KO FESTIVAL OF PERFORMANCE!

5 weeks of 6-day intensive workshops and performances which were open to the public – plus our rehearsal residency lab where artists came from all over the country to cook up new work.

Performances were selected from throughout the US. Some of them were developed, in part, during rehearsal residencies at Ko. All of them were original works, created by the people who performed them. The 2011 season was curated around the theme of “SECRETS.” Where does the desire to tell intersect with the desire to hide? Join us as we peek into a diverse set of secret sorrows, secret joys, and just plain secrets!

Many of our audience members enriched their experience of the shows by staying for the discussion of the season’s theme that followed every performance. For first time, this year, you could deepen your experience of this season of “SECRETS” even further by taking the festival as a UMASS course led by post-show discussion facilitator, Kermit Dunkelberg! (Read more…)

SHOWS & SPECIAL EVENTS

SPECIAL EVENT: July 8, Friday at 6:30 p.m.

Gala Opening Night/20th Anniversary Cocktail Party

Live entertainment, delicious refreshments, and an opportunity to meet some of the 2011 Ko Festival artists. Come celebrate!

July 8 – 10, Friday & Saturday at 8 p.m., Sunday at 4 p.m.

INDUSTRIOUS ANGELS

is a solo hand-crafted-story-spinning-shadow-puppet-memory-play-with-music evoking the secret creative lives of women, mother/daughter bloodlines, and the ghost of Emily Dickinson.

written & performed by Laurie McCants (Bloomsburg, PA; music by Guy Klucevsek (NYC); directed by Ko Artistic Director, Sabrina Hamilton (Amherst, MA); scenography by F. Elaine Williams (Lewisburg, PA) (Read more…)

July 15 – 17, Friday & Saturday at 8 p.m., Sunday at 4 p.m.

ME, MISS KRAUSE AND JOAN

is about a lifelong fascination with Joan of Arc. a difficult but often hilarious relationship with an acting guru and a traumatic assault— powerfully forged into a spiritually insightful play about passion and perseverance.

written & performed by Martha Kemper (Philadelphia, PA) (Read more…)

SPECIAL EVENT: July 17, ONE NIGHT ONLY! Sunday at 8 p.m.

THE OLD BOAT GODDESS: Songs of the Ainu

tales from Northern Japan of interactions between humans, gods and the natural world – told out under the stars with masks, puppets, giant figures and live music by our annual favorites, The Mettawee River Theater Company. (NYC/Salem, NY) (Read more…)

July 22 – 24, Friday & Saturday at 8 p.m., Sunday at 4 p.m.

OVERTURE TO A THURSDAY MORNING

is about Lila, a girl who smokes, listens to Talking Heads and wants to be a violin rock star, but unwanted discoveries shove her toward the truth about her own birth. A suspenseful and inspiring journey that questions the will to go on and who to take with you.

written & performed by Kali Quinn (Buffalo, NY/Arezzo, Italy) (Read more…)

SPECIAL EVENT: July 24 at 8 p.m.

KoFest STORY SLAM & PARTY

You’ve heard of poetry slams – competitive poetry events. Now, we’ve got one for first person, true stories – told live and without notes. Stories will be 5 minutes or under and on our season theme of “SECRETS!” There will be some pre-selected ringers, you may be able to participate! We’ll have some sign-up slots, and as we’re thinking now, we’ll audition some first lines of stories – and audience members will get to vote on which ones should be told in their entirety. Feeling a bit unsure? We’re offering private storytelling coaching sessions from Ko Festival artists! Call 413.427.6147 to sign-up for one of these slots or for more information.

Know a great racconteur – tell them about the event! Everyone should come prepared to listen, but you may want to come prepared to tell! And to help you whet your whistle we’ll have a cash bar. And prizes! All tickets $12.

July 29 – 31, Friday & Saturday at 8 p.m., Sunday at 4 p.m.

RIPPLE EFFECT

RIPPLE EFFECT transports audiences from Springfield, MA to a U.S. army base, a Nepali family and their struggle for recognition, and a refugee camp in Tanzania. While local and global news media report political events and economic statistics, The FIRST GENERATION ensemble brings to light the stories of the individuals experiencing those events that are so often left untold.

FIRST GENERATION ensemble members may be the first in their family to grow up in the United States, the first to speak English, to graduate high school, go to college, to be incarcerated, not be incarcerated, be drug free, be openly GLBT, to break the silence, to be an artist, or many other firsts. RIPPLE EFFECT is a powerfully crafted work that examines the effects of racism, economic oppression, and violence – as well as our humanity, our strengths, and our possibilities.

Spanning four languages and three continents, RIPPLE EFFECT shares the strengths and struggles of the ensemble’s journeys, of family and community, as well as fantasy worlds – carrying us from Beyonce to Bollywood to a “Secret Recipe for Warriors Only,” and dreams for the future.

Created and performed by FIRST GENERATION Springfield-based ensemble of the Performance Project. Co-directed by Julie Lichtenberg, Julissa Rodriguez, Carla Wojczuk, and Lesley Farlow (Read more…)

SPECIAL EVENT, Sunday July 31 at 7 p.m.

PING CHONG: All Islands Connect Under Water

We are incredibly fortunate to have one of the stars of the international multidisciplinary arts world with us at Ko this summer. Ping Chong is in Amherst to initiate a new summer theater institute that has attracted students from all over the globe. In order for us to share that presence with more of the Ko audience, he has agreed to do a public presentation about his work, in which he will discuss the evolution of his approach to theatre in relationship to changes in contemporary arts and culture over the past 40 years. A question and answer period follows a slide presentation that will show his visually astonishing and socially compelling body of work in some of the most illustrious venues around the globe.

Admission is by donation.

August 5 – 7, Friday & Saturday at 8 p.m., Sunday at 4 p.m.

STRANGER THINGS

is a new play, inspired existential philosopher Albert Camus, that examines identity within the context of a broken rural family trying to make a living in the bitterly cold North. A black comedy, perfect for survivors of our recent, western Mass winter….

by the The Ghost Road Company (Los Angeles, CA) (Read more…)

2011 Workshops

July 11 – 16

MASK, MOVEMENT & MAYHEM

Kali Quinn

Accademia dell ‘ Arte; (Arezzo, Italy)

(read more…)

July 25 -30

FROM THE LITERARY TO THE DRAMATIC:

Devising New Work From Extant Text

Katharine Noon

The Ghost Road Company (Los Angeles)

(read more…)

July 31 – August 6

PING CHONG & COMPANY SUMMER THEATRE INSTITUTE

Ping Chong, Talvin Wilks, & Sara Zatz

Innovative community-based performance and documentary theatre practices behind Ping Chong’s award-winning “Undesirable Elements” series. For Performers, Directors, Scholars and Activists.

(read more…)

The Inaugural
PING CHONG & COMPANY SUMMER THEATRE INSTITUTE

July 31 – August 7, 2011 at the Ko Festival of Performance,
on the Amherst College campus in Amherst, MA

“Undesirable Elements is designed to help individuals and communities confront and overcome cultural insularity by fostering a greater understanding of the commonalities that bind us all.”

Photo by Adam Nadel

The Ping Chong & Company (PCC) Summer Institute has been designed to engage and inspire artists, activists and community organizations interested in developing unique performance projects that explore oral history and art and social justice engagements. We are looking for a diverse group of participants: arts practitioners, students, educators, teaching artists, social justice advocates, and community organizers are encouraged to apply. This intensive week-long workshop will explore the innovative community-based performance and documentary theatre practices behind Ping Chong’s award-winning Undesirable Elements series:

• Learn the process of creating an ensemble-based oral history work;
• Learn how to conduct interviews and develop original script components based on the Undesirable Elements process;
• Learn strategies to build relationships with community organizations utilizing interview techniques, documentation and the Undesirable Elements curriculum components;
• Learn more about the history of Undesirable Elements and experience Master Classes with one of the leading theatre auteurs of a generation, exploring the aesthetics and social justice issues of other Ping Chong multidisciplinary works such as Cocktail, Blindness and The East West Quartet.

Workshop will be led by:

Ping Chong (Founder/Artistic Director, Ping Chong & Company) is an internationally acclaimed theatre director, playwright, video and installation artist. He is a seminal figure in the interdisciplinary theater community and the Asian-American arts arena. In his 39 year career in the theater, he has been a restless explorer of new possibilities and new directions, always pushing at the boundaries of what theater is and can be. Mr. Chong’s work has been presented at major festivals and theatres around the world including: The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Lincoln Center Festival, Seattle Repertory Theatre, New Victory, Brooklyn Academy of Music, La MaMa E.T.C, Spoleto USA Festival,, Vienna Festival, RomaEuropa Festival, Tokyo International Arts Festival, Singapore Festival of the Arts, and many others. His 2005 puppet theatre production, Cathay: Three Tales of China, an international collaboration with the Shaanxi Folk Art Theater of Xian, China, received 3 Henry Hewes Design Awards from the New York Theatre Wing, and had its Asian premiere in Xian, China in 2010. Mr. Chong has taught at numerous universities, including Harvard and New York University. Among his many honors and awards, he has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, two BESSIE awards, two OBIE awards, including one for sustained Achievement in 2000, and a USA Artist Fellowship in 2006. Chong’s first collection of plays, The East-West Quartet, was published by Theatre Communications Group in 2005, and his play Cocktail (2007) was recently published by the University of Washington Press. A book on the Undesirable Elements series is forthcoming from TCG. Recent projects include The Devil You Know, a puppetry adaptation of The Devil and Daniel Webster, which premiered in 2010 at La MaMa ETC, as part of the Under the Radar Festival, and, Throne of Blood, the stage adaptation of Akira Kurosawa’s film masterpiece, which premiered at Oregon Shakespeare Festival in July 2010 and was presented at BAM’s Next Wave Festival in November 2010.

Talvin Wilks (Summer Institute Coordinator, Ping Chong & Company) is a director, playwright and dramaturg based in New York City. His plays include Tod, the boy, Tod, The Trial of Uncle S&M, Bread of Heaven, and An American Triptych. Directorial projects include Banana Beer Bath by Lynn Nottage (Going to the River Festival/EST), On the Way to Timbuktu by Petronia Paley (Ensemble Studio Theatre – AUDELCO Nomination for Best Director of a Play), Relativity by Cassandra Medley (Ensemble Studio Theatre – AUDELCO Nomination for Best Director of a Play), UDU by Sekou Sundiata (651Arts/ Brooklyn Academy of Music), No Black Male Show (Joe’s Pub/The Public Theater) and Pagan Operetta (The Kitchen) by Carl Hancock Rux, Legends by Leslie Lee (St. Louis Black Repertory Company), and the Obie Award/AUDELCO Award winning, The Shaneequa Chronicles by Stephanie Berry (Ensemble Studio Theatre). He has served as co-writer/dramaturg for eight productions in Ping Chong’s ongoing series of Undesirable Elements/Secret Histories, and dramaturg for four collaborations with the Bebe Miller Company, the upcoming Necessary Beauty, Going to the Wall, the Bessie Award winning, Verge, and Landing/Place for which he received a 2006 Bessie Award. He is currently writing a book on black theatre, Testament: 40 Years of Black Theatre History in the Making, 1964-2004.

