I make things. Images, performances in places that weren’t meant for performances, I dig into stories people would rather stay buried, I write. Whatever it takes to figure out what the hell is going on and why it matters.
Lately, I’ve been obsessed with poisoned ground… the places we’ve fucked up, the landscapes we’ve loaded with chemicals and lies and convenient amnesia. I work in these spaces, make theatre there, let the location tell you what it knows. The dirt has memory. The walls remember. And if you pay attention, if you let the place speak, you might glimpse what could be different, what could be better, if we stopped repeating the same mistakes.
Note Bene: The photographs displayed on this website are a mix of digital (full frame or iPhone) and film: 6×6 negative (1952 Rolliflex, Holga) and 4×5 (1958 Speed Graphic Pacemaker) for archival purposes.
Theatre didn’t start in some marble amphitheater with everyone wearing togas and speaking in iambic pentameter. It started in a fucking cave. Some dude with firelight dancing on stone walls, telling stories, making shadows, probably trying to explain why we’re all here and what happens when we die. Theatre and religion? Born in the same breath, the same moment of terror and wonder. Theatre isn’t a museum piece. It’s alive. It’s a practice, a ritual, something that still matters when two people share the same space at the same time, breathing the same air. No safety net, no editing, no second takes. Just presence.
Site responsive theatre? It’s artists making work with a place, not just in it. I’m collaborating with the ghosts, with the walls, with whatever happened in that space before I/We showed up. All those accumulated years, all that history soaked into the floorboards or the concrete or the dirt, I’m working with that. Past and present cooking together in the same pot. The living and the dead, all showing up for the same meal.
Photographs are their own strange thing. One image, the right one, can gut you, can tell you everything you need to know about a moment. String them together and you’ve got a record of something that disappeared the second it happened. Performance documented becomes something else entirely: evidence, artifact, memory. Sacred, in its way. A testament to the fact that something existed, something was witnessed, even if just for a heartbeat.
Neither theatre nor photography is about invention. It’s about what I choose to show, what I cut away, where I point the camera or the light. The raw material? It’s infinite.
Giotto figured out how to put a body in space that made sense.
Caravaggio gave us darkness and light fighting it out.
Rembrandt understood that light is everything.
Piranesi broke down the walls between inside and out.
Van Gogh showed us that color could make you feel something in your chest.
Warhol proved you could reproduce the same image until it meant something completely different.
None of it means anything without someone there to see it. The audience, the witness, that’s where it all lives or dies. You’re not just sitting there. You’re making it happen. Without you, I’ve got nothing but movement and noise in an empty room. You’re the ones who give it meaning, who carry it forward, who turn it into memory and experience and truth.
And that’s where it gets interesting, and uncomfortable. Because if you, the audience, gives my work life, then I owe you something back. Not what you think you want, necessarily. Not comfort. Not confirmation of everything you already believe.
My job as an artist isn’t to be a fucking concierge, serving up exactly what people ordered. It’s to take you somewhere you didn’t know you needed to go. To show you something that makes you squirm a little, that pisses you off, that breaks something open inside of you that you thought was sealed shut. Education isn’t about being nice or polite or accessible. It’s about friction. It’s about heat.
I’ve got to challenge you. Push you past the edge of what you think you can handle, what you think you understand. Make you look at something you’ve been avoiding. Make you sit with discomfort. Make you question the story you’ve been telling yourselves about who you are and how the world works.
That’s the contract. You show up, you give me your time, your attention, your willingness to be vulnerable in a dark room with strangers. And me? I can’t waste that. I can’t pander. I have push. Provoke. Refuse to let you leave exactly the same as when you walked in.
Because if you’re not changed, even just a little, even just a crack in the armor, then what the hell are WE doing here? Entertainment? Distraction? There’s plenty of that already. Theatre, real theatre, live art, it should leave a mark. It should cost you something to witness it, and it should be worth every bit of that price. If it just confirms what everyone already knew when they bought their ticket, then WE have failed. Both of us.
