Guest Artists 2008-2009
Lisa Jo Epstein
Fall 2008, Director, Playwriting Thesis
Lisa Jo Epstein is a theatre director, educator, community-based artist and Artistic Director of Gas & Electric Arts. Her foray into physical theatre began in Minneapolis at Theatre de la Jeune Lune in 1988. She continued her explorations in physical and intercultural theatre as well as socially-engaged theatre practices at the University of Texas at Austin where she obtained an MA and Ph.D. She then moved to Paris, France where she served as Ariane Mnouchkine's assistant during the Théâtre du Soleil's creation of Molière's Tartuffe. While in Paris, she also worked at Augusto Boal's Center for the Theatre of the Oppressed. Upon returning to the US, Lisa Jo became an Assistant Professor of Theatre in the Department of Theatre & Dance at Tulane University for seven years where she won awards for teaching and directing, both inside the university and in the community. Over two decades, Lisa Jo has facilitated countless interactive, experiential Theatre of the Oppressed-based workshops with a variety of populations around issues of identity and empowerment, community and social justice. Gas & Electric Arts is a recent recipient of a Philadelphia Theatre Initiative grant to commission Kira Obolensky to write Cabinet of Wonders for a September '09 site-specific production. Recent productions include: Lisa d'Amour's Anna Bella Eema, Deb Margolin's O Yes I Will, Kira Obolensky's QuickSilver, Abi Basch's Voices Underwater, and Lisa d'Amour's Anna Bella Eema for Gas & Electric Arts; Hannah Harvester's Everlasting Father: A Religious Fantasy at Swarthmore College; Deb Margolin's O Wholly Night and Other Jewish Solecisms at the Painted Bride Art Center; Stephanie Fleischmann's What the Moon Saw; or, I Only Appear to be Dead, Naomi Wallace's The Trestle at Pope Lick Creek and Timberlake Wertenbaker's The Love of the Nightingale at Ursinus College; Rebecca Gilman's Spinning into Butter at Southern Repertory Theatre, New Orleans.
Simon Harding '99
Fall 2008, Set Designer, Playwriting Thesis
Simon Harding graduated from Swarthmore with honors in design and directing. He subsequently studied at the École Jacques Lecoq in Paris and Kiklos Teatro Scuola di Creazione Teatrale in Padua, Italy. He is the Resident Designer for SaBooge Theatre and has designed lights and sets for all of their productions, including the critically-acclaimed Hatched, Fathom, and Every Day Above the Ground. He has also designed sets for Mum Puppettheatre in Philadelphia and for Bryn Mawr College. He was the lighting designer for the Department of Theater's productions of Shakespeare's All's Well That Ends Well and Anna Belc '07's The Fishbowl in 2007. Among other roles, Simon has played Theseus and Oberon in Mum Puppettheatre's production of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream.
Maria Möller
Spring 2009, Director, Solo Performance Thesis
Maria Möller received her MFA in Acting from Temple University. Her original solo work has been presented by the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival and the Philly Fringe, Chicago's Rhinoceros Festival, and the CEC's New Edge Residency, among others. Maria has travelled extensively in India, where she has worked as a guest artist with the Naya Theatre of Bhopal, and is a co-artistic director and co-founder of Shakespeare in Clark Park.
Randolph Curtis Rand
Spring 2009, Director, Acting Thesis
Randolph Curtis Rand is a theatre artist in New York and throughout the country. He has worked with Actors Theatre of Louisville, The Cleveland Public Theatre, The Drama Dept., Douglas Dunn, Elevator Repair Service, Richard Foreman, The Foundry Theatre, The Rude Mechs, Meredith Monk, Charles Moulton, Orlando Shakespeare Theatre, Shakespeare Santa Monica, The Talking Band, *(Obie award for performance)* Target-Margin, and The Wooster Group among others. Additionally, he has directed and taught at institutions like Actors Theatre of Louisville, The Governor's School of North Carolina, The Hangar Theatre, Naropa University, The New School, NYU/Tisch School of the Arts, NYU Graduate Acting Programme, The University of Kentucky, and The University of Tennessee.
Troy Herion
Spring 2009, Sound Designer, Acting Thesis
Troy Herion works as a composer, performer, improviser, musical director and sound designer in Philadelphia. Compositions include two Italian operas premiered in Italy, symphonic and chamber works, and improvised scores. Theater collaborations have included composition and sound design for Pig Iron Theatre's Love Unpunished, The Wilma Theater's Life of Galileo and Age of Arousal, The Arden Theatre's Our Town, and musical direction for Azuka Theater's Hedwig and the Angry Inch. In the summer of 2008, Troy was awarded an Independence Foundation Fellowship to study and perform gamelan music in Bali, Indonesia.
Christopher Colucci
Spring 2009, Composer, Production Ensemble
Christopher Colucci makes sound and music as a theater artist, composer, producer and guitarist. This season he has designed Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire and Garson Kasin's Born Yesterday (Walnut Street Theater); Karen Getz's Disco Descending (LiveArts festival); Harold Pinter's The Hothouse and Fugard, Kanin, and Ntshona's Sizwe Bansi is Dead (Lantern); Elizabeth Maupin's Gee's Bend (Arden); Russell Davis' The Day of the Picnic (Peoples Light); Vincent Delaney's The War Party (InterAct); Steve Martin's Picasso at the Lapin Agile and Peter Frayn's Copenhagen (Delaware Theater Company); Carlos Murillo's Dark Play and David Harrower's Blackbird (Theater Exile); and Eugene O'Neill's A Long Days Journey Into Night (Villanova). Christopher received the 2008 Barrymore award for Outstanding Sound Design.
Brian Grace-Duff
Spring 2009, Set Designer, Directing Thesis
Brian Grace-Duff has recently been set designer for Jerrod Bogard's Hugging the Shoulder (Represented Theatre); Technical Director with Nicholas Wardigo's Exit and Corpse and Set Designer for David Mamet's Oleanna (Plays and Players). Other recent work includes writing for 4x4 (PDC, Fringe Festival 2008), set design for Paul Rudnick's Jeffery (Represented Theatre) and lighting design for A Brave New Funk (Strictly Funk Dance Co.). A graduate of West Chester University, Brian has traveled the country in a variety of theatrical roles and is now the Student Event Coordinator at the Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts at the University of Pennsylvania and on the board of directors for Philadelphia Dramatists Center.
Kate Watson-Wallace
Spring 2009, Space/Movement Dramaturgy, Directing Thesis
Kate Watson-Wallace is a choreographer and director of anonymous bodies, an interdisciplinary performance company that creates site-based installation. Projects include, CAR, a performance for 4 audience members who sit in the back seat of a moving car, HOUSE, a show inside a row home, and the upcoming STORE, a performance piece about American greed. She is a 2007 Pew Fellow in the Arts in Choreography. Her work has been funded by the Rockefeller Map Fund, Dance Advance, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and the Independence Foundation. She has been presented throughout the US at the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival, Joyce SoHo, ODC Dance (San Francisco), Velocity Dance (Seattle), Wave Rising Series/John Ryan Theater, Bryn Mawr College, and DanceBoom/Wilma Theater. She is currently dancing with Headlong Dance Theater in a new project created in a series of workshops with Tere O'Connor. She has been a guest artist at Drexel University, The University of the Arts, Franklin and Marshall College, Temple University, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, and Swarthmore College. http://anonymousbodies.org/
