SLC Performance Lab

ContemporaryPerformance.com and the Sarah Lawrence College MFA Theatre Program produce the SLC Performance Lab. During the year, visiting artists to the MFA Theatre Program's Performance Lab are interviewed after leading a workshop with the students. Performance Lab is one of the program's core components, where graduate students work with guest artists and develop performance experiments. Alex Tartarsky is interviewed by Amelia Munson (SLC'26) and Sheridan Merrick (SLC'26) and produced by Julia Duffy (SLC'25) Alex Tatarsky makes performances somewhere in between comedy, poetry, dance-theater, and rant—sometimes with songs. Tatarsky's pieces play with the tension and overlap between written and improvised sequences, careening between known and unknown, set and scored. Drawing on the lineage of the clown, Tatarsky plays with the expectations and power dynamics of a given context, dissolving the fourth wall to respond to what is actually happening in the room, and probing the construction of genre, self, and narrative in real time. Sad Boys in Harpy Land, which premiered in 2023 at Abrons Arts Center in New York, NY, is an adaptation of a German novel about a little boy who wants to change the world through art but isn't very good at it. This narrative collides with other stories of tormented artists during horrific times, moving through the inaction born of anxiety, shame, and overwhelm towards strange and ecstatic modes of re-writing the world together. The performance takes the form of the bildungsroman or development novel—a classic narrative of an individual's linear progress towards becoming a fully integrated member of society—and lets it decay, reveling in the insights of the fragment, the spiral, the wandering, and the broken bits. Sad Boys in Harpy Land was presented again in 2023 by Playwrights Horizons, New York, NY. Tatarsky's other works include MATERIAL, Whitney Biennial, New York, NY (2024); Gnome Core, Glen Foerd, Philadelphia, PA (2023); Dirt Trip, MoMA PS1, Long Island City, NY (2021); Untitled Freakout (Tell Me What To Do), The Kitchen, New York, NY (2021); and Americana Psychobabble, which premiered at La MaMa E.T.C., New York, NY (2016), with subsequent performances as part of the Exponential Festival, Brooklyn, NY (2019); and America(na) to Me, a program celebrating the 90th anniversary season at Jacob's Pillow, Becket, MA (2022). Photo: Maria Baranova

ContemporaryPerformance.com and the Sarah Lawrence College MFA Theatre Program produce the SLC Performance Lab. During the year, visiting artists to the MFA Theatre Program's Performance Lab are interviewed after leading a workshop with the students. Performance Lab is one of the program's core components, where graduate students work with guest artists and develop performance experiments. Maria Camia is interviewed by Rebecca Padrick (SLC'26) and produced by Julia Duffy (SLC'25) Maria Camia, creator of the MARICAMA brand and universe, is a Filipino American Director, Playwright, and Spiritual Visual Theatre Artist who creates Puppet Theater, Visual Art, and Fashion with the intention to globally inspire healing and play. Her transformative storytelling leaves audiences rewired and enlightened to the infinite potential of the MARICAMA mindset. She has performed original work for established theaters, including The Henson Company, La Mama, and Chicago's International Puppet Festival.

ContemporaryPerformance.com and the Sarah Lawrence College MFA Theatre Program produce the SLC Performance Lab. During the year, visiting artists to the MFA Theatre Program's Performance Lab are interviewed after leading a workshop with the students. Performance Lab is one of the program's core components, where graduate students work with guest artists and develop performance experiments. Sacha Yanow is interviewed by Julia Cowitt (SLC'24) and produced by Julia Duffy (SLC'25) Sacha Yanow is an NYC/Lenapehoking–based actor, performance artist and organizer. Yanow's performance practice draws on theater, dance, queer performance, and Jewish cultural traditions to reckon with ancestral trauma, gender and sexuality, antizionism and assimilation. Since 2015, Yanow has created a trio of solo performances based on familial archetypes— Dad Band (2015), Cherie Dre (2018) and Uncle! (2024) — these embodied portraits act as an entry point to discuss broader social issues, as well as connect to estranged personal and cultural histories. Sacha's work has been presented by venues including The Kitchen, MoMA PS1, Danspace Project, Joe's Pub, and the New Museum in NYC; PICA's TBA Festival/Cooley Gallery at Reed College in Portland, OR; and Festival Theaterformen in Hanover, Germany. They have received residency support from Baryshnikov Arts Center, Denniston Hill, LIFT Festival UK, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Mass MoCA, SOMA Mexico City, and Yaddo. Sacha has performed in theater, film and dance works by artists including Karen Finley, Sarah Michelson, Laura Parnes, Katy Pyle, Elisabeth Subrin, and Julie Tolentino. And they were a member of the Dyke Division of Theatre of a Two-Headed Calf, creators of Room for Cream, the live lesbian soap opera. Sacha is also working on two ongoing collaborative projects: a short film Grey Matter with organizer Bilal Ansari, disrupting settler colonial mythologies of their hometown of Williamstown, MA (Mohican Land); And an embodied dialogue Thank You for the Fire Between Us with Johannesburg-based performing artist Tshego Khutsoane involving divination practices. Sacha currently works as creative consultant for fellow artists and organizations. They served as Director of Art Matters Foundation for 12 years, and previously worked at The Kitchen as Director of Operations. They received a BA from Sarah Lawrence College and are a graduate of the William Esper Studio Actor Training Program. Sacha is a member of the NY chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace. Photo by Allison Michael Orenstein

ContemporaryPerformance.com and the Sarah Lawrence College MFA Theatre Program produce the SLC Performance Lab. During the year, visiting artists to the MFA Theatre Program's Performance Lab are interviewed after leading a workshop with the students. Performance Lab is one of the program's core components, where graduate students work with guest artists and develop performance experiments. Juliana Francis Kelly is interviewed by K Stanger (SLC'24) and produced by Julia Duffy (SLC'25) Juliana Francis Kelly is an OBIE award-winning actor who has performed in the U.S., Europe, and Asia. She has worked for both emerging and legendary theater artists, including the late Reza Abdoh, Richard Foreman, Young Jean Lee, Karin Coonrod, Anne Bogart, Kelly Copper and Pavol Liska, Normandy Sherwood, Charlotte Brathwaite, Bryan Doerries (for The Theater of War) and many others. She has appeared in films by Hal Hartley, Bertrand Mandico, Tatyana Yassukovich, and Marie Losier in collaboration with Guy Maddin. www.julianafranciskelly.net

ContemporaryPerformance.com and the Sarah Lawrence College MFA Theatre Program produce the SLC Performance Lab. During the year, visiting artists to the MFA Theatre Program's Performance Lab are interviewed after leading a workshop with the students. Performance Lab is one of the program's core components, where graduate students work with guest artists and develop performance experiments. Eric Peters is interviewed and produced by Julia Duffy (SLC'25) Eric Peters is a Broadway performer who recently finished his run in Harmony: A New Musical, in which he originated the role of Erich. A proud Minneapolis native, Eric graduated from Northwestern University, where he studied Theatre and Mathematics. His credits include the national tour of Motown: The Musical, Off Broadway's Harmony (National Yiddish Theater Folksbiene), and Love Actually: The Unauthorized Musical Parody (Jerry Orbach Theater). When he's not performing, Eric loves to get outside, play board games, and support his beloved Minnesota Vikings.

