Carl Hancock Rux and Mallory Catlett Announced as New Artistic Directors at Mabou Mines

Two prolific, award winning artists, Carl Hancock Rux and Mallory Catlett, both former artists in Mabou Mines' Resident Artist Program, embody the company's mission to foster the next generation of experimental theater artists and bring with them a strong vision for the future of Mabou Mines.

Mabou Mines, the renowned experimental theater company celebrates its 50th anniversary in 2020 and while their stages may be dark the company has big plans for the future. Carl Hancock Rux and Mallory Catlett both have a rich history of collaboration with the company. After serving as Resident Artists with the company earlier in his career, Carl became an Associate Artist in 2018 and has served as an Advisor for Mabou Mines SUITE/Space Program for artists of color, now in its third season. Mallory Catlett is currently collaborating with Karen Kandel on the upcoming new work Vicksburg Project and brought her OBIE Winning piece This Was The End back to Mabou Mines in 2018. She will serve as mentor for the long running Resident Artist Program for Emerging Artists. Founding member Lee Breuer and long time Co-Artistic Director Terry O'Reilly will step into emeritus roles as Artistic Advisors. Rux, Catlett, Kandel and Fogarty take on leadership with an influx of creative energy to ground the company as a vibrant, collaborative hub for diverse theatre artists. They will also work to expand the ranks of Associate Artists in the coming months.

Mabou Mines will stream a "Meet The Artists" FaceBook Live event on Friday, September 25, 2020.

Mabou Mines' newly renovated theater, rehearsal studio and administrative offices at the 122 Community Center provides the company with a permanent home to create new work as well as increase its investment in their RAP for emerging artists and SUITE/Space for artists of color residency programs, provide much-needed opportunities the next generation of artists. Mabou Mines sees the 122CC transforming into a vibrant and welcoming cultural home where the Company will foster exchanges between artists, scholars, and cultural leaders, continuing its rich history of interdisciplinary collaboration.

The company has been sustained on principles of collaboration and a wide network of artists and the future will be no different. The 50th anniversary is an opportunity to imagine an expansive future for Mabou Mines. These two new Artistic Directors broaden the Company's network of collaborators and audiences creating a broader community. Central to Mabou Mines mission has always been nurturing and mentoring the next generation of innovative theatre artists. Mr. Rux and Ms. Catlett are both former resident artists of the Company. It is integral to the shared vision for the future to bring new voices to the stage and these two are up to the challenge of not only creating and producing their own projects but strengthening and expanding Mabou Mines residencies and fellowships to elevate the company's unparalleled intergenerational mentorship model.

About Carl Hancock Rux:

Carl Hancock Rux is an award-winning poet, playwright, novelist, essayist and recording artist. He is the author of the novel, Asphalt, the OBIE Award winning play, Talk, and the Village Voice Literary prize-winning collection of poetry, Pagan Operetta. Rux is a frequent guest performer in dance, collaborating with Marlies Yearby's Movin' Spirits Dance Theater, Urban Bush Women, Jane Comfort & Co., Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and Martha Clark.Rux received a BESSIE award for his direction of the Lisa Jones/Alva Rogers dance musical, Stained.

Rux originated the title role in the folk opera production of The Temptation of St. Anthony, directed by Robert Wilson at BAM Next Wave Festival and official world premiere at the Paris Opera, Garnier. Rux's The Blackamoor Angel performed at Bard Summerscape. He wrote the book for Yosvaney Terry music for the opera Makandal. He and composer Deirdre Murray reimagined the curious life of Angelo Soliman (1721- 1797) How Much is Enough? at St. Ann's Warehouse. He performed in Grace Notes: Reflections for Now by Carrie Mae Weems which premiered at the Spoleto Festival, USA.

His film credits include The Grand Inquisitor (as The One) directed by Tony Torn, Brooklyn Boheme (documentary) and Migrations directed by Nelson George; The Revolution Will Not Be Televised: a film About Gil Scott-Heron (documentary) among others.

