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Assistant Dean of Students Corey Sullivan ’03 Wins Obie Award

Assistant Dean of Students Corey Sullivan ’03.

At the 68th annual Obie Awards, the American Theatre Wing presented Assistant Dean of Students Corey Sullivan ’03 and other members of his arts collective, Theater Mitu, the Ross Wetzsteon Award for sustained innovation in the field. Theater Mitu was originally formed through Sullivan’s collaborations as an undergraduate at Bard.

In 2001, then an undergraduate, Sullivan began collaborating with visiting artists on a production for Bard’s Theater and Performance Program. Their work together continued beyond the show’s run, and soon after, Sullivan joined the group in forming an interdisciplinary arts collective called Theater Mitu. Since then they have worked together to push the boundaries of theater through innovative productions, global research and education initiatives, programs supporting emerging artists, and the creation of their Brooklyn-based performance and technology center, MITU580.

Theater Mitu will be in residence at the Boston Museum of Science and Arts Emerson in spring 2025 to present Utopian Hotline, a project developed in partnership with the SETI Institute and Arizona State University’s Interplanetary Initiative. Part telephone hotline, part vinyl record, and part live performance, Utopian Hotline uses real voicemails left on a public hotline to create a moment of community—inviting audience members to re-imagine our shared future. Inspired by the 1977 NASA Voyager mission, which launched a vinyl-style recording of sounds found on Earth into space, as well as the uncertainty surrounding the Covid-19 pandemic, this immersive performance begs the question: “If we were to send another message into the distant future, what message would we send?”

Last summer, Theater Mitu premiered (HOLY) BLOOD! at their Brooklyn space, MITU580. Part live-scored silent film, part irreverent midnight movie, the piece created an original live soundscape merged with manipulated fragments of Alejandro Jodorowsky’s cult-classic film Santa Sangre. Projected across a shattered landscape of screens and sculpture, accompanied by explosive blood choreography enclosed in glass booths, the work remapped a story of circuses, blood cults, madness, and forgiveness.

For more information on the company’s work, visit www.theatermitu.org

Read about the 68th annual Obie Award winners

Post Date: 02-04-2025

Bard College and Six Faculty Awarded New York State Council on the Arts Grants

Six Bard College faculty members have been named as recipients of grants from the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) for 2025. NYSCA Support for Organizations grants were awarded to Erika Switzer, assistant professor of music and director of the Postgraduate Collaborative Piano Fellowship at Bard, Lucy Fitz Gibbon, visiting faculty in vocal arts at the Bard College Conservatory of Music, Sarah Hennies, visiting assistant professor of music, and Suzanne Kite, distinguished artist in residence, assistant professor of American and Indigenous Studies and director of the Wihanble S’a Center for Indigenous AI at Bard. Additionally, Bard College received a Support for Organizations Award for 2025 in the amount of $40,000. NYSCA Support for Artist grants were awarded to DN Bashir, assistant professor of theater and performance at Bard, and Ann Lauterbach, professor of languages and literature.The NYSCA grants are intended to increase access to arts funding and recognize the substantial economic and social impact of New York state’s arts and culture sector.

Bard College and Six Faculty Awarded New York State Council on the Arts Grants

Clockwise from top left: Erika Switzer, Suzanne Kite, Lucy Fitz Gibbon, DN Bashir, Sarah Hennies, and Ann Lauterbach.

Six Bard College faculty members have been named as recipients of grants from the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) for 2025. NYSCA Support for Organizations grants were awarded to Erika Switzer, assistant professor of music and director of the Postgraduate Collaborative Piano Fellowship at Bard, Lucy Fitz Gibbon, visiting faculty in vocal arts at the Bard College Conservatory of Music, Sarah Hennies, visiting assistant professor of music, and Suzanne Kite, distinguished artist in residence, assistant professor of American and Indigenous Studies and director of the Wihanble S’a Center for Indigenous AI at Bard. Additionally, Bard College received a Support for Organizations Award for 2025 in the amount of $40,000. NYSCA Support for Artist grants were awarded to DN Bashir, assistant professor of theater and performance at Bard, and Ann Lauterbach, professor of languages and literature.The NYSCA grants are intended to increase access to arts funding and recognize the substantial economic and social impact of New York state’s arts and culture sector.

Erika Switzer and Lucy Fitz Gibbon will receive a grant in support of operational expenses and projects at Sparks & Wiry Cries, an organization, cofounded by Switzer and where Fitz Gibbon serves as managing editor, that curates opportunities for art song creators, performers, and scholars with innovative initiatives. These projects will include the upcoming Brooklyn premieres of Meltdown, a dramatic work for mezzo and piano trio which engages the layered stories and science of climate change through the lens of a female glaciologist, and Skymother, which weaves together the family history of composer Timothy Long (Choctaw, Muscogee Creek) with the Haudenosaunee creation story, Sky Woman.

Sarah Hennies, along with her duo partner, Tristan Kasten-Krause, a bassist and composer, will receive the grant for their new work Saccades for double bass and percussion at the Wassaic Project, an artist-run nonprofit contemporary art gallery, artist residency, and art education center. The piece is to be performed in total darkness with a single candle flame.

Suzanne Kite will receive a grant for the proposed project, Owáǧo Uŋkíhaŋblapi (We Dream a Score), her first full orchestral work for her organizational partner, the American Composers Orchestra (ACO). The piece continues Kite’s exploration of individual, collective, and societal dreaming practices, using an Indigenous AI framework. NYSCA funding supports the development of an AI app in collaboration with the Brooklyn-based design firm School. Members of the ACO and the public will submit their dreams to the app, which transforms language into Lakȟóta Visual Language symbols.

DN Bashir’s Hollow House, sponsored by JACK Arts Incorporated, follows a group of New York residents meeting at a farm-to-table restaurant in an old house in the Hudson Valley. Inspired by Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard, it explores unspoken power dynamics and “the systems that hold us captive.”

Ann Lauterbach will be awarded a grant in support of her project called “The Meanwhile: Linear Ruptures and Simultaneous Narratives,” which will have a performance and possible exhibition at the Flowchart Foundation.

Read the NYSCA Announcement Here

Post Date: 12-10-2024

Fisher Center Artist Justin Vivian Bond Named 2024 MacArthur Fellow

Justin Vivian Bond. Photo courtesy of John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation

Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College artist and collaborator Justin Vivian Bond is named a recipient of a 2024 MacArthur Fellowship. One of this year’s 22 recipients of the prestigious “genius grant” awarded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Justin Vivian Bond, an artist and performer, has a long relationship with the Fisher Center and Bard College. They curated and hosted the Spiegeltent season for five years (2014–2018), and continue to return as a performer each summer to sold-out audiences. They have taught in Bard’s undergraduate Theater and Performance Program, and have received developmental support from Fisher Center LAB on multiple projects. MacArthur Fellows receive $800,000 stipends that are bestowed with no conditions; recipients may use the money as they see fit.

In a statement about their work, the MacArthur Foundation says, “Justin Vivian Bond (Viv) is an artist and performer working in the cabaret tradition weaving history, cultural critique, and an ethic of care into performances and artworks animated by wit, whimsy, and calls to action. Bond uses cabaret to explore the political and cultural ethos of the moment and tie it back to history to address contemporary challenges, in particular those facing queer communities. Bond’s decades-long journey across the landscape of gender has both informed their artistic practices and played a significant role in ongoing conversations around gender identity and LGBTQ+ rights.”

Justin Vivian Bond studied theater at Adelphi University (1981–1985) and received an MA (2005) from Central Saint Martins College, London. They have taught performance at New York University and Bard College and held a long-term residency at Joe’s Pub at the Public Theater (New York). Bond has appeared on stage at such venues as Carnegie Hall, the Sydney Opera House, and the Vienna Staatsoper, among others. They are the author of a memoir, Tango: My Childhood, Backwards and in High Heels (2011), and their art has been exhibited at The New Museum, VITRINE (London), and Participant, Inc. (New York).

Learn more about Justin Vivian Bond from the MacArthur Foundation

Post Date: 10-02-2024

More Theater News

Led by Co-Artistic Director Bard Alumna Morgan Green ’12, Philadelphia’s Wilma Theater Wins 2024 Regional Theatre Tony Award

Led by Co-Artistic Director Bard Alumna Morgan Green ’12, Philadelphia’s Wilma Theater Wins 2024 Regional Theatre Tony Award

Wilma Theater’s Co-Artistic Director and Bard alumna Morgan Green ’12. Photo by Johanna Austin

The Wilma Theater in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, which is led by three co-artistic directors including Bard Theater and Performance alumna Morgan Green ’12, will receive the 2024 Regional Theatre Tony Award. This honor recognizes a regional theater company that has displayed a continuous level of artistic achievement contributing to the growth of theater nationally and is accompanied by a grant of $25,000. The Wilma Theater was named this year’s recipient based on the recommendation by the American Theatre Critics Association. Green’s recent directing credits include premieres of the Pulitzer Prize–winning Fat Ham by James Ijames (digital, The Wilma Theater) and School Pictures by Milo Cramer ’12 (The Wilma Theater, Playwrights Horizons), who also majored in theater at Bard. In 2019, Green directed the Theater and Performance Program’s production of Promenade at the Fisher Center. This summer, Green and Cramer will return to Bard to present their performance of School Pictures in the Spiegeltent for SummerScape on July 20.

Further reading:
School Pictures, A One-Person Show by Milo Cramer ’12, Featured on This American Life
https://www.bard.edu/news/milo-cramer-12-school-pictures-this-american-life-2024-02-13

Fat Ham, a Black, Queer Take on Hamlet Directed by Morgan Green ’12, Is a New York Times Critic’s Pick
https://www.bard.edu/news/fat-ham-a-black-queer-take-on-hamlet-directed-by-morgan-green-12-is-a-new-york-times-critics-pick-2021-05-04

Post Date: 05-29-2024

School Pictures, A One-Person Show by Milo Cramer ’12, Featured on This American Life

School Pictures, A One-Person Show by Milo Cramer ’12, Featured on This American Life

School Pictures by Milo Cramer ’12, directed by Morgan Green ’12. Photo by Johanna Austin

A high school student is assigned a five-paragraph essay on the subject: “Is Shakespeare’s Othello racist?” Her tutor, Milo Cramer ’12, wants to guide her toward a nuanced argument, but their tutee just wants an A. This and other scenes from tutoring sessions serve as the subject of Cramer’s one-person show School Pictures, a hybrid musical monologue that recently had its New York premiere at Playwrights Horizons. School Pictures was excerpted on an episode of This American Life, where host Ira Glass says of Cramer’s work: “There’s just something in the intentional roughness and sincerity of what they’re doing that kind of matches the rawness of these kids and their feelings—and of Milo’s reactions to them.”

Listen Now on This American Life

Post Date: 02-13-2024

Bard Faculty Members and Alumni/ae Awarded 2023 MacDowell Fellowships

Bard Faculty Members and Alumni/ae Awarded 2023 MacDowell Fellowships

Clockwise from top left: 2023 MacDowell Fellowship recipients Bard Visiting Artist in Residence Carl Elsaesser; Chaya Czernowin MFA ’88 (photo by Irina Rozovsky); Bard Playwright in Residence Daaimah Mubashshir (photo by Maya Sharpe); Hannah Beerman ’15 (photo by Joanna Eldredge Morrissey).

Two Bard faculty members and two alumni/ae are recipients of MacDowell Fellowships. Carl Elsaesser, visiting artist in residence at Bard College in Film and Electronic Arts, has been awarded a MacDowell Fellowship to MacDowell's Residency Program in the Film/Video Artists category for fall/winter 2023. Elsaesser’s residency will support the completion of his project, Coastlines, a feature-length film that intertwines the ethnographic intricacies of Maine’s coastline with the intimate video diaries of a Portland family, inviting a reevaluation of evolving identities and artistic representation within the private and public spheres. Drawing from queer phenomenology and traditional historical narratives, the film challenges perceptions and redefines the boundaries of storytelling, revealing Maine’s dual role as a backdrop and active participant in shaping inhabitants’ sense of self.

Daaimah Mubashshir, playwright in residence at Bard, received a MacDowell Fellowship in MacDowell’s Artist Residency Program for fall 2023 in Peterborough, New Hampshire, in support of their work on a new play about their great grandmother, Begonia Williams Tate, who defied all odds in Mobile, Alabama, in the late 19th century. Chaya Czernowin, a composer and Bard MFA ’88 in Music, and Bard alumna Hannah Beerman ’15, are also 2023 MacDowell Fellowship recipients. The MacDowell Fellowships are distributed by seven discipline-specific admissions panels who make their selections based on applicants’ vision and talent as reflected by work samples and a project description. Once at MacDowell, selected Fellows are provided a private studio, three meals a day, and accommodations for a period of up to six weeks.

Post Date: 01-19-2024

Bard Student Trudy Poux ’26 Stars in TV Pilot Do Nothings, a Musical Comedy about Their Nonbinary Coming-of-Age Experience

Bard Student Trudy Poux ’26 Stars in TV Pilot Do Nothings, a Musical Comedy about Their Nonbinary Coming-of-Age Experience

Trudy Poux ’26 at a screening of Do Nothings.

Trudy Poux ’26, a current theater and performance major at Bard, plays the lead character in the TV pilot Do Nothings, which tells the story of Tamarin, a teenage singer-songwriter plagued by paralyzing stage fright. Produced in the Hudson Valley by their director, educator, and filmmaker mother Amy Poux, the show was inspired by Trudy’s real-life experiences. Trudy, who cowrote the script with their mother, says that LGBTQ+ screen narratives tend to focus on tragedy or the build up to coming out, “but thereʼs not a lot of media that shows what itʼs like to live day-to-day as a nonbinary person whoʼs already come out . . . The story is about everything else that happens in high school as well and itʼs really inspiring to see a story like that.”

Read more in the Daily Freeman

Post Date: 12-19-2023

The Hunt, A New Opera Directed by Ashley Tata, Is a New York Times Critic’s Pick

The Hunt, A New Opera Directed by Ashley Tata, Is a New York Times Critic’s Pick

Ashley Tata.

The Hunt, a new Kate Soper opera directed by Assistant Professor of Theater and Performance Ashley Tata, was named a Critic’s Pick by the New York Times. This “darkly funny fairy tale,” writes Joshua Barone, “makes the medieval modern.” “Think Waiting for Godot, but with the female rebelliousness of a Sofia Coppola film,” he writes. Complementing the biting text set in “medieval and/or contemporary times,” Barone praises the production as much as the text: “Tata’s direction slowly dissolves pristine, satirized virginal presentation into something wilder, and free.” The opera premiered October 12, 2023, at the Miller Theatre in New York City.

Read More in the New York Times

More Coverage in the Times

Post Date: 10-18-2023

The Fisher Center at Bard Presents the World Premiere of Elevator Repair Service’s Ulysses, Which Brings the Epic James Joyce Novel to Wild Theatrical Life, September 21–October 1

The Fisher Center at Bard Presents the World Premiere of Elevator Repair Service’s Ulysses, Which Brings the Epic James Joyce Novel to Wild Theatrical Life, September 21–October 1

© 2022 Kevin Yatarola for Symphony Space

The Fisher Center at Bard continues its 20th Anniversary Season: Breaking Ground with the world premiere of Ulysses, from Elevator Repair Service, which the New York Times has called “one of New York City’s few truly essential theater companies,” September 21 – October 1 (opening Sunday, September 24).

James Joyce’s Ulysses has fascinated, perplexed, scandalized, and/or defeated readers for over a century. ERS takes on this Mount Everest of twentieth-century literature having staged modernist works including Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, and Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises—all with highly acclaimed results.

In the world premiere at the Fisher Center, seven ERS ensemble members—Dee Beasnael (7 Daughters of Eve), OBIE Award-winner Kate Benson (Fondly, Collette Richland), Maggie Hoffman (founding member, Radiohole), Vin Knight (Gatz, The Select (The Sun Also Rises), The Sound and the Fury, and more with ERS), OBIE Award-winner Scott Shepherd (Gatz, The Wooster Group), Christopher-Rashee Stevenson (Baldwin and Buckley at Cambridge), and Stephanie Weeks (The Whitney Album)—sit down for a sober reading but soon find themselves guzzling pints, getting in brawls, and committing debaucheries as they careen on a fast-forward tour through Joyce’s funhouse of styles. With madcap antics and a densely layered sound design, ERS presents an eclectic sampling from Joyce’s life-affirming masterpiece.

Ulysses is directed by ERS Artistic Director John Collins, with co-direction and dramaturgy by Scott Shepherd and text by James Joyce. The production features set design by dots (The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window, Public Obscenities), costume design by Enver Chakartash (A Doll's House, Is This A Room on Broadway) and Assistant Costume Designer Caleb Krieg, lighting design by Marika Kent (ERS’s Seagull) and Assistant Lighting Designer Matt Lazarus, sound design by OBIE Award-winner Ben Williams (The Whitney Album), sound engineering by Gavin Price, projections by Matthew Deinhart (El Amor Brujo, ANIMUS ANIMA//ANIMA ANIMUS) and Assistant Projections Designer Alessandra Cronin, and props by Patrícia Marjorie (Wolf Play, Flex) and Assistant Properties Designer Ned Gaynor. Maurina Lioce (Fondly, Collette Richland; Baldwin and Buckley at Cambridge) is the Assistant Director and Stage Manager, and Jack Ganguly is the Assistant Stage Manager. Hanna Novak of ERS is the producer.

Ulysses is a Fisher Center LAB commission and is co-commissioned by Symphony Space, where the work was partly developed. Daphne Gaines, April Matthis, and Mark Barton contributed to the development of the work.

Performance Schedule and Ticketing

Performances of Ulysses take place in the LUMA Theater at the Fisher Center:
Thursday, September 21, at 8pm
Friday, September 22, at 8pm
Saturday, September 23, at 8pm
Sunday, September 24, at 3pm
Thursday, September 28, at 8pm
Friday, September 29, at 8pm
Saturday, September 30, at 2pm
Saturday, September 30, at 8pm
Sunday, October 1, at 3pm

Critics are welcome as of Saturday, September 23, at 8 pm for an official opening on Sunday, September 24, at 3 pm.

Tickets start at $25 ($5 for Bard students through the Passloff Pass) and can be purchased here.

Credits
The Fisher Center’s 20th Anniversary Season is dedicated to the founders of the Fisher Center who have cultivated extraordinary artistic experiences—past, present, and future. We honor the memory of Richard B. Fisher, a true champion of the arts and Bard College, and his visionary leadership.
The Fisher Center is generously supported by Jeanne Donovan Fisher, the Martin and Toni Sosnoff Foundation, Felicitas S. Thorne, the Advisory Boards of the Fisher Center at Bard and Bard Music Festival, Fisher Center and Bard Music Festival members, the Ettinger Foundation, the Thendara Foundation, and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature. Fisher Center LAB has received funding from members of the Live Arts Bard Creative Council, the Lucille Lortel Foundation, and the Fisher Center’s Artistic Innovation Fund, with lead support from Rebecca Gold and S. Asher Gelman ’06 through the March Forth Foundation.

Post Date: 09-13-2023

Theater Events

4/18
Friday

Friday, April 18, 2025
Fisher Center, LUMA Theater 7:30 pm – 8:30 pm EDT/GMT-4
The Bard Theater & Performance Program presents Good Penny by DN Bashir, Assistant Professor of Theater & Performance at Bard College, and directed by Katherine Wilkinson.

7:30 pm – 8:30 pm EDT/GMT-4 Fisher Center, LUMA Theater
4/19
Saturday

Saturday, April 19, 2025
Fisher Center, LUMA Theater 2:00 pm – 3:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
The Bard Theater & Performance Program presents Good Penny by DN Bashir, Assistant Professor of Theater & Performance at Bard College, and directed by Katherine Wilkinson.

2:00 pm – 3:00 pm EDT/GMT-4 Fisher Center, LUMA Theater
4/19
Saturday

Saturday, April 19, 2025
Fisher Center, LUMA Theater 7:30 pm – 8:30 pm EDT/GMT-4
The Bard Theater & Performance Program presents Good Penny by DN Bashir, Assistant Professor of Theater & Performance at Bard College, and directed by Katherine Wilkinson.

7:30 pm – 8:30 pm EDT/GMT-4 Fisher Center, LUMA Theater
4/20
Sunday

Sunday, April 20, 2025
Fisher Center, LUMA Theater 4:00 pm – 5:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
The Bard Theater & Performance Program presents Good Penny by DN Bashir, Assistant Professor of Theater & Performance at Bard College, and directed by Katherine Wilkinson.

4:00 pm – 5:00 pm EDT/GMT-4 Fisher Center, LUMA Theater