ContemporaryPerformance.com and the Sarah Lawrence College MFA Theatre Program produce the SLC Performance Lab. During the year, visiting artists to the MFA Theatre Program's Performance Lab are interviewed after leading a workshop with the students. Performance Lab is one of the program's core components, where graduate students work with guest artists and develop performance experiments. Sibyl Kempson is interviewed and produced by Julia Duffy (SLC'25) Kempson's plays have been presented in the United States, Germany, and Norway. As a performer she toured internationally from 2000-2011 with Nature Theater of Oklahoma, New York City Players, and Elevator Repair Service. Her own work has received support from the Jerome Foundation, the Greenwall Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, and Dixon Place. She was given four Mondo Cane! commissions from 2002-2011 for The Wytche of Problymm Plantation, Crime or Emergency, Potatoes of August, and The Secret Death of Puppets). She received an MAP Fund grant for her collaboration with Elevator Repair Service (Fondly, Collette Richland) at New York Theatre Workshop (NYTW), a 2018 PEN/Laura Pels International Foundation for Theater Award for American Playwright at Mid-Career (specifically honoring “her fine craft, intertextual approach, and her body of work, including Crime or Emergency and Let Us Now Praise Susan Sontag”), and a 2014 USA Artists Rockefeller fellowship with NYTW and director Sarah Benson. She received a 2013 Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation commission for Kyckling and Screaming (a translation/adaptation of Ibsen's The Wild Duck), a 2013-14 McKnight National residency and commission for a new play (The Securely Conferred, Vouchsafed Keepsakes of Maery S.), a New Dramatists/Full Stage USA commission for a devised piece (From the Pig Pile: The Requisite Gesture(s) of Narrow Approach), and a National Presenters Network Creation Fund Award for the same project. Her second collaboration with David Neumann/Advanced Beginner Group, I Understand Everything Better, received a Bessie Award for Outstanding Production in 2015; the first was Restless Eye at New York Live Arts in 2012. Current and upcoming projects include a new opera with David Lang for the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston for 2018, Sasquatch Rituals at The Kitchen in April 2018, and The Securely Conferred, Vouchsafed Keepsakes of Maery S. Kempson is a MacDowell Colony fellow; a member of New Dramatists; a USA Artists Rockefeller fellow; an artist-in-residence at the Abrons Arts Center; a 2014 nominee for the Doris Duke Impact Award, the Laurents Hatcher Award, and the Herb Alpert Award; and a New York Theatre Workshop Usual Suspect. Her plays are published by 53rd State Press, PLAY: Journal of Plays, and Performance & Art Journal (PAJ). Kempson launched the 7 Daughters of Eve Theater & Performance Co. in April 2015 at the Martin E. Segal Center at the City University of New York. The company's inaugural production, Let Us Now Praise Susan Sontag, premiered at Abrons Arts Center in New York City. A new piece, Public People's Enemy, was presented in October 2018 at the Ibsen Awards and Conference in Ibsen's hometown of Skien, Norway. 12 Shouts to the Ten Forgotten Heavens, a three-year cycle of rituals for the Whitney Museum of American Art in the Meatpacking District of New York City, began on the vernal equinox in March 2016 to recur on each solstice and equinox through December 2018

ContemporaryPerformance.com and the Sarah Lawrence College MFA Theatre Program produce the SLC Performance Lab. During the year, visiting artists to the MFA Theatre Program's Performance Lab are interviewed after leading a workshop with the students. Performance Lab is one of the core components of the program where graduate students work with guest artists and develop performance experiments. Ethan Philbrick is interviewed by Nicki Miller (SLC'24)and Frank Barret (SLC'25)and produced by Julia Duffy (SLC'23) Ethan Philbrick is a cellist, artist, and writer. His book, Group Works: Art, Politics, and Collective Ambivalence, was recently published by Fordham University Press (April 2023). Recent projects include Slow Dances (with Anh Vo, Tess Dworman, Niall Jones, Tara Aisha Willis, nibia pastrana santiago, and Moriah Evans) at The Kitchen Video Viewing Room (2020) and Montez Press Radio (2022), DAYS (with Ned Riseley), Mutual Aid Among Animals at the Park Avenue Armory (2022), Song in an Expanding Field at The Poetry Project (2022), Case at Rashid Johnson and Creative Time's Red Stage (2021), The Gay Divorcees (with Robbie Acklen, Lauren Bakst, Lauren Denitzio, Paul Legault, Joshua Thomas Lieberman, Ita Segev, and Julia Steinmetz) (2021), March is for Marches (with Morgan Bassichis) at Triple Canopy (2019), Disordo Virtutum at Museum of Art and Design (2020), 10 Meditations in an Emergency at The Poetry Project and Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (2019/2020), Choral Marx at NYU Skirball (2018), and Suite for Solo For Cello and Audience at Grey Art Gallery (2016). He holds a PhD in performance studies from New York University and has taught at Pratt Institute, Muhlenberg College, and New York University.

The SLC Performance Lab is produced by ContemporaryPerformance.com and the Sarah Lawrence College MFA Theatre Program. During the year, visiting artists to the MFA Theatre Program's Performance Lab are interviewed after leading a workshop with the students. Performance Lab is one of the core components of the program where graduate students work with guest artists and develop performance experiments. Nile Harris is interviewed by Chisom Awachie (SLC'23)and Marisa Conroy (SLC'23)and produced by Chisom Awachie (SLC'23) Nile Harris is a performer and a director of live works of art. His work has been presented at the Palais de Tokyo, Under the Radar Festival (Public Theater), The Watermill Center, Volksbühne Berlin, Prelude Festival, Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance, Otion Front Studio, and Movement Research at Judson Church. His work has been supported by Pepatián, Foundation for Contemporary Art, Abrons Arts Center, YoungArts, and Brooklyn Arts Exchange. He is currently a resident of the Devised Theatre Working Group at the Public Theater/Under the Radar Festival under the leadership of Mark Russell. He has worked extensively as a performer originating roles in works by various artists including Jaamil Olawale Kosoko, 600 HIGHWAYMEN, Bill Shannon, Robert Wilson, Nia Witherspoon, Lilleth Glimcher, Malcolm Betts X, and Miles Greenberg in venues including New York Live Arts, Museum of Modern Art, Tanz im August, The Walker Art Center, EMPAC, Danspace Project, Superblue, Stanford Live, Dublin Theatre Festival, and MESS Festival. Photo by Chloé Bellemère

The SLC Performance Lab is produced by ContemporaryPerformance.com and the Sarah Lawrence College MFA Theatre Program. During the course, visiting artists to the MFA Theatre Program's Performance Lab are interviewed after leading a workshop with the students. Performance Lab is one of the core components of the program where graduate students work with guest artists and develop group-generated performance experiments. Agnes Borinsky is interviewed by Jeremy Kadetsky (SLC'23), Zee Hanna (SLC'23)and produced by Chisom Awachie (SLC'23) Agnes Borinsky is a writer and artist who has collaborated on all sorts of projects in basements, backyards, gardens, circus tents, classrooms, bars, and theaters. Selected plays include A Song of Songs (Bushwick Starr & El Puente), Ding Dong It's the Ocean (Rady&Bloom), Brief Chronicle, Books 6-8 (i am a slow tide), and Of Government (Clubbed Thumb). She lives in Los Angeles. https://www.rustchukfarm.org/

