WHO’S WHO

About Annie Dorsen

Annie Dorsen is a director and writer whose works explore the intersection of algorithms and live performance. Her most recent project, Infinite Sun (2019), is an algorithmic sound installation commissioned by the Sharjah Biennial 14. Previous performance projects, including The Slow Room (2018), The Great Outdoors (2017), Yesterday Tomorrow (2015), A Piece of Work (2013), Spokaoke (2012), and Hello Hi There (2010), have been widely presented in the US and internationally.

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Some of the venues where her work has been seen include Performance Space New York (formerly PS122), Le Festival d’Automne de Paris, The Holland Festival, BAM’s Next Wave Festival, New York Live Arts, Kampnagel Summer Festival, Kaaitheater, and The New York Film Festival’s “Views from the Avant-garde” series, along with many others. The script for A PIECE OF WORK was published by Ugly Duckling Presse, and she has contributed essays for The Drama Review (TDR), Theatre Magazine, Etcetera, Frakcija, and Performing Arts Journal (PAJ).

She has collaborated frequently with musicians and choreographers, including Anne Juren, Ethel, Questlove/The Roots, DD Dorvillier, and Sébastien Roux. She is the co-creator of the 2008 Broadway musical Passing Strange, which she also directed. In addition to awards for Passing Strange, Dorsen received a 2019 MacArthur Fellowship, a 2018 Guggenheim Fellowship, the 2018 Spalding Gray Award, a 2016 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grant to Artists Award and the 2014 Herb Alpert Award for the Arts in Theatre.

Performers

Scott Shepherd (A Piece of Work)

Scott Shepherd has been a member of both The Wooster Group and Elevator Repair Service for over twenty years. A partial list of productions includes The Town Hall Affair, Vieux Carré, HamletPoor TheaterTo You The Birdie!, and North Atlantic with The Wooster Group; and Ulysses, GatzMeasure for MeasureNo Great Society, and Cab Legs with ERS. He received Obie Awards for his performances in Poor Theater and Gatz. He appears in films directed by Scott Cooper, Vince Gilligan, Paul Greengrass, Errol Morris, Kelly Reichardt, Rob Reiner, Martin Scorsese, Stephen Soderbergh, Paolo Sorrentino, and Steven Spielberg.

Hai-Ting Chinn (Yesterday Tomorrow)

American mezzo-soprano Hai-Ting Chinn performs in a wide range of styles and venues. She has performed with New York City Opera, The Wooster Group, Philip Glass/Robert Wilson, OperaOmnia, American Symphony Orchestra; on the stages of Carnegie Hall, the Mann Center in Philadelphia, and London’s West End; and at Festivals including the Edinburgh, Verbier, Grimeborn, Tête-à-Tête, and Festival d’Autumne. As an Artist in Residence at HERE arts center, Hai-Ting created and performed Science Fair: An Opera With Experiments, a staged solo show of science set to music. Of mixed Chinese and Jewish ancestry, Hai-Ting is a native of Northern California and currently resides in New York City.  She holds degrees from the Eastman and Yale Schools of Music.

Emily Eagen (Yesterday Tomorrow)

Emily Eagen sings in and between several musical genres, adding new to the old and old to the new. She studied contemporary and early music in the Netherlands, and moved to New York in 2007. Emily is a member of The M6, an ensemble dedicated to performing the works of composer Meredith Monk, and a co-founder of Moving Star, an in-residence ensemble at Carnegie Hall that explores the borders between composition and improvisation. She has been a teaching artist and composer with Carnegie Hall’s Lullaby Project since its inception in 2011. Eagen has toured with Bang on a Can, as the lead singer in the folk/old-time band The Whistling Wolves, and with avant-folk trio Moira Smiley and VOCO. She has performed in John Gay’s Beggar’s Opera, with the Hesperus Ensemble for a live-film performance of the 1920s horror film The Golem, as a soloist with the mediterranean medieval ensemble Sendebar, and in an eight-voice women’s chorus on singer-songwriter Sufjan Steven’s 2010 EP All Delighted People.

Jeffrey Gavett (Yesterday Tomorrow)

Baritone Jeffrey Gavett, called a “brilliantly agile singer” by The New York Times, has performed with a broad array of artists, including Alarm Will Sound, ICE, Meredith Monk, New Juilliard Ensemble, Roomful of Teeth, SEM Ensemble, Ensemble Signal, Talea Ensemble, and his own ensembles Ekmeles and loadbang. As a recording artist he appears on a Kairos release of the music of Chaya Czernowin with ICE conducted by Steve Schick, and conducted and music directed for Roomful of Teeth’s CD The Colorado. Theatrical appearances include Rudolf Komorous’s Nonomiya and Petr Kotik’s Master-Pieces, Annie Dorsen’s Yesterday Tomorrow, and Matt Marks’s Mata Hari, as well as appearing on video in Judd Greenstein’s A Marvelous Order. Gavett holds degrees from Westminster Choir College and Manhattan School of Music.

Bryn Mawr College

Bryn Mawr is a distinguished women’s college, located on a beautiful residential campus just outside a major metropolitan area. Two distinctive coed graduate schools and a post-baccalaureate premedical program enrich the College community and offer opportunities for advanced study.

At Bryn Mawr, students choose from a wide array of majors in the sciences, social sciences, and the humanities. The College is a leader in academic innovation, with a particular focus on putting learning into action through research, fieldwork, community and social justice engagement, and internships.

Appreciating, learning about, and creating art are vital to Bryn Mawr’s campus culture. In our lively, diverse community, the arts build bridges to the wider world, stimulating intellectual and social growth. Learn more about the Arts at Bryn Mawr.

Faculty and Staff

Mark E. Lord, Professor of Theater

Maiko Matsushima, Lecturer in Theater

Catharine Slusar, Associate Professor of Theater, Acting Chair of Theater, and Chair of the Arts

Meredith Finch, Performing Art Series Coordinator

Justin McDaniel, Technical Director, Goodhart Theater

Amy M. Radbill, Theater Production Manager

India Thorne, Administrative Assistant for the Arts

FringeArts

FringeArts is Philadelphia’s home for contemporary performance, presenting progressive, world-class art that expands the imagination and boldly defies expectations. Spokaoke is being presented as part of the annual Philadelphia Fringe Festival, a 4-week celebration that fills the city’s neighborhoods with hundreds of curated and independently produced performances. Learn more at FringeArts.com.

Banner photo by Maria Baranova
Photo of Annie Dorsen by Stephen Dodd