<![CDATA[J o a n     O s a t o - Archive]]>Thu, 28 Aug 2025 03:00:16 -0700Weebly<![CDATA[Recent Articles]]>Mon, 25 Aug 2025 01:25:33 GMThttp://www.joanosato.org/archive/recent-articlesAZTLAN by Luis Alfaro // SF                             Latinbayarea.com                               July 9, 2025
https://latinbayarea.com/theater-aztlan-by-luis-alfaro-sf/

Let’s Reimagine It All Deborah Cullinan Apr 5, 2020

https://medium.com/@deborahcullinan/lets-reimagine-it-all-3f294d03eddb

'Home in the World': Joan Osato's apocalyptic vision 'Home in the World': A director at Youth Speaks brings her eerie apocalyptic vision to the great outdoors By Kimberly Chun, Special to The Chronicle April 20, 2011

https://www.sfgate.com/art/article/home-in-the-world-joan-osato-s-apocalyptic-2374713.php

Review: Shakespeare is adrenaline in Magic Theatre’s thrilling ‘Richard II’ Lily Janiak                   August 25, 2024

https://datebook.sfchronicle.com/theater/magic-theatre-richard-ii-review-19666763

Drama Masks: In ‘Aztlán,’ gripped by intense forces beyond control Magic Theatre melds carceral to mystical. By Charles Lewis III July 2, 2025

https://48hills.org/2025/07/drama-masks-stage-reviews-aztlan-magic-theatre-central-works-last-goat/

Naomi Iizuka Sounds the Alarm in Beautiful New Poetic Drama by Mary Lou Herlihy
June 13, 2024

https://theatrius.com/2024/06/13/garudas-wing-celebrates-nature-travels-time-at-magic/

Theater Review: DIRTY WHITE TESLAS MAKE ME SAD (Magic Theatre World Premiere) Stage and Cinema by Chuck Louden on March 7, 2024

https://theatreeddys.com/2024/03/dirty-white-teslas-make-me-sad.html

2024 Stage Raw Theater Awards Recipients and Program March 7, 2024

https://stageraw.com/2024-stage-raw-theater-awards-recipients/
https://stageraw.com/2024-stage-raw-theater-awards-recipients/
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Campo goes seriously sci-fi with Hookers on Mars, Chad Jones' TheaterDogs

https://www.theaterdogs.net/reviews/2016/07/02/campo-goes-seriously-sci-fi-with-hookers-on-mars

Review: 49ers fandom gives and takes in Campo Santo’s eulogy for changing city
Lily Janiak, January 25, 2019

https://datebook.sfchronicle.com/theater/review-49ers-fandom-gives-and-takes-in-campo-santos-eulogy-for-changing-city

Intersection for the Arts and California Shakespeare Present CALIFAS FESTIVAL thru 11/17            By: BWW News Desk Nov. 05, 2013     

https://www.broadwayworld.com/san-francisco/article/Intersection-for-the-Arts-and-California-Shakespeare-Present-CALIFAS-FESTIVAL-thru-1117-20131105
]]><![CDATA[JOAN OSATO - ARTE LAGUNA PRIZE IN PHOTOGRAPHY]]>Sat, 25 Mar 2017 07:00:00 GMThttp://www.joanosato.org/archive/joan-osato-arte-laguna-prize-in-photographyThe major collective exhibition will take place in the historical location of the Arsenale in Venice in March 2017.
The prestigious venue in the lagoon city will host the exhibition of 30 works of painting, 30 sculptures and installations, 30 works of photographic art, 10 videos, 10 land art projects, 5 performances which will be performed live during the exhibition's opening ceremony.

EXHIBITION INFORMATION
ARSENALE OF VENICE ̶ 25 March 2017
OPENING AND AWARDS CEREMONY ̶ 11th ARTE LAGUNA PRIZE
Exhibition open through April 9, admission free

Exhibition of finalists and winners, 125 international artworks - Nappe Arsenale, Venice
26 March – 9 April 2017 opening hours 10am - 6pm daily
Opening ceremony: Saturday, March 25, 2017 at 6:00 pm
Guided tours:
Sunday, March 26, 2017 at 11:00am Nappe Arsenale and on reservation (phone number +39 0415937242)

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]]><![CDATA[Community-based Artists and Culture-Bearers Supported for Quality of Artistic Practice and Promise of Social Change]]>Mon, 15 Jun 2015 07:00:00 GMThttp://www.joanosato.org/archive/community-based-artists-and-culture-bearers-supported-for-quality-of-artistic-practice-and-promise-of-social-changeSURNDA FOUNDATION ARTISTS ENGAGED IN SOCIAL CHANGE AWARD - JOAN OSATO, RICHARD MONTOYA AND SEAN SAN JOSE FOR "NOGALES"

Building on its commitment to supporting  artists and culture bearers in low-income communities and communities of color who nurture, sustain, and grow our communities’ cultural traditions, the Surdna Foundation announced today the recipients of its Artists Engaged in Social Change grant awards. The grants are designed to support individual artists, culture bearers, and nonprofits whose work is embedded in community and either helps to inform, engage, or challenge people around specific social issues or helps to increase our awareness of cultural diversity.

Fifteen project grants were awarded from more than 1000 applications received in response to a national request for proposals. Projects receiving funds were selected for the quality of the artistic practice; for making visible communities that are too often invisible or exploring critical themes that arise from, or impact a community; and finally, for the project’s capacity to enable social change. The grants will enable artists and culture-bearers to work with their organizational partners to support community processes, and to create and disseminate new work. The one and two-year awards, ranging from $37,000 to $157,000 and totaling $1,345,000, support artists and culture bearers working in places from Haines, Alaska and Brooklyn, New York to LaConner, Washington and Long Beach, California. These projects are addressing contemporary issues including incarceration, cultural heritage, and immigration, among many others. In addition to the diverse geographic, ethnic, cultural, and gender communities addressed by the artists’ projects, awardees’ work spans a broad range of artistic activity, aesthetics, genres, and artistic disciplines.