Rux is the subject of the Voices of America television documentary, Carl Hancock Rux, Coming of Age, recipient of the CINE Golden Eagle Award (Larry Clamage/Richard Maniscalo producers). He was the host and programming director of the WBAI radio show, Live from The Nuyorican Poets Cafe, contributing correspondent for XM radio's The Bob Edwards Show and frequent guest host on WNYC's Soundcheck. Rux co-wrote and narrated the radio documentary, Walt Whitman; Songs of Myself, awarded the New York Press Club Journalism Award for Entertainment News. Mr. Rux created and performed a spoken word piece meant to be a mosaic of remembrance 9/11 for WNYC's the Greene Space Titled: A City Reimagined: Voices of 9/11 in Poetry and Performance. His poetry is currently on display projected as light and etched into glass by artist Brandon Stirling Baker as part of the Kaatsbaan Summer Festival 2020.

His CDs include Rux Revue (Sony/550), Apothecary Rx (Giant Step), Good Bread Alley (Thirsty Ear) and Homeostasis (CD Baby). He is the recipient of several awards including the Herb Alpert Prize, NYFA Prize, NYFA Gregory Millard Fellow, and NEA/TCG Artist-in-Residency Fellow. He is currently working on his new novel.

Rux has taught or been in residence at the University of California San Diego, Stanford University, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Hollins University, the University of Iowa, Brown University, New School for Social Research Faculty, NYU/BAI/Stella Adler Institute, Associate Artist The Billie Holiday Theater, Associate Artist Compagnia de' Colombari, Global ChangeMaker Fellow WeMakeChangeNow.org, Distinguished Hayden Visiting Artist at Yale University, Project Narrative Board Member - America During and After COVID-19, Columbia University Distinguished Visiting Faculty, and the former head of the MFA Writing for Performance Program at the California Institute of the Arts.

About Mallory Catlett:

Mallory Catlett is an Obie award winning director, dramaturg and creator of performance across disciplines; from City Council Meeting - a regional experiment in participatory democracy created with Aaron Landsman and Jim Findlay that the audience performs, to the internationally touring

Beowulf - Banana Bag & Bodice's musical bar room brawl, to Dread Scott's performance installation - Dread Scott: Decision at BAM's Next Wave Festival.

She received a 2014 Special Citation Obie Award for This Was The End, her remix of Chekhov's Uncle Vanya presented at The Chocolate Factory with Restless NYC, the production company she started in 2004. Restless NYC was designed to excavate the theatrical and literary record and to expand Catlett's own authorship. The design for This Was The End was also recognized with a Bessie and the Henry Hewes award. Prior productions include 2 site-specific reconstructions of Shakespeare - As You Like It: Restless In Arden and Rii; and the upcoming M/F FUTURE, a pair of pieces that explore gender and the prophetic imagination.

Prolific outside of the company, Catlett's original works also include Oh What War, inspired by Joan Littlewood's Oh What a Lovely War (HERE); The Greenhour, an adaptation of Rimbaud's A Season in Hell (Chapel Arts, Vancouver); Celebrity, devised from student-generated material and the writings of Andy Warhol (SUNY Purchase); The Woman Rebel, compiled from the writings of Margaret Sanger with Amanda Quaid (Women Center Stage at The Culture Project) and This Room Is Moving, a two-act combination of Harold Pinter's The Dwarfs and a companion piece, BEAT, created from the writings of Ginsberg, Kerouac and Burroughs (Video In, Vancouver; nominated for 5 Jessie Awards).

Catlett co-created and directed two Latitude 14 multimedia music pieces Red Fly/Blue Bottle (co-produced by HERE) and Tinder and with ensemble Banana Bag & Bodice (company member) Beowulf, Space//Space, The Fall & Rise Of The Rising Fallen, The Sewers, Panel.Animal and The Young War.

Catlett also directs new opera - the upcoming Echo Drift (HERE/Beth Morrison PROTOTYPE 2017), The Scarlet Ibis (HERE/Beth Morrison PROTOTYPE2015), Brother, Brother (Experiments In Opera), The Wanton Sublime (American Opera Projects/Roulette) and recently began on her first libretto of Rainbird now in development (Experiments in Opera).

She is a longtime collaborator with playwright Aaron Landsman (Patient Boy, and Running Away From The One With The Knife at The Chocolate Factory) and has also worked on plays by - Sergi Belbel, Thomas Bradshaw, Normand Chaurette, Guillem Clua, Xiemena Escalante, Christina Masciotti, Jason Craig and Naomi Wallace.