I. EDUCATION:
Ph.D., Stanford University, Drama and Humanities, 2007
Dissertation: The Image of Tragedy
A.B., Stanford University, 1997
II. SCREENWRITING PROJECTS
2019: Revival
2015: The Land of Tears
2012: The Bikini Atoll War
2011: Danger is My Destiny
2010: Al Khatun
2009: Tragedy of Hoffman
2008: Compadre
The Lost Patrol
2007: The Traveling Beekers
III. THEATRE DIRECTING/PERFORMANCE/ART RESEARCH PROJECTS
2020
Sophocles, Laocoön, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
The Man Who Knows (Euripides #115), Santa Cruz
2019
Aeschylus’ Mysians, Kauai
2018
Aeschylus Danaids at The Pulgas Water Temple
Paths of Steady Success (Euripides #259), East Palo Alto
Savage Blasts (Sophocles #116) at Wave Organ
2016
Sophocles, Nausicaä at Pillar Point
Love is The Fullest Education (Euripides #91) on Slacker Hill
2015
Speechless Fish (Sophocles #110) at San Gregorio
Cloud Talk (Sophocles #137) Ryan’s Bathtub
Aeschylus, The Argo at San Francisco Maritime
No Man’s Friend (Euripides #266), Aquatic Park
Aeschylus’ Glaucus of Potniae at Golden Gate Fields
Sophocles’ Sinon at Emeryville Mudflats
Aeschylus’ Daughters of Helios at Año Nuevo State Park
The Balcony by Jean Genet, Old Mint, San Francisco, Collected Works
2014
King Fool, We Players
2013
On The Harmful Effects of Tobacco by Anton Chekov, Franconia Performance Salon
2004
The Blue Room by David Hare, Stanford University
2003
Stray Cats by Warren Leight, Stanford University
Night of the Burning Pestle, Stanford University
2002
True West by Sam Shepard, Stanford University
2001
Marat/Sade by Peter Weiss, Stanford University
2000
The Revenger’s Tragedy by Cyril Tournour, Stanford University
Footfalls by Samuel Beckett, Stanford Repertory Theater
What Where by Samuel Beckett, Stanford University
Come and Go by Samuel Beckett, Stanford Univiersity
1999
Mountain Language by Harold Pinter, Stanford University
Cowboy Mouth by Sam Shepard, Stanford University.
1998
Aya no Tsuzumi, a Noh play, The Pulgas Water Temple, San Francisco Water Department
1997
Rat by Sarah Warren, P.S. 122, New York City
Drain, a radio play by J.C. Lyons, KPFA Public Radio
Homeplus, by J.C. Lyons, Upstairs Garage, New York City
IV. OTHER PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
2019-: Lecturer, Film & Digital Media, University of California Santa Cruz
Guest Lecturer, Movement for Actors/Acting for Dancers,
Theater and Performance Studies, Stanford University
2017-: Co-Instructor, d.school, Stanford University: “The Intersection of Performance, Architecutre & Design”
2017-: Director of Marketing, Alonzo King LINES Ballet, San Francisco:
Responsible for planning and implementing marketing strategies that attract new audiences and students, deepen the organization’s connection with its community, and strengthen its global brand and international position.
2017-2019: Trustee, Museum of Perfromance + Design, San Francisco
2016-2020: Communications Lead, Environmental Data Governance Initiative:
a research-based organization founded n 2016 to respond to the Trump administration’s impact on federal environmental policy and data.
2015-: Artist Weather Television
2012-2017: Instructor, Prison University Project, San Quentin
2012-2016 Co-Founding Artistic Director, Collected Works
2009: Founder, False Art
2006-2012: Creative Producer / Director, Google/Picture Lab
Created, developed, and managed video and digital media content that supported, explained, and told the stories that helped define a diverse array of platforms.
2005-2006: Teaching Fellow, Introduction to the Humanities, Stanford University
2004-2005: Lecturer, Theatre History I & II, Stanford University
2003-2007: Stanford Summer Production Laboratory:
Initiated and organized a summer theater lab, bringing together graduate and undergraduate students for 10 weeks to create 4 graduate-directed works, emphasizing the work of actor and director. Held weekly colloquia examining issues of theory, methodology, and the work of the artist/scholar. Supported with grants from Stanford Drama and the Institute for Diversity in the Arts.