Sara Zatz (Associate Director, Ping Chong & Company) has worked with Ping Chong & Company since 1997 and became the manager of the Undesirable Elements series in 2002. Working in collaboration with a wide range of partner organizations, from regional theaters to community-based arts organizations, she has overseen the production of over a dozen original works in the series and served as co-author with Ping Chong on ten productions, including Undesirable Elements (Asian America) which was published in the 2008 New York Theater Review. Most recently, she served as the lead artist on Secret Survivors, focusing on adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse. In over a decade in arts management, she has worked with the Henson International Festival of Puppet Theater, the composer Tan Dun, and Lincoln Center Festival, among other arts organizations. She holds an M.Phil in Irish Theatre Studies from Trinity College, Dublin.

About Undesirable Elements

Undesirable Elements is an ongoing series of oral history theater works examining issues of identity in the lives of individuals in specific communities. Each production is made with a partner organization in a host community, with local participants testifying to their real lives and experiences. Undesirable Elements exists as an open framework that can be brought to any community, and be tailored to suit the needs and issues facing that community. Each production is made with a host organization based in the local community, with local participants testifying to their real lives and experiences. The development process includes an extended residency and rehearsal period during which Ping Chong and collaborators conduct intensive interviews with potential participants. These interviews form the basis of a script that covers the historical and personal narratives of the individuals. The script is then performed by the interviewees themselves, many of whom have never before spoken publicly. The series is designed to help communities confront and overcome cultural insularity by encouraging a greater understanding of the commonalities that bind us all.

Since 1992, over 40 productions have been made in cities across the United States and abroad. Recent works have explored themes such as immigration, the disability experience, Native American identity, and the experiences of survivors of child sexual abuse. In 2008, Ping Chong & Company launched an in-school education program based on the Undesirable Elements series, working with middle school students to use writing and performance to express their own voices and identities. A current project in Syracuse, NY explores the efforts of the Congolese refugee community to find avenues toward reconciliation.

CLICK HERE to download an application for the Ping Chong & Company’s Summer Theatre Institute.

Intern Applications are no longer being accepted for the 2011 season. And we’ve got a GREAT team from throughout the United States.

BUT you can still get involved by signing up for one of our wonderful workshops or get credit through UMASS for seeing the shows and participating in pre- and post-show discussions!

August 6 – 8, Fri – Sun at 6:30 p.m.
Note time, which coordinates with the sun!

Created by ArtSpot Productions & Mondo Bizarro
Written by Raymond “Moose” Jackson
Directed by Kathy Randels
Performed by Nick Slie
Live Cajun Music by Whit & Barbara Connah
Set Design by Jeff Becker
Costumes by Susan Gisleson

From New Orleans, and far more timely than we could ever have guessed — a howl to the world about the precarious state of Louisiana’s wetlands & the interconnectedness of land, family legacy & culture.

Every half hour, Louisiana loses nearly a football field’s worth of coastal marshes to the Gulf of Mexico. Land loss is ubiquitous, occurring even in interior areas. Six major hurricanes in the last four years have exacerbated an already dire situation. In Louisiana, so many of our cultural traditions and industries derive directly from our relationship with the rich waters and swamps that surround us. What will become of those traditions as the land that nurtures them disappears?

Designed to be performed outside in a natural setting, LOUP GAROU is part performance, part ritual, part howl to the world about southeast Louisiana’s plight. We invite you to join us as we sing a song of love and hope for our precarious homeland.

Performed on the Amherst College Observatory Lawn off of Snell Street in Amherst. Bring blankets, lawn chairs (we will have some additional folding chairs available) and insect repellent, but leave the dogs at home! There is plenty of free parking nearby and handicapped people may drive up the hill to the site.

Tickets are $20 for Adults and $16 for Students & Seniors.  We also save a VERY limited number of $8 tickets which cannot be reserved. They are given to the first 10 people in line who request them at EXACTLY 5:30 p.m, one hour before the performance. Cash or check only.  NO CREDIT CARDS.

“This is a great creative work of anger, caution and imagination.”
– David Cuthbert, Steppin’ Out

NICK SLIE

lives and works on the disappearing wetlands of coastal Louisiana. He is Co-Founder and Co-Artistic Director of the New Orleans based performance collective Mondo Bizarro. He is an actor, director, writer, educator and community activist. Nick’s performance work ranges from physical theater to multi-disciplinary solo work, from digital storytelling to collaborative ensemble productions. He creates original works of performance that are rooted in a particular sense-of-place reflecting the needs, desires, memories and possibilities of the community from which it is born. In the last two years, he has collaborated on a vast array of local and national performance projects that include: co-creator/performer for Mondo Bizarro’s FLIGHT and Catching Him In Pieces; co-creator/performer for the national tour of UPROOTED: The Katrina Project; dramaturge for olive Dance Theater’s Brotherly Love; co-producer of The State of the National Art and Performance Festival and co-creative director of Mondo Bizarro’s post-Katrina story project The I-10 Witness Project (www.i10witness.org). He serves on the Executive Committee for Alternate ROOTS and is the Board Chair for the Network of Ensemble Theaters.

KATHY RANDELS

is ArtSpot’s founding artistic director. She has written, performed in, and directed numerous original solo and ensemble works for professional, prison and student ensembles throughout the world. She has received OBIE, Big Easy and Storer Boone awards, as well as Louisiana and NEA/TCG Theatre Fellowships. She was last seen at the Ko Festival in 2005 in NITA & ZITA, and before that in 2002 she performed RAGE WITHIN/WITHOUT – a solo theater piece about women who refused to turn the other cheek. She has alos taught two workshops at Ko – “THEATRE AND SOCIAL CHANGE: Theatre in Community” and BIOGRAPHICAL THEATER”

JEFF BECKER

is a sculptor and set designer and a 2009 recipient of the NEA/TCG Career Development Program for Theatre Designers. He was a founding member of the performance group Crisus, which specialized in site-specific performances that utilized innovative kinetic sets, sculpture, film, machines, and live performance. He is a member of ArtSpot Productions. ArtSpot Productions is an ensemble of artists dedicated to creating meticulously LIVE theater in New Orleans. Our productions are a sincere blend of disciplines developed through ensemble authorship, physically rigorous training, original music, interactive sculptural environments, and extended research and rehearsal. We practice social justice and shared power in our creative and organizational processes, and we strive to incite positive change in our community with visually stunning performances and empowering educational programs.

ARTSPOT PRODUCTIONS

Founded in New Orleans in 1995 by Kathy Randels to produce her solo performance work, ArtSpot was incorporated in December 2000 and received its 501(c)3 status in October 2002. ArtSpot fosters the work of two primary projects: the ensemble — a physically-based performance company that trains together regularly — and The LCIW Drama Club, a theatre company comprised of inmates at The Louisiana Correctional Institute for Women in St. Gabriel, Louisiana, that was founded by Kathy Randels in 1996 and is co-directed by Ausettua Amor Amenkum. In addition to creating performances in New Orleans that tour nationally and internationally, ArtSpot is dedicated to bringing nationally and internationally acclaimed performance work to New Orleans and the U.S., and to fostering opportunities for collaboration with those artists. They believe that all stories and voices within a community need to be expressed, and that performance is an essential element of collective healing for all communities, especially those whose voices are not often heard. ArtSpot is trying to revive and foster this belief through an emphasis on the process of creation, and through the celebration of the moment of performance when artists and audience come together to witness and share their collective dreams, sorrows, joys and lives.

MONDO BIZARRO

has been creating original, multidisciplinary art and fostering partnerships in local, national and international communities for the last six years. Based in New Orleans, we are a group of artists that have committed to labor as an ensemble over several years with the goal of establishing a body of work inspired by a particular set of commonly shared aesthetic and civic values. We are a collective of individuals that create, present and produce a wide array of imaginative projects aimed at utilizing art as a tool for understanding what makes us commonly human and individually unique. Our work is intentionally multidisciplinary, ranging from physical theater to large-scale community festivals; from social media to site-specific productions. Everything we do is fueled by the desire to develop brave new works of art that illuminate the beauty and travails of the human condition.

“A powerful statement that anyone who loves New Orleans and south Louisiana should see.” — Molly Reid, The Times-Picayune

“A perfect storm of vivid writing [and] spirited acting.” — Will Coviello, Gambit

DREW THE DRAMATIC FOOL (Drew Richardson)

Drew the Dramatic Fool reinvents the ancient art of brilliant bumbling. Inspired by a thousands-of-years old tradition of royal jesters, vaudeville eccentrics, silent film comedians, animated cartoons, theatrical clowns, absurd theatre, and imperfect humans everywhere, Drew offers high-stakes amusement desperately demanded by today‘s audiences, giving them laughter built on a range of human emotions, from joy to fear to despair and back to joy again.

Youth
As a youngster, Drew began performing magic and juggling to compensate for his shyness. Now he plays the fool to take advantage of his increasing baldness.

Training
Drew’s life-long personal tension between drama and foolishness gelled while studying Theatrical Clowning with John Towsen 25 years ago at Ohio University, where Drew received a B.F.A. in Theatre. He continued his studies in physical theatre with Jacques Lecoq in Paris. Since then, Drew has sought out numerous learning opportunities by taking workshops with master teachers in Commedia dell’Arte, clown, improv, movement, mask, circus skills, and puppetry.

Stage Solos
Drew the Dramatic Fool has performed his solo stage shows in theaters and festivals all over the United States and abroad, from Austin to Austria. Drew has created five one-man shows including The Psychology of Clumsiness (twice picked as “Critic’s Choice” by The Chicago Reader) and the current “Help! Help! I Know This Title Is Long, But Somebody’s Trying to Kill Me!” directed by Avner Eisenberg (Broadway’s “Avner the Eccentric”).

Devised Theatre
Drew has been involved in ensemble created theatre and performance pieces as an actor/ creator in groups such as Brazen Theatre (Madison, WI), 89 Fighters (Philadelphia, PA),The Clownarchists (Chicago, IL), and Night at the Fights (Chicago). Drew has also toured with Squonk Opera and The Daredevil Opera Company.

Filmmaking
Drew is best known as the first person in the 21st century to have new silent movies shown in major motion picture theaters across the United States (“If Drew Richardson was born 100 years ago, there’s a good chance he’d be a household name today.”—DVDTalk.com). Drew’s first short silent moving picture, The Guy Who Lived on a Chair, was screened at The Chicago Short Comedy Video and Film Festival, Pittsburgh Film Kitchen, and The Silent Film Society of Chicago. His Theatre Etiquette 101 movies are currently being shown in various performing arts centers.

Teaching and Residencies
Drew has taught classes and workshops in physical theatre for colleges, universities, conferences, and theater companies. Drew has been a guest teaching artist at such institutions as Point Park Conservatory, the University of Michigan, Roosevelt University, Columbia College, and The Art Institute of Chicago; Drew also taught “Improvising Physical Comedy” at The Big Stinkin’ Improv Festival in Austin, Texas, and “Creating Visual Comedy” at MotionFest in Baltimore. In Chicago, he served as clown consultant/instructor for 500 Clown Macbeth, Strawdog Theatre, and Powertap Productions/Next Theatre Lab.

