FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: Ellen Rusconi, Producing Director
646.524.2226
Theatre Artists Lee Breuer and Taylor Mac in SDC Foundation’s One‐on‐One Conversation Monday, May 14, 7:00 – 8:30pm at The Axis Theatre
SDCF presents an exciting opportunity to hear from Lee Breuer and Taylor Mac, hybrid theatre artists of limitless imagination and inventiveness, in conversation discussing their artistic processes and visions, influences, inspirations, career trajectories and challenges. The conversation will be moderated by Mark Russell, Artistic Director and Producer of the Under the Radar Festival produced by The Public Theater. SDCF is the nation’s only organization that exists to foster, support and promote the craft of theatre directors and choreographers at all levels of career. Among their many other programs, SDCF produces six One‐on‐One Conversations annually. Prior conversations of this year’s series featured Emily Mann & Blanka Zizka and Walter Bobbie & Sam Gold. Upcoming participants this year include Elizabeth LeCompte and Young Jean Lee (May 19). Tickets for this event are $15 for the general public, $10 for SDC Members and SDCF Observership applicants. For reservations, please RSVP to [email protected]. The Axis Theatre is located at 1 Sheridan Square. The theatre is down one flight of stairs. **** LEE BREUER ‐ Lee Breuer is a director, writer, poet, playwright, adapter and lyricist engaged in a lifelong procession of incendiary experimental theater projects across Europe, Asia, Africa, North and South America. Breuer, the Founding Co‐Artistic Director of Mabou Mines, is most widely known for his revelatory, upending adaptations of classic works of theater: Mabou Mines DollHouse, adapted from Ibsen; The Gospel at Colonus, adapted from Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus; Peter & Wendy, adapted by Liza Lorwin from J.M. Barrie’s novel "Peter And Wendy". All continue to tour festivals and theaters around the world. Breuer is also noted for his extensive work with puppets. It is Breuer’s “deep purpose” to bring puppetry into serious American theater. “I first saw Bunraku in Japan in 1968 and fell madly in love with puppetry. It is quite simply the deconstruction of working with an actor and with acting itself.” Breuer recently directed his first film, a further‐adapted version of his Ibsen adaptation, Mabou Mines DollHouse, filmed live on stage at King’s Theater in Edinburgh, Scotland and released on DVD in 2009. The disk includes the companion documentary, “Looking for a Miracle”, which features extensive interviews with the director and members of the cast. Breuer is a MacArthur Fellow, a Bunting Fellow, a Guggenheim Fellow and twice a Fulbright Fellow. He has collected many OBIES as well as the prestigious Golden Herald of the Edinburgh International Festival, the French Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, and the Helen Hayes Award. He delivered the inaugural lectures for the Samuel Beckett Chair at Trinity College, Dublin and his teaching resume includes time as Co‐Chair for Directing at the Yale University School of Drama, as well as positions at Stanford, Harvard, Arizona State University West, NYU, Columbia, Penn State, UC Berkeley, Drama Institute Beijing, Aristotle University Thessaloniki, Athens University, and the Moscow Art Theater School of Acting. TAYLOR MAC Taylor Mac is a playwright, actor, singer‐songwriter, and sometime director and producer. TimeOut New York has called him, “One of the most exciting theater artists of our time” and American Theater Magazine says, “Mac is one of this country’s most heroic and disarmingly funny playwrights.” His plays include “The Walk Across America For Mother Earth”, “The Lily’s Revenge”, “The Young Ladies Of”, “The Be(A)st of Taylor Mac”, “Red Tide Blooming”, “Dilating” (an evening of one‐acts), “Blue Grotto” and his first play “The Hot Month”. His concerts of original songs and covers include: “Comparison is Violence or The Ziggy Stardust Meets Tiny Tim Songbook”, “Cardiac Arrest or Venus on a Half‐Clam” and “The Face of Liberalism”. Taylor has performed his work and/or others at The Sydney Opera House, The San Francisco MOMA and Opera House, New York’s Public Theater, Stockholm’s Sodra Teatern, The Spoleto Festival, The Bumbershoot Festival, The Time Based Arts Festival, Dublin’s Project Arts Center, London’s Soho Theater, and literally hundreds of other theaters, museums, music halls, cabarets, and festivals around the globe. He has acted in many original plays (by others), dozens of revivals, and in featured roles on television with The BBC2, BBC4, MTV, and The Sci‐Fi Channel. Awards, grants, and fellowships include: a 2010 Obie, a McKnight National Commissioning Award, a Sundance Theater Lab Residency, a New York Foundation for the Arts Grant, two MAP Grants, a Creative Capital Grant, The James Hammerstein Award for playwriting, three Brighton Best of Festival Awards, a Dallas Theater Critics Forum Award for Best Touring Show, a Chicago Jeff Award Nomination, three GLAAD Media Award Nominations, an Edinburgh Festival Herald Angel Award, two New York State Council of The Arts Grants, an Edward Albee Foundation Residency, The Franklin Furnace Grant, a Peter S. Reed Grant, The Ensemble Studio Theatre's New Voices Fellowship in playwriting, a Mabou Mines Suite (with collaborator Elizabeth Swados), and the one he is most proud of, an Ethyl Eichelberger Award. Vintage Press, Playscripts, New York Theatre Review, New York Theatre Experience have published his plays and he was a HERE Arts Center resident artists and is currently a member of New Dramatists. MARK RUSSELL (Moderator) is the Director of the Under the Radar Festival at the Public Theater. Mr. Russell works with the Public Theater In New York City as an Associate Artistic Director and is the head of the Public’s new Devised Theater Initiative. Russell produced the Under the Radar Theater Festival in collaboration with the Association of Performing Arts Presenters premiering at St. Ann’s Warehouse in January 2005. The festival moved to the Public Theater in 2006. In 2007 UTR expanded to a two weekend format and it continues on as a core part of the Public Theater’s season today and a valuable pre‐conference event for Arts Presenters. From 1983‐2004, Russell was the Executive Artistic Director of Performance Space 122 (P.S. 122). SDCF Programming, including the One‐on‐One Conversation Series, is funded in part by the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and Stage Directors and Choreographers Society. For additional information, visit SDCF online at SDCweb.org.