Surdna Foundation’s President Phil Henderson said, “In an era of accelerated and often dramatic social and demographic change, artists and culture bearers play critical roles within our communities helping us understand and challenge pressing issues. Their visions, communicated through film, performance, text, spoken word and other forms can help communities achieve a sense of connectedness and common purpose.”

In commenting on the breadth of artistic practices and broad segments of society represented in the grant awards announced today, Henderson continued, “By acknowledging, valuing, and supporting artists representing a diversity of communities—including those whose work is often ignored, silenced, or marginalized—we are investing in building stronger, more just and sustainable communities."

“The proposals have helped us to understand the expanding definition of American culture and identity in very different ways,” said Judilee Reed, Director of Surdna’s Thriving Cultures program. “We learned how artists are addressing issues ranging from immigration to criminal justice to economic equality and practically everything in between. And through their creative practice, we as a society are finding pathways of empathy and understanding, and subsequently are emboldened to action, each on our own terms.”


About The Surdna Foundation
The Surdna Foundation seeks to foster sustainable communities in the United States -- communities guided by principles of social justice and distinguished by healthy environments, strong local economies, and thriving cultures. For over five generations, the Foundation has been governed largely by descendants of John Andrus and has developed a tradition of innovative service for those in need of help or opportunity.  The Foundation’s support arts and cultural projects through its Thriving Cultures grantmaking program which is based on a belief that communities with robust arts and culture are more cohesive and prosperous, and benefit from the diversity of their residents. Surdna believes that artists and cultural organizations can help us explore shared values and spark innovation, imagination and advancement for our communities.


]]><![CDATA[October 26th, 2014]]>Mon, 27 Oct 2014 06:17:07 GMThttp://www.joanosato.org/archive/october-26th-2014 Joan Osato of United States was Awarded Third Prize in the PX3 2014 Competition.

Paris, France
Prix de la Photographie Paris (Px3) announces winners of PX3 2014 competition.

Joan Osato of United States was Awarded: Third Prize in category Press for the entry entitled, " Our Orb "  and Third Prize in category Book Proposal (Series Only) for the entry entitled, " Viridiplantae ." The jury selected PX3 2014’s winners from thousands of photography entries from over 85 countries. 

Px3 is juried by top international decision-makers in the photography industry: Carol Johnson, Curator of Photography of Library of Congress, Washington D.C.; Gilles Raynaldy, Director of Purpose, Paris; Viviene Esders, Expert près la Cour d'Appel de Paris; Mark Heflin, Director of American Illustration + American Photography, New York; Sara Rumens, Lifestyle Photo Editor of Grazia Magazine, London; Françoise Paviot, Director of Galerie Françoise Paviot, Paris; Chrisitine Ollier, Art Director of Filles du Calvaire, Paris; Natalie Johnson, Features Editor of Digital Photographer Magazine, London; Natalie Belayche, Director of Visual Delight, Paris; Kenan Aktulun, VP/Creative Director of Digitas, New York; Chiara Mariani, Photo Editor of Corriere della Sera Magazine, Italy; Arnaud Adida, Director of Acte 2 Gallery/Agency, Paris; Jeannette Mariani, Director of 13 Sévigné Gallery, Paris; Bernard Utudjian, Director of Galerie Polaris, Paris; Agnès Voltz, Director of Chambre Avec Vues, Paris; and Alice Gabriner, World Picture Editor of Time Magazine, New York.


ABOUT Px3:
The "Prix de la Photographie Paris" (Px3) strives to promote the appreciation of photography, to discover emerging talent, and introduce photographers from around the world to the artistic community of Paris. Winning photographs from this competition are exhibited in a high-profile gallery in Paris and published in the high-quality, full-color Px3 Annual Book.

Visit http://px3.fr

For Press Inquiries, Contact:
Press@px3.fr

http://www.px3.fr/winners/zoom2.php?eid=1-44300-14&uid=3229774&cat=Press

http://www.px3.fr/winners/zoom2.php?eid=1-44305-14&uid=3229774&cat=Book%20Proposal%20%28Series%20Only%29
]]><![CDATA[Theatre Bay Area Announces the TBA Award Finalists]]>Fri, 19 Sep 2014 06:31:08 GMThttp://www.joanosato.org/archive/theatre-bay-area-announces-the-tba-award-finalists September 18, 2014 San Francisco

The Bay Area is home to magnificent art, and Theatre Bay Area is thrilled to recognize the outstanding achievements of the artists and companies whose work has moved us, challenged us, taught us and changed us.

So, it is with great excitement that Theatre Bay Area announces the fabulous finalists for the 2014 TBA Awards. This list represents not only the superlative efforts of the companies and people named below, but the dedication of the 200+ professional peer adjudicators whose diligent work has made this program possible. And now we get to share the news with you!

The TBA Awards are designed to honor excellence in professionally oriented theatre through a peer-based, Bay Area-wide adjudication process. The inaugural TBA Awards Celebration is scheduled for November 10, 2014 at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco.

Outstanding Video Design, Joan Osato for TRIBES, Berkeley Repertory Theatre


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNO_op3c33Y

]]><![CDATA[For Its 25th Annual Grant Round, the MAP Fund Awards $1.5 Million to Performance Projects Across the United States]]>Mon, 28 Apr 2014 08:53:10 GMThttp://www.joanosato.org/archive/for-its-25th-annual-grant-round-the-map-fund-awards-15-million-to-performance-projects-across-the-united-states


For Its 25th Annual Grant Round, the MAP Fund Awards $1.5 Million to Performance Projects Across the United States

Jazz Composer Amir ElSaffar and and Playwright Nikkole Salter among first-time Grantees

New York, NY - April 28, 2014 Funding for 39 projects undertaken by many of America’s most vital artists working in the fields of contemporary performance was announced today by the MAP Fund, a program of Creative Capital primarily supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, with additional support by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The MAP Fund, among the longest-standing nongovernment grants programs in the nation, has supported new works in performance that challenge the conventions of contemporary performance, particularly those that address issues of cultural difference in race, ethnicity, sexuality, gender, generation or any other aspect of diversity since 1989.