Drew served as Artist in Residence for the Chicago Park District and Free Street Theatre, where he combined circus skills, movement, and poetry writing to create performances with atrisk youths. At Little City Foundation in Palatine, Illinois, he worked with residents with mental, emotional, and physical disabilities. He also taught medical students at Northwestern University where to find their funny bones and how to use humor as a healing tool. Most recently, Drew collaborated with high school students in Virginia and Maryland to make their own silent movies.

“If Teller of ‘Penn & Teller’ had ever become pregnant by Harpo Marx, Drew Richardson would be the one to arrive out of that strange scientific amalgamation.” —Film Threat

WANT TO KNOW MORE? Visit www.dramaticfool.com

•To watch a clip of the show or one of Drew’s short silent movies click HERE

•Read Drew’s blog at ThinkFoolishly.com

DAVID FERNEY

has performed in over 20 countries around the world as a member of the comic acrobatic street theatre troupe, Los Payasos Mendigos and as a current company member the Dell’Arte Company of Blue Lake, CA.  Performing credits with the Dell’Arte Company include Tartuffe, Malpractice, Road Not Taken, The Bacchae, Original Instructions, Journey of the Ten Moons, Slapstick, Out of the Frying Pan and Wildcard. Ferney is best known for his outlandish comic characters which are influenced by his work in clown theatre, commedia dell’arte and mask performance.  As a graduate of the Dell’Arte School of Physical Theatre David has studied physical performance styles as well studying shadow puppetry and mask carving in Bali.

Ferney is a company member and co­founder of Four on the Floor Theatre Ensemble, a community based theatre company that creates spectacle pageants using giant puppets, stilt walkers and fire performers, as well as producing and presenting original work at the Arcata Playhouse, an exciting new space in Arcata, CA where The Misunderstood Badger is premiering in April. Earlier this year Ferney opened Crawdaddy’s Odditorium. Set in the 1930s Depression era and centered around a traveling freak show. The piece explored the discrimination, individuality, and the sensationalism of the bizarre within the internal relationships of a family of performers, all of whom have physical oddities.

Regional credits inlculde Red Noses at San Diego Repertory Theatre and David Rabe’s Streamers at the Full Circle Theatre Collective of San Francisco.

NICK TROTTER

has been active in music and theatre since childhood. At the Dell’Arte School, Nick specialized in Clown, Bouffon, and Commedia, and was one of the school’s noted mask and prosthetic designers. Before attending Dell’Arte, he lived in New York City and performed extensively with the theatre/music group Bonejesters, which he co-founded with David Leicht. Their original show Bonejesters was performed at La MaMa. Their adaptation of Gogol’s The Nose was alos performed in NYC at HERE Arts Center. Other original repertory included Round and Obscurity Knocks. As a musician, he has performed as a solo singer/songwriter and as a guitar accompanist for National Champion mandolinist Charlie Provenza; as guitarist with the Celtic trio The Crooked Road; and as a member of the Brazilian percussion ensemble Maracatu New York. As his clown Ferdinand the Magnificent, he toured Chiapas, Mexico in January 2008 with Rudi Galindo and Clowns Without Borders. He has worked extensively with Four on the Floor/The Arcata Playhouse on their outdoor spectacle Elemental, as a clown, musician, composer and shadow puppeteer, performing in Blue Lake, Cloverdale and Pender Island, British Columbia.

THE METTAWEE RIVER THEATRE COMPANY

The Mettawee River Theatre Company, founded in 1975, creates original theater productions which incorporate masks, giant figures, puppets and other visual elements with live music, movement and text, drawing on myths, legends and folklore of the world’s many cultures for its material. The company is committed to bringing theater to people who have little or no access to live professional theater. Each year Mettawee presents outdoor performances in rural communities of upstate New York and New England as well as performing in the New York City area. For more information visit http://www.mettawee.org

RALPH LEE

Ralph Lee first created puppets as a child growing up in Middlebury, Vermont. He graduated from Amherst College in 1957, and studied dance and theater in Europe for two years on a Fulbright Scholarship. Upon returning to the United States, Lee acted on Broadway, off-Broadway, in regional theaters and with the Open Theatre. During that period he started creating masks, unusual props, puppets and larger-than-life figures for theater and dance companies, including the New York Shakespeare Festival, Lincoln Center Repertory Theatre, the Living Theatre, the Erick Hawkins Dance Company, Shari Lewis and Saturday Night Live (he created the Land Shark).

In 1974, while teaching at Bennington College, Ralph Lee staged his first outdoor production, which took place all over the college campus, and featured giant puppets and masked creatures. That same year he organized the first Greenwich Village Halloween Parade, which he directed through 1985. For his work on the parade Mr. Lee received a 1975 Village Voice OBIE Award, a 1985 Citation from the Municipal Arts Society, and in 1993 he was inducted into the CityLore People’s Hall of Fame.

In 1976 Ralph Lee became Artistic Director of the Mettawee River Theatre Company, which has been a center of his creative activity ever since. Mettawee’s productions are based on creation myths, trickster tales, Sufi stories, legends and folklore from the world’s many cultures. In addition to annual tours to rural communities, Mettawee has presented Ralph Lee’s work at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, the New York Botanical Garden, Provincetown Playhouse, the Henson Foundation’s International Festival of Puppet Theater, La MaMa E.T.C., INTAR, Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors, Central Park Summerstage, The Bowery Poetry Club, and many other locations.

Ralph Lee is the recipient of a 2003 Guggenheim Fellowship in Drama. Two of Ralph Lee’s Mettawee productions have been honored with American Theatre Wing Design Awards: The Popol Vuh in 1995 and Wichikapache Goes Walking in 1992. Under Mr. Lee’s direction, Mettawee has also received a 1991 Village Voice OBIE Award and two Citations for Excellence from UNIMA, the international puppetry organization. Additional awards to Mr. Lee include a 1996 Dance Theatre Workshop Bessie Award for “sustained achievement as a mask maker and theatre designer without equal” and a 1996 New York State Governor’s Arts Award in recognition of his many contributions to the artistic and cultural life of New York State. In 1999 Ralph received an award for “excellence in theater” from the New England Theater Conference.

Since 1989 Ralph Lee has made annual trips to San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico, to develop plays and a performing ensemble with the Mayan writers group Sna Jtz’ Ibajom. He is an artist-in-residence at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, where he has staged special events with masks and giant puppets since 1984. In addition, he has produced parades and pageants featuring his giant figures for celebrations in Central Park, the Bronx Zoo, the New York Botanical Garden, the Ringling Museums in Sarasota, Florida and the International Festival of Arts and Ideas in New Haven, Connecticut.

From February through May, 1998, the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center presented a retrospective exhibition of Ralph Lee’s work that attracted record-breaking crowds to the gallery. As part of the Henson Foundation’s International Festival of Puppet Theater, the Children’s Museum of the Arts featured an exhibition entitled “The Masks and Magic of Ralph Lee” in September, 1998. During 2000 there were three exhibits in New York City featuring creations designed by Ralph Lee for Mettawee productions. Masks and puppets from THE WOMAN WHO FELL FROM THE SKY were on exhibit in the ambulatory of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine; an array of giant figures were display in the Courtyard Gallery of the World Financial Center, and an exhibit of sketches and models were in the gallery of The Kitchen.

Lee has taught at Amherst College, Smith College, Bennington College, Hampshire College, Hamilton College, Colgate University, the University of Rio Grande and the University of North Carolina. He is currently on the faculty of New York University, and teaches puppetry at the Boys and Girls Republic on New York’s Lower East Side.

SARA FELDER

is a solo theater artist, playwright and juggler. While the themes of her plays and performances are serious, her form is comic, engaging, and vaudevillian. She strives to integrate personal experiences with the urgency of this moment in history. Out of that mix she creates funny and provocative theater.

Sara began performing in 1984 with San Franciso’s beloved Pickle Family Circus. She has also toured with Jugglers for Peace in Cuba, the Women’s Circus in Nicaragua, Joel Grey’s Borscht Capades and at Festivals of Jewish/Yiddish Culture in Berlin, London, Amsterdam, New York, Los Angeles and Toronto. Through juggling, she has been able to find her theatrical voice, create compelling performance, teach alternative populations and pursue social justice.

Sara’s body of work, including radical solo circus theater and witty multi-actor plays, explores political and social frictions: a lone cellist playing defiantly on the war-ravaged streets of Sarajevo; the scientists who – in a gargantuan effort to save the world from Hitler – ended up making the bombs that annihilated the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; a gender-bending cross-dressing 19th-century vaudevillian; two urban neighbors who confront racism; victims of radioactive fallout from U.S. nuclear tests in the Marshall Islands; and women named Joan.

Her newest solo play, Melancholy, a Comedy probes the dark corners of mental illness in this radical solo comedy about Abraham Lincoln, a woman on the bus, and the civil war within ourselves. She continues to tour her highly-acclaimed June Bride, which tells the story of a traditional Jewish lesbian wedding. In its hundreds of performances over the last 13 years, June Bride has become part of the grass-roots effort to keep same-sex marriage on the national agenda and has given audiences a way to talk about this controversial issue.

Sara has received fellowships in performance from the Pennsylvania Council for the Arts and the Independence Foundation, and has been awarded the Philadelphia Theatre Initiative. She has been an artist-in-residence at Intersection for the Arts, the Headlands Center for the Arts and the California Arts Council, the latter for teaching juggling and performance in California’s prisons. She has been commissioned by the San Francisco Art Commission, the National Performance Network and the Irvine Foundation for New Plays. She has received a playwriting fellowship from the California Arts Council. Her work has received nominations from the Bay Area Critics Circle (The Lady Upstairs, best play) and the Cable Car Awards (best performer.) She was part of the Animating Democracy Initiative in Anchorage, Alaska, where, with two other artists, she created performance pieces to encourage civic dialogue about same-sex marriage. She is on the roster of PennPAT: Pennsylvania Artists on Tour.

“Felder is a master story-teller and social satirist whose gentle but incisive humor recalls Lily Tomlin or Jerry Seinfeld — if they could juggle.”
— Santa Cruz Sentinel

“Out Of Sight needs to be seen. Not just by Philadelphia audiences, either.”
–Edge Philadelphia

“A charming night with a charismatic performer…”
— Philadelphia City Paper

ERIC DAVIS

currently resides in New York. His original creations have won him both critical and audience acclaim. He performs and teaches internationally. Lauded as one of the premiere clowns of our time, Davis is a master improviser, clown and bouffon, his work ranges from subtle and realistic to the absurd. His work has been described by critics as “genius” “subversive” and “very, very funny”.

In 2007, Mr. Davis was nominated for a Golden Nose for Clown of the Year in New York. In addition, he was a Finalist for the NY Comedy Festival’s Andy Kaufman Award, and the award winning director and co-writer of The Bouffon Glass Menajoree which was nominated for Best Director, Best Script, Best Ensemble and Best Production by the NY Innovative Theatre Awards.

Mr. Davis is a Founder and Co-Director of the NY Clown Theatre Festival, an international festival celebrating and promoting the art of contemporary theatrical Clown. (www.bricktheater.com) Oct 5-28, 2007.