The SLC Performance Lab is produced by ContemporaryPerformance.com and the Sarah Lawrence College MFA Theatre Program. During the course, visiting artists to the MFA Theatre Program's Performance Lab are interviewed after leading a workshop with the students. Performance Lab is one of the core components of the program where graduate students work with guest artists and develop group-generated performance experiments. Zach Morris is interviewed by Aliya Hunter (SLC'23) and Jillian Jetton (SLC'23) Produced by Chisom Awachie (SLC'23) Zach Morris (Third Rail Projects Co-Artistic Director) is co-creator of the immersive theater hits Then She Fell, The Grand Paradise, Sweet & Lucky, and most recently Ghost Light at Lincoln Center Theater's Claire Tow Theater. Zach's work includes site-specific performance, multimedia installation art and environments, and experiential performance. He is particularly interested in creating projects that place contemporary art and performance in non-traditional contexts. Zach has been honored with numerous awards, including two BESSIE awards, and was recently named as one of the 100 most influential people in Brooklyn culture by Brooklyn Magazine. His work has been presented nationally and internationally with the support of numerous grants, commissions, and residencies and he has had the pleasure of teaching, mentoring, and creating new platforms to support the work of artists both at home and abroad. Zach holds a BFA in Directing from Carnegie Mellon University. To learn more about Zach's and Third Rail Project's work, please check out their website at www.ThirdRailProjects.com

The SLC Performance Lab is produced by ContemporaryPerformance.com and the Sarah Lawrence College MFA Theatre Program. During the course, visiting artists to the MFA Theatre Program's Grad Lab are interviewed after leading a workshop with the students. Grad Lab is one of the core components of the program where graduate students work with guest artists and develop group-generated performance experiments. Autumn Knight is interviewed by Chisom Awachie (SLC 23) and Red (SLC 23) Autumn Knight is an interdisciplinary artist working with performance, installation, video and text. Her performance work has been on view at various institutions including DiverseWorks Artspace, Art League Houston, Project Row Houses, Blaffer Art Museum, Crystal Bridges Museum, Skowhegan Space (NY), The New Museum, The Contemporary Art Museum Houston, Optica (Montreal, Canada), The Poetry Project (NY) and Krannart Art Museum (IL), The Institute for Contemporary Art (VCU), Human Resources Los Angeles (HRLA) and Akademie der Kunste, (Berlin). Knight has been an artist in residence with with In-Situ (UK), Galveston Artist Residency, YICA (Yamaguchi, Japan), Artpace (San Antonio, TX) and a 2016-2017 artist in residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem (NY). Knight is the recipient of an Artadia Award (2015) and an Art Matters Grant (2018). She has served as visiting artist at Montclair State University, Princeton University and Bard College. Her performance work is held in the permanent collection of the Studio Museum in Harlem. She attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (2016) and holds an M.A. in Drama Therapy from New York University.

The SLC Performance Lab is produced by ContemporaryPerformance.com and the Sarah Lawrence College MFA Theatre Program. During the course, visiting artists to the MFA Theatre Program's Performance Lab are interviewed after leading a workshop with the students. Performance Lab is one of the core components of the program where graduate students work with guest artists and develop group-generated performance experiments. David Neumann and Marcella Murray are interviewed by Chisom Awachie (SLC 23) Marcella Murray is a New York-based theatre artist from Augusta, Georgia, Murray is a playwright, performer, collaborator, and puppeteer. Her work is heavily inspired by the observed ways in which people tend to segregate and reconnect. Her work tends to focus on themes of identity within a community and (hopefully) forward momentum in the face of trauma.  Performances include The Slow Room, a piece directed by Annie Dorsen at Performance Space New York; a workshop of Ocean Filibuster, which was co-created by the team Pearl D'Amour (Lisa D'Amour and Katie Pearl) with composer Sxip Shirey at Abrons Arts Center; the work-in-progress, I Don't Want to Interrupt You Guys, created in collaboration with Leonie Bell and Hyung Seok Jeon during RAP at Mabou Mines; New Mony, created by Maria Camia at Dixon Place; and Shoot Don't Talk at St. Ann's Warehouse/Puppet Lab, created by Andrew Murdock.  Along with David Neumann, Murray recently co-created Distances Smaller Than This Are Not Confirmed (Obie Special Citation for Creation and Performance), which opened at Abrons Arts Center in January 2020. Murray is part of an artist collective called The Midwives. As artistic director of Advanced Beginner Group, Neumann's original work has been presented in New York at PS 122, New York Live Arts, The Kitchen, Central Park Summerstage (in collaboration with John Giorno), Symphony Space (in collaboration with Laurie Anderson), Abrons Arts Center, The Chocolate Factory, and The Whitney. Advanced Beginner Group has also performed at the Walker Art Center, Jacob's Pillow, MASS MoCA, American Dance Institute, and Carolina Performing Arts, among others. Neumann has been a featured dancer in the works of Adrienne Truscott, Susan Marshall, Jane Comfort, Big Dance Theater, Doug Varone, Doug Elkins Dance Company, and in two duets with Mikhail Baryshnikov. His choreography in the theatre includes The Antipodes at Signature Theatre, Futurity with Soho Rep and Ars Nova, An Octoroon at Soho Rep, Underground Railroad Game at Ars Nova, and directing Geoff Sobelle in The Object Lesson at BAM Fischer and New York Theatre Workshop. Neumann was choreographer on Hagoromo with Wendy Whelan and Jock Soto, Home at BAM Harvey, and Sibyl Kempson's Let Us Now Praise Susan Sontag at Abrons Arts Center. His film work includes collaborations with Hal Hartley, I Am Legend with Will Smith, Marriage Story with Adam Driver and Scarlett Johanssen, and White Noise directed by Noah Baumbach. Neumann is the recipient of three New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Awards (including Best Production in 2015 for I Understand Everything Better). The third installment of the Distances... trilogy, in collaboration with theatre artists Marcella Murray and Tei Blow, will be presented in New York in 2024. Neumann has also been nominated for Tony, Drama Desk, and Outer Circle Critics awards for his choreography on Hadestown. He is also the recipient of a 2019 Chita Rivera Award for Outstanding Choreography of a Broadway Musical for Hadestown. Most recently, Neumann was choreographer on Swept Away, with music by the Avett Brothers at Berkeley Rep. Photo: Maria Baranova

The SLC Performance Lab is produced by ContemporaryPerformance.com and the Sarah Lawrence College MFA Theatre Program. During the course, visiting artists to the MFA Theatre Program's Grad Lab are interviewed after leading a workshop with the students. Grad Lab is one of the core components of the program where graduate students work with guest artists and develop group-generated performance experiments. David J. Diamond is a theatre consultant, producer and career coach for theatre artists. As a career coach, David works with individual theatre artists assisting them in goal setting, strategizing and actively pursuing their chosen career. Clients include directors, actors, designers, playwrights, musicians, visual artists, administrators and producers. Current projects include organizing and coordinating (along with Mia B. Yoo) the La MaMa International Symposium for Directors, now entering its 22nd year and The Playwright Retreat. The Symposium brings directors from around the world together to exchange ideas and interact creatively through workshops, rehearsals and performances. Specialized workshops and Residencies also take place. The Programs takes place at La MaMa Umbria International in Spoleto, Italy each summer. In addition we produce shows for the La MaMa Spoleto Open, a portion of the Spoleto Festival of Two Worlds.