This year, the Fund received over 900 requests for support, which were reviewed in three stages by a total of 51 artists and arts professionals from around the country. Panelists at the final stage of selection were Jenny Bilfield (President and CEO of Washington Performing Arts Society, Washington DC), Yolanda Cesta Cursach (Associate Director of Performance Programs at Museum of Contemporary Arts Chicago), Deborah Cullinan (Executive Director of Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco), Darrell Jones (Performer, Choreographer, Associate Professor at Columbia College Chicago), Travis Just (Composer/Musician & Co-Founder of Object Collection, NYC), Gavin Kroeber (Producer, NYC), Carla Peterson (Director of the Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography, Tallahassee), Tanya Selvaratnam (Writer, Actor, Producer, Activist, NYC), Andrew Simonet (Artists U Founder and Director, Philadelphia), Somi (Singer/Songwriter & Founder of New Africa Live, NYC), Mich&egravele Steinwald (Independent Dance Curator and Producer, Minneapolis), Shay Wafer (Executive Director of 651 Arts, Brooklyn).

Grantee projects will receive grants in the range of $20,000 to $40,000, plus additional funds of up to $5,000 for general operating support. Individual artists associated with these projects are also invited to take part in Creative Capital’s signature Professional Development Program. Over half of the artists involved with these projects are first-time MAP Fund grantees.

Projects will take place in San Francisco, Houston, Providence, Seattle, Chicago, Portland, Tucson, Los Angeles, and New York City, with many touring nationally and internationally and varying widely in scope. In the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center’s At War With Ourselves, the Kronos Quartet will join jazz luminary Terence Blanchard, poet Nikky Finney and a 500-member choir on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to commemorate the dual anniversaries of the Civil War and the Civil Rights Movement. And on a more intimate but no less urgent front, singer, composer, and performing artist Holcombe Waller will create The LGBT Requiem Mass, honoring LGBT people persecuted in the name of religion worldwide. As a group, the projects represent myriad interpretations of the MAP Fund’s core objective – to foster diversity and aesthetic daring in performance today.

“In a time when there is anxiety about the health of the performing arts, the MAP Fund is an eloquent testimonial to the massive creative and artistic energy in performance today,” said Ben Cameron, Program Director for the Arts at the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. “We are honored to support these exemplary projects and look forward to seeing these works brought to fruition.”

Grantee Holcombe Waller adds: “As one of the only major grants available to artists creating new performance work in the US, MAP is fundamentally shaping the ongoing life of the performing arts. Without this grant, my supported project would be hard-pressed to find comparable initial funding to get off the ground. The MAP Fund continues to be a beacon of light for the new work and new ideas born everyday, funded or otherwise.”

More information about the MAP Fund is available at www.mapfund.org

About Creative Capital

Creative Capital supports innovative and adventurous artists across the country through funding, counsel and career development services. Our pioneering approach—inspired by venture-capital principles—helps artists working in all creative disciplines realize their visions and build sustainable practices. Since 1999, Creative Capital has committed $30 million in financial and advisory support to 419 projects representing 529 artists, and our Professional Development Program has reached 7,000 artists in more than 300 communities. For more information, visit www.creative-capital.org.

About DDCF

The mission of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation is to improve the quality of people’s lives through grants supporting the performing arts, environmental conservation, medical research and child well-being, and through preservation of the cultural and environmental legacy of Doris Duke’s properties. The Arts Program of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation focuses its support on contemporary dance, jazz and theatre artists, and the organizations that nurture, present and produce them. To learn more, visit www.ddcf.org.

MAP Fund 2014 Grantees

Afterword
Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago
An interdisciplinary project created by composer George Lewis, media/theater artist Catherine Sullivan, and composer/director Sean Griffin. The work is the aesthetic extension of the final chapter of George Lewis’ book about the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, A Power Stronger Than Itself: The A.A.C.M. and American Experimental Music. The project will develop through a process-based exploration of the book’s content in various forms, and will be realized in an experimental opera, smaller scale concert presentations, and a film installation.

Age and Beauty, Parts 2 and 3
Unique Projects on behalf of Miguel Gutierrez
The second and third installments of a queer performance project created by choreographer Miguel Gutierrez. The works will follow Age and Beauty Part 1: Mid Career Artist/Suicide Note. In Age and Beauty Part 2: Asian Beauty or The Choreographer and Her Muse, and Age and Beauty Part 3: DANCER or You Can Make Whatever The Fuck You Want But You’ll Only Tour Solos, queer theory meets an artist confronting middle age. The pieces use suicidal ideation and time looping as platforms for structural and conceptual investigation and formally function as dance performances while also reflecting Gutierrez’ long-standing commitment to interdisciplinarity by incorporating text, song, and video.

Ancient Lives
Haleakala, Inc. DBA The Kitchen
A live performance project created by playwright and director Tina Satter, and her ensemble Half Straddle. The work, which includes video mise en scene and a live choral score, will create a playful yet poignant experience considering feminist and queer concerns. The Kitchen will also host an eight-month development residency open to the public that offers a meta-view of the performance-building and dramaturgical process.

Antigona
Noche Flamenca
An evening-length flamenco work developed by Artistic Director Martin Santangelo in collaboration with Lee Breuer (who will co­direct), principal dancer Soledad Barrio who will play the title role, as well as other company members. It is a complex interpretation of Sophocles’ classic work, which utilizes sets, costumes and masks designed by renowned visual artist Mary Frank.

At War With Ourselves
Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center
A one-hour, secular, contemporary musical oratorio for the Kronos Quartet and a 500-voice choir, with original score by jazz composer Terence Blanchard, story/libretto/spoken word by National Book Award winning poet Nikky Finney. Performed on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC, the work is created in dual commemoration of interconnected anniversaries of the Civil Rights movement and the sesquicentennial observations of the American Civil War.

Black Man, Running
Fractured Atlas, Inc. on behalf of Working Narratives
A street theater work that incorporates storytelling created by Working Narratives. Conceived of as a series of public runs (as in a jog or footrace) and community dialogues in different U.S. cities, the performance work will address issues of race, public space, safety and democracy.

California: The Tempest
Cornerstone Theater Company
A play created by playwright Alison Carey and director Michael John Garc&eacutes utilizing Cornerstone Theater Company’s community-engaged methodology, which engages diverse and underserved communities to make professional theater productions. The work will explore themes of hunger as part of Cornerstone’s Hunger Cycle.