Performance credits include the clown in Cirque du Soleil’s highly celebrated production: Quidam, as well as being contracted for developmental workshop of Cirque du Soleil’s Kooza, under the direction of Tony Winner, David Shiner and Cirque’s 2009 Touring Production.

Mr. Davis has trained in Pochinko clown technique, a Native American form of performance, and Bouffon with masters Sue Morrison as well as Phillipe Gaulier. He has also been a practitioner and teacher of improvisation, movement, Lecoq technique, and mask for over 15 years.

ABOUT BOUFFON PERFORMANCE

Bouffon, is a bold style of performance that has proved to be an excellent form for deconstructing and commenting on societal ills!

Grotesque in nature, often physically deformed, the bouffon is the outcast shunned by society and told to live outside of the village. On rare occasions, he is asked to perform for the pleasure of those who previously persecuted him. On these occasions the bouffon willingly accepts. (What choice does he have? Perform or be killed!) Thus this hideous creature enters the circle of society once more, light on his feet, eternally smiling with hateful eyes. Charming, entertaining and smart, he plans to take the piss out of you all!

According to Eric Davis, “Bouffon is a joke told by a nightmare. He is smart, entertaining and like the most brilliant idea, or deadly of viruses- utterly infectious.”

DAVID FERNEY

has performed in over 20 countries around the world as a member of the comic acrobatic street theatre troupe, Los Payasos Mendigos and as a current company member the Dell’Arte Company of Blue Lake, CA. Performing credits with the Dell’Arte Company include Tartuffe, Malpractice, Road Not Taken, The Bacchae, Original Instructions, Journey of the Ten Moons, Slapstick, Out of the Frying Pan and Wildcard. Ferney is best known for his outlandish comic characters which are influenced by his work in clown theatre, commedia dell’arte and mask performance. As a graduate of the Dell’Arte School of Physical Theatre David has studied physical performance styles as well studying shadow puppetry and mask carving in Bali.

Ferney is a company member and co founder of Four on the Floor Theatre Ensemble, a community based theatre company that creates spectacle pageants using giant puppets, stilt walkers and fire performers, as well as producing and presenting original work at the Arcata Playhouse, an exciting new space in Arcata, CA where The Misunderstood Badger is premiering in April prior to its performances at the Ko Festival on July 17-19. Earlier this year Ferney opened Crawdaddy’s Odditorium. Set in the 1930s Depression era and centered around a traveling freak show. The piece explored the discrimination, individuality, and the sensationalism of the bizarre within the internal relationships of a family of performers, all of whom have physical oddities.

Regional credits inlculde Red Noses at San Diego Repertory Theatre and David Rabe’s Streamers at the Full Circle Theatre Collective of San Francisco.

SARA FELDER

is a solo theater artist, playwright and juggler. While the themes of her plays and performances are serious, her form is comic, engaging, vaudevillian. She strives to integrate personal experiences with the urgency of this moment in history. Out of that mix she creates funny and provocative theater.

Sara began performing in 1984 with San Franciso’s Pickle Family Circus. She has also toured with Jugglers for Peace in Cuba, the Women’s Circus in Nicaragua, Joel Grey’s Borscht Capades and at Festivals of Jewish/Yiddish Culture in Berlin, London, Amsterdam, New York, Los Angeles and Toronto. Through juggling, she has been able to find her theatrical voice, create compelling performance, teach alternative populations and pursue social justice.

Sara’s body of work, including radical solo circus theater and witty multi-actor plays, explores political and social frictions: a lone cellist playing defiantly on the war-ravaged streets of Sarajevo; the scientists who – in a gargantuan effort to save the world from Hitler – ended up making the bombs that annihilated the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; a gender-bending cross-dressing 19th-century vaudevillian; two urban neighbors who confront racism; victims of radioactive fallout from U.S. nuclear tests in the Marshall Islands; and women named Joan.

Her newest solo play, Out of Sight, which is being performed at the Ko Festival this summer, uses the relationship between a blind mother and her adult daughter to examine invisibility, family loyalties and the Israel/Palestine conflict. She continues to tour her highly-acclaimed June Bride, which tells the story of a traditional Jewish lesbian wedding. In its hundreds of performances over the last 13 years, June Bride has become part of the grass-roots effort to keep same-sex marriage on the national agenda and has given audiences a way to talk about this controversial issue.

Sara has received fellowships in performance from the Pennsylvania Council for the Arts and the Independence Foundation, and has been awarded the Philadelphia Theatre Initiative. She has been an artist-in-residence at Intersection for the Arts, the Headlands Center for the Arts and the California Arts Council, the latter for teaching juggling and performance in California’s prisons. She has been commissioned by the San Francisco Art Commission, the National Performance Network and the Irvine Foundation for New Plays. She has received a playwriting fellowship from the California Arts Council. Her work has received nominations from the Bay Area Critics Circle (The Lady Upstairs, best play) and the Cable Car Awards (best performer.) She was part of the Animating Democracy Initiative in Anchorage, Alaska, where, with two other artists, she created performance pieces to encourage civic dialogue about same-sex marriage. She is on the roster of PennPAT: Pennsylvania Artists on Tour.

“Felder is a master story-teller and social satirist whose gentle but incisive humor recalls Lily Tomlin or Jerry Seinfeld — if they could juggle.” 
— Santa Cruz Sentinel

“She has chutzpah up the wazoo.”    
— San Francisco Weekly

For more information visit www.sarafelder.com

Enormously successful in New York City and elsewhere, Dark Dining Projects has won raves from diners and has appeared in such diverse media as ABC News, NY 1 News, Univision, Time Out, USA Today, New York Times, Village Voice, Metromix, Cool Hunting, Toxic Pop, Theatre Journal and Contact Quarterly Dance Journal.

DANA SALISBURY

Dana Salisbury, winner of New York Dance and Performance Award (a “Bessie”), is a multi-disciplinary artist whose investigations span dance, video, language, site-specific performance/installation and visual art. Her work, Dance Insider has reported “evidences her acute consciousness, her keen multi-disciplinary attention to detail.” The Village Voice described her work as offering “trenchant dispatches from a life of keeping eyes and mind wide open.” Her dances and videos have been seen in New York at PS 122, Judson Church, Dance Theater Workshop, Dixon Place, University Settlement and the 92nd Street Y. She has created site-specific works for Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, the Lower East Side Tenement Museum and the Old American Can Factory in Brooklyn. Her visual art has been exhibited widely in museums and galleries.

For the last several years, inspired by the sensate and imaginative life of the blind, Salisbury has been exploring non-visual perception. Her dance production, “Whole-Body-Seer” (2004) offered experiential equivalents of vision without sight. A quotation from John Hull’s, Touching the Rock: An Experience of Blindness helped shape her thinking: “I do not think of myself so much as a blind person, which would define me with reference to sighted people and as lacking something, but simply as a whole-body-seer. A blind person is simply someone in whom the specialist function of sight is now devolved upon the whole body, and no longer specialized in a particular organ.” Dark Dining Projects celebrates “whole-body-seeing”.

CHEF ALAN HARRIS of NOBLE FEAST CATERING in Shelburne Falls.

The Noble Feast was created in 1975 as a community restaurant in Turners Falls providing innovative foods, in a unique setting geared toward people wanting vegetarian cuisine as well as those desiring meat and seafood. It became well known as a place in which to relax, and find food that was healthy and tasted fabulous. Although it did not make it through the eighties, Alan Harris reinvented it for the mid nineties. The name Noble Feast means that you can expect a conciousness of quality, integrity of production, and artistry in presentation. Harris notes “I’ve been committed to serving foods that reflect my love and respect for the world’s great cuisines and support for those involved in local, sustainable agriculture. These local friends make it possible for me to offer a quality and taste that is unique.”

THE METTAWEE RIVER THEATRE COMPANY

The Mettawee River Theatre Company, founded in 1975, creates original theater productions which incorporate masks, giant figures, puppets and other visual elements with live music, movement and text, drawing on myths, legends and folklore of the world’s many cultures for its material. The company is committed to bringing theater to people who have little or no access to live professional theater. Each year Mettawee presents outdoor performances in rural communities of upstate New York and New England as well as performing in the New York City area. For more information visit http://www.mettawee.org/

RALPH LEE

is a company Ralph Lee first created puppets as a child growing up in Middlebury, Vermont. He graduated from Amherst College in 1957, and studied dance and theater in Europe for two years on a Fulbright Scholarship. Upon returning to the United States, Lee acted on Broadway, off-Broadway, in regional theaters and with the Open Theatre. During that period he started creating masks, unusual props, puppets and larger-than-life figures for theater and dance companies, including the New York Shakespeare Festival, Lincoln Center Repertory Theatre, the Living Theatre, the Erick Hawkins Dance Company, Shari Lewis and Saturday Night Live (he created the Land Shark).

In 1974, while teaching at Bennington College, Ralph Lee staged his first outdoor production, which took place all over the college campus, and featured giant puppets and masked creatures. That same year he organized the first Greenwich Village Halloween Parade, which he directed through 1985. For his work on the parade Mr. Lee received a 1975 Village Voice OBIE Award, a 1985 Citation from the Municipal Arts Society, and in 1993 he was inducted into the CityLore People’s Hall of Fame.

In 1976 Ralph Lee became Artistic Director of the Mettawee River Theatre Company, which has been a center of his creative activity ever since. Mettawee’s productions are based on creation myths, trickster tales, Sufi stories, legends and folklore from the world’s many cultures. In addition to annual tours to rural communities, Mettawee has presented Ralph Lee’s work at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, the New York Botanical Garden, Provincetown Playhouse, the Henson Foundation’s International Festival of Puppet Theater, La MaMa E.T.C., INTAR, Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors, Central Park Summerstage, The Bowery Poetry Club, and many other locations.

Ralph Lee is the recipient of a 2003 Guggenheim Fellowship in Drama. Two of Ralph Lee’s Mettawee productions have been honored with American Theatre Wing Design Awards: The Popol Vuh in 1995 and Wichikapache Goes Walking in 1992. Under Mr. Lee’s direction, Mettawee has also received a 1991 Village Voice OBIE Award and two Citations for Excellence from UNIMA, the international puppetry organization. Additional awards to Mr. Lee include a 1996 Dance Theatre Workshop Bessie Award for “sustained achievement as a mask maker and theatre designer without equal” and a 1996 New York State Governor’s Arts Award in recognition of his many contributions to the artistic and cultural life of New York State. In 1999 Ralph received an award for “excellence in theater” from the New England Theater Conference.

Since 1989 Ralph Lee has made annual trips to San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico, to develop plays and a performing ensemble with the Mayan writers group Sna Jtz’ Ibajom. He is an artist-in-residence at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, where he has staged special events with masks and giant puppets since 1984. In addition, he has produced parades and pageants featuring his giant figures for celebrations in Central Park, the Bronx Zoo, the New York Botanical Garden, the Ringling Museums in Sarasota, Florida and the International Festival of Arts and Ideas in New Haven, Connecticut.

