novelty, and I hope it wouldn't distract the viewer from the work. Personally, if someone saw the film and believed that it's made by a Rwandan, I would feel very satisfied.
The L: You've since directed a second film, Lucky Life, here in the States. Was the experience—planning, logistics, collaboration with cast and crew—at all comparable?
Isaac: The production period of Lucky Life felt like a gathering of friends, most of us knowing each other well, that was able to create a setting that made us reflect and be immersed in nature. Lucky Life is about poetry, and the production felt that way—I'm still very nostalgic about it. Munyurangabo was different because many of us were out of our comfort zones. Somehow, this feeling of discomfort created an atmosphere that forced us to be very vulnerable to one another, and I think it elevated the work.
The L: Your production company, Almond Tree Films, has thus far been synonymous with your feature films (and one short directed by Munyurangabo's cowriter Samuel Anderson). But you say "Currently, the company has interest in extending its partnerships abroad, and in producing short and feature films in international locations". What do you hope or envision for your producing collaborations? Anything brewing?
Isaac: My company is producing three short films in Rwanda right now, commissioned by the Tribeca Film Institute. It would be great it the company could be a hub for filmmakers in Rwanda to get their films made. But as for countries outside of Rwanda, none of us at Almond Tree seem to be interested in producing for now, so the partnerships will be limited to whatever we wish to direct. Personally, I'd like to make another film or two abroad. South America, Europe, Asia�€”I'm not sure where yet, but I'd like to direct in a language I don't speak again.
The L: What are you working on next, and how do you see your career changing over the next five years?
Isaac: I've been working on a few scripts but after realizing that it would take a long time to get them financed, I decided to shoot a fairly quick film this fall called No Love Lost. It stars Amanda Plummer (Pulp Fiction) and Brooklyn actress Luisa Williams (Day Night Day Night). The film is about a man who steals millions from the bank where he works and hides away in the woods with his girlfriend and mother. It's somewhat inspired by a news story I read. As for any changes in the next five years, I've been thinking of making an action film, which would be a big shift from the contemplative cinema I seem to have embraced.
The L: If you could collaborate with any other New York City artist (living or dead), who would it be, why, and what would you create together?
Isaac: I don't feel worthy enough to collaborate with most of the artists I love. I feel shy around them; I doubt I'd get anything useful done!
Shane Caffrey
Artist, Art Handler, 32, Clinton HillThe first ever Art Handling Olympics launched this May, thanks in no small part to lead organizer Shane Caffrey. Aiming to find the best art handling team in the city, early on Caffrey produced a compelling promo photograph showcasing dual ass cracks—his own and one other handler's, as a teaser for what was to come. As it turned out audiences didn't see much of these—handlers tend to opt for overalls—but we did see a Jackass-like competition in which handlers were subjected to humiliating tasks. We're signing up for a repeat performance next year.
The L: Do you consider the Art Handling Olympics part of your art practice?
Shane: The Art Handling Olympics is a community event, not an art piece. That being said, I have a sketchbook filled with drawings of each event and all the ones that didn't make the cut, cartoons of characters I created, dialogue notes (which all went out the window, because apart from the basic structure of the event, everything was improvised), costume ideas, music, logistical mathematics, etc. I poured my creative imagination into the AHO; jokingly at first and then intensely as it materialized. But the real success of it came from the collective imaginations of all the people who helped make it happen (most of whom are artists).
The L: Where did you get those hosting skills?
Shane: Maybe those endless hours of watching game shows and eating Cap'n Crunch were good for something after all...
The L: You have two uber obsessive line drawings in Employee of the Month at Marianne Boesky Gallery, one called "Apple Pie from Scratch"—which resembles a smashed pie—and another ancient brain-like form, "Powers of Ten." How do you come up with your titles?
Shane: I take my titles from the jumbled soup of my artistic and cultural influences. "Apple Pie from Scratch" is an excerpt from the following Carl Sagan quote: "If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe." I'm a big Carl Sagan fan and his words have deep roots in the nature of my art work. The drawing "Powers of Ten" shares its title with the short film from 1968 by Charles and Ray Eames. The film starts with an aerial shot of a couple laying on a picnic blanket; the frame is 1 meter square. The rest of the film is a visual trip created by zooming out to 10 to the power of 24 meters (the edge of the known universe), and then inward to 10 to the power of negative 16 (the realm of quarks). By the same token, another drawing is titled "Get Your Ass to Mars," one of the more memorable quotes from the movie Total Recall.
The L: Do you have any advice to artists in the city who are looking to "make it"?
Shane: As an artist myself trying to "make it" in NYC, I feel utterly unqualified to offer advice to anyone in the same boat. But if I had a gun to my head, I'd echo what my mother always told me and my brothers growing up, "Do what you love." Sounds too simple, but I find it's one of the hardest things to do in life.
The L: If you could collaborate with any other New York City artist (living or dead), who would be, why, and what would you create together?
Shane: I'm a huge fan of Brooklyn based artist Tehching Hsieh. His five "one-year-performances" are often categorized as "endurance art". I propose a collaboration where Hsieh and I live our regular lives, never meeting or corresponding. From a synchronized time, we both systematically weed out endurance from our actions in life. The performance project would follow us separately as we endure to un-endure. The piece will have no time limit. The project would end when both of us, in our own times, give up giving up or fade away and die.
Either that or I re-enact Terry and Edie's walk in the park scene in On the Waterfront. I stand in for Brando as Terry, and Brooklyn born Marisa Tomei plays the part of Edie.
(photos by Crystal Gwyn, shot at The Invisible Dog)
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