Faculty

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Miriam Felton-Dansky

Miriam Felton-Dansky is Associate Professor of Theater & Performance and Director of Bard's Undergraduate Theater & Performance Program. Her research and teaching interests include experimental and avant-garde performance, the politics of attention and spectatorship, and theater in the digital age. Her book Viral Performance: Contagious Theaters From Modernism to the Digital Age was published by Northwestern University Press in 2018. Her articles and essays have appeared in publications such as Theatre Survey, Theatre Journal, Theater, PAJ, ASAP/J, and Artforum.com, and she was a theater critic for the Village Voice from 2009-2018. She is a regular cohost of the On Tap theater and performance studies podcast, and a contributing editor for Theater, where she guest co-edited the "Digital Dramaturgies" trilogy (2012-2018). BA: Barnard College; MFA/DFA: Yale School of Drama. At Bard since 2012.

Phone: (845)758-7960
Email: [email protected]

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Jack Ferver

Jack Ferver is a New York based writer, choreographer, and director. Their genre defying performances, which have been called “so extreme that they sometimes look and feel like exorcisms” (the New Yorker), explore the tragicomedy of the human psyche. Ferver’s “darkly humorous” (the New York Times) works interrogate and indict an array of psychological and socio-political issues, particularly in the realms of gender, sexual orientation, and power struggles. Their visionary direction blurs boundaries between fantastic theatrics and stark naturalism, character and self, humor and horror.

Ferver’s works have been presented in New York City at the New Museum; New York Live Arts; The Kitchen; The French Institute Alliance Française, as part of Crossing the Line; Abrons Arts Center; Gibney Dance; Performance Space 122; the Museum of Arts and Design, as part of Performa 11; Danspace Project; and Dixon Place. Domestically and internationally, Ferver has been presented by the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College (NY); American Dance Institute (MD); Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (IL); Portland Institute of Contemporary Art (OR); the Institute of Contemporary Art at MECA (ME); the Institute of Contemporary Art (MA); Diverse Works in collaboration with the Contemporary Arts Museum of Houston (TX); and Théâtre de Vanves (France).

Ferver’s work has been critically acclaimed in the New York Times, La Monde, Artforum, the New Yorker, Time Out NY, Modern Painters, the Financial Times, the Village Voice, and ArtsJournal. Ferver has received residencies and fellowships from the Maggie Allesee National Center of Choreography at Florida State (2012); Baryshnikov Arts Center (2013); the Watermill Center (2014); the Institute of Contemporary Art at Maine College of Art (2014); and Live Arts Bard, the commissioning and residency program of The Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College (2014); and Abrons Art Center (2014-2015). They are a 2016 recipient of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grant.

Ferver teaches at Bard College in Theater and Performance and for the graduate Vocal Art Program. They have also taught at NYU Tisch, SUNY Purchase, and have set choreography at The Juilliard School. As an actor they have appeared in numerous films and television series and plays. They are currently working on a solo work to be presented in collaboration with the visual artist Marc Swanson at Mass MoCA and a new play with the playwright Jeremy O Harris.

https://www.jackferver.org/

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Tania El Khoury

Director, OSUN Center for Human Rights & the Arts. Tania El Khoury is a distinguished artist in residence in Theater & Performance and the director of the OSUN Center for Human Rights & the Arts at Bard. She is an artist who creates interactive installations and performances that reflect on the production of collective memory and the cultivation of solidarity. Her work is activated by tactile, auditory, and visual materials collected and curated by the artist and her collaborators, which are ultimately transformed through audience interaction. El Khoury’s work engages questions of displacement, border systems, privatization, and the politics of space, exploring how they are shaped through nation-building projects and colonial legacies. Her work has been translated into multiple languages and shown in 33 countries across six continents in spaces ranging from museums to cable cars. She is the recipient of the Herb Alpert Award (2023); Soros Art Fellowship (2019); Bessie Award for Outstanding Production (2019); International Live Art Prize (2017); GOOD 100, GOOD magazine’s list of people from around the globe who are improving the world; Total Theatre Innovation Award (2011), and Arches Brick Award (2011). She is also the recipient of grants from, among others, the British Council, Arts Council England, and Arab Fund for Arts and Culture; and residencies at Campbelltown Arts Centre in Australia, Spielart Festival in Munich, Fierce Festival in Birmingham, Long Island’s Watermill Center, and BankART Gallery in Yokohama. El Khoury is associated with Forest Fringe, a collective of artists in the United Kingdom, and is cofounder of Dictaphone Group in Lebanon, a live art and urban research collective. She cocurated Tashweesh, a festival on feminist practices in Southwest Asia, North Africa, and Europe, taking place across the three cities of Tunis, Brussels, and Vienna in 2022.