Decameron Carnival Cruise
Theater Oobleck
A new performance created in collaboration between Theater Oobleck's Dave Buchen and El Circo Nacional de Puerto Rico's Arturo Gaskins. The work will synthesize Oobleck's new play development methodology and El Circo's circus arts expertise, and combine the narrative sweep of a typical Oobleck show, with the philosophical concerns of El Circo: the "brain drain" of Puerto Rico’s creative class from the island.

Doggie Hamlet
Fractured Atlas, Inc. on behalf of Ann Carlson
A site-specific performance created by choreographer Ann Carlson. The work, performed by humans, a herding dog, sheep and a live chamber orchestra, will be presented in a lush green meadow. Interdisciplinary by nature, Doggie Hamlet combines contemporary dance, classic narrative structure, and elements from competitive sheep herding trials to mine the territory of human and non-human relationships and the hierarchy of domestication and different modes of knowing.

Empathy School
EMPAC
A new performance and film/video work by theater artist Aaron Landsman and filmmaker/installation artist Brent Green, created for a night bus ride in the country. Engaging lo- and hi-fi video and sound technologies, the work is performed by the bus driver, and is a dark, poetic story about the impact of landscape on memory, nostalgia on culture, and class-consciousness.

Fondly, Collette Richland
Elevator Repair Service Theater
A new work for the stage created by Elevator Repair Service, written in close collaboration with playwright Sibyl Kempson, and directed by John Collins. This is the first piece that ERS has devised with a living writer and is rooted in the ensemble’s mission to create new works that explore and challenge the fundamentals of live performance. The play will explore non-traditional narrative structures and upend traditional gender roles on-stage.

Four Contemplations
Community MusicWorks
A site-specific work for the Community MusicWorks Players composed by Ken Ueno that will coincide with the rededication of the ten-foot Dainichi Buddha housed at the RISD Museum in Providence. Encompassing three live performances by Ueno and CMW Players and a month-long sound installation in the museum, the project will engage diverse urban communities in contemporary music and ancient Asian art.

GAME OVER
Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company
A live performance created by playwright Nikkole Salter and Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company. The work contains an ambitious concept, which fuses a cyber-narrative about a hacker who eliminates slavery from an American History game, with an embedded online game for audiences to play on their smartphones during performances.

Glorious Ravage
Brava! for Women in the Arts
An evening-length work of music and film by San Francisco Bay Area bassist and composer Lisa Mezzacappa that features a large ensemble of celebrated musicians from the San Francisco and greater California improvisers’ communities performing new music in dialogue with visuals created by Bay Area filmmakers. The program takes as its inspiration the adventures and writings of lady explorers of the 19th century who trekked to the wildest parts of the earth, to escape, to discover, and to lose themselves.

In The Thrust Towards The Future…I Want To Leave Something Of Use
New York Live Arts on behalf of Malcolm Low, Tommy DeFrantz, Damon White
A one-hour multidisciplinary work created by Malcolm Low, Tommy DeFrantz, and Damon White. Inspired by the Great Migration of African Americans in America from 1916 to 1970, the work draws on insights from Isabel Wilkerson's book, The Warmth of Other Suns. Abstract and non-linear, In The Thrust will bring together post-modern and neo-classical African American dancers through the use of movement, text, video and original score.

johnbrown
Gametophyte, Inc.
A multidisciplinary, evening length meditation on the controversial white abolitionist John Brown, directed by choreographer/video artist Dean Moss with assistance from visual artist Laylah Ali. Drawing on a deep interest in the history of the man and his actions, an impassioned interview of Moss' father on the elder’s civil rights experience, and framed with the assistance of unaffected teenaged participants, the work presents a layered generational perspective on the legacy of the radical activist.

LGBT Requiem Mass
Portland Institute for Contemporary Art on behalf of Holcombe Waller
A music composition/performance created by singer, composer, and performing artist Holcombe Waller. The work will honor LGBT people persecuted - or abandoned to persecution - in the name of religion. Intended for both arts and liturgical contexts, this project will unite artists, religious congregations, arts presenters and communities seeking common ground in the global movement for LGBT safety and equality.

Made in China
Wakka Wakka Productions
A dark musical comedy created by Wakka Wakka Productions featuring over 30 puppets and masks, 7 puppeteers, and 3 musicians performing music inspired by both American and Chinese folk traditions, and animated video. The work explores the complicated relationship between the U.S. and China, specifically related to the production and consumption of goods, as examined through the lens of an unlikely relationship between an eccentric middle-aged American woman and her Chinese ex-pat neighbor.

Nogales
Arizona State University – School of Film, Dance & Theatre
A new play by Richard Montoya and Sean San Jos&eacute, with visual design by Joan Osato. An expansion of the conceptual framework from their previous work The River, the collaborators will create an immersive platform for the play that includes a statewide community engagement project, film, media, and installation. Nogales aims to fully understand and humanize all the “players” entrapped in the endless “Tragic-comic Theater of the US/Mexico Border.”

/peh-LO-tah/
MAPP International Productions
A full-evening performance work written by Marc Bamuthi Joseph, with visual design by Balinese shadow animator Christine Marie. The work, which blends poetic narrative, dance, music, and a visual world, will link the “beautiful game” of soccer to local and global economic hierarchies, fan behaviors, political allegiances and social practices. Drawn from extensive research in South Africa and Brazil, it is an investigation of the underpinnings of yearning democracies, the contradictory implications of the world’s most popular pastime, and Joseph’s confrontations with his own body as a figure in both the language of sport and art.

Play Ball
Forklift Danceworks
A grand civic spectacle created by choreographer Allison Orr. Rooted in a two-year creative partnership with the Astros Major League Baseball Organization, the work fuses Orr’s 15 years of ethnographic choreography with the traditions and ritualized movement of America's national pastime — baseball. Featuring Astros players as well as 500+ additional stadium staff and community members, the performance will weave together choreographed movement along with interviews, video projection, and cameos by retired star players, performed to a live original musical score in Houston’s Minute Maid Park for an audience of 20,000+.