From February through May, 1998, the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center presented a retrospective exhibition of Ralph Lee’s work that attracted record-breaking crowds to the gallery. As part of the Henson Foundation’s International Festival of Puppet Theater, the Children’s Museum of the Arts featured an exhibition entitled “The Masks and Magic of Ralph Lee” in September, 1998. During 2000 there were three exhibits in New York City featuring creations designed by Ralph Lee for Mettawee productions. Masks and puppets from THE WOMAN WHO FELL FROM THE SKY were on exhibit in the ambulatory of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine; an array of giant figures were display in the Courtyard Gallery of the World Financial Center, and an exhibit of sketches and models were in the gallery of The Kitchen.

Lee has taught at Amherst College, Smith College, Bennington College, Hampshire College, Hamilton College, Colgate University, the University of Rio Grande and the University of North Carolina. He is currently on the faculty of New York University, and teaches puppetry at the Boys and Girls Republic on New York’s Lower East Side.

LIGHTBOX

LightBox creates bold, kinetic plays that speak to issues of our time. Collaboration is at the heart of everything LightBox does. The company extends this culture of collaboration to its audience through community outreach programs including the After Show Café, the Youth Workshop Program, and the interactive website for the Food Theater Project. ghtBox creates bold, kinetic plays that speak to issues of our time. Collaboration is at the heart of everything oes. The company extends t

MILK-N-HONEY premiered in October 2007 in New York City where it featured scenic design by Narelle Sissons, who designed the Broadway revival of ALL MY SONS and has worked with many prominent companies including, LAByrinth, The Public, The Vineyard, CSC, Mabou Mines, NYTW, Primary Stages, and Signature. MILK -N-HONEY also features sound design by Bray Poor; lighting design by Justin Townsend; costume design by Meghan Healey; video design by Nicole Betancourt (also the Producing Director of LightBox) and C. Andrew Bauer.re of collaboration to its audience through community outreach programs including the After Show Café, the Youth Workshop Program, and the in

ELLEN BECKERMAN

is the Producing Artistic Director of LightBox where she has directed Milk-n-Honey, Week 17 of 365 Days /365 Plays by Suzan-Lori Parks, Ajax: 100% Fun, Shutter, Gull, Fanatics, Charles Mee’s Orestes, Hamlet, Embarkation and Mother Courage and Her Children. Other directing credits include The Public Theater, Soho Rep, the Ontological Theatre, New Dramatists, Chicago Dramatists Center, the Playwrights’ Center, New Georges, New York Theatre Workshop, Louisiana State University, New Dramatists, Syracuse University. Ellen is a recipient of the NEA/TCG Career Development Program for Directors, a Drama League Directing Fellow, a member of the Lincoln Center Directors Lab, a 2005 member of the Soho Rep writer/director lab, and a New York Theater Workshop Usual Suspect. Ellen spent 8 months living in Thailand creating new Thai language plays and teaching at Patravadi Theatre and Chiangmai University. Ellen performed in Richard Foreman’s I’ve Got the Shakes and worked with Mabou Mines on The Mother. Drawing from her experiences in Asia, India, Europe, and South America, and working in collaboration with the artists of LightBox, Ellen has developed the LightBox Approach, a physical actor training method which has been taught at Princeton University, the Lincoln Center Directors Lab, New York Theatre Workshop, LSU, Syracuse University, Chiangmai University, St. Paul’s School, and The Artists’ Crossing. Ellen’s article, Finding the Boy Band in Chekhov’s The Seagull, will be published this year by Slavica Press. She has an A.B. in history from Princeton University.

MADELEINE GEORGE

worked on the text for MILK-N-HONEY. Her plays have been developed or staged at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center, New York Theatre Workshop, The Playwrights’ Center, New Dramatists, the Cherry Lane Alternative, HERE, Playwrights Horizons, and The Public Theater. Her play THE MOST MASSIVE WOMAN WINS is included in the anthologies PLAYS FOR ACTRESSES and BEST AMERICAN SHORT PLAYS 1997-1998 and has had over 100 productions. Support includes a MacDowell Fellowship, the Princess Grace Playwriting Award, a Manhattan Theatre Club Playwriting Fellowship, and the Jane Chambers Award.

TEMPLE CROCKER

is a performer and educator currently residing in Baltimore, Maryland. She has worked extensively in the San Francisco Bay Area performing with multiple companies including Art Street Theater, Campo Santo, Torque Dance Theater and Pearl Ubungen Dancers and Musicians. In 1996 she co-founded the experimental performance ensemble STRANGEFRUIT with Annie Kunjappy and Rowena Richie. STRANGEFRUIT has created six original performances including The Heat Death of the Universe based on the science-fiction story by Pamela Zoline and Sewing Lessons, a surrealist lifecycle based on the lives and art of Remedios Varo and Leonora Carrington (nominated for best direction and costume design by the Bay Area Critics Circle). Since her move to the east coast she has presented work at spare room, CHELA, Creative Alliance and the Baltimore Theatre Project. For the past three years she has had an ongoing relationship with the Ontological-Hysteric Theater in New York presenting new work at the Summer Series in 2005 and acting in Richard Foreman’s ZOMBOID in the spring of 2006. Temple is currently a member of the theater faculty at Towson University and University of Maryland, Baltimore County

ANNIE KUNJAPPY

has been devising original theatre since 1995 as Artistic Director of Strangefruit Theatre Ensemble in San Francisco, and in various collaborations with Temple Crocker and Daniel Nelson at the Ontological Theatre in New York. She was nominated for best direction and costume design by the Bay Area Theatre Critics’ Circle for Sewing Lessons, and was awarded best costume design for Funnyhouse of a Negro. Annie has performed and taught Motion Theatre, a physical impulse-based improvised narrative form, with its founder Nina Wise, in San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York, and is also part of Big Apple Playback Theatre. She works as a chef and teaches at the Natural Gourmet Institute for Health and Culinary Arts.

SABRINA HAMILTON

is the Artistic Director of the Ko Festival of Performance in Amherst, MA. For many years she worked with the New York theatre company Mabou Mines as Lighting Designer, Production Manager, Stage Manager, Performer, and Assistant Director. Other credits include work at the New York Shakespeare Festival, the Goodman Theatre, the Mark Taper Forum and 6 years as Route Lighting Designer for New York’s Village Halloween Parade under the direction of Ralph Lee. International lighting credits include work in Bologna, Florence, Milan, London, Grenada, Geneva, Paris, Rio de Janeiro, Amsterdam, Brussels, Cardiff, Edinburgh, at the Bristol Old Vic, the Theatre Academy in Tampere, Finland, and at the International Theatre Festival in Havana, Cuba. She has been touring as the Lighting Designer for LOW, written an performed by Rha Goddess, directed by Chay Yew, most recently as part of the Under the Radar Festival at the Public Theatre in NYC.

Sabrina’s directing work, primarily original pieces, has been seen in New York, Berlin and throughout New England. Hamilton has served on the Editorial Board of Theatre Topics . She is on the Lighting Commission of the United States Institute for Theatre Technology (USITT), for whom she serves as head of their Portfolio Review program and as the International Liaison. She was recently named as the USITT representative to the Lighting Design Working Group of OISTAT, the international parent body of USITT and served as part of the international team that put together the Scenofest at the Prague Quadrennial. In addition, Hamilton has served on a N.E.H. panel, the “New Forms” panel for Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and the NEA/TCG Career Development Program for Designers panel. She was elected this year to the Board of Directors of the Network of Ensemble Theatres.

Hamilton holds a B.A. from Hampshire College and double M.F.A. in Directing and Lighting Design from the UMASS/Amherst. She has been on the faculties of Hampshire, Williams and Trinity Colleges, and Long Island University, and served as the Program Director of the M.F.A. Theatre Program at Towson University for 2006-7.

BELLE LINDA HALPERN

has performed as a cabaret singer and actor at clubs and theatres in New York, Boston, San Francisco, Paris, Munich, Jerusalem, and Bombay. Each summer she sings cabaret concerts in the villas and castles of Northern Italy. A graduate of Harvard/Radcliffe, she performs in French and Italian as well as Yiddish and Hebrew. Her theater roles include Esther in Elizabeth Swados’ rock opera Esther, Alice in her Alice in Concert, Josephine in Laura Harrington’s N Bonaparte and Sally in Cabaret. Belle’s other theatre credits include work with Robert Wilson and Andrew Serban at the American Repertory Theatre. She has taught singing and performance since 1986 at Harvard University and each summer in Italy through the Tuscany Project. She has co-created Moon Over Dark Street, a Brecht/Weill Cabaret with Pilgrim Theatre and Cutting Crosstown: From 2nd Avenue to Broadway with fellow performer Jeffrey Korn. Her interest in Weill and Yiddish music was inspired by the generous spirit of her teacher, Martha Schlamme. She has also co-authored Leadership Presence: Dramatic Techniques to Reach Out, Motivate, and Inspire published by Penguin Putnam about the leadership development work she does with her company, The Ariel Group.

RON ROY

Pianist and Musical Director Ron Roy was most recently arranger and musical director for the Off-Broadway production “Disappearing Act” at the 47th Street Theatre. Other credits include “Forbidden Hollywood” at Steve McGraw’s. He was pianist and assistant conductor for the Gershwin musical “Crazy For You” (National Tour and Berlin, Germany), and pianist and musical director for Boston’s long running hits “Forever Plaid” and “Forbidden Broadway. He was last seen at the Ko Festival two summers ago accompanying Belle Linda Halpern and Kermit Dunkelberg in selections for Moon Over Dark Street for the Ko Festival’s 15th anniversary celebration, The Ko Cabaret.

SABRINA HAMILTON

is the Artistic Director of the Ko Festival of Performance in Amherst, MA. For many years she worked with the New York theatre company Mabou Mines as Lighting Designer, Production Manager, Stage Manager, Performer, and Assistant Director. Other credits include work at the New York Shakespeare Festival, the Goodman Theatre, the Mark Taper Forum and 6 years as Route Lighting Designer for New York’s Village Halloween Parade under the direction of Ralph Lee. International lighting credits include work in Bologna, Florence, Milan, London, Grenada, Geneva, Paris, Rio de Janeiro, Amsterdam, Brussels, Cardiff, Edinburgh, at the Bristol Old Vic, the Theatre Academy in Tampere, Finland, and at the International Theatre Festival in Havana, Cuba. She has been touring as the Lighting Designer for LOW, written an performed by Rha Goddess, directed by Chay Yew, most recently as part of the Under the Radar Festival at the Public Theatre in NYC.

Sabrina’s directing work, primarily original pieces, has been seen in New York, Berlin and throughout New England. Hamilton has served on the Editorial Board of Theatre Topics . She is on the Lighting Commission of the United States Institute for Theatre Technology (USITT), for whom she serves as head of their Portfolio Review program and as the International Liaison. She was recently named as the USITT representative to the Lighting Design Working Group of OISTAT, the international parent body of USITT and served as part of the international team that put together the Scenofest at the Prague Quadrennial. In addition, Hamilton has served on a N.E.H. panel, the “New Forms” panel for Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and the NEA/TCG Career Development Program for Designers panel. She was elected this year to the Board of Directors of the Network of Ensemble Theatres.

