Annex 1
Company Profile of The Builders Association
The Builders Association creates theatre projects exploring the interface between live performance and media. Directed by Marianne Weems, its OBIE award-winning work re-animates theatre for a contemporary audience, using current tools to interpret old forms. The company's productions combine texts with sound, video, and architectural sets to create a world onstage that reflects contemporary culture.
Since 1994, it has collaborated on seven large-scale theatre projects, including Master Builder (1994), The White Album (1995), Imperial Motel (Faust) (1996), Jump Cut (Faust) (1997), Jet Lag (1998 – 2000) with Diller + Scofidio, Xtravaganza (2000 – 2001), and Alladeen (2002) with motiroti.
Its work has been presented widely in Europe and the United States at venues including the Barbican Centre, London; Trafo theatre, Budapest; Kaaitheatre, Brussels; the Guggenheim Museum, New York; The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and will be presented at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in December 2003.
Company Profile of motiroti
motiroti exists to create innovative, inspirational, intelligent art that makes you think. Founded in 1990 by Keith Khan and Ali Zaidi, London based motiroti is twice winner of a ‘Time Out London Dance and Performance Award’ and recipient of the BBC Asia award for Achievement in the Arts’. Khan and Zaidi created the first Bollywood Musical – Moti Roti, Puttli Chunni - as a co-production with East London’s Theatre Royal Stratford East, which put them on the world stage.
motiroti creates customised art projects, just about anywhere, that excite the imagination, that examine cultural and social values and that precipitate change. It also supports existing groups, small or large, as well as emerging artists to make new work. The pieces created are playful, dynamic and vivid, using both familiar and cutting-edge techniques, and in particular pushing the boundaries of new technology.
Annex 2
Profile of Director and Designers
Marianne Weems
Director
Marianne Weems is a co-founder of The Builders Association and has directed all of their productions. Over the last 15 years in New York, she has worked as an assistant director and dramaturge with Susan Sontag, Jan Cohen-Cruz, Richard Foreman, and many others. From 1988 to 1994 she was assistant director and dramaturge for The Wooster Group, during which time she also co-directed Ron Vawter’s solo performance Roy Cohn / Jack Smith and co-produced the film version with Good Machine, executive produced by Jonathan Demme. She is board president of Art Matters, a private arts foundation, and co-edited the book Art Matters: How the Culture Wars Changed America (NYU Press, 2000). She was a member of the performance ensemble The V-Girls, who performed and published from 1986 to 1995.
Keith Khan
Design
Keith Khan is a multi award-winning artist whose work is recognised internationally. Recent commissions include Director of Design for the opening and closing ceremonies of the Commonwealth Games 2002 and Artistic Director of Celebration Commonwealth, for the Queen’s Jubilee Parade in Central London, June 2002. Starting on the streets of London’s Notting Hill (where he worked as a carnivalist for eight years), Khan’s work now occupies places such as the Tate Modern, the Royal Albert Hall, and the Millennium Dome, where he designed the opening ceremony and worked with Mark Fisher and Peter Gabriel. Keith Khan is an advisor to the British Government’s Department of Culture, Media & Sport.
Ali Zaidi
Design
Indian by birth, Pakistani by migration and now British by choice, the cultural paradoxes and hybridity contribute creatively to Ali Zaidi’s speculation around issues of identity and representation. He engages with diverse art forms like film, theatre, live art, installation, site-specific design and digital technologies, and creates fresh participatory experiences for a wide range of audiences. Zaidi’s passion for photography remains resolute for the oscillation it offers between fact and fiction. His work maps personal experiences in a language, which both comes from and responds to the times.
Annex 3
Profile of Cast
Rizwan Mirza
Rizwan Mirza is an actor and singer raised in New Delhi, The Bronx. He studied Musical Theatre and Art at New York City’s "Fame"ous High School of Music and The Performing Arts. Currently studying Hindustani Classical music, he is writing Zaika!, a musical resonating the experiences of South Asian Americans in New York and recording an album in India titled Salaamaste, calling for communal harmony in South Asia.
Heaven Phillips
Heaven Phillips has been a member of The Builders Association since 1996. She met and worked with the company in The White Album (1995) and has performed in all of their productions since that time. She is a composer/performer for solo voice and piano, and premiered her first theatrical score due to premiere in March 2003 in Juneau, Alaska.
Tanya Selvaratnam
Tanya Selvaratnam is a film producer, performer and activist based in Brooklyn. She was a member of the Institute on Arts & Civic Dialogue under the directorship of Anna Deavere Smith. She has also been an associate of The Wooster Group for seven years. As a producer, her last film, On_Line, premiered at Sundance and Berlin last year and was out in theatres in May 2003. She recently finished production on Domino, with Gabri Christa directing and Vernon Reid scoring.
Jasmine Simhalan
Jasmine Simhalan was born in Madras and has now been a resident of London for 10 years. Being a trained martial artist (Kalarippayattu), dancer (Bharthanatyam and Mohiniyattam) and actor, she has performed in most of the productions of Chandralekha (India) and Shobana Jeyasingh (UK) and with a range of British choreographers. Jasmine choreographed and performed in the award winning Akademi production Coming of Age, directed by Keith Khan.
Jeff Webster
Jeff Webster is a founding member of The Builders Association and has performed in and collaborated on all of their projects. His film work includes roles in I Shot Andy Warhol, Long Time Since, Alchemy, Berenice, Enemies and The Lost Hours.