Playhouse Follies
Abrons Art Center
An interdisciplinary work created by master puppeteer and director Basil Twist. The work will be conceived especially for the Abron’s Playhouse and will utilize its unique resources and archival materials to celebrate the rich history of its diverse artists and audiences. While the formal structure has yet to be determined, Twist will continue and even push the Playhouse’s tradition of presenting Opera, Broadway, and the avant-garde.

Predator Songstress: Dictator
Circuit Network on behalf of Joshua Kohl and Haruko Nishimura
The latest chapter of a series of portraits of imagined iconic women created by Degenerate Art Ensemble. The work examines power, transformation, and hidden phenomenon, using dance, music, mass group interaction, architectural site transformation and contemporary s&eacuteance.

Remains
Thin Man Dance, Inc.
A dance work by choreographer John Jasperse in collaboration with James Clotfelter. The work deals with the illusion of self as separate and the notion of legacy as the ensemble of interconnected cause-effect relationships with ones' environs. The dance will be constructed with a notion of an extended body that involves physical objects and some technology (perhaps rudimentary), where the dance, or some residue thereof, might continue to exist in some form without the dancers.

Rivers of Sound
The Jazz Gallery on behalf of Amir ElSaffar
A 60-minute work composed by Amir ElSaffar for an ensemble of 17 instrumentalists and vocalists of diverse musical backgrounds, performing on Arab, Central Asian, South Asian, and Western instruments. Using resonance as its governing principle, the music incorporates elements of maqam modal music of the Middle East with jazz and other contemporary musical practices to create a unique microtonal musical environment that moves beyond the notions of style and tradition into a realm of uninhibited musical communication.

Stories From the Trees
Earshot Jazz on behalf of Paul Rucker
The re-imagining of vintage lynching postcards with animation, live restaging of attendants, new composition, and live performance. This project will bring to life the different scenarios of lynchings, places where communities gathered with women and children proudly watching these atrocities.

Thank You For Coming: PLAY
Performance Zone, Inc. DBA The Field on behalf of Faye Driscoll
The second part in a series of choreographic works created by Faye Driscoll. The project heightens how we experience ourselves in relation to other bodies and stories, and the spaces we all inhabit, as a company of performers, designers, and supporters is built around a long-term creative endeavor. PLAY focuses on the ritual of storytelling, forcing it to the top of a physically driven dance-play, which investigates our reliance on stories to relate to one another and form identities as individuals and citizens. The conflation of Driscoll’s life story with the performers, collaborators, and others will ultimately create a quasi-fictional collective autobiography that is danced, sung, and spoken.

The Anastasio Project
EastSide Arts Alliance
A series of multi-disciplinary performance pieces created by Steven Sanchez, Leslie D. Lopez, and (NAKA) Navarrete x Kajiyama Dance Theater. The project includes outdoor theater performances (in the tradition of Teatro Campesino); video installations, workshops and interviews that address the brutal killing of Anastasio Hernandez-Rojas and other examples of state violence – Rodney King, Trayvon Martin and in particular, the killing of Oscar Grant by BART police here in Oakland.

The Demo
Ridge Theater on behalf of Ben Neill and Mikel Rouse
An electronic opera by composer/performers Mikel Rouse and Ben Neill, directed by Bob McGrath. The piece is inspired by the remarkable story of computer pioneer Douglas Engelbart’s prophetic vision of a world interconnected through personal computers. Using emerging digital technologies to explore live performance with sampled media and original music, The Demo reveals the origin of computing and the internet as a unique hybrid performance event.

The Installment
New York Live Arts on behalf of Juliana F. May
An evening length performance created by choreographer Juliana F. May and collaborators set designer Brad Kisicki, composer Chris Seeds and lighting designer Chloe Z. Brown. Performers include Benjamin Asriel, Lindsay Clark, Talya Epstein, Luke George, Kayvon Pourazar and Maggie Thom. The work embraces a simultaneous compositional structure that makes a case for abstraction and its ability to communicate new narrative systems.

The Light House
SITI Company
An environmental theater production and collaboration between visual artist Ann Hamilton, director Anne Bogart and SITI Company. Unfolding over the course of five hours, the work is a durational experience that provides the audience with a place and time set apart from the demanding world of speed and multi-tasking interconnectivity. At once aural, kinesthetic, visual, literary and sensational, the sounds and imagery are influenced and stimulated by Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, and will include text excerpts from the novel itself.

The Object Lesson
Performance Zone, Inc. DBA The Field on behalf of Geoff Sobelle
A solo performance/installation created by Geoff Sobelle for one performer, a mobile audience, and a massive amount of "stuff." Audiences will be invited to enter a space filled with cardboard boxes that they are welcome to pick through and explore. The performer, emerging from the audience, begins to unpack and finds&#8230a telephone. A lamp-shade. A chair…Flotsam and jetsam of a life that could be his, or…anyone's. Meaningless things, yet suddenly imbued with memory - then dropped, forgotten, lost again. The work is a futile mystery, a meditation on the stuff we cling to and the crap we leave behind for others to clean up.

The Scarlet Ibis
HERE Arts Center on behalf of Stefan Weisman, David Cote, and Mallory Catlett
A mixed-media opera created in collaboration by composer Stefan Weisman, librettist David Cote, director Mallory Catlett, puppet artist Tom Lee and set and video designer Joseph Silovsky. The work interrogates normalcy, nature and the family by fusing singers, puppets and stagecraft to evoke a pre-digital world: rural North Carolina circa 1912.

The Social
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
An interactive, participatory dance work by choreographer Kyle Abraham. The work, rooted in rave culture, investigates the whimsical dance vocabulary of American social dances through the decades, in the context of social movements that transformed the country while these dances were in use. Based on his extensive interviews and community-based activities with people living in cities across America, Abraham will explore social dance styles as diverse as the cotillions of the South and the Motown and electronic music scene of the Midwest, later translating this research into a new dance work, as well as a documentary film and a book rich with imagery and writings.

This Was Made Here
Fractured Atlas, Inc. on behalf of Meklit Hadero
A body of songs created by singer-songwriter Meklit Hadero. The work will be born from a musical deconstruction, taking core elements of Ethiopian and jazz music traditions, and using them as foundational building blocks for songs exploring the arrival of the Ethiopian Diaspora en masse to North America.