Hamilton holds a B.A. from Hampshire College and double M.F.A. in Directing and Lighting Design from the UMASS/Amherst. She has been on the faculties of Hampshire, Williams and Trinity Colleges, and Long Island University, and served as the Program Director of the M.F.A. Theatre Program at Towson University for 2006-7.

PETER LOBDELL

Peter Lobdell is a senior resident artist in the Department of Theater and Dance and is presently Chair. He has directed and/or performed on, off and off-off Broadway in New York, on national tours, at regional theaters, and international venues. Most recently he was director of movement for the Hartford Stage Company’s Our Town last September.

TEMPLE CROCKER

is a theater artist and educator. She makes interdisciplinary and collaborative performance works as well as objects and installations. Before moving to Baltimore, Maryland in 2003 Temple lived and worked in San Francisco where she performed with various theater and dance companies including Campo Santo, Art Street Theater, Torque Dance Theatre and Pearl Ubungen Dancers and Musicians.

In 1996 she co-founded the experimental performance ensemble STRANGEFRUIT with Annie Kunjappy and Rowena Richie. STRANGEFRUIT works collaboratively to create handcrafted performance works. The research process that accompanies the making of a piece draws on variety of sources including literature, philosophy, the natural and social sciences, alternative medicine, homespun recipes and visual art. Weaving together personal and universal mythologies STRANGEFRUIT explores the intersection of whimsy and insight addressing themes such as the curious nature of identity, and the phenomena of presence and memory. STRANGEFRUIT has created six original performances including The Heat Death of the Universe based on the science-fiction story by Pamela Zoline and Sewing Lessons, a surrealist lifecycle based on the lives and art of Remedios Varo and Leonora Carrington.

Temple’s first performance in Baltimore was a collaboration with visual artist/performer Jackie Milad at the first Transmodern Age Festival in the spring of 2004. Since then she has presented work at spare room, CHELA, Creative Alliance and the Baltimore Theatre Project. For the past three years she has had an ongoing relationship with the Ontological-Hysteric Theater in New York presenting new work at the Summer Series in 2005 and acting in Richard Foreman’s ZOMBOID in the spring of 2006. Temple is currently a member of the theater faculty at Towson University and University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

BARBARA LANCIERS

is a company member and the resident choreographer for The Theatre of a Two-Headed Calf in New York City. She has trained extensively with Anne Bogart and the SITI Company. Barbara performed in the SITI Company production of Hay Fever (Actors Theatre of Louisville) and served as Anne Bogart’s assistant on Death and The Ploughman. Barbara is an Anne Bogart endorsed teacher the Viewpoints training method for theatre practitioners. She holds her MFA in Theatre from Towson University. Barbara is currently living and working in Budapest, Hungary on a Fulbright Scholarship. This is her 3rd season at the Ko Festival.

KATIE DOWN

is a sound artist, composer, performer and sound designer for theatre, film, and dance. She performs regularly with the infamous ukulele group The Ukuladies (www.myspace.com/theukuladies), and was the director of the Sephardic ensemble Adelantre, which appeared at the Ko Festival’s 15th Anniversary Celebration, the Ko Kabaret. She also wrote the music for and performed in The House Not Touched by Death in the 2000 Ko Festivval

Katie has traveled extensively throughout Eastern Europe and the Balkans and most recently South Africa with different theatre artists as a performer, sound designer, and teacher in voice, improvisation, and clown. She plays several instruments including flute, ukulele, guitar, didjeridu, and glass harmonica as well as a host of homemade instruments, percussion, and found objects. Katie works regularly as a sound designer in New York City and regionally and has created numerous sound scores and original music for Off, and off-Off Broadway productions for Target Margin, The Hourglass Group, Ripetime, New Georges, Ensemble Studio Theatre, SoHo Rep and others.

Internationally, Katie has performed at the Ohrid Summer Festival in Macedonia, Trn Festival in Ljubljana, Slovenia, and the Malta Festival in Poznan, Poland. She has toured twice with chashama’s international program where she co-conducted voice, movement, and clowning workshops with young people from Media Artes in Macedonia, the Up-Beat Hvar Music Festival in Croatia and Trn Fest in Slovenia.

Katie has also created sound installations for several gallery shows including Homebase II (Broadway Gallery, 2007), And Suddenly….(Ohio Gallery, 2005), Vision Whisper (chashama Gallery, 2002). She will be the guest curator at the arts colony Music Omi in August, 2008, and has been an artist in residence at The Watermill Arts Center, Music/Omi, Makor Artist Network, chashama AREA Space Grant, and The Composer Librettist Studio at New Dramatists.

Katie is deeply committed to the power of deep listening and sound healing and is currently working towards a Masters degree in music therapy at NYU.  For more information on Katie Down go to www.katiedown.com or www.myspace.com/katiedownmusic

ELLEN BECKERMAN

is the founding artistic director of LightBox, and the director of Milk-N-Honey, which is being performed at the Ko Festival this summer.

In addition she has directed Week 17 of 365 Days/365 Plays by Suzan-Lori Parks, Ajax: 100% Fun, Shutter, Gull, Fanatics, Charles Mee’s Orestes, Hamlet, Embarkation and Mother Courage and Her Children. Other directing credits include The Public Theater, Soho Rep, the Ontological Theatre, New Dramatists, Chicago Dramatists Center, the Playwrights’ Center, New Georges, New York Theatre Workshop, Louisiana State University, New Dramatists, Syracuse University. Ellen is a recipient of the NEA/TCG Career Development Program for Directors, a Drama League Directing Fellow, a member of the Lincoln Center Directors Lab, a 2005 member of the Soho Rep writer/director lab, and a New York Theater Workshop Usual Suspect. Ellen was the first literary manager of Steppenwolf Theatre Company, and spent 8 months living in Thailand, creating new Thai language plays and teaching at Patravadi Theatre and Chiangmai University. Ellen performed in Richard Foreman’s I’ve Got the Shakes and worked with Mabou Mines on The Mother. Drawing from her experiences in Asia, India, Europe, and South America, and working in collaboration with the artists of LightBox, Ellen has developed the LightBox Approach, a physical actor training method which has been taught at Princeton University, the Lincoln Center Directors Lab, New York Theatre Workshop, LSU, Syracuse University, Chiangmai University, St. Paul’s School, and The Artists’ Crossing. Ellen’s article, Finding the Boy Band in Chekhov’s The Seagull, will be published this year by Slavica Press. She has an A.B. in history from Princeton University.

DELETTA GILLESPIE

Deletta is a performing artist, playwright, and educator with nearly twenty years in the entertainment industry.

Deletta was born into a show business family. Her mother played piano and organ in backing bands for artists such as the Ink Spots, the Shirelles, and others. Her father played bass in the Army and in jazz bands on the West Coast. Deletta made her professional debut at age six, when her mother gave her a cameo in her nightclub act.

She has performed in a myriad of situations; clubs, theatres, casinos, cruise ships, and resorts as a singer, dancer, actress, choreographer, and entertainment coordinator. Highlights include performing for Michael Jackson, and opening for jazz legends Al Jarreau and Patti Austin. She has performed as a voice over artist, and a television and radio presenter. Additionally Gillespie served as entertainment coordinator for Destination Dockyard, a seasonal street festival jointly produced by The Bermuda Chamber of Commerce, RF Communications, and Royal Caribbean International.

She wrote and directed two critically acclaimed revue shows: The Time Tunnel Show, and Rufus’ Rhythm and Blues Revue. Her play, What a Girl Wants, produced by Healing Stage Productions in June 2006 raised over $15,000 for the Women’s Resource Center in Bermuda. And in October 2007, Atlanta-based theatre organization Alternate Roots, whose mission includes supporting artists that create theatre for social change, invited Gillespie to perform a staged reading of her upcoming musical, The Magic City Massacre during the Creative Convergence Festival in Baltimore. She has also written several plays for middle school students.

Gillespie has vocal pedagogy certification (Levels I & II of Somatic VoiceworkTM, The LoVetri Method) in Contemporary Commercial Music, as well as ABRSM certificates in Vocal Music.

ROBERT SMYTHE

is the Artistic Director of Philadelphia’s Mum Puppettheatre, the company he founded over two decades ago, and has created over 20 original productions. According to the Puppeteers of America he is one of the most influential puppet artists in the United States today. His work with Mum has taken him all over the world while winning three UNIMA Citations of Excellence in the Art of Puppetry and four Barrymore Awards. He was won numerous awards, including a Pew Fellowship in the Arts in 2006 and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2000. He is the recipient of one of the last Solo Theater Fellowships ever awarded by the National Endowment for the Arts and six Solo Performer Fellowships from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. He has directed and designed puppet work for the Arden Theater, the Wilma Theater, Interact Theater Company, the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Children’s Theater Company in Minneapolis.

HELP! HELP! I KNOW THIS TITLE IS LONG, BUT SOMEBODY’S TRYING TO KILL ME!

July 10 – 12 (Fri & Sat at 8 p.m., Sun. at 4 p.m.)

an all-ages event created and performed by: Drew the Dramatic Fool (Drew Richardson)

directed by Avner Eisenberg (Avner the Eccentric)

All the performers in this vaudeville variety show have been murdered – except for Drew the Dramatic Fool. Unfortunately for him, the show must go on, or he’s next. Drew attempts every act in the show, from juggling 36 balls to sawing a woman in half, in this comical examination of fears–fear of performing, fear of failure, and fear of death. When courage fails, the only answer is dramatic foolishness.

Drew the Dramatic Fool reinvents the ancient art of brilliant bumbling. Inspired by a thousands-of-years old tradition of royal jesters, vaudeville eccentrics, silent film comedians, animated cartoons, theatrical clowns, and imperfect humans everywhere, Drew offers amusement relevant for today‘s audiences by giving them laughter built on a range of human emotions, from joy to fear to despair and back to joy again.

“If you like Bill Irwin, You have to see Drew the Dramatic Fool. He’s a world-class visual comedian.” —Charleston Gazette

And if you think you hate clowns….we dare you not to laugh, and welcome your rant at the discussion that follows every performance!

THE MISUNDERSTOOD BADGER

written and performed by: David Ferney

co-written and directed by Nick Trotter

An eccentric biologist goes off the deep end in his quest to explore the mysterious realm of the North American Badger (taxidea taxus). Part lecture and part free-association dream, The Misunderstood Badger is a solo comedy performed and written by actor David Ferney. The show probes deep within one individual’s struggle to balance his ties to the civilized world with his desire for the wild. Professor Harold Burrows is extremely passionate—you might even say obsessed—about his life long study of badgers. After living in the wild with a community of badgers for a year, he has returned to civilization to share his findings.

Using live music, projections, and mask performance, Ferney take us on a comedic journey to find the badger within.

In the heart of the 5-College area, are academics fair game?

BEYOND THE HIGH VALLEY a Quechua Story

SUNDAY, July 19 at 8 p.m. (One Performance Only)

performed by the METTAWEE RIVER THEATRE COMPANY under the direction of Ralph Lee

Our annual favorites with a piece drawn from the Quechua people, descendants of the Incas, who live in villages in the Andean highlands of Peru. As the story begins, a giant condor spies a young woman tending her family’s llamas in a meadow. He sweeps down from the sky, transforms into a dashing lover and then carries her off to a rocky crag. Her unlikely rescuer is a creature of dazzling ingenuity, a plucky little hummingbird.