Annex 4
Profile of Crew
Christopher Kondek
Video Design
Christopher Kondek began creating video for performance in 1989 when he became an Associate Member of The Wooster Group, where he designed video for Brace Up!, Fish Story, and The Emperor Jones. He has co-created visuals with Laurie Anderson for her multimedia works Nerve Bible and Songs and Stories From Moby Dick. He has made video for Robert Wilson's The Days Before: Death, Destruction and Detroit III, and has collaborated with composer Michael Nyman. For The Builders Association, he created video for Jump Cut (Faust) and Jet Lag. In 2001, he began working with choreographer Meg Stewart, designing video for Alibi (2001) and her new work Visitors Only (2003).
Dan Dobson
Sound Composition and Design
Dan Dobson is a founding member of The Builders Association and has designed sound for all of their productions. In addition to editing and scoring for film, he has played zither and Chapman stick for Blue Man Group since 1995.
Jennifer Tipton
Lighting Design
Jennifer Tipton is well known for her work in theatre, dance and opera. Recently she lit Manon Lescaut in Lisbon, Trisha Brown’s Winterreise for the Lincoln Centre Festival and Mourning Becomes Electra at Long Wharf. She teaches lighting at the Yale School of Drama. She is the recipient of the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize for 2001 and the first Jerome Robbins Prize in 2003. A founding member of The Builders Association, she has designed lights for most of their productions.
Shrikanth Sriram (Shri)
Original Music Samples
Born and bred in Bombay and now based in London, Shrikanth Sriram is a celebrated multi instrumentalist (flute, tabla, bass guitar) and composer whose work covers music from Indian classical to Western contemporary and modern jazz. His collaborations are numerous and include projects with composer / musicians Talvin Singh and Nitin Sawhney and various theatre / dance companies.
Norman Frisch
Dramaturg
Norman Frisch has worked as a dramaturg and administrator with The Wooster Group, The Builders Association, and director Peter Sellars, among others. He has also worked with a number of international arts festivals as a curator and associate director, and curated the exhibition Show People: Downtown Directors and the Play of Time for the Exit Art gallery in 2002.
Joseph Silovsky
Technical Director
Joseph Silovsky is a performance artist from Oklahoma and has been the technical director with The Builders Association for both Xtravaganza and Alladeen. He has built a robot for Richard Maxwell's play Joe, and helped make hand-shaking machines for the Radiohole. His own work has been performed in Chicago, New York, and Rakvere, Estonia.
Peter Flaherty
Video Systems Design
Peter Flaherty constructs interactive video systems and directs integrated media performances. Peter is currently finishing post-production on his first live-mix digital feature, trans-national. His solo work has been shown at the Collision Festival at MIT Media Lab, Oni Gallery, and electronic music venues and festivals world-wide. In 2000 - 2001 he was a Harvard University Artist-in-Residence in new media performance.
Jeff Morey
Video Associate
Jeff Morey specialises in multimedia, interaction and web design. Holding a Masters degree from NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program, he designed The Builders Association’s web site. He also works with Delicious Biscuit, a performance and film company. Other recent work includes programming a video portrait gallery for AIDS: A Living Archive at The Museum of the City of New York, electrical and sound design for kinetic sculptures and building electronic musical instruments.
James Gibbs
3D Animation Design
dbox is a multidisciplinary collective encompassing photography, design, illustration, and creative direction. Founded in 1996 by Matthew Bannister, James Gibbs and Charles D'Autremont, its mission is to balance commercial and experimental work and create an environment of rigorous study where each compliments the other. dbox animation work has been shown at Eyebeam, A+A, and Beyond Media, in addition to current exhibitions at the New Museum (NYC) and commissioned work on view at the Whitney's Diller+Scofidio retrospective. Recent photographic work includes an advertising campaign for Adidas and a fashion editorial featured in British Esquire.
James Gibbs studied at Deep Springs College in California before going on to receive his Bachelor of Architecture from Cornell University. Gibbs has taught at Cornell University’s School of Architecture, Art, and Planning and School of Visual Arts and is actively involved in dbox’s relationship with Princeton University. Gibbs has directed a wide array of dbox’s projects ranging from collaborations with theatre groups to digital installation projects.
Eric Schuldenfrei
3D Animation Design
Eric Schuldenfrei teaches digital media at Princeton University’s School of Architecture. Recent projects include computer animations for Jet Lag and an animation and video installation, The Measure of All Things, a collaboration with artist Haluk Akakce that has been exhibited at the National Centre for Contemporary Arts, Rome; Kunst Werke, Berlin; Centre d'Art Contemporain, Geneva; and PS1, New York.
Peter Norrman
Bangalore Videography
Peter Norrman is a video artist and a filmmaker, who has worked with The Builders Association since 1994. He designed the video for Xtravaganza (2001 - 2002), and co-designed the video and toured with Jet Lag (1999 - 2000). He was a recipient of the NYSCA Media Artist grant in 2000 and was also awarded an artist-in-residence at STEIM in Amsterdam in 1999. He has collaborated and designed video for artists Andrea Fraser, Coco Fusco and Ben Rubin. His film and video production includes music videos for EMI, installation production for Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale and digital video design for Production Designer.
Penny Andrews
Producer (UK)
Penny Andrews has over 15 years experience working in the performing arts including posts at the British Council, Arts Council of England, and with Shobana Jeyasingh Dance Company. Penny now specialises in producing large-scale projects and her clients have included leading British dance artists and venues. Recent productions include Take me to the River (1999) and the award- winning Akademi production Coming of Age (2000).
Kim Whitener
Executive Producer
Kim Whitener is an independent producer working with various non-profit theatre companies as a consulting producer for their strategic and touring activities, in addition to developing and producing other music and theatre projects. She was the Managing Director of The Wooster Group for over four years, and has held several theatre management positions in New York, Boston and Philadelphia.