Untitled Project About Guns
So Percussion
A Greek Tragedy/Tragic Opera created by So Percussion, choreographer Emily Johnson, and director Ain Gordon. Taking the form of a series of episodes, each followed by a commentary from a ‘(Greek) Chorus of Drummers,’ the work questions our relationships with guns: our knee-jerk aversion to, our ignorance of, our urban-centered estrangement from, and our recoil from what could be called simply an object (if it weren’t for its daunting power).

Vine of the Dead
The Collapsible Giraffe on behalf of Jim Findlay
A visual art performance created by theater artist Jim Findlay. The work will consist of three nested elements, two of them simultaneous and dependent live performance events and a subsequent third element - a dual channel video projection installation that functions as a ghost trace of the event in the space where it occurred. Vine of the Dead attempts to communicate across the divide between life and death while investigating the place and meaning of ritual in the 21st century.

We Are The Paper We Are The Trees
Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions
A collaborative multidisciplinary performance by choreographer taisha paggett, experimental filmmaker Cauleen Smith, and sculptor Rodney McMillian. Over the course of two months the artists will create a raw interior landscape that is built up, shifted around, and rebuilt. Ultimately, the work delves into relationships between the Black body, belonging, nature, and urban environments.

ZERO ONE
Performance Zone, Inc. DBA The Field on behalf of Yasuko Yokoshi
A live performance work created by choreographer Yasuko Yokoshi. The work is a multi-layered dialogue between movie “Hangman Takuzo” and a duet by mono-amniotic twins, the Fukuoka sisters. Pairing the duet and the movie together, ZERO ONE challenges the viewers’ capacity to suspend their preconceptions as well as expand their perspectives to include kinetic thinking.


]]><![CDATA[November 04th, 2013]]>Mon, 04 Nov 2013 09:58:07 GMThttp://www.joanosato.org/archive/november-04th-2013Picture
Campo Santo, Cal Shakes do some Califas dreaming

Chad Jones 0 comments California Shakespeare Theater, Campo Santo, Catherine Castellanos, Intersection for the Arts, Jonathan Moscone, Sean San Jose

Nov 04

EXTENDED THROUGH NOV. 23

Sean San José is Isaac in the Campo Santo/California Shakespeare Theater production of Alleluia, the Road by Luis Alfaro. The play is one part of the elaborate Califas Festival at Intersection for the Arts. Photo courtesy of Intersection for the Arts




There’s something extraordinary happening at Intersection for the Arts, and only part of it has to do with theater. Intersection, along with Campo Santo and California Shakespeare Theater have been partners for years, but their current collaboration is kind of staggering.

It began back last April with a production of Richard Montoya’s The River directed by Campo Santo’s Sean San José (read my review here) and continued with Cal Shakes’ season opener, Montoya’s American Night: The Ballad of Juan José in June starring San José and directed by Jonathan Moscone (read my review here).

Now we have the culmination of the collaboration in the Califas Festival, a multimedia exploration of what it means to be a Californian. There are filmed documentaries on display in the galleries alongside photo documentations and some really staggering art, not to mention a floor covered with letters written by theatergoers from the previous plays and notes they wrote for proverbial bottles. When you go to see the play, which is sort of the centerpiece art, you are completely immersed in this astonishing exhibition. The play takes place in one of the two installation rooms, and there’s no central stage. The action takes place all over the room, with different parts of the exhibition providing the backdrop.

The play, Alleluia the Road by Luis Alfaro, is one more part of this California mosaic. Moscone directs and San José stars, and though critics have been asked not to review the show itself, potential audience members should know that this experience – the art and the play – cannot be missed. As with every Campo Santo production, you are guaranteed intelligence and emotion and powerful writing and incredible performances. If all you knew about this play was that it was written by Alfaro (whose Oedipus El Rey and Bruja have been so powerfully engaging at the Magic Theatre) and that it stars San José and Catherine Castellanos and Nora el Samahy and Brian Rivera and Donald E. Lacy Jr. among others, you would know that is something you need to see. If you care at all about Bay Area theater.

Come early for the show or make time to stay after, but engage with the exhibition (I highly recommend the 10-minute documentary Aquadettes by Drea Cooper and Zackary Canepari). At a recent performance, it was heartening to see audience members writing letters and postcards during intermission to add to the exhibition. This isn’t one of those art things offering hollow jabber about interactivity. This really as interactive as you’d like it to be.

And just to be clear about Alleluia, the Road – this is not a performance piece in a gallery. It’s a full-on, two-act play (about two hours in length) that takes a figurative road trip through the Golden State. And when it comes right down to it, you can have all the art and photography and documentary films in the world to beguile viewers, but when the lights go down on a performance, what matters most is story, emotion, connection. That’s definitely the case here, but that level of engagement almost always happens when Campo Santo, Cal Shakes and Intersection engage in that thing we need so much more of in the Bay Area theater world: collaboration.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
The Califas Festival and Alleluia, the Road continues an extended run through Nov. 23 at Intersection for the Arts, 925 Mission St., San Francisco. Tickets for the play are $30. Visit www.theintersection.org.

]]><![CDATA[The MAP Fund Announces 2013 Grantees]]>Mon, 08 Apr 2013 08:52:16 GMThttp://www.joanosato.org/archive/the-map-fund-announces-2013-granteesProgram News: The MAP Fund Announces 2013 Grants to 41 Groundbreaking Performance Projects

April 8, 2013

 

Today, The MAP Fund, administered by Creative Capital, announced its 2013 grants to 41 groundbreaking projects involving 70 generative artists. For this, its 24th year, the MAP Fund will provide direct project funding ranging from $15,000 to $40,000, plus an additional $200,000 total in general operating grants to all applicant organizations and artists. Since its founding in 1988, the MAP Fund has provided more than $24 million in project funding to nearly one thousand works across all performing arts disciplines, $1 million in general operating funds since 2009, and $600,000 in research and development grants since 2010.

"Over the years, the MAP Fund has consistently identified the most exciting artists and projects to support," says Ruby Lerner, President & Executive Director of Creative Capital, which administers the MAP Fund. "We are so proud and honored to house this vital program for the performing arts."