A range of puppets and other visual elements realized on many different scales, are used to evoke the vast distances, radiant sky and rugged, vertical thrust of fierce and beautiful Peruvian terrain. Performed out under the stars within a landscape permeated with live music, song and a spirit of celebration.

OUT OF SIGHT

July 24 – 26 (Fri & Sat at 8 p.m., Sun. at 4 p.m.)

A solo comedy that brings circus tricks, shadow puppets and a Jewish queer sensibility to questions of family loyalty and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
written and performed by:

SARA FELDER
Directed by David O’Connor
Shadow Puppets by Morgan FitzPatrick Andrews
Sound Design by Matthew Lorenz

DRAMATIC FOOLERY:The Paradox of Comic Acting

July 13 – 18

with Drew Richardson (Drew the Dramatic Fool)

In an effort to provoke deeper laughter, it’s often the case that the more serious you are, the funnier you are. No irony, no wackiness, just you, trying your imperfect best in absurdly real situations. In this workshop, Drew will guide the participants with tragically comic exercises using clown, mask, and movement to express their own dramatic foolishness and then use what they learn to create character-based theatrical comedy. For people who don’t think they are funny, actors who want to be funnier, or anyone who wants to explore sincerely playful creative problem solving.

FINDING COMEDY IN A SERIOUS WORLD

July 20 – 25

with David Ferney

An exploration of what is funny as a tool for creating new performance. Using clown, mask and absurdist theatre to find the comic in our often too serious world, Mr. Ferney will lead the class through an exploration of what is funny. Through exercises and explorations workshop participants will be encouraged to “find the funny” and develop a sense of play for creating interesting comic characters and generating new material.

CREATING SOLO PERFORMANCE: Amusing the Muse

(or – The Art of Juggling the Truth)

July 27 – August 1

with Sara Felder

A workshop on developing performance material from our own lives using objects, character work, monologues and humor. We will write, try on different performance styles, create images, play with objects, investigate characters, consider different narrative voices, find the humor in the pain (and vice versa) experiment, fail, laugh and surprise ourselves. Use this workshop to generate material for a solo performance. Emphasize the use of performance to say something important, and, if we’re lucky, to amuse (or schmooze or cruise) the Muse.

JOIN US FOR A SPECIAL EVENT TO LAUNCH KOFEST 2008′s SEASON ON THE THEME OF “FOOD” appetites, attitudes and politics

July 11 and 12 at 7 p.m.

Dark Dining Projects

Artist & Chef Collaborations

Sensory Feasts
Gourmet Meals Served to Blindfolded Guests

Participatory Art Events

Conceived and Directed by Dana Salisbury

THE EVENT

Blindfolded guests enter the space and are seated at long tables. A splendid multi-course banquet of locally produced food and drink is set before them. Savoring the sensuous feast, diners tease out the mysteries of the menu. The room is an ever-changing olfactory, tactile and sonic landscape, an installation of wind, water, organic material, music, virtuosic performance and movement. At the evening’s close, diners are handed a sealed card in which the menu and performing artists are revealed.

For further information visit www.darkdiningprojects.com/index.htm

DARK DINING PROJECTS

Enormously successful in New York City and elsewhere, Dark Dining Projects has won raves from diners and has appeared in such diverse media as ABC News, NY 1 News, Univision, Time Out, USA Today, New York Times, Village Voice, Metromix, Cool Hunting, Toxic Pop, Theatre Journal and Contact Quarterly Dance Journal.

NANABOZHO

SUNDAY, July 13 at 8 p.m.

performed by the Mettawee River Company under the direction of Ralph Lee

Our annual favorites with a piece drawn from Winnebago creation tales that describe how elements of the natural world emerged out of chaos and achieved their present form. Central to this process is Nanabozho, the trickster hare, whose fearless, sometimes dimwitted impulses have unexpected, frequently hilarious results and keep us guessing what will happen next. He emerges from the arms of his Grandmother Earth to confront amicable beavers, ferocious frog demons and a bevy of delectable spirit women. The world we have inherited appears to have been shaped by the combined efforts of wise benefactors, evil beings and a willful, capricious buffoon.

The production will be ASL Interpreted by Joan Wattman.

FRIDAY -SUNDAY , July 18 – 20 Fri., Sat. & Sun. at 8 p.m.

NOTE: AS THIS IS A VERY SPECIAL EVENT FOR US AT THE KO FESTIVAL, WE ARE PLEASED TO BE ABLE TO ADD ADDITIONAL PERFORMANCES ON Sat. & Sun. at 2:00!

MILK-N-HONEY

created by: LightBox

directed by ELLEN BECKERMAN

with Aysan Celik* and Shawn Fagan*, Signe V. Harriday*, Adam Rihacek, Gerry Rodriguez*, and a “mystery guest”

*Member, Actors Equity Association

Shawn Fagan and the cast of MILK-N-HONEY

Both the Ko Festival and LightBox have the creation of opportunities for civic dialogue as key parts of their respective missions. We in invite you to stay for the AFTER SHOW CAFE that follows every performance of Milk-N-Honey. Local experts on the the issues raised in the production will make short presentations and then we will open the floor for general discussion.

MILK-N-HONEY is a play about the pleasures and politics of eating, based on interviews the company conducted with migrant workers, flavor chemists, waiters and executives, diabetics, dumpster divers, grocery clerks, people with eating disorders, hunters, politicians and farmers. MILK-N-HONEY is a large-scale multi-media play that looks at food and appetite in the 21st century: the play’s interweaving storylines follow a couple whose marriage is at stake as they differ about what food to put on the table, a grocery store clerk who forages through dumpsters, immigrant farm workers, a family that struggles with diabetes, a flavor chemist who attempts to capture the flavor of light, et.al. The production features an innovative, wrap-around video design that envelopes the space in lush video imagery, with live-feed video cameras that the actors control and video supertitles for scenes performed in Spanish. The cast of five actors play a variety of roles and a sixth, The Eater, sits meditatively at a table and eats a meal for the length of the play. The performance includes original songs composed by Bray Poor and Sean Hagerty, several dance numbers, and a pageant about the history of corn.

* HEARTS AND TONGUES

SUNDAY, July 25 – 27 (Fri & Sat at 8 p.m., Sun. at 4.p.m.)

created and performed by: TEMPLE CROCKER & ANNIE KUNJAPPY

in collaboration with Daniel Allen Nelson

lighting by Sabrina Hamilton

As we live, we eat the world through our senses, our mouths ingesting the material of the natural world, our eyes, ears, nose and skin absorbing the colors, shapes, smells and vibrations. All meet in the blood stream, mingle with breath, tangle with the deepest intentions within the chambers of the heart and, thus transformed, are released as words, actions and other emanations of the heart and mind. Thus the inner landscape of our physical body, the subtle vibrations of our energetic body, and the unfolding of our being in time are shaped by the material of the external world.

Led by our hunger and passion, if we are what we eat, our digestive systems are conduits for an intimate communion with our environment, and our manifested beings are reincarnations of all that we have consumed.

In their latest theatrical exploration Temple Crocker and Annie Kunjappy attempt to sort through the chaos of information and experience to understand man’s sublime, contentious and ever evolving relationship with the natural world.

ABOUT THE COLLABORATION

Temple Crocker and Annie Kunjappy’s handcrafted performance work combines installation and objects, songs and gestures, original and appropriated texts. The research process that accompanies the making of a piece draws on a variety of sources including literature, philosophy, the natural and social sciences, alternative medicine, homespun recipes and visual art. Weaving together personal and universal mythologies the work explores the intersection of whimsy and insight addressing themes such as the curious nature of identity, and the phenomena of presence and memory.

SONGS OF HUNGER & SATISFACTION

SUNDAY, August 1 – 3 (Fri & Sat at 8 p.m., Sun. at 4 p.m.)

a new cabaret created and performed by: BELLE LINDA HALPERN

musical director/accompanist Ron Roy

directed by Sabrina Hamilton

A funny, intriguing and profound look at constant cravings—hunger for food, sex, acceptance and fame — and for true nourishment. Songs that range from Tin Pan Alley classics by Gershwin, Berlin and Bernstein to pop anthems are interspersed with personal narrative reflecting Halpern’s Jewish-American experience.

The Boston Globe has called called Belle Linda Halpern’s work “stunning, both as music and theater” as she connects the music and lyrics of American and European cabaret songs with clarity, warmth and style. With her incredible dynamic range, she sensuously croons ballads, powerfully belts out the blues, and, with lightning speed and hilarity, whips out a patter song, the Boston Herald hails her as, “Boston’s best singing actor.”

Halpern was last seen at the Ko Festival two summers ago as the Empress Josephine in the Pilgrim Theatre production of (N) Bonaparte. Earlier that season, she garnered riotous applause in the Ko Kabaret with her selections from Moon Over Dark Street, a Bertolt Brecht/Kurt Weill revue.

Special Additional Event

SUNDAY, August 8 – 10 (Fri & Sat at 8 p.m., Sun. at 4 p.m..)

2/3 two short plays for three actors

ME AND BOBBY McGEE and LUGNUTS OF THE SOUL by PETER LOBDELL

Honora Talbott Ho

The evening is made up of Me and Bobby McGee:

In the first scene Bobby and McGee find themselves in a kind of limbo. They attempt to orient themselves, but the environment affects them in strange ways. In the second scene Me, an old woman in a wheel chair, speaks directly to the audience who learn that Bobby and McGee exist within her mind. For Bobby and McGee she might be God? For Me might they be memories, fantasies, or something more creative?

And Lugnuts of the Soul:

An ordinary evening for Denise and Dave is interrupted by a telephone call. The telephone call segues into a visit by Angel. Angel claims to be Dave’s cousin, but there is something other worldly about her — including her ability to shift her personality into the other characters’ bodies.

CAST

The roles will be played by Bernard Bygott, Honora Talbott, and Teresa Spencer — all recent graduates of Amherst College.

2008 Workshops

THE ART OF COLLABORATION: devised theatre & ensemble practice with Temple Crocker and Barbara Lanciers

July 7 – 12

Discover the art of building an ensemble and utilizing the various interests and talents of a group to create original theater. This workshop explores the intimacies and intricacies of the collaborative process while engaging in various strategies for generating material for the stage. Theatre artists and educators Temple Crocker and Barbara Lanciers guide students through a unique actor training process allowing them to develop their own distinctive presence and style while engaging in the dynamics of ensemble performance.

The training – both highly physical and deeply contemplative – draws on the principles of various actor training methods and physical disciplines including Viewpoints, Suzuki, Yoga and The Alexander Technique. Throughout the week the group will create theatrical compositions utilizing elements provided and generated by the participants, including original and appropriated texts, songs and movement, objects and installations. The mornings will be devoted to ensemble training and the afternoons will be dedicated to the creation of theatrical compositions.