She also cocurated the 2023 edition of Live Arts Bard at the Fisher Center, Common Ground: An International Festival on the Politics of Land and Food, and the 2019 edition, Where No Wall Remains: An International Festival about Borders. Recent artworks include Memory of Birds (2023); Cultural Exchange Rate (2019); The Search for Power (2018); As Far As My Fingertips Take Me (2016); Gardens Speak (2014), and others.

Her publications include The Search for Power (2020) and Gardens Speak (2016), both published by Tadween Publishing; “Camp Pause: Stories from Rashidieh Camp and the Sea,” in Jadaliyya; “Performing the Arab,” in Kohl: A Journal for Body and Gender Research; “The Contested Scenography of The Revolution,” “Two Live Artists in the Theatre,” and “Swimming in Sewage, Political Performances in the Mediterranean,” in Performance Research; and “We Are All Witnesses: The Arab Spring in Photos and Electronic Wars” and “Spaces and Bodies in Arab Revolutionary Art” in Journal of Palestine Studies.

BA, Institute of Fine Arts, Lebanese University; postgraduate certificate, School of Physical Theatre, London; MA, Goldsmiths, University of London; PhD, Royal Holloway, University of London.

https://taniaelkhoury.com

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Gideon Lester

Gideon Lester is Artistic Director and Chief Executive of the Fisher Center at Bard, and Senior Curator at the Open Society University Network’s Center for the Arts and Human Rights. A Tony and Olivier award-winning creative producer, festival director, and dramaturg, he has collaborated with and commissioned a broad range of American and international artists across disciplines, including Romeo Castellucci, Justin Vivian Bond, Tania El Khoury, Brice Marden, Sarah Michelson, Claudia Rankine, Kaija Saariaho, Peter Sellars, and Anna Deavere Smith. 

Recent projects include the world premiere of Justin Peck and Sufjan Steven’s Illinoise; Common Ground, an international festival on the politics of land and food; Daniel Fish’s Oklahoma! (Tony award; Olivier Award); Pam Tanowitz’s Four Quartets and Song of Songs; Ronald K. Brown and Meshell Ndegeocello’s Grace and Mercy; and Peter Sellars’ film This body is so impermanent… 

Productions he has developed and commissioned have toured to theaters and art centers around the world, including BAM (Brooklyn); Circle in the Square (Broadway); CAP-UCLA (Los Angeles); the Kennedy Center; St Ann’s Warehouse (Brooklyn); New York City Center; Barbican (London); Walker Art Center (Minneapolis); Spielart (Munich); Onassis Cultural Center (Athens); Edinburgh International Festival, and many others. 

He was previously co-curator of Crossing the Line Festival, and Acting Artistic Director and Dramaturg at the American Repertory Theatre.

A professor at Bard College, he was director of Bard’s undergraduate Theater & Performance Program from 2012-2020, and has previously held faculty positions at Harvard and Columbia, where he founded and directed an interdisciplinary arts collaboration lab at the Graduate School of the Arts. 

As a writer for the stage, his translations include Moliere’s Dom Juan; The Island of Slaves and The Dispute by Marivaux, Büchner’s Woyzeck, and Brecht’s Mother Courage, and his adaptations include Kafka’s Amerika, Wim Wenders’ Wings of Desire, and Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita.  