The MAP Fund is founded on the principle that experimentation drives human progress, no less in art than in science or medicine. MAP supports artists, ensembles, producers and presenters whose work in the disciplines of contemporary performance embodies this spirit of exploration and deep inquiry. MAP is particularly interested in supporting work that examines notions of cultural difference or "the other," be that in class, gender, generation, race, religion, sexual orientation or other aspects of diversity.

The 2013 grantee projects represent these principles in highly contemporary and unexpected ways. Among the 41 works, for example, are a collaboration between Pakistani singer Zeb Bangash and American klezmer clarinetist Michael Winograd; New York-based, Zimbabwe-born choreographer Nora Chipaumire's reconsideration of The Rite of Spring; and a new opera from composer Ted Hearn about the trial of alleged Wikileaks source Private First Class Bradley Manning. For full descriptions of the 2013 grantee projects, visit our website.

Ben Cameron, Doris Duke Charitable Foundation's Program Director for the Arts, notes, "For the last twenty-five years, the MAP Fund has been at the forefront of supporting exciting projects and extraordinary talent. We at the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation are proud to support this exemplary program and look forward to the various works to be created with this year's grants."

Selection Process & Panelists

This year, the MAP Fund received a total of 813 submissions from artists in 42 states, reviewed in three stages by 58 arts professionals and artists from across the country serving as readers, evaluators and panelists.

For the 2013 awards, the panelists who selected the final projects were: Pia Agrawal (independent producer, Austin, TX), Michelle Boulé (independent dance artist, New York), Bill Bragin (Director of Public Programming, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, New York), Don Byron (independent composer, New Jersey), Jess Curtis (choreographer/director, Artistic Director, Jess Curtis/Gravity, San Francisco/Berlin), Jackie Sibblies Drury (playwright, New York), Cathy Edwards (Director of Programming, International Festival of Arts and Ideas, New Haven, CT), Gayle Isa (Executive Director, Asian Arts Initiative, Philadelphia), Jaamil Olawale Kosoko (Producing Associate, New York Live Arts, Co-Director of anonymous bodies II art colllective, Philadelphia), Tommy Kriegsmann (President, ArKtype, New York), Mark Murphy (Executive Director, REDCAT, Los Angeles) and Susan Narucki (soprano and professor of music, University of California at San Diego).

About the MAP Fund

The MAP Fund is supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The program, which was established by the Rockefeller Foundation in 1988, has supported innovation and cross-cultural exploration in theater, dance and music for more than two decades. Among the longest-lived programs in arts philanthropy, MAP has disbursed over $24 million dollars to more than one thousand projects. Creative Capital has administered the program since 2001. For more information, visit www.mapfund.org.

About Creative Capital

Creative Capital supports innovative and adventurous artists across the country through funding, counsel and career development services. Our pioneering approach—inspired by venture-capital principles—helps artists working in all creative disciplines realize their visions and build sustainable practices. Since 1999, Creative Capital has committed $29 million in financial and advisory support to 418 projects representing 529 artists, and our Professional Development Program has reached 5,500 artists in more than 150 communities. For more information, visit www.creative-capital.org.

Alarm Will Sound, Inc.
The Hunger, a new opera on the inequities that led to the Great Famine in Ireland for Alarm Will Sound, Dawn Upshaw, and Iarla O'Lionáird.

Ars Nova Theater I, Inc.
Jacuzzi, a new play commission for The Debate Society, explores class inequality and competition among modern day servants.

Automata for Cloud Eye Control
Half Life, Cloud Eye Control's multidisciplinary performance piece inspired by personal blog postings of Japanese housewives who were directly affected by the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster.

Bang on a Can
Bulgarian Asphalt, a new commission for Bang on a Can's Asphalt Orchestra, including music by Ivo Papasov and movement by Parker Lutz.

Beth Morrison Projects
The Source, a music-theatre piece composed by Ted Hearne with libretto by Mark Doten and video by Nikolai Antonie, questions the consequences of information transparency in the 21st century.

Big Dance Theater
ADAM SMITHEE, a dance/theater triptych co-conceived by Paul Lazar and Annie-B Parson in collaboration with video designer Jeff Parson, in which the company simultaneously employs techniques of narrative abstraction and hyper-narration through choreographic, video, aural, and textual fragmentation.

Center for Traditional Music and Dance
The Pomegranate of Sistan, a musical collaboration between Pakistani vocalist Zeb Bangash and American klezmer clarinetist Michael Winograd, addresses religious orthodoxy and nationalism across cultural divides.

Children's Theatre Company
The Fre, a new theatrical experience created by performance artist Taylor Mac, questions what it means to behave "correctly" for multi-generational audiences.

Columbia Music Festival Association for Wideman/Davis Dance
Ruptured Silence: Racist Symbolism and Signs, a new dance theater work that questions the history of the confederate flag and its current role in the southern United States.

CounterPULSE for Laura Arrington, Jesse Hewitt
Adult, a collaboration between Laura Arrington and Jesse Hewitt, is a work/ a love song/ a murder plot/ a funeral/ and a dance that subverts the pervasive experience of the duet in two acts.

Dancers' Group for Dohee Lee
The Mago Project, Dohee Lee's new performance installation, integrates music, dance, animation, ritual, mudangism, and a custom-designed "eye harp," which represents the intersections between Lee's life and Korean Mago mythology.

Forklift Danceworks
PowerUP, a grand civic spectacle choreographed by Allison Orr, which highlights the inherent beauty and artistry found in the daily work of the Austin Energy linemen.

Fractured Atlas, Inc. for Susie Ibarra, Roberto Juan Rodriguez, Makoto Fujimura
Digital Sanctuaries, a digital soundwalk where the listener finds meditative spaces at twelve sites in Lower Manhattan, featuring original music composed by Electric Kulintang (Susie Ibarra and Roberto Rodriguez).

Fractured Atlas, Inc. for Nature Theater of Oklahoma
Life and Times (Episodes 6 & 7 of the ten-part series), conceived and executed by Nature Theater of Oklahoma, will explore the next iterations of the epic serial biography as a radio play and a film.