FINDING THE THEATRICAL SOUNDSCORE: with voice and non-traditional instruments with Katie Down

July 14 – 19

This workshop is open to theatre professionals and enthusiasts simply interested in our relationship to and with sound. The soundscore in a theatrical context can be as present as any character in a play or as a sonic support to the trajectory of the story. Sound comes from many different sources and how sound is created, manipulated and used in theatre will be explored through improvisational vocal and instrumental explorations as well as recording and mixing techniques. Sound walks will take place daily with the use of portable recording devices and open discussions about sound design, “sound-scapes” and composition will be fodder for collaborative creations and a final presentation at the end of the week.

PHYSICAL & EXPERIMENTAL APPROACHES TO CLASSICAL TEXTS with Ellen Beckerman

July 21 – 26

Bridge the divide between language and physicality in this intensive, on-your-feet workshop, focusing on scenes from Macbeth. Learn the basics of the LightBox Approach, which integrates movement techniques from around the world, including Butoh, Suzuki, Viewpoints, and Commedia dell’Arte, into one unified approach to physical theatre-making. Each class begins with meditation and ensemble-building before moving into a rigorous exploration of Shakespeare’s classic play using experimental staging techniques. Explore character through Butoh movement. Discover character relationships and generate staging through physical improvisation. The LightBox Approach is applicable to any performance style, and can help directors and actors uncover the contemporary resonances in classic plays. The Approach teaches the art of collaboration, ensemble-building, and whole-body listening skills that are as important in life as they are in art-making. This course is open to all theatre artists, including actors, directors, writers, dramaturgs, designers, and technicians.

CREATING CABARET: styles, stories and songs with Deletta Gillespie

July 28 – August 2

Many cabaret performers have backgrounds in music and singing, but lack equal training in the theatricality that goes into making a successful cabaret act. In this workshop, our work on the art and craft of cabaret performance will include work on developing a persona for performance, choosing music, singing, creating spoken material relating to the audience, and on structuring an act. We will work with a variety of performance styles, thinking about the optimal way to engage audiences and convey meaning. There will be opportunities to share work in an environment that is safe for risk-taking and for growth. This workshop is suitable for first-timers, as well as professionals who want a chance to either hone or shake-up their work.

FUNDAMENTALS OF PUPPET PERFORMANCE: performer, instrument & score with Robert Smythe

August 4 – 9

This class will use a variety of techniques and games to develop an awareness of the three fundamentals of puppet performance: the performer, the instrument and the score. The class will use LeCoq mime technique and other theatre exercises to develop performance skills; found objects to create hand-puppets and Japanese-style bunraku puppets for instruments; and simple improvisational exercises to open the exploration of developing works for puppets. Participants will work solo and in pairs and will learn how to create their own work through exercises designed to increase control of the elements of theatre.

“Stories of Illness and Healing”

FRIDAY-SUNDAY, JULY 6 – 8 at 8 p.m.

MATERMORPHOSIS

by Lenelle Moise, performed by Serious Play,

directed by Sheryl Stoodley, designed by Kathy Couch & Robin Doty

with Linda Putnam as Gregora/Mother

and Steve Bailey, Billy Girand, Jeannine Haas, Glenn Love, Alberto Peart, Alexis Reid

In this darkly ironic and comic adaptation of Kafka’s masterpiece of isolation and human cruelty “Metamorphosis,” award-winning, Hatian-American slam poet/playwright Lenelle Moise, reworks Kafka’s Gregor into Gregora, a critically ill, menopausal mother who has supported her family by working in the sex industry. By depicting her ”change of life” as her transformation into insect, the Serious Play Ensemble dissects the social constructs that compromise humanity, family bonds, and the loss of physical autonomy that occurs as we age and confront the possibility of illness and even death.

PEACE

SUNDAY, July 15 at 8 p.m.

by Aristophanes, performed by the Mettawee River Company

under the direction of Ralph Lee

Our annual favorites with a contemporary adaptation of Aristophanes’ comedy PEACE that tells of a mortal who journeys on the back of a dung beetle to Mt Olympus to complain to the gods about the situation on earth, only to learn that the gods have fled, leaving War and Greed in charge and Peace buried under a trash heap. In the end, Peace is rescued and an extended celebration begins. This all-ages event is performed outdoors with live music, masks and giant puppets.

Performed on the Amherst College Observatory Lawn off of Snell Street. Bring blankets, lawn chairs and insect repellant, but leave the dogs at home!

RAIN SPACE: Amherst College’s HOLDEN THEATRE

The production will be ASL Interpreted by Joan Wattman.

THE MAMMY PROJECT

FRIDAY – SUNDAY, JULY 20 – 22 at 8 p.m.

created and performed by Michelle Matlock

co-developed with Joan Evans, directed by Amy Gordon, lighting by Sabrina Hamilton

Writer/performer Michelle Matlock uses original music, storytelling, multimedia documentary materials and her considerable comedic skills to explore the influence that the “Mammy” icon has had on contemporary American culture by re-imagining the cultural traditions from which the image was born — slavery, minstrelsy and advertising. The piece unpacks the little-known history of Nancy Green, the first African-American woman hired to play the part of “Aunt Jemima’ at the 1893 World’s Fair, and in so doing transforms an oppressive stereotype of African-American womanhood into a celebration of the power to be gained from knowing and understanding history

O YES I WILL (I will remember the spirit and texture of this conversation)

FRIDAY – SUNDAY, JULY 27 – 29 at 8 p.m.

written and performed by Deb Margolin

direction and dramaturgy by Merri Milwe, lighting by Sabrina Hamilton

How much do we say when we speak? Yet what if we speak truth and aren’t there to hear it? In OBIE Award winning playwright/performer Deb Margolin’s new piece a woman is amazed to learn that just prior to going under for surgery, she talked, talked and talked for 12 straight minutes without stopping! This unmediated aria performed before a bunch of men in scrubs with knives was known to them but unknown to her. Was it love she talked about? Politics? Sex? Conspiracy theory? Evasion? Ontology? Requests for a ménage à trois, quatre or cinq? What kinds of things do you say when your body and mind are engaged but not married? This comic tour-de-force for one actor is a kind of Scherezade for the surgery-bound, and offers five radically different possibilities of what she might have said outside the realm of conscious volition. In doing so, she explores the essential nature of language itself, the indomitable human spirit in the face of adversity, what it means to live in a woman’s body, and the role of theatre and imagination in our lives . Diagnosed with lymphoma ten years ago, Margolin has processing it, as with every significant event in her life, by writing and creating performance. In her work, the personal is always both the political and the poetic.

SUMMER WORKSHOPS 2007

BEYOND THE BARS: making theatre with incarcerated people and the recently released

July 2 – 7

with Julie Lichtenberg

Learn the unique process the Performance Project has developed over the past 12 years in its work inside and outside of prison settings that gives voice to identity and culture as it catalyses and supports change and transformation through self-reflection and the creation of artistically compelling work. The workshop will particularly address the role of the “outside” artist in the creation of performances that are opportunities for dialogue and relationship between performers and audience.

The Performance Project focus is on giving voice to identity and culture through self-reflection, catalyzing and supporting change and transformation, building a strong relationship among group members, and creating artistically strong work. Our workshops establish a creative and personal space within a jail or workshop setting. The Performance Project model of developing artistic work has five phases. 1) a workshop; 2) project development; 3) rehearsals; 4) production and performances; and, 5) evaluation.

The exercises will invoke a spirit of playfulness, creativity, and collaboration, and explore improvisational structures in theater and movement. Techniques for script development processes will include storytelling and writing exercises designed to give voice to identity and culture will be explored as well as exercises that the students invent themselves.

THEATRICAL CLOWN

July 9 – 14

with Julie Nelson

The exploration of Theatrical Clown plays a vital role in actor training. In this workshop, actors will enter the world of clown and get to know its topography. For example, adventurous physicality is a way of life here. Words are used sparsely and never squandered. The impulse bypasses the brain and gets right to work in the body. The presence of the performer is heightened by the immediate connection and volatile relationship between clown and audience.

Through a progression of exercises and structured improvisations, the actor will recognize and develop his/her nascent clown character. In the process, s/he will uncover and highlight habits and foibles that, until now, s/he wanted to ignore, hide or banish. They turn out to be crucial and delightful building blocks for the clown.

As with any theater ensemble, good will and a collaborative spirit are essential in creating an atmosphere in which all can take big risks.

BREATH, VOICE AND THE PERFORMATIVE SELF: from inner experience to outer expression

July 16 – 21

with Leeny Sack, Laurie McCants

A single cycle of breath and you’ve already been in relation: impressed through the inbreath, expressed through the outbreath. And you’ve shared air.

“Hmmm”, you might say, and you’ve also, perhaps unknowingly, just toned ancient sacred sounds, and voiced a sound you’ve seen in comic books. Hmmm …

A voice is like a fingerprint. Unique. Identifiable. Only yours.

It is vibratory imprint. It is a form of touch. “Speech,” says Dr. Oliver Sacks, “consists of UTTERANCE – an uttering forth of one’s whole meaning with one’s whole being”.

If you said, “hmmm” aloud, did you “utter” it? What did you mean by it? Was it loud? Barely audible? A single pitch? Several? Was there wonder in your voice? Disdain? Was there a frog in your throat, or a family member, whose voice seemed to come through you? Did you feel the sound in your body? Did you “utter” it?

This series combines guided, experiential practices for expanding internal awareness with exercises for reeducating and unifying the body/mind through breath and sound.

Elements of the following will be included:

• breath awareness
• breath, voice and the diaphragm
• vowels and subtle energy centers (chakras)
• consonants as frame and punctuation
• embodying communication
• softening psychophysical constraints
• working with self-consciousness and fear
• working with evocative and provocative texts
• simple presence

Open to students of all levels.

SOLO PERFORMANCE

July 23 – 28

with Michelle Matlock

This workshop will focus on how to develop and perform a solo show. Starting with what motivates you!

Through theater games for the solo actor we will explore the “right now” and “doing, not thinking.” Clown techniques will be introduced to uncover the unique, connected and visible performer. We will then move into building your character/characters from a physical point of view. Storytelling will figure heavily in the work as you begin to discover and structure your own solo performance material.

Participants are asked to please come in with an idea. It can be anything, a poem, a prop, a gesture, a monologue, a word. Anything.

CREATING STAGE TEXTS FOR OUR TIMES

July 30 – August 4

with Ruth Margraff

How does the play you are writing (or want to write) measure up against the world right now? How can we write beyond America’s own backyards? Is there a way to write your story from a more world-driven centrifuge? How can we write more colossal characters? What are the politics of empathy and travel? In our highly intuitive laboratory, we’ll do writing exercises designed to get your play in motion, expand the horizon of your stage and to stir up interdisciplinary passions.

Open to writers and would-be writers from all genres of playwriting, screenwriting, fiction, music-theater, poetry, solo performance, etc.

Workshops cost $350. Optional room and board are available on the Amherst College campus for an additional fee. (See registration form.)

Workshops will meet from 10 am – 4 pm Monday through Saturday in Studio II or Studio III of Webster Hall on the Amherst College campus in Amherst, MA.

“The Ko Festival of Performance offerings are authentic, brave…

its pool is international;it sits on a unique throne.”

-The Greenfield Recorder