Perspectives on Performance with Jay Scheib

Date: 

Tuesday, October 18, 2016, 5:00pm to 6:00pm

Location: 

Farkas Hall, 10-12 Holyoke Street, 203

Perspectives on Performance is a new series that invites prominent artists and academics from different disciplines to speak about their work in and on interdisciplinary performance.

Our series begins with a presentation and discussion with Jay Scheib, theater director, Director of Theater Arts and Professor at M.I.T.

Bio:  Jay Scheib is a director and designer of plays, operas, ballets and hybrid live art performance events. Recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and an Obie Award for Direction of his Fassbinder adaptationWorld of Wires, Scheib’s physically forward, technologically rich, stagings have garnered rave reviews and accolades internationally. Scheib’s production of Thomas Adès’ opera Powder her Face for New York City Opera at BAM was called “dazzling,” by Anthony Tommasini of the New York Times. Other recent works include an adaptation of Bergman’s Persona as a full length live cinema opera at National Sawdust in Brooklyn followed by performances at the Gardner Museum in Boston and the Luigi Nono / Monteverdi evening, Odyssee, conducted by George Petrou at the Staatstheater Darmstadt. Also of note are Scheib’s recent broadcast projects which began with the live cinema performance of Chekhov’sPlatonov, or the Disinherited which premiered at La Jolla Playhouse, followed by performances in New York City at The Kitchen with live broadcast to the AMC Empire 25 Cinema in Times Square as an independent feature film under the title The Disinherited. The second experiment in this vein was the Bizet/Godard mashup opera Carmen, as part of the Outside the Box series in Miami with the Young Arts Foundation. Most recently Scheib’s work has been primarily focused on operas with recent collaboration with George Kouroupou on his two operas Pylades and Jocasta for the Athens Festival in Greece, also with conductor George Petrou. Forthcoming works include a return to the theater with a new staging of Brecht’s Arturo Ui at MIT for one week only. Arturo Ui will close election night. Feel Bad? Vote Bad. Also coming up this season isScheib’s collaboration with rock and roll legend Jim Steinman on his musical Bat Out of Hell.  Slated to open in March in Manchester for an extended period of previews followed by a world premiere run at the London Coliseum this adaptation of the Peter Pan saga set in a post-cataclysmic city—was also the foundation for Steinman’s collaboration with Meat Loaf on the iconic album of the same name. Made for an audience who will never not be 19. Scheib is Professor for Music and Theater Arts at MIT where he directs the program in Theater Arts. 

 

Perspectives on Performance is made possible by support from The Provostial Funds for the Arts & Humanities, The Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Harvard Art Museums, Department of History of Art and Architecture, Department of English, Department of Visual and Environmental Studies, Harvard Dance Center, and Theater, Dance & Media.