French Institute Alliance Française
rite riot, a two-part work by Nora Chipaumire commissioned by the Crossing the Line festival, challenges the colonial perspective of the original Rite of Spring and the assumptions of age, social status, and vulnerability that defined the sacrificial victim.

Haleakala, Inc. DBA The Kitchen
Platonov, or the Disinherited is a live-cinema performance based on Anton Chekhov's unfinished, first full-length play, created and staged in two unique environments by Jay Scheib and Company.

Harlem Stage
The Idea(s) of Harlem, a song cycle conceived by musician/composer/visual artist STEW, explores both the reality and myth of Harlem through the lens of writer James Baldwin.

Headlong Dance Theater
Tugboat Jupiter, directed by Headlong's Amy Smith, is a new immersive dance theater piece that takes place on the Delaware River aboard the restored 110-year-old tugboat Jupiter.

iLAND, Inc.
In Tow – what and who we move forward with is a laboratory for experimentation across aesthetic, historical and geographic contexts – a year-long, multi-faceted collaborative project between Zeena Parkins, David Zambrano, DD Dorvillier, Jennifer Monson, and other cultural producers who reside in Urbana, IL.

Intersection for the Arts for Jonathan Moscone, Campo Santo, Joan Osato
Alleluia, The Road, is a series of performance and exhibition roadside attractions and revival tents that re-imagine collective identity created by Luis Alfaro, Joan Osato, Jonathon Moscone and California Shakespeare Theater.

Kronos Quartet
A Meditation on War, created in collaboration between Kronos Quartet and composer Aleksandra Vrebalov, is a new work for string quartet and film in commemoration of the centennial of the outbreak of World War I.

Los Angeles Poverty Department
HOSPITAL, a new collaborative theater work by LAPD and Netherlands based Wunderbaum, addresses the human needs and experiences of people seeking health care amidst climates of policy reform.

Miami Light Project, Inc.
Third Trinity, created by writer/performer Teo Castellanos and director/dramaturg Tarell McCraney, is a new play that explores Puerto Rican Nationalism and the Drug Wars of the late 1980s.

New York City Players, Inc.
Mona's House, a new play written and directed by Tina Satter, deals with queer family structures and the creative process as explored through the relationship between four men at a tap dance studio in a small American town.

New York Foundation for the Arts for Maria Hassabi
PREMIERE, a new work by Maria Hassabi, explores the concept behind its title (the "first performance") and features performers Andros-Zins Browne, HristoulaHarakas, Paige Martin, Robert Steijn, and Maria Hassabi, sound designer Alex Waterman, and visual artist/dramaturg Scott Lyall.

New York Live Arts, Inc.
When the Wolves Came In (working title), an historical homage to the Emancipation Proclamation, includes two new choreographic works by 2012-2014 New York Live Arts Resident Commissioned Artist Kyle Abraham and his company Kyle Abraham/Abraham.In.Motion.

On the Boards
the quartet, a durational, contemporary performance created by Heather Kravas and four performers, is a post-hierarchical, choreographic investigation inspired by the concentration and implications of self-identifying communities.

On the Boards
The Clay Duke, a devised dance-theater work created by Dayna Hanson, explores the complex connections between guns and mental health.

Philadelphia Live Arts Festival and Philly Fringe for Thaddeus Phillips
17 Border Crossings // 17 Fronteras, a new series of monologue format "mini-plays" by Thaddeus Phillips, weaves together real accounts of international border crossings into a dramatic examination of imaginary lines, arbitrary passports and curious customs.

Providence Productions International, Inc.
Mediation, a new live performance where pre-recorded sound, video, and text form the basis for improvisational collaboration between the three lead artists – "Blue" Gene Tyranny, HisaoIharra, and Mary Griffin.

Ragamala Dance
Song of the Jasmine is a new dance work conceived by Aparna Ramaswamy and created in collaboration with jazz saxophonist/composer Rudresh Mahanthappa, two first-generation Indian-American artists whose cultural identities have influenced their artistry in different ways.

Regents of the University of Minnesota, Northrop Concerts & Lectures
The Gathering, a long-term engagement residency and performance event, serves as an incubator for the development of Emily Johnson's latest work SHORE, and the generation of new processes for Johnson's engagement theories and practices.

Salvage Vanguard Theater
Bright Now Beyond, basedupon The Marvelous Land of Oz, is a new musical theater event written by Daniel Alexander Jones, composed by Bobby Halvorson, and developed and presented by Salvage Vanguard Theater.

Sojourn Theatre
Islands of Milwaukee, a devised, cross-disciplinary project created by Sojourn Theatre and Ann Basting, jumpstarts cross-community conversations about connectedness, homebound seniors, public health policy, and arts-based civic practice in Milwaukee.

The Civilians
Bogota Prison Pageant, an original play developed by The Civilians and the Goodman Theatre, is inspired by an annual beauty pageant in El Buen Pastor women's prison, the national women's prison of Bogotá, Colombia.

The New Group
Intimacy, a new play by Thomas Bradshaw, is about the integration and naturalization of pornography in American suburbia.

The Performance Zone, Inc. DBA The Field for luciana achugar
OTRO TEATRO, luciana achugar's latest work, is a dance to be felt as it is seen and an occasion for communion as a dark rite of passage, from destruction to rebuilding and renewal.

The Play Company
Ludic Proxy, a commission by The Play Company, explores the ubiquitous nature of gaming culture, video simulation and technology, and the tenuous line between reality and fantasy in an immersive theatrical landscape.

Thin Man Dance, Inc.
From once between (working title), created by choreographer John Jasperse and composer Jonathan Bepler, is a new evening length work informed by the phenomenon of emergence.

Yerba Buena Gardens Festival
Noches de Parrandas, a new composition by Yosvany Terry, syncretizes jazz and symphonic music to create a contemporary orchestral representation of Las Noches de Parrandas of Remedios, Cuba.

Young Jean Lee's Theater Company
STRAIGHT WHITE MEN, Young Jean Lee's Theater Company's latest work, examines a striking aspect of the current cultural moment in America in relation to straight white male identity and privilege.

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