The SLC Performance Lab is produced by ContemporaryPerformance.com and the Sarah Lawrence College MFA Theatre Program. During the course, visiting artists to the MFA Theatre Program's Grad Lab are interviewed after leading a workshop with the students. Grad Lab is one of the core components of the program where graduate students work with guest artists and develop group-generated performance experiments. Kaneza Schaal is a New York City based artist working in theater, opera, and film. Schaal was named a 2021 Guggenheim Fellow, and received a 2019 United States Artists Fellowship, SOROS Art Migration and Public Space Fellowship, Joyce Award, 2018 Ford Foundation Art For Justice Bearing Witness Award, 2017 MAP Fund Award, 2016 Creative Capital Award, and was an Aetna New Voices Fellow at Hartford Stage. Her project GO FORTH, premiered at Performance Space 122 and then showed at the Genocide Memorial Amphitheater in Kigali, Rwanda; Contemporary Arts Center New Orleans; Cairo International Contemporary Theater Festival in Egypt; and at her alma mater Wesleyan University, CT. Her work JACK & showed in BAM's 2018 Next Wave Festival, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, and with its co-commissioners Walker Arts Center, REDCAT, On The Boards, Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center, and Portland Institute for Contemporary Art. Schaal's piece CARTOGRAPHY premiered at The Kennedy Center and toured to The New Victory Theater, Abu Dhabi Arts Center and Playhouse Square, OH. Her dance work, MAZE, created with FLEXN NYC, premiered at The Shed. Most recently, she directed Triptych composed by Bryce Dessner with libretto by Korde Arrington Tuttle, which premiered at LA Philharmonic, The Power Center in Ann Arbor, MI, BAM Opera House and Holland Festival. Her newest original work KLII, was co-commissioned as part of the Eureka Commissions program by the Onassis Foundation and is a National Performance Network (NPN) Creation & Development Fund Project co-commissioned by Walker Art Center in partnership with Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, and REDCAT. Schaal will develop and direct a number of upcoming works including SPLIT TOOTH with Tanya Tagaq (Luminato Festival, Canada), HUSH ARBOR (The Opera) with Imani Uzuri (The Momentary, AZ) and BLUE at Michigan Opera Theater. Schaal's work has also been supported by New England Foundation for The Arts, Baryshnikov Arts Center, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Nathan Cummings Foundation, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, FACE Foundation Contemporary Theater grant, Theater Communications Group, and a Princess Grace George C. Wolfe Award. Her work with The Wooster Group, Elevator Repair Service, Richard Maxwell/New York City Players, Claude Wampler, Jim Findlay, and Dean Moss has brought her to venues including Centre Pompidou, Royal Lyceum Theater Edinburgh, The Whitney Museum, and MoMA.

The SLC Performance Lab is produced by ContemporaryPerformance.com and the Sarah Lawrence College MFA Theatre Program. During the course, visiting artists to the MFA Theatre Program's Grad Lab are interviewed after leading a workshop with the students. Grad Lab is one of the core components of the program where graduate students work with guest artists and develop group-generated performance experiments. Stephen Winter is interviewed Stephen Winter (SLC 23) Stephen Winter is an award-winning filmmaker, writer, and artist. He wrote, produced and directed his 1996 debut feature film Chocolate Babies, which premiered at the Berlin Film Festival and won Honorable Mention and Audience awards at San Francisco Frameline, SXSW, Urbanworld and OutFest. Stephen's second feature film is Jason and Shirley (2015) co-written and co-starred artist Jack Waters and playwright and journalist Sarah Schulman. Richard Brody in The New Yorker called it “one of the year's finest” films. As producer, Stephen's first film was Jonathan Caouette's landmark “narci-cinema” feature documentary Tarnation. He has worked creatively with Lee Daniels (Precious, Paperboy, The Butler), John Cameron Mitchell (Shortbus), John Krokidas (Kill Your Darlings), David France (How To Survive A Plague) and Xan Cassavetes (Kiss of the Damned). In the podcast space, Stephen is directing the science fiction drama The Space Within for Topic Studios, starring and Executive Produced by Jessica Chastain with Bobby Cannavale, Michael Stahlberg, Sturgill Simpson and Jessica Wu. In 2018, with Tristan Cowen, Stephen co-wrote and directed the pioneering fiction podcast series Adventures in New America, an afro-futuristic political satire for the Night Vale Network, “The Best New Social Thriller is a Podcast,” New York Times, compared the show to Boots Riley and Jordan Peele.

Will Frears is an award-winning theatre and film director. His New York credits include Misery (Broadway), Still Life (MCC), The Water's Edge (Second Stage), Pen (Playwright's Horizons), Terrorism (The New Group/Play Company), Rainbow Kiss (The Play Company), Where We're Born (Rattlestick), God Hates the Irish (Rattlestick), and the Pulitzer finalist Omnium Gatherum. His film credits include All Saints Day and Coach. His writing has appeared in The Paris Review, New York Magazine, The London Review of Books, and Eight by Eight. He holds a BA from Sarah Lawrence College and an MFA from the Yale School of Drama. Will Frears in interviewed by Jillian Jetton '23 and Michelle Cowles '22 The SLC Performance Lab is produced by ContemporaryPerformance.com and the Sarah Lawrence College MFA Theatre Program. During the course, visiting artists to the MFA Theatre Program's Grad Lab are interviewed after leading a workshop with the students. Grad Lab is one of the core components of the program where graduate students work with guest artists and develop group-generated performance experiments.

