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