Lester received his B.A./M.A. from Oxford University, and completed graduate training at Harvard, where he was a Fulbright and Frank Knox Scholar. 
Phone: (845)758-7949
Email: [email protected]
 

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Chiori Miyagawa

M.F.A., CUNY Brooklyn College. Playwright and dramaturg. Plays produced Off-Broadway and nationally. Seven plays published in various anthologies. Playwriting fellowships: New York Foundation for the Arts, Van Lier, McNight. Recipient: Radcliffe Institute Fellowship, Rockefeller Bellagio Residency,Critic Beinecke Playwright-in-Residence at Yale School of Drama, Rockefeller Multi-Arts Production Fund (twice), Asian Cultural Council Fellowship. Resident playwright, New Dramatists. Coartistic director, Crossing Jamaica Avenue, a New York–based theater company; board member, ART/N.Y. At Bard since 1999.
Phone: 845-758-7938
E-mail: [email protected]

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DN Bashir

DN Bashir is a playwright, theatre-maker, and Assistant Professor of Theater and Performance at Bard College. Their accolades include the Fisher Center LAB Residency, MacDowell Residencies (2016, 2023), BAU Institute Residency at Camargo, Catwalk Institute Residency, and the 2021 Helen Merrill Award for Playwriting from the New York Community Trust, among others. They are a two-time recipient of the NYSCA Playwright Grant Award. 

Bashir's work has been commissioned, developed, and supported by organizations such as Jack Arts, Soho Rep, WP Theater, the Playwrights’ Center, Bushwick Starr, Clubbed Thumb, the Dutchess County Historical Society, and the Fire This Time Festival. Published works include contributions to Our Red Book (Simon & Schuster) and The Immeasurable Want of Light (MacDowell, 3 Hole Press, (Writ)ual MixFest at Atlantic Theater). Notable stage plays include Night of Power, Room Enough (MacDowell, Playwrights’ Center), The Chronicles of Cardigan and Khente (Soho Rep), and Emily Black is a Total Gift (New Georges). Digital Media have screened at the Institute of Contemporary Art-London, England, Women in the Director’s Chair International Film Festival, Chicago and MIX Experimental Film and Video Festival, NYC.

Bashir’s theatrical works critique nonfunctional social systems through a fusion of traditional and experimental forms across stage and digital media. Known for biting humor and incisive narratives, Bashir bridges the chasm between carceral captivity and abolitionist creative praxis, transporting audiences to radically reimagined worlds and offering glimpses of reparative, alternative futures.

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Beto O'Byrne

Beto O’Byrne hails from East Texas and is the co-founder of Radical Evolution, a multi-ethnic, multi-disciplinary producing collective based in Brooklyn, NY.  The author of 20 plays, screenplays, and original tv pilots, his works have been produced and developed in San Antonio, Austin, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, Portland, and New York City. He was the 2017 playwright-in-residence at the Stella Adler School of Acting, and a 2050 Playwriting Fellow at New York Theatre Workshop, and his works have received residencies at the New Ohio Theatre, Pregones Theater, Sol Project, Tofte Lake Arts Center, Kitchen Dog Theater, and more. In addition to his work in the theatre, Beto is a musician and the creator of A Revolutionary Chorus, a punk choral project, and the creative visionary and lead writer of the World of Kir fantasy series. Beto teaches classes and workshops on creative writing, theatre, and activist/political performing arts theory and practices at universities, colleges, and community spaces across the country. MFA, Dramatic Writing: University of Southern California.  www.betoobyrne.com 

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Bhavesh Patel

Bhavesh Patel is a graduate of NYU’s Grad Acting MFA Program under Zelda Fichandler. Bhavesh (pronounced BAH-vesh) has been a private acting coach for over 15 years, has assistant directed at The Juilliard School, has taught for the University of Albany, The New School, and most recently at Bard College. He has starred on Broadway in The Nap, Present Laughter opposite Kevin Kline and in the original cast of the Tony-winning War Horse at Lincoln Center. Off-Broadway credits include Indian Ink at Roundabout and A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Public's Shakespeare in the Park. He was featured opposite Matthew McConaughey in the film Gold and has recurred or guest starred on many major NY TV series including The Good Wife, Madam Secretary, New Amsterdam, The Mysteries of Laura, Bull, Law & Order: SVU, Blue Bloods, and White Collar.