The SLC Performance Lab is produced by ContemporaryPerformance.com and the Sarah Lawrence College MFA Theatre Program. During the course, visiting artists to the MFA Theatre Program's Grad Lab are interviewed after leading a workshop with the students. Grad Lab is one of the core components of the program where graduate students work with guest artists and develop group-generated performance experiments. Tei is interviewed by Marisa Conroy (SLC23) and Kenneth Keng (SLC23). Tei Blow is a performer, educator, and media designer based in New York. Blow's work incorporates photography, video, and sound culled from found materials and mass media. He has performed and designed for The Laboratory of Dmitry Krymov, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Jodi Melnick, Ann Liv Young, Big Dance Theater, and David Neumann/Advanced Beginner Group. He also performs as Frustrator on Enemies List Recordings. Blow's work has been featured at Hartford Stage, Dance Theater Workshop, PS122/PSNY, Lincoln Center Festival, The Kitchen, BAM, The Public Theater, The Broad Stage, MCA Chicago, MFA Boston, Kate Werble Gallery, Baryshnikov Arts Center, The Wadsworth Atheneum, and at theaters around the world. He is the recipient of a 2015 New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Award for Outstanding Sound Design for David Neumann/Advanced Beginner Group's I Understand Everything Better. Blow is one half of Royal Osiris Karaoke Ensemble, whose ongoing multipart series The Art of Luv is a recipient of the Creative Capital and Franklin Furnace Awards. Photo: Maria Baranova

The SLC Performance Lab is produced by ContemporaryPerformance.com and the Sarah Lawrence College MFA Theatre Program. During the course, visiting artists to the MFA Theatre Program's Grad Lab are interviewed after leading a workshop with the students. Grad Lab is one of the core components of the program where graduate students work with guest artists and develop group-generated performance experiments. Machine was interviewed by Andrew Del Vecchio (SLC22) and Alex Guhde (SLC23). MACHINE DAZZLE has been dazzling stages via costumes, sets, and performances since his arrival in New York in 1994. Credits include Julie Atlas Muz's I Am The Moon And and You Are The Man On Me (2004), Big Art Group's House Of No More (2006), Justin Vivian Bond's Lustre (2008) and Re:Galli Blonde (2011), Chris Tanner's Football Head (2014), Soomi Kim's Change (2015), Pig Iron Theater's I Promised Myself To Live Faster (2015), Bombay Ricky (Prototype Festival 2016), Opera Philadelphia's Dito and Aeneus (2017) and Spiegleworld's Opium (Las Vegas 2018). With Taylor Mac, Machine has collaborated on several projects including The Lily's Revenge (2009), Walk Across America For Mother Earth (2012) and the Pulitzer Prize-Nominated A 24-Decade History of Popular Music (2016-Present). Conceptualist-as-artist meets DIY meets “glitter rhymes with litter,” Machine was a co-recipient the 2017Bessie Award for Outstanding Visual Design and the winner of a 2017 Henry Hewes Design Award.

The SLC Performance Lab is produced by ContemporaryPerformance.com and the Sarah Lawrence College MFA Theatre Program. During the course, visiting artists to the MFA Theatre Program's Grad Lab are interviewed after leading a workshop with the students. Grad Lab is one of the core components of the program where graduate students work with guest artists and develop group-generated performance experiments. Miguel was interviewed by Andrew Del Vecchio (SLC22) and Jillian Jetton (SLC23). Miguel Gutierrez is a choreographer, composer, performer, singer, writer, educator and arts advocate who has lived in New York for over twenty years. He is fascinated by the time-based nature of performance and how it creates an ideal frame for phenomenological questions around presence and meaning-making. His work proposes an immersive state, for performer and audience alike, where attention itself becomes an elastic material. He believes in an approach to art making that is fierce, fragile, empathetic, political, and irreverent. In recent years he has been occupied with thinking about how he negotiates his queer Latinx identity within the traditions of the white avant-garde. This led to This Bridge Called My Ass, a piece that bends tropes of Latinidad to identify new relationships to content and form. The piece premiered in 2019 at The Chocolate Factory as part of American Realness Festival and tours throughout 2019 and 2020 to a host of venues. He has been presented in more than 60 cities around the world, in venues such as at Centre National de Danse, Centre Pompidou, Festival Universitario, ImPulsTanz, Fringe Arts, Walker Art Center, TBA/PICA, MCA Chicago, Live Arts Bard, American Realness, and the 2014 Whitney Biennial. He has received support from Creative Capital, MAP, National Dance Project, National Performance Network, and Jerome Foundation. He has received fellowships from New York Foundation for the Arts, the Tides Foundation, Guggenheim Foundation, United States Artists, an award from Foundation for Contemporary Art, a 2016 Franky Award from Prelude Festival and four Bessies. He is a 2016 Doris Duke Artist. Other recent work includes Cela nous concerne tous (This concerns all of us), a commission for Ballet de Lorraine inspired by the May '68 French protests. With Ishmael Houston-Jones he co-directed Variations on Themes from Lost and Found: Scenes from a Life and other works by John Bernd, which received a 2017 Bessie for Outstanding Revival. He has been an artist in residence at MANCC, LMCC, Centre Choréographique National de Montpellier, Centre National du Danse Pantin, Baryshnikov Art Center, and Gibney. He has created music for several of his works, for Antonio Ramos' work, and with Colin Self for Jen Rosenblit and Simone Aughterlony. He performs with Nick Hallett as Nudity in Dance. He also currently performs a music project called SADONNA: sad versions of upbeat Madonna songs. His book WHEN YOU RISE UP is available from 53rd State Press. His essays have been published in A Life in Dance (ed. Rebecca Stenn and Fran Kirmser), In Terms of Performance: A Keywords Anthology (ed. Shannon Jackson and Paula Marincola) and his essay “Does Abstraction Belong To White People” is one of the most viewed essays on BOMB's website. https://www.miguelgutierrez.org/ photo by Marley Trigg Stewart

The SLC Performance Lab is produced by ContemporaryPerformance.com and the Sarah Lawrence College MFA Theatre Program. Each month a visiting artist to the MFA Theatre Program's Grad Lab is interviewed. Grad Lab is one of the core components of the program where graduate students work with guest artists and develop group-generated performance pieces monthly. Jaami was interviewed by Chanel Blanchett (SLC21) and Ricky Brown (SLC22). Jaamil Olawale Kosoko is a Nigerian American performance artist, poet, and curator originally from Detroit, MI. He is a 2019 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow in Choreography, 2019 NPN Development Fund Award, a 2017-19 Princeton Arts Fellow, 2019 Red Bull Writing Fellow, 2018 NEFA NDP Production Grant recipient, and a 2017 Cave Canem Poetry Fellow. His creative practice draws from Black study, queer theories of the body, weaving together visual performance, lecture, ritual, and spiritual practice. His most recent works, Séancers (2017) and the Bessie nominated #negrophobia (2015), have toured internationally appearing in major festivals including: Tanz im August (Berlin), Moving in November (Finland), Within Practice (Sweden), TakeMeSomewhere (UK), Brighton Festival (UK), Oslo Teaterfestival (Norway), and Zürich MOVES! (Switzerland) among others. He is the author of two chapbooks and his poems and essays have been included in The American Poetry Review, The Dunes Review, The Broad Street Review, among others. Visit jaamil.com for more information. IG@jaamil_means_beauty Photo by Aisha Nailah

Noel Allain is the Co-Founder / Artistic Director of Bushwick Star. Noel is a graduate of Skidmore College and the Juilliard School's Drama Division. As an actor, he has performed in various theater, television, and film productions in and out of New York City. The SLC Performance Lab is produced by ContemporaryPerformance.com and the Sarah Lawrence College MFA Theatre Program. Each month a visiting artist to the MFA Theatre Program's Grad Lab is interviewed. Grad Lab is one of the core components of the program where graduate students work with guest artists and develop group-generated performance pieces monthly. Noel was interviewed by Michelle Cowles (SLC 22)

The SLC Performance Lab is produced by ContemporaryPerformance.com and the Sarah Lawrence College MFA Theatre Program. Each month a visiting artist to the MFA Theatre Program's Grad Lab is interviewed. Grad Lab is one of the core components of the program where graduate students work with guest artists and develop group-generated performance pieces monthly. Caleb Hammons is interviewed by Kyrie Ellison (SLC21) and Andrew Del Vecchio (SLC22). CALEB HAMMONS is a Tony and Obie Award-winning cultural producer and curator of performance working in Brooklyn and the Hudson Valley. Currently the Director of Artistic Planning and Producing at the Fisher Center at Bard, he facilitates Live Arts Bard, a professional commissioning, residency, and presenting initiative focusing on contemporary practices in the performing arts, produces an extensive portfolio of dance, theater, live music, and transdisciplinary performance projects, and co-curates the Bard SummerScape Spiegeltent. Prior to his time at Bard he was the Producer at Soho Rep in NYC and was the first Producing Director of Young Jean Lee's Theater Company from 2008 to 2011. He is the Co-Curator of the acclaimed Brooklyn-based performance series CATCH. Caleb holds a BFA from the NYU/Tisch Experimental Theatre Wing and was a member of the Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance's inaugural class at Wesleyan University. Photo is by Maria Baranova

The SLC Performance Lab is produced by ContemporaryPerformance.com and the Sarah Lawrence College MFA Theatre Program. Each month a visiting artist to the MFA Theatre Program's Grad Lab is interviewed. Grad Lab is one of the core components of the program where graduate students work with guest artists and develop group-generated performance pieces monthly. Jibz Cameron is interviewed by Sarah Sterling (SLC 21) and Andrew Del Vecchio (SLC 22. Jibz Cameron is a performance, recording, and video artist as well as an actor. Cameron also produces work as Dynasty Handbag, an alter ego created in 2001. Her performance art has been called "Outrageously smart, grotesque and innovative" by The New Yorker and referred to as "[...] one of the most insanely funny, tone-perfect pieces of performance art I have seen in years" by Jennifer Dunning in The New York Times. She has taught at universities as a visiting professor at California Institute of the Arts and an adjunct professor at Tisch School of the Arts at NYU. Her performances and video works have been presented at prestigious venues and festivals including the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, The Kitchen, Redcat Theatre, Brooklyn Academy of Music, The New Museum in New York, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Joe's Pub, Performa, the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, Centre Pompidou, the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, SXSW and many more. Jibz Cameron currently resides in Los Angeles. She hosts and produces Weirdo Night at Zebulon Cafe Concert. A 4-camera recorded version of Weirdo Night was selected for the 2021 Sundance Film Festival. http://www.dynastyhandbag.com

The SLC Performance Lab is produced by ContemporaryPerformance.com and the Sarah Lawrence College MFA Theatre Program. Each month a visiting artist to the MFA Theatre Program's Grad Lab is interviewed. Grad Lab is one of the program's core components, where graduate students work with guest artists and develop group-generated performance pieces monthly. Tina Satter is interviewed by Amelia Bethel (SLC21) and Amanda Card(SLC21). Tina Satter is a playwright and director based in New York City. She is the founder and artistic director of the theater company Half Straddle. A collection of three of her plays, "Seagull (Thinking of you) with Away Uniform and FAMILY," was published in 2014. Her show's text, "Ghost Rings," was published in 2017 by 53rd State Press and a vinyl album of the show's songs. She has received the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists award (2016) and a Doris Doris Duke Artist Impact Award in 2014. Satter has created 10 shows with Half Straddle, and the company's shows and videos have toured to over 20 countries in the U.S., Europe, Australia, and Asia. She made her Off-Broadway debut as a conceiver and director in fall 2019 with IS THIS A ROOM at the Vineyard Theatre, for which she won an Obie Award.

The SLC Performance Lab is produced by ContemporaryPerformance.com and the Sarah Lawrence College MFA Theatre Program. Each month a visiting artist to the MFA Theatre Program's Grad Lab is interviewed. Grad Lab is one of the core components of the program where graduate students work with guest artists and develop group generated performance pieces monthly. Alice Yuan Zhang is interviewed by Karen Loewy Movilla (‘21) and Chanel Smith (‘21). Alice Yuan Zhang is an artist, designer, and program organizer working across the IRL and URL. Her projects often take on a playful and collaborative approach, using mixed reality technologies to invite public empathy into ecological and social futuring. She is the co-organizer of virtual care lab, a series of experiments in remote togetherness. Alice holds a B.S. in Business Administration from University of California, Berkeley and is influenced by object-oriented ontology, interspecies collaborations, Eastern philosophy, and magical realism. www.aliceyuanzhang.com

The SLC Performance Lab is produced by ContemporaryPerformance.com and the Sarah Lawrence College MFA Theatre Program. Each month we interview visiting artists to the MFA Theatre Program's Grad Lab, one of the core classes of the program where grads work with guest artists and develop group generated performance pieces monthly. Emily Johnson is interviewed by Yuexing (Star) Sun (SLC21) and Emily Aviles (SLC21). Emily Johnson is an artist who makes body-based work. She is a land and water protector and an activist for justice, sovereignty and well-being. A Bessie Award-winning choreographer, Guggenheim Fellow and recipient of the Doris Duke Artist Award, she is based in New York City. Originally from Alaska, Emily is of the Yup’ik Nation, and since 1998 has created work that considers the experience of sensing and seeing performance. Her dances function as portals and installations, engaging audiences within and through space, time, and environment—interacting with a place's architecture, peoples, history and role in community. Emily is trying to make a world where performance is part of life; where performance is an integral connection to each other, our environment, our stories, our past, present and future. * Note: There is an accidental citation in this podcast stating that Leanne Simpson wrote Emergent Strategy, which is incorrect. adrienne maree brown is the author of Emergent Strategy, though Leanne Simpson's book As We Have Always Done, is highly recommended as well Photo by Tracy Rector and Melissa Ponder

The SLC Performance Lab is produced by ContemporaryPerformance.com and the Sarah Lawrence College MFA Theatre Program. Each month we interview visiting artists to the MFA Theatre Program's Grad Lab, one of the core classes of the program where grads work with guest artists and develop group generated performance pieces monthly. In our second podcast of the 20/21 season, Chanel Blanchett (SLC21) and Andrew Del Vecchio (SCL22) interview the director and designer Carlos Soto. Carlos Soto is a director and designer based in New York City, where he studied Art History and Literature at the Pratt Institute. His GIRLMACHINE premiered at Performa 09 and was subsequently presented in Paris by the American University of Paris. Pig Pig Pig (2010) was developed in residency at Le Point Éphémère, Paris, and performed at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art. In 2011, he was featured in an evening of works curated by Robert Wilson for Works & Process at the Guggenheim Museum. In September 2013, Pace Gallery, NY, exhibited video work created in residency at Willem de Kooning’s studio in Springs, NY. Soto has presented work at the Triennale di Milano, Kunstverein in Hamburg, the Istanbul Biennial, among others. He has been artist-in-residence at The Watermill Center (2009 & 2015), Kampnagel Hamburg, Schauspielhaus Wien, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, New York Live Arts, among others. Photo © Carlos Soto