2003-2004: Administrator, Performance Studies international
2003: Stanford Artist Scholar Conference:
Initiated and organized a graduate conference on the artist scholar. The aim of this conference of was to consider the place of theater practice within the research university at the PhD level and beyond, to develop practical strategies for the continued growth and evolution of theater and performance studies programs integrating scholarship and practice, and to foster interdisciplinary collaboration between theater studies and art research in other fields both within and beyond arts and humanities
2002-2004: Instructor, Honors College, Stanford University
2000-2004: Co-Founder Stanford Theater Laboratory:
The Theater Lab’s mission was to promote the interrelationship of artistic practice and academic scholarship and to advocate for the place of practical theatrical research within an academic research university. These artist-scholar activities included performance workshops with international practitioners both overseas and at Stanford; team-taught experimental theater workshops; graduate-directed summer theater laboratory; and a graduate-led conference. This idea of Art Research evolved into the Franconia Performance Salon.
2000-2005: Instructor: Introduction to Acting; Sex Rites and Earth Rituals; Shakespeare from Stage to Screen; Samuel Beckett’s Late Plays and Prose; Directing and Technology and Art. Drama Department, Stanford University
2000-2001: Administrator, Stanford Summer Theater (now Stanford Repertory Theater)
1997-2003: Production Manager/Producer, Mabou Mines Productions
I worked first as Technical Director, then Production Manager and later as Producer as we worked Off Broadway and toured nationally and internationally with the company’s productions of Gospel at Colonus, Peter and Wendy, Hajj, Prelude to a Death in Venice, and video installations of their earlier work of developing Lear.
1993: Production Assistant, Anna Deavere Smith’s Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 for the Mark Taper Forum, Los Angeles
V. PUBLICATIONS
(images) Hill, Leslie & Paris, Helen. Devising Theatre & Performance: Curious Methods, London: Intellect and Unbound, 2021
(text and images) “the SHIPYARD and the BOMB”, The T-Line News, Summer 2020
(cover/images) Ecumenica: Performance and Religion (Issue 13.1), Spring 2020
(cover image) We Players’ Macbeth at Fort Point, Theatre History Studies, The University of Alabama Press, 2019, Volume 38.
(images) “Alonzo King LINES Ballet Artistic Director Alonzo King”, The Wonderful World of Dance, Act IV, Spring 2019
(images) Eero Laine and Maaike Bleeker, “Performance Studies international”, Critical Stages/Scènes critiques, The IATC journal/Revue de l’AICT – June/Juin 2019: Issue No 19
(images) Anna Halprin’s Sensory Walk, Repères, cahier de danse #41, Fall 2018
(images) “Carl Weber 1925-2016”, Kathryn Mederos Syssoyeva, TDR/The Drama Review Fall 2018, Vol. 62, No. 3 (T239), pps 51-54
(photographer) Inquiry Magazine, UCSC Office of Research, University of California Santa Cruz Press, 2018
(images) “Fantasy on the Clock: The Virtual Cruelty of Collected Works’ The Balcony” by Rebecca Chaleff, TDR/The Drama Review, Summer 2016, Vol. 60, No. 2 , Pages 139-145
On Time, Performance Research, Volume 19, Issue 3, (Routledge, 2014)
Image of Tragedy (dissertation), (Stanford University, 2007)
“Rethinking the Cambridge Anthropologists.” Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, Winter, 2004
“Lee Breuer’s Hajj as Postmortem Theater.” Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, Winter, 2000
“Image of Scene: Oedipus Tyrannus, Ajax, and Philoctetes”. Comparative Drama, Spring 1998
*(photos) “Bill Ham: The Psychedelic Light Show,” Bomb Magazine, February, 1997
*(with Charles R. Lyons) “The Performance Work of Anna Deavere Smith and Contemporary Critical Theory,” Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, Fall, 1994
VI. PUBLICATIONS FOR PHOTOGRAPHY
VII. OTHER PERFORMANCES & EXHIBITIONS
2022
Guest Lecturer: Visual and Site Specific Design for Aleta Hayes’ Fashion Fable Cantor Arts Center, Stanford University. Commissioned performance to celebrate the museum’s Gordon Parks exhibit A Loaded Camera.
Guest, What to Be?, KSQD, December 18, 2022
2021
Solo Exhibit, Reunion Island, Téat, Ile de la Réunion, France.
Projection Design, Pole Star, Alonzo King LINES Ballet and Vân-Ánh Vanessa Võ, Téat, Ile de la Réunion, France.