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Jonathan Rosenberg

B.A., University of Pennsylvania; M.F.A., New York University. Work produced at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Dance Theater Workshop, Home for Contemporary Theater and Art, Theater for the New City, and Public Theater (workshop), all New York; Flynn Theater, Burlington; Berkshire Theatre Festival; A Contemporary Theater, Seattle; Institut International de la Marionnette, Charleville-Mézi ères, France; Bedlam Theatre, Edinburgh; Wits Theater, Johannesburg; and at Juilliard Drama Division, NYU Graduate Acting Program, Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University, SUNY Purchase Acting Conservatory, others. Associate artistic director, DearKnows Theater Company (1989–91). Recipient: National Endowment for the Arts Director Fellowship Award; Fox Foundation Fellowship Award. Has taught in Juilliard Drama Division, Conservatory of Theater Arts and Film at SUNY Purchase, Fordham University Theater Program, and at Colorado College and University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. At Bard since 2005.
Phone: 845-758-7918
E-mail: [email protected]

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Ashley Kelly Tata

“I make multi-media works of theater, contemporary opera, performance, cyberformance, live music and immersive experiences. This output comes from my belief that theater, live performance, and works made through the alchemical combination of rigor, craft and inspiration and that exist at the intersection of multiple media have the power to bypass an audience’s habituated ways of thinking, perceiving and feeling that they may see better the world around them. I am simultaneously an advocate of art for art’s sake and the necessity of art to keep (or make) a society healthy.”
Director Ashley Kelly Tata’s works have been called “fervently inventive,” by Ben Brantley in the New York Times, “extraordinarily powerful” by the LA Times, like something that “reaches out across the centuries and punches you in the throat” by Alexis Soloski in the New York Times and Tata’s production of Kate Soper’s Ipsa Dixit was named a notable production of the decade by Alex Ross in The New Yorker. These works have been presented in venues and festivals throughout the US and internationally including at the Fisher Center’s Summerscape Festival at Bard, Theatre for a New Audience, Ars Nova, PS21, LA Opera, Austin Opera, The Miller Theater, National Sawdust, EMPAC, BPAC, The Crossing the Line Festival, the Holland Festival, The Prelude Festival and The National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing. Tata’s MFA in directing was earned at Columbia University under the mentorship of Anne Bogart and Brian Kulick. In turn Tata has taught, guest taught or been a guest artist at Columbia University, Mannes School of Music and The College of the Performing Arts at The New School, Harvard University, MIT, Marymount Manhattan College, Colgate College, and LIU Post and is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of Theater & Performance and the Artistic Producer of Theater & Performance at Bard College.
“In my work with younger artists I advocate and assist in enabling the sounding of brave truths and idiosyncratic, precious and unique voices to manifest however the impulse finds its way. In this pursuit I encourage young artists to explore a work from many different angles and to find what is interesting and will hold their fascination as a way in. In our collective work I encourage collaboration with colleagues who’s skills, perspectives and experiences complement and supplement one’s own.”
Tata is a recent recipient of a MAP Grant to help fund a project in development that intends to be a sonic installation with a virtual reality embed couched within a live music theater performance. More succinctly described as a “VR Opera about Trees” it is the first in what intends to be a developing practice of making performance works with Nature as collaborator. This work is being supported with residencies at the Brooklyn Academy of Music where Tata is a member of their inaugural residency cohort, a residency at Coffey Street Studios and from the Little Island Festival. 
Tata has been a member of the Lincoln Center Theater’s Directors’ Lab, the recipient of the Lotos Foundation's Emerging Artist Award in Arts and Sciences and a winner of a Robert L. B. Tobin Director/Designer grant. 
Tata has also worked as an associate director with Robert Woodruff, Jay Scheib, Daniel Fish, David Levine, David Lang, Annie Dorsen and Richard Jones among others in such venues as St. Ann’s Warehouse (on the critically acclaimed production of Oklahoma!), Brooklyn Academy of Music, The Lincoln Center Theater Festival, The Park Avenue Armory, Spoleto Festival, USA, Fort Worth Opera and LAOpera at REDCAT. 
More at www.tatatime.live

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Lindsey Liberatore

B.F.A. Marymount Manhattan College, M.F.A. ART/MXAT at Harvard University. An NYC based actor, singer, teaching-artist and corporate coach, Lindsey’s performance credits include everything from off-Broadway, international and immersive theater to commercial voice-over. Professionally, she has had the pleasure of working with Sarah Benson, Neil Gaiman, The Lisps and Enthuse Theatre. Lindsey is currently pursuing certification in Knight-Thompson Speechwork® and developing a solo piece titled, CATLADY. Liberatore is a certified yoga instructor (500 RYT YogaWorks), and Roll Model ® Method body worker. A devoted student of Buddhism, she leads mindfulness meditation courses for companies all over the US and weaves awareness practices into all of her classes.