Welcome to the 2nd Season of the SLC Performance lab Podcast. Produced by ContemporaryPerformance.com and the Sarah Lawrence College MFA Theatre Program, the SLC Performance lab interviews visiting artists to the MFA Theatre Program's Grad Lab, one of the core classes of the program where grads work with guest artists and develop group generated performance pieces monthly. Maiko Kikuchi is a multidisciplinary artist working in illustration, painting, drawing, collage, sculpture, animation and puppetry/ performance. Her object theatre pieces include DAYDREAM TUTORIAL(Work in Progress) as part of Under The Radar Festival 2020 (INCOMING! Program) at The Public Theatre, LaMaMa and FiveMyles Gallery, PINK BUNNY at Japan Society and St.Ann’s Warehouse, ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE FENSE at Dixon Place, NO NEED FOR A NIGHT LIGHT ON A LIGHT NIGHT LIKE TONIGHT at LaMaMa, DAYDREAM ANTHOLOGY at St. Ann’s Warehouse. She is currently in artist residency program at HERE collaborating with Spencer Lott and also one third of the curator members at a puppetry residency program Object Movement Festival at The Center at West Park in NYC. Interviewed by Karen Movilla (SLC 21)and Amanda Card (SLC 21)

Produced by ContemporaryPerformance.com and the Sarah Lawrence College MFA Theatre Program, the SLC Performance lab interviews visiting artists to the MFA Theatre Program's Grad Lab, one of the core classes of the program where grads work with guest artists and develop group generated performance pieces monthly. Beth Pickens Consultant for artists and arts organizations Beth Pickens is a Los Angeles-based consultant for artists and arts organizations. She is the author of the book Your Art Will Save Your Life (Feminist Press, 2018) and the pamphlets Making Art During Fascism and On Artists and Hopelessness. She provides career consultation, grant writing, fundraising, and financial, project, and strategic planning services for clients throughout the US. Before relocating to Los Angeles in 2014, she was based in San Francisco where she served as Senior Program Manager at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and Managing Director of both RADAR Productions and the Queer Cultural Center. She specializes in supporting queer and trans artists, women, and artists of color.

Produced by ContemporaryPerformance.com and the Sarah Lawrence College MFA Theatre Program, the SLC Performance lab interviews visiting artists to the MFA Theatre Program's Grad Lab, one of the core classes of the program where grads work with guest artists and develop group generated performance pieces monthly. Broadway: Violet (Tony nomination); Chinglish; Well. Off-Broadway: American Hero (2ST); Kung Fu (Signature Theatre); The (curious case of the) Watson Intelligence (Playwrights Horizons); The Call (Playwrights Horizons); The Madrid (MTC); Golden Child (Signature Theatre); No Place to Go (Public Theater; Two River Theatre); In the Wake (Center Theatre Group/Berkeley Repertory Theatre and The Public Theater, Obie Award, Lortel nomination); Go Back to Where You Are (Playwrights Horizons, Obie Award); From Up Here (MTC, Drama Desk nomination); Yellow Face (Center Theatre Group/The Public Theater); Coraline (MCC/True Love); Blue Door (Playwrights Horizons); Well (The Public Theater; Huntington Theatre; ACT); Danny and the Deep Blue Sea (Second Stage Theatre). Recent regional: The Heidi Chronicles (The Guthrie); American Hero (WTF); Chinglish (Goodman Theater, Jeff nomination; West Coast/Hong Kong tour).

Jillian Walker writes and often performs contemporary sacred texts for the now times. Her work creates space for healing and liberation; embodying remembrance for our ancestors and legacies. Often taking the form of plays, musicals, sacred lecture-sermon-concert gatherings, and self-reflective space, Jillian’s work pushes what we think of as genre and blurs the perceived boundaries between performer, audience and self. She draws deeply on her training as a dramaturg (MFA Columbia), Black Spiritual wisdom, and the ongoing work of black feminist thinkers to bring process-driven performance to life. Some of her works include: Sarah’s Salt. (developed at MCC Theater, Roundabout Theater Company; Honorable Mention for the Relentless Award; finalist for the 2019 Bay Area Playwrights Festival). Songs of Speculation, presented at JACK; and “Blue Ink: A Night with Jillian Walker” performed at Joe’s Pub. Her ancestor-revering work, SKiNFoLK: An American Show (co-presented by The Bushwick Starr and National Black Theatre) was a NY Times Critics’ Pick. Some of her collaborations and dramaturgical works include: co-writing for Common’s 2019 international tour, “Let Love Tour”, dramaturgy for the award-winning musical, Rags Parkland Sings the Songs of The Future and dramaturgy for Dave Malloy’s Moby-Dick, directed by Rachel Chavkin. She is currently developing work with the High Line, The TEAM, Musical Theater Factory (MTF Makers), Ars Nova (Makers Lab), and Soho Rep., where she is the 2020-21 Tow Playwright-in-Residence. Edited and Produced by Kyrie Ellison (SLC21) Edited and Produced by Kyrie Ellison (SLC21) Edited and Produced by Kyrie Ellison (SLC21) Edited and Produced by Kyrie Ellison (SLC21) Edited and Produced by Kyrie Ellison (SLC21) Interviewed by Karen Loewy Movilla and Kyrie Ellison (SLC21) Photo Cred: De’Lon Grant Photography

Emily Ritger is a director, playwright, performer and choreographer based in Chicago. As a teacher and director developing new work, she has worked for American Theatre Company, Redmoon, Cleveland Public Theatre, Northlight Theatre, ChiArts, The New Harmony Project and The National High School Institute. While Ritger’s focus is in ensemble based work, her diverse training includes Viola Spolin Theatre Games, Viewpoints, Puppetry, Contact Improv, experimental methods of writing and various forms of music, creating work that is saturated in movement, music and play. Her work draws from her experience of growing up in small town Wisconsin. It celebrates rural america - its voice, land, dialect, sense of community and the people who carry on the traditions and way of life inherent to living off the land. With the agrarian landscape as her cornerstone, her work explores the philosophy and religion inherent in nature and living off the land, and the cyclical birth and death inherent in life on a farm. Her current projects include her solo show, "Crud", part documentary style theatre, part fantastical music and shadow puppetry, examining a day her family never talks about. "Behaymas", a collaboration with playwright Aliza Bartfield, three humans and one animal blur the lines of domesticity and societal constructions of family. And her play "The Day Krissy LeDuke Fell Through the Ice", is a moment in time and its arrayed vectors of tragedy told through free verse and music. She has studied with theater artists Dan Hurlin, David Neumann, Sibyl Kempson, Tina Landau, Brett Bailey, Claudia Castellucci, Aretha Sills, Shirley Kaplan, Cassandra Medley, Stuart Spencer and Tom Lee, and received her MFA in Theater from Sarah Lawrence College and a BS in Theatre and Philosophy from the University of Evansville. Edited and Produced by Kyrie Ellison (SLC21) Interviewed by Anne Bakan (SLC20) and Kyrie Ellison (SLC21)

Produced by ContemporaryPerformance.com and the Sarah Lawrence College MFA Theatre Program, the SLC Performance Lab interviews visiting artists to the MFA Theatre Program’s Grad Lab, one of the core classes of the program where grads work with guest artists and develop group generated performance pieces monthly. Kate Bornstein was interviewed by Dan Hurlin and SLC Students on Zoom. Since 1989, trans trailblazer Kate Bornstein has—with humor and spunk—ushered us into a world of limitless possibility through a daring re-envisionment of the gender system as we know it. Today, Kate identifies as nonbinary: not a man, and not a woman—and she’s been writing about nonbinary gender identity for nearly thirty years. Currently, you can see Kate onscreen as Joan, the church lady, in the film, Saturday Church. In 2016, she was a regular cast member of the second season of E! TV’s “I Am Cait,” with Caitlyn Jenner. Kate is the subject of Sam Feder’s award-winning documentary, “Kate Bornstein Is a Queer and Pleasant Danger.” Kate’s work on suicide prevention, and her advocacy for marginalized and at-risk youth has earned her two citations of outstanding citizenship from the New York City Council.