Her works have premiered in New York at 3LD, HERE, the Ontological-Hysteric Theater, PS122, Abrons Arts Center, The Chocolate Factory, The Collapsable Hole and the Ohio Theatre, and have been featured at the Ice Factory, CultureMart, COIL, Prelude and BAM's Next Wave Festival.

Regionally, her work has been seen at American Repertory Theater (Cambridge), ASU Gammage (Tempe), DiverseWorks (Houston), Z Space (San Francisco) & Redfern Center (Keene, NH). International touring includes Les Escales improbables (Montreal), Kilkenny Arts Festival (Ireland), Edinburgh Fringe Festival (Scotland), Dublin Fringe, (Ireland) Exit Festival (Créteil, France), Noorderzon Festival (Groningen, Netherlands), Adelaide Festival (Australia), Brighton Festival and Bristol's Mayfest (UK) and the PuSh Festival (Canada).

Catlett was a member of the 2006 Soho Rep. Writer/Director Lab, and she has been a resident artist at the Mount Tremper Arts, Baryshnikov Arts Center, CultureHub, MacDowell, Gibney Dance, Performing Garage, the Ontological's Incubator, Abrons Arts Center, HERE's HARP Program, Mabou Mines, Yaddo, Chashama, Digital Performance Institute, The Shadbolt Centre for the Arts and a British Studies Fellow at the Harry Ransom Research Center at UT-Austin.

Her work has been funded by the Jerome Foundation, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, New York Council for the Humanities, Graham Foundation, New York State Music Fund, NPN, NYSCA, LMCC (MCAF and Swing Space grants), Puffin Foundation, NYSCA (2 individual artist commissions), Edith Lutyens & Norman Bel Geddes Fund, Tobin Theatre Arts Fund, Mary Duke Biddle Foundation, Strickland Family Foundation, Greenwall Foundation, MAP Fund, NEFA, Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation. She is the recipient of the Foundation for the Contemporary Arts 2015 Grants to Artists Award and is a 2016 Creative Capital Grantee. She is a resident artist at Collapsable Hole and Westbeth Arts Center, where she develops her own work and supports the work of others.

She received her high school diploma from the North Carolina School for the Arts, where she studied classical ballet, a BA from Bard College in Drama and Dance and an Interdisciplinary MFA from The School for Contemporary Arts, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, where she continues to work and collaborate. In Vancouver she has created, directed and dramaturged 10 works for theater, opera and dance. Her work has received 6 Jessie Award nominations and been funded by the Canada Council for the Arts, BC Arts Council, Hamber Foundation and ArtsFACT.

As a freelance dramaturg, she has worked on projects for the Lincoln Center Theater Directors Lab, Ma-Yi, The Culture Project, Labyrinth, ExP Girl, Freefall Dance and Urban Stages. She received the Elliot Hayes Award for Dramaturgy for her co-direction of Juggernaut's THE FIRST 100 YEARS: The Professional Female Playwright. Her writing has been published in Theater Magazine (essay on and script of CITY COUNCIL MEETING), Canadian Theatre Review (on THIS ROOM IS MOVING) and her work has been covered in American Theater, HowlRound, Hyperallergic and Brazil's Questao de Critica. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Theater Arts at SUNY Stony Brook.

About Karen Kandel:

Karen Kandel first worked with Mabou Mines in the 1980s on the gender-reversed adaptation Lear, playing the role of Edna (Edgar in the original). She describes her early work with the Company as truly transformative, during which she "became acutely aware of what it means to be a full creative participant." Karen's work with Mabou Mines has earned her numerous awards including her performance as the narrator in Peter and Wendy (OBIE)- called "astonishing and enchanting."

Karen's deep commitment to collaboration fueled her work with many other like-minded artists committed to expanding traditional notions of theatre, among them Elizabeth Swados, Ann Bogart, Peter Sellars, Andre Serban, and JoAnne Akalitis (one of Mabou Mines' founders). Karen became a Co-Artistic Director at Mabou Mines in 2015.

Karen's creative vision continues to move her toward "work that embraces every possibility..."

Currently she is developing a new work with composer Eve Beglarian and directed by Mallory Catlett entitled The Vