January 29, 2003
Contact: Sarah Ray
802-443-5794
sray@middlebury.edu
Posted: January 29, 2003
MIDDLEBURY,
VT - Fans of the American stage are in for a Valentine’s Day treat
when acclaimed director and dynamic educator Anne Bogart visits Middlebury
College for a discussion of her experience in the theatre. Bogart presents
“Six Things I Know For Sure About Being a Director in the American
Theatre” at 4:30 p.m., Friday, Feb. 14, in Wright Memorial Theatre
on Château Road off College Street (Route 125). The talk is free
and open to the public.
For more than 25 years, Bogart
has been active in American theatre as a director, playwright, essayist
and teacher. Her discussion will focus on creating art in the 21st century,
and will include forthright challenges to artists in all disciplines.
Bogart is an associate professor
of theatre arts at Columbia University’s School of the Arts, where she
teaches directing. She is also the artistic director and co-founder of
the 10-year-old Saratoga International Theatre Institute (SITI), an ensemble-based
company that creates new work, trains young artists, and experiments in
international collaboration. Begun as a summer program, SITI operates
most of the year in New York City with a summer season in Saratoga, N.Y.
Bogart is known for her cross-disciplinary
work. Her most recent production at Middlebury, which was presented in
2001, was The Foundry Theatre’s “Gertrude and Alice,” a first-person
portrayal of writer Gertrude Stein and her relationship with Alice B.
Toklas. Other efforts in recent years include her co-direction with Laurie
Anderson of “Songs and Stories from Moby Dick,” which toured
nationally and internationally in1999-2000. She also directed “War
of the Worlds,” a play about the life of Orson Wells by Naomi Iizuka
that opened the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival in 2000.
Since graduating in 1974
from Bard College, Bogart has accumulated numerous honors for her signature
approach to the stage. In 2001, she won the Edwin Booth Award and the
Charles Flint Kellogg Award. Other achievements include a Guggenheim Fellowship,
two Obie Awards, and a Bessie Award.
Bogart has staged operas
and musicals, as well as a range of plays from classical to contemporary.
Her repertoire includes plays by Pierre Marivaux, Anton Chekhov, Paula
Vogel, Leonard Bernstein, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Calderon de la Barca
and Mac Wellman. She has taught at a number of institutions, including
New York University, the University of California in San Diego, and the
Playwrights Horizons Theater School.
Bogart’s visit is sponsored
by the Middlebury College Performing Arts Series.
For more information, contact Liza Sacheli at sacheli@middlebury.edu
or 802-443-3169.