Holly Hughes interviewed by Brynn Hambley (SLC20) & Stephen (SLC20) Earnhart Holly Hughes is an internationally acclaimed performance artist whose work maps the troubled fault lines of identity. Her combination of poetic imagery and political satire has earned her wide attention and placed her work at the center of America’s culture wars.

Sarah DeLappe interviewed by Amelia Bethel (SLC21) Karen Loewy Movilla (SLC21) Sarah DeLappe's play The Wolves premiered Off-Broadway at The Playwrights Realm, following an engagement at New York Stage and Film, and development at Clubbed Thumb and Great Plains Theatre Conference. The Wolves received the American Playwriting Foundation's inaugural Relentless Award, and was a finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize and the Yale Drama Series Prize. DeLappe is the Page One Playwright for The Playwrights Realm and has been a resident artist at the Sitka Fellows Program and SPACE on Ryder Farm. Past affiliations: Clubbed Thumb's Early Career Writers' Group, New Georges Audrey Residency. Current: Ars Nova's Play Group, Resident Playwright at LCT3. MFA in process at Brooklyn College.

Donna Dennis Interviewed by Joanna Eisenberg (SLC20) and Sarah Sterling (SLC21) Dennis is one of a small group of groundbreaking women—including Alice Aycock, Jackie Ferrara and Mary Miss—who pushed sculpture toward the domain of architecture in the early 1970s. Deborah Everett writes in Sculpture Magazine “When Donna Dennis created her earnest, plain-spoken Tourist Cabins at the outset of her career, they had the impact of cultural icons.” Drawing from overlooked fragments of rural and urban vernacular American architecture, her sculptures—tourist cabins, hotels, subway stations, roller coasters—have represented stopping places on the journey through life. Dennis has received solo exhibitions at The Brooklyn Museum, the Neuberger Museum, the Sculpture Center, and Holly Solomon Gallery, among others. Her work has also appeared in group exhibitions including the Venice Biennale, the Whitney Biennal, the National Academy Museum, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Walker Art Center, MOMA P.S. 1, Tate Gallery, ICA London, and Ludwig Forum fur Internationale Kunst, among others. A frequent collaborator, Dennis has worked with poets Anne Waldman, Kenward Elmslie, Daniel Wolff and Ted Berrigan and with performance artist/puppeteer Dan Hurlin. Edited and Produced by Kyrie Ellison (SLC21)

Doug Wright Interviewed by Rebecca Geminn and Kyrie Ellison Doug Wright (Playwright) earned the Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award for his play I Am My Own Wife. Other Broadway works include War Paint, Grey Gardens (Tony nomination), The Little Mermaid and Hands on a Hardbody. Film credits include Quills, based on his Obie Award-winning play and nominated for three Academy Awards. Television credits include Tony Bennett: An American Classic, directed by Rob Marshall. Honors include the Benjamin Dank Prize (the American Academy of Arts and Letters), the Tolerance Prize (Kulturforum Europa) and the Paul Selvin Award (Writers Guild of America). He is the president of the Dramatists Guild, a member of the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers, a frequent guest at Yaddo, and serves on the board of the New York Theatre Workshop. Mr. Wright is married to singer/songwriter David Clement. Photo Credit: Joan Marcus. Edited and Produced by Kyrie Ellison (SLC21)

Produced by ContemporaryPerformance.com and the Sarah Lawrence College MFA Theatre Program, the SLC Performance Lab interviews visiting artists to the MFA Theatre Program’s Grad Lab, one of the core classes of the program where grads work with guest artists and develop group generated performance pieces monthly. Our Fourth episode features composer and singer Kamala Sankaram Edited and Produced by Kyrie Ellison (SLC21)

Produced by ContemporaryPerformance.com and the Sarah Lawrence College MFA Theatre Program, the SLC Performance Lab interviews visiting artists to the MFA Theatre Program’s Grad Lab, one of the core classes of the program where grads work with guest artists and develop group generated performance pieces monthly. Our second episode features Puppeteer, Designer, and Teacher, Tom Lee Edited and Produced by Kyrie Ellison (SLC21)

Produced by ContemporaryPerformance.com and the Sarah Lawrence College MFA Theatre Program, the SLC Performance lab interviews visiting artists to the MFA Theatre Program's Grad Lab, one of the core classes of the program where grads work with guest artists and develop group generated performance pieces monthly. Deb Margolin is a playwright, actor, and founding member of Split Britches Theater Company. She is the author of numerous plays, including Imagining Madoff, Turquoise, and Bringing the Fishermen Home, as well as 10 solo performance plays which she has toured throughout the US, the most recent of which is 8 STOPS, a comedy concerning the grief of endless compassion! 8 STOPS takes a long, humorous, tender look at motherhood, the suburbs, the fear of death, and the inheritability of ideas. Interviewed by Joanna Eisenberg (SLC 20) and Kyrie Ellison's (SLC21) Edited and Produced by Kyrie Ellison (SLC21)

Produced by ContemporaryPerformance.com and the Sarah Lawrence College MFA Theatre Program, the SLC Performance lab interviews visiting artists to the MFA Theatre Program's Grad Lab, one of the core classes of the program where grads work with guest artists and develop group generated performance pieces monthly. Jennifer Kidwell’s (b. 1978) poignant, performer-driven theater work addresses the complexities of race and notions of American history with sharp intelligence and wry humor. Invested in probing challenging social and historical truths, Kidwell says her work is “concerned with discomfort and/or confusion around normative practices and systems.” With Scott Sheppard, she premiered and performed in Underground Railroad Game, lauded by The Philadelphia Inquirer as a “brilliant theatrical commentary on contemporary race relations.” A graduate of Pig Iron Theatre Company’s School for Advanced Performance Training, Kidwell created and appeared in the company’s Center-funded project, I Promised Myself to Live Faster, and The Wilma Theater’s production of Antigone. For the 2014 Whitney Biennial, she performed in Joe Scanlan’s provocative piece Dick’s Last Stand as the artist Donelle Woolford. She is co-artistic director of the theater company Lightning Rod Special and co-founder of the Brooklyn-based performance space JACK. She holds a BA in English and comparative literature from Columbia University. Edited and Produced by Kyrie Ellison (SLC21)