Produced by ContemporaryPerformance.com and the Sarah Lawrence College MFA Theatre Program, the SLC Performance lab interviews visiting artists to the MFA Theatre Program's Grad Lab, one of the core classes of the program where grads work with guest artists and develop group generated performance pieces monthly.

Jennifer Kidwell’s (b. 1978) poignant, performer-driven theater work addresses the complexities of race and notions of American history with sharp intelligence and wry humor. Invested in probing challenging social and historical truths, Kidwell says her work is “concerned with discomfort and/or confusion around normative practices and systems.” With Scott Sheppard, she premiered and performed in Underground Railroad Game, lauded by The Philadelphia Inquirer as a “brilliant theatrical commentary on contemporary race relations.” A graduate of Pig Iron Theatre Company’s School for Advanced Performance Training, Kidwell created and appeared in the company’s Center-funded project, I Promised Myself to Live Faster, and The Wilma Theater’s production of Antigone. For the 2014 Whitney Biennial, she performed in Joe Scanlan’s provocative piece Dick’s Last Stand as the artist Donelle Woolford. She is co-artistic director of the theater company Lightning Rod Special and co-founder of the Brooklyn-based performance space JACK. She holds a BA in English and comparative literature from Columbia University.

Edited and Produced by Kyrie Ellison (SLC21)

Episode 01.01 SLC Performance Lab With Jennifer Kidwell

Produced by ContemporaryPerformance.com and the Sarah Lawrence College MFA Theatre Program, the SLC Performance lab interviews visiting artists to the MFA Theatre Program's Grad Lab, one of the core classes of the program where grads work with guest artists and develop group generated performance pieces monthly.

Deb Margolin is a playwright, actor, and founding member of Split Britches Theater Company. She is the author of numerous plays, including Imagining Madoff, Turquoise, and Bringing the Fishermen Home, as well as 10 solo performance plays which she has toured throughout the US, the most recent of which is 8 STOPS, a comedy concerning the grief of endless compassion! 8 STOPS takes a long, humorous, tender look at motherhood, the suburbs, the fear of death, and the inheritability of ideas.

Interviewed by Joanna Eisenberg (SLC 20) and  Kyrie Ellison's (SLC21)

Edited and Produced by Kyrie Ellison (SLC21)

Episode 01.02 SLC Performance Lab With Deb Margolin

Produced by ContemporaryPerformance.com and the Sarah Lawrence College MFA Theatre Program, the SLC Performance Lab interviews visiting artists to the MFA Theatre Program’s Grad Lab, one of the core classes of the program where grads work with guest artists and develop group generated performance pieces monthly.

Our second episode features Puppeteer, Designer, and Teacher, Tom Lee

Edited and Produced by Kyrie Ellison (SLC21)

Episode 01.03 SLC Performance Lab With Tom Lee

Produced by ContemporaryPerformance.com and the Sarah Lawrence College MFA Theatre Program, the SLC Performance Lab interviews visiting artists to the MFA Theatre Program’s Grad Lab, one of the core classes of the program where grads work with guest artists and develop group generated performance pieces monthly.

Our Fourth episode features composer and singer Kamala Sankaram

Edited and Produced by Kyrie Ellison (SLC21)

Episode 01.04 SLC Performance Lab With Kamala Sankaram

Doug Wright Interviewed by Rebecca Geminn and Kyrie Ellison
Doug Wright (Playwright) earned the Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award for his play I Am My Own Wife. Other Broadway works include War Paint, Grey Gardens (Tony nomination), The Little Mermaid and Hands on a Hardbody. Film credits include Quills, based on his Obie Award-winning play and nominated for three Academy Awards. Television credits include Tony Bennett: An American Classic, directed by Rob Marshall. Honors include the Benjamin Dank Prize (the American Academy of Arts and Letters), the Tolerance Prize (Kulturforum Europa) and the Paul Selvin Award (Writers Guild of America). He is the president of the Dramatists Guild, a member of the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers, a frequent guest at Yaddo, and serves on the board of the New York Theatre Workshop. Mr. Wright is married to singer/songwriter David Clement. Photo Credit: Joan Marcus.

Edited and Produced by Kyrie Ellison (SLC21)

Episode 01.05 SLC Performance Lab With Doug Wright

Emily Ritger is a director, playwright, performer and choreographer based in Chicago. As a teacher and director developing new work, she has worked for American Theatre Company, Redmoon, Cleveland Public Theatre, Northlight Theatre, ChiArts, The New Harmony Project and The National High School Institute.

While Ritger’s focus is in ensemble based work, her diverse training includes Viola Spolin Theatre Games, Viewpoints, Puppetry, Contact Improv, experimental methods of writing and various forms of music, creating work that is saturated in movement, music and play. Her work draws from her experience of growing up in small town Wisconsin. It celebrates rural america - its voice, land, dialect, sense of community and the people who carry on the traditions and way of life inherent to living off the land. With the agrarian landscape as her cornerstone, her work explores the philosophy and religion inherent in nature and living off the land, and the cyclical birth and death inherent in life on a farm.
Her current projects include her solo show, "Crud", part documentary style theatre, part fantastical music and shadow puppetry, examining a day her family never talks about. "Behaymas", a collaboration with playwright Aliza Bartfield, three humans and one animal blur the lines of domesticity and societal constructions of family. And her play "The Day Krissy LeDuke Fell Through the Ice", is a moment in time and its arrayed vectors of tragedy told through free verse and music.
She has studied with theater artists Dan Hurlin, David Neumann, Sibyl Kempson, Tina Landau, Brett Bailey, Claudia Castellucci, Aretha Sills, Shirley Kaplan, Cassandra Medley, Stuart Spencer and Tom Lee, and received her MFA in Theater from Sarah Lawrence College and a BS in Theatre and Philosophy from the University of Evansville.

Edited and Produced by Kyrie Ellison (SLC21)
Interviewed by Anne Bakan (SLC20) and Kyrie Ellison (SLC21)

Podcast: Episode 01.10 SLC Performance Lab With Emily Ritger

Sarah Lawrence College MFA Theatre Program has partnered with ContemporaryPerformance.com to produce the SLC Performance Lab Podcast. The SLC Performance lab interviews visiting artists to the MFA Theatre Program’s Grad Lab, one of the core classes of the program where graduate students work with guest artists and develop group generated performance pieces each monthly.

Podcast: Episode 01.10 SLC Performance Lab With Emily Ritger

SLC Performance Lab

Related tracks