Announcing the Director for THE EXILE OF PETIE DELARGE

Beautiful, exciting, ground-breaking Maureen Huskey, who I had the pleasure of working with previously at CalArts, has agreed to lead the workshop of The Exile of Petie DeLarge by Jennifer Barclay!

More about Maureen:

Maureen Huskey is an award-winning theater director based in Los Angeles since 2006.   Most recently, she was the Assistant Director for Lenka Udovicki for UCLA Live's Medea starring Annette Bening. Maureen received the 2008-09 Princess Grace Honorarium Award for Theater Directing.  As co-creator and director of the New York based, site-specific theater group Red Dive (1996-2006), she brought audiences down Brooklyn's Gowanus Canal via pontoon boat (Peripheral City), through narrow streets of Lower Manhattan, and to historic landmarks like the Lower East Side Tenement Building to re-envision the buried stories of New York landscapes.  This cross-disciplinary, experimental work that incorporated the work of dozens of New York's emerging artists garnered her a Bessie Award for 'performance installation and new media' and support by the Creative Capital Foundation, Franklin Furnace Foundation, The Greenwall Foundation, The Puffin Foundation, The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Meet the Composer's Fund, The Heathcote Foundation, and the Foundry Theatre's Emerging Artist Award among others.
 

Maureen's original movement-theater projects in New York have been supported by Voice & Vision's Envision Development Program for Women theater artists, New Dance Alliance, The Brooklyn Arts Exchange and the New York State Council for the Arts, BRIC Studios, the Brooklyn Arts Council and through independent artist residencies through The Field, and others. Her New York directing collaborations with dance artists and small companies have been presented in such venues as The Kitchen, Dance Theater Workshop, Joe's Pub, Joyce SOHO, PS122, New Dance Alliance and HERE Arts Center.  In addition to New York and Los Angeles, Maureen's directing work has been presented in festivals in Chicago, Vancouver, San Francisco and Vienna, Austria.  She is currently a national workshop leader for the Creative Capital Foundation's Professional Development Program.  As a Rotary Fellow she received a Diploma with Merit in Drama from the University of Kent at Canterbury in England.  She holds a MFA in Theater Directing from California Institute of the Arts (2009).

Maureen has taught directing to undergraduate and graduate students at the California Institute for the Arts and led workshops in acting, movement/voice and site-specific installation to students at Western State College in Colorado, Bard College in New York through the Voice & Vision Envision Retreat, and the Brooklyn Arts Exchange.

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I'm tellin' you folks, when we get this whole thing together, it's gonna be a show you ain't gonna wanna miss.   
I'm not sayin', but I'm just sayin'.  -- Liz E

Progress Report, Week #9

Final Project, Week of November 16th:

- Still hashing out a few little details with a director for "Exile" re: duties & responsibilities. I know, developing new work can raise a lot of questions about who owes what to whom, and who is willing to commit what. Trying to lay that out in writing for "Exile" so there will not be miscommunications later. Call me "little-miss-responsible".

- Submitted my first application for some grant money. Hoping for an interdisciplinary grant from the CalArts' Provost's Office for the "Exile" workshop. Every little bit helps.

- Approached video designer Roz Fulton for "Exile" and to engineer and oversee the project as a whole. She's up for it. Now I just need to find her some LA housing/transportation for the workshop & performance period.

- The Hollywood Fringe's application site went live this week. Deadline for applications is April.


And then I came down with some lingering sickness that I could not shake for days and days and days.

Next week is Thanksgiving so I am not optimistic about getting very much accomplished. Mostly thinking of ways to ask people for money.

"for the vision" -- Liz E

Progress Report Week #8

Final Project, Week of November 9th:

This has felt a bit like a "phone tag" week.

- I have engaged in multiple rounds of phone/email tag with various collaborators since last week. Good news is that we have stuff to talk about and want to talk about it. The tricky part is actually reaching each other on top of busy lives and a 3 hour time difference. I hope to actually have some substantive conversations over the weekend.

- I continued researching venues in earnest, and began inquiring about availability and fees. My working assumption is that I am looking for a venue that I can program for the Hollywood Fringe in June. Not necessarily exclusively, but that is the scope. One location, multiple presentatations within it.

- I drafted the following working "Problem Statement" (not that it's a problem, that's just my preferred method of attack) along with a Goals & Objectives/Timetable:

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Project: MFA Final Project, Tentatively Collectively Titled "Elektra, Petie & Other Misunderstood Girls"

Problem Statement: Artists of multiple performance disciplines sometimes need a reason to reach beyond their comfort zone, to collaborate with other artists whom they might not have known or with whom they might not have imagined working. Audiences may not realize that they have an interest in new and experimental work unless something gives them a point of entry, and audience members tastes will vary. Will a variety of offerings stimulate their interest, and encourage their participation?

Questions I Seek to Answer: How can I as a creative producer jump-start new collaboration partnerships and set a tangible destination for a "work-in-progress"? What is a comfortable environment to create and present new work, and to invite participation from audiences at an early stage? And conversely, how can I program multiple performances by artists of different mediums in a "tasting menu" of sorts that an audience will find engaging enough to explore and visit repeatedly? Is this a presentation model that will encourage dialogue and participation across disciplines, backgrounds and the spectator-spectacle divide?

Goal: To commission and collaboratively develop new experimental performances through a workshop process, organized around a theme. To present these new performance pieces together as "works-in-progress" in a shared performance space, along with pre-show art installation and post-show musical entertainment to create a total experience for the audience. To use this informal workshop and presentation model as a means of encouraging interaction and dialogue between the artists working on different projects and between the artists and the audience, and give all a sense of participation in the ultimate event.

Objectives/Timetable:

• Commission of 3 Performance Pieces + 2 Performance Art Installations, Fall 2009-Winter 2010

• One workshop per performance piece to take place April-May 2010
  

-- Includes Writer (for each), Director/Creator (for each), Video Designer, Ensembles of Performer/Musician /Puppeteers (for each)

• Inclusion of post-performance programming (Musical Acts), Spring 2010

• Presentation of All Pieces & Installations together in one venue (possibly as part of Hollywood Fringe), June 2010
  

-- Rotating schedule of performances, presented over the course of approx. 2 weeks

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I continue to be a work-in-progress
-- Liz E