Guest Lecturer: Director of Photography/Design for Riot of Spring, Stanford Under the Stars: Movie Nights at Frost for Stanford Live. Inspired by realized and imagined rites of spring, this intermedia project interpolates “liveness”, seeks communion and finds love. Rehearsed and filmed partially over Zoom and in landmark locations on the Stanford campus.
“Presenting Liveness in the Tech Space.” Presentation and roundtable discussion. Ethics, Society, & Tech Unconference, Stanford University.
Panelist, Art + tech: Salon Showcase. Working at the emerging intersections of Art and Technology, Stanford University
2020
Guest Lecturer: Director of Photography/Video Design for Dance 30: “Traveling in Place”, Stanford Theater and Performance Studies. An online live dance performance project.
2019
Projection Design, Pole Star, Alonzo King LINES Ballet and Vân-Ánh Vanessa Võ, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco
Panelist, Beyond Academia Conference. Beyond Academia, UC Berkeley
Site Specific Design, Chocolate Heads: The Chocolate Ball for Polymaths, Stanford University. A performance as part of the “Leonardo’s Library” Exhibit Reception, a celebration of Leonardo Da Vinci’s 500th Birthday.
Enduring Democracy: The Monterey Petition, Documentary Film, 2019, Actor: Robinson Jeffers, David Schendel, director
Video Design, Chocolate Heads: Night Landing, Aleta Hayes Choreographer Stanford University
Group Exhibit, Through-LINES: The Art of Ballet, Gallery 836M, San Francisco
2016
Site Specific Design, Chocolate Heads’ Ghost Architecture: Palimpsest, Stanford University
Visual Artist, Yula Paluy’s Nothing is Sacred? Museum of Performance + Design, San Francisco
Chocolate Heads, Spring Charrette, Stanford University
Chocolate Heads, Flower at Windhover, Stanford University
2015
MAPP (Mission Arts Performance Project): Breaking Open The Prison Industrial Complex at Adobe Books, San Francisco, curated by Nathalie Brilliant
Building Scene: space launch and performance installation. Architecture through Dance, Voice & Fashion in Commemoration of the Opening of the McMurtry Art and Art History Building, Stanford University
Video and Photos of The Iota (fragments of Aeschylus, Sophocles & Euripides) for FPS #14, at Museum of Performance + Design
Video and Photos of Collected Works production of The Balcony at The Old Mint for Sublimated Mask, at Museum of Performance + Design
Video Projection, Prototyping Festival, Market Street
2014
Performer, Inhabitant, Ntsoana Contemporary Dance Theatre, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and Galería de la Raza as part of Public Intimacy: Art and Other Ordinary Acts in South Africa and Live Projects 4
Dante’s Inferno, Cantos 1-7 (film), Franconia Performance Salon #12
2013
DJ/Dancer/Producer in Jerome Bel’s The Show Must Go On, Stanford Live
Video Projection & Lights for Building Score 101b, Performance Art Institute
Producer, Video Projection & Lights for Collected Works production of Gombrowicz’s Princess Ivona
VIII. AWARDS, GRANTS & FELLOWSHIPS
2005: Centennial Teaching Assistant Awards
1999-2006: Stanford University Fellowship
1994: Barbara Thompson Memorial Scholarship.
1994: Robert M. Golden Grant for Humanities and Creative Arts
1994: Appointed to Honors College, Stanford University
1993: James Irvine Foundation Grant
1993: Elston M. Harrison Memorial Scholarship
VIII. ORGANIZATIONS & AFFILIATIONS
National Press Photographers Association (NPPA), Modern Language Association (MLA), Reporters Without Borders, American Society for Theatre Research (ASTR), Performance Studies international (PSi), Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE), Environmental Data Governance Initiative (EDGI).
.
i don’t have one
all i have are rules
but why not try one of these?
“Notes to myself on beginning a painting” by Richard Diebenkorn
How to work better Fischli & Weiss
The Stuckists Manifesto
The Dada Manifesto by Hugo Ball
The Dada Manifesto by Tristan Tzara
The Orgasm Manifesto
The Manifesto of Negativity
Permanent Manifesto Art and Communication
John Cage’s 10 Rules
Ten Commandments for Gilbert & George
Manifesto of the Empress Catherine II