Lea Anderson is a noted choreographer who was awarded the MBE
(Member of the Order of the British Empire) by Queen Elizabeth II
in 2002. Her work as artistic director of two performance
companies in England, The Cholmondeleys (all female) and The
Featherstonehaughs (all male), has been called “one of the
success stories of British new dance” (Financial Times), offering
“a dense and specific coherence of image and choreography that
sets the eyes on fire” (Daily Telegraph).
Jenny Killick first came to the theatrical world’s attention in
1985, when she was named Artistic Director of the celebrated
Traverse Theatre Club in Edinburgh. Britain’s youngest artistic
director, she was the first woman to hold the position at the
Traverse. After her outstanding tenure at the traverse, Killick
has directed at such celebrated theatres as the Bristol Old Vic,
the Royal National Theatre Studio, the Haymarket Theatre, the
Royal National Theatre, and the Oxford Playhouse.
Kate Whoriskey is co-artistic director at Seattle’s Intiman
Theatre. She previously served as associate director at the
La Jolla Playhouse and has worked at leading regional theatres
including the Goodman (Chicago) and the Shakespeare Theater (DC).
A few of her regional credits include Lady from the Sea
and The Chairs at Intiman, Antigone at South
Coast Repertory, and The Master Builder at American
Repertory Theatre. Most recently she directed the world premiere
of Intimate Apparel.
Nigel Charnock has been creating enigmatic dance pieces for many
years. He founded his first company in 1995, and since then has
gone on to perform his shows internationally. He served as
artistic director of Helsinki Dance Company from 2002 – 2005, and
is known for unique, often improvisational, solo performances
including Human Being, Hell Bent, Original Sin, Resurrection, and
Frank. While working with his dance company and traveling the
world, he still manages to find time to teach, write and direct.
Director John Burgess has been associated with new plays and new
writing since he began working at the Open Space Theatre in the
early 1970s. Burgess joined the National Theatre in 1980 and,
with Peter Gill, founded the National Theatre Studio, the
experimental wing of the theatre, in 1984. In his 30-year career
in theatre and film, Burgess has been the Literary Manager (New
Writing) at the National Theatre, associate director of the
National Theatre Studio, Resident Director of the National
Theatre, Artistic Director of Drum Arts, and Associate Director
of Riverside Studios.
Celia Lowenstein is the creator of over 50 documentary films on
art, science, and philosophy, among them The Silk Road
Project, Bill T. Jones, Like a God When He Plays,
The Essential History of France (in which Anderson
appears), and The Culture of Violence. Her film The
Pitt Rivers Museum was nominated for an Emmy in 1989, and
her films have been shown at film festivals around the world.
Indhu Rubasingham directed Moliere’s The
Misanthrope, adapted by Martin Crimp, at Chichester, and
was an Associate Director on the Andrew Lloyd Webber production
of Bombay Dreams. Upon arriving at UC Davis, she
had directed 20 world premieres with major theatre companies,
including the Royal National Theatre, The Royal Court, The
Tricycle Theatre, Birmingham Rep Theatre, Young Vic Studio and
Theatre Royal Stratford East.
Glen Walford, a writer, theatre and musical director, has had an
extraordinary international career, directing classic and
contemporary works in Tel Aviv, Hong Kong, Germany, Borneo,
Greece, Japan, Austria and Russia, usually in the host country’s
language. Her English directing work includes the development of
a new version of Stravinsky’s Soldier’s Tale
with the London Philharmonic, and creation of a new musical
version of Our Day Out for the Belgrade Theatre
Coventry.
Born in Kingston, Jamaica, Yvonne Brewster traveled to the UK to
study speech, drama and mime. In Britain, she founded Talawa, the
UK’s largest Black theatre company. She has undertaken a vast
variety of directorial work in all media, from the first ever
Black production of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being
Earnest at the Opera House, Newcastle, to
Pantomime, a two-hander by Derek Walcott, in a pub.
Irina Brown was born and educated in Leningrad (St Petersburg),
Russia. She started her work in the theater as an assistant
director to Andrei Tarkovsky, Yuri Lubimov and Anatoly Vassiliev,
and later on as a staff director with Richard Eyre, David Hare
and Mike Alfreds at the Royal National Theatre.
Since 1978 she has been living and working in Britain,
establishing a versatile career as an internationally acclaimed
stage director and teacher. Her work spans the experimental and
the popular, classical drama and new writing, opera and musicals.
Mark Ravenhill is a playwright known for writing visceral,
provocative work regarding contemporary society. His most famous
plays include Shopping and Fucking (1996), Some
Explicit Polaroids (1999) and Mother Clap’s Molly
House (2001). His play, The Cut, opened in 2006 at
London’s Donmar Warehouse starring Sir Ian McKellen . It depicts
a world dominated by the administering of a surgical
procedure.
Joanna Haigood, Artistic Director of San Francisco’s Zaccho Dance
Theatre, is known for aerial choreography in dances that respond
directly to physical, cultural, and historical environments.
Award-winning choreographer and director Doug Varone works in
dance, theater, opera, film, television and fashion. His
Bottomland was the critic’s pick for Dance in America’s
“Wolf Trap’s Face of America,” nationally broadcast on PBS in
2008. His direction and choreography of Ricky Ian Gordon’s
Orpheus and Euridice garnered him a 2006 Obie Award.
Granada Artist-in-Residence Helena Kaut-Howson worked with
students on a collaborative theatre piece based on the work of
Polish writer Bruno Schulz titled Sanatorium Under the Sign
of the Hourglass after one of Schulz’s stories.
Ellen Bromberg, a 2006 Guggenheim Fellow, has been creating
dances for companies and solo artists for over 30 years.She has
received numerous awards for her work including three Isadora
Duncan Dance Awards; one for outstanding achievement in
choreography for “The Black Dress,” which was subsequently
broadcast on PBS Television’s “Alive From Off Center,” a second
for her work with Douglas Rosenberg on Singing Myself A
Lullaby and a third for Visual Design for her work with
Della Davidson for Collapse (suddenly falling down).She
was also honored with a UC Berkeley Townsend H
Mindy Cooper has had the privilege of spending
the last 40 years working as a dancer, choreographer, director,
producer and teacher. From dance companies (Twyla Tharp Dance,
Eliot Feld Ballet, Kansas City Ballet, Thingsezisee’m Dance
Theater) to Broadway/Off-Broadway
(Chicago, Titanic, Song and Dance, Beauty and the
Beast, Dracula The Musical, Being Seen, The Eternal Space,
Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus, Live!, 50 Shades – The
Musical Parody, Soul Doctor, Wrong Mountain), her passion
for new works has always steered her career.
Jules Aaron has directed more than 250 stage and
television productions including Equus, Death of a
Salesman, Macbeth, The Importance of Being
Earnest, The Picture of Dorian Gray (world
premiere) and award-winning runs of Into the Woods,
Cabaret, Company and Merrily We Roll
Along. Frequent stage venues include the New York
Shakespeare Festival (Public Theatre), the Humana Festival
(Actors Theatre of Louisville), South Coast Repertory and
Pasadena Playhouse.
Rinde Eckert, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama,
composes, writes, performs and directs productions that tour
throughout America, and to major European and Asian
festivals.
Playwright Philip Kan Gotanda has been a major influence in the
broadening of our definition of theater in America. Over the past
three decades his plays and advocacy have helped deliver stories
of Asians in the United States to mainstream American theatreas
well as to Europe and Asia. His works have been presented at
venues including American Conservatory Theatre, Mark Taper Forum,
New York Shakespeare Festival, and London’s Gate Theatre. Philip
is the recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship, several National
Endowment for the Arts awards, as well asnumerous honors and
awards.
Sara Shelton Mann created, wrote and directed
tribes/the unified field as UC Davis Granada
Artist-in-Residence Fall 2009. She has taught, performed and
created performance since 1967.
John Jasperse has been Artistic
Director/Choreographer of John Jasperse Company New York, NY,
since 1985. His work has been presented by festivals and
presenting organizations in the United States, Brazil, Chile,
Israel, Japan, and throughout Europe including The American Dance
Festival, The Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival, La
Biennale di Venezia, Cannes International Dance Festival, Dance
Umbrella, EuroKaz, Kampnagel, Montpellier Danse, Tanz im August,
TanzQuartier Wein, Künstlerhaus Mousonturm, and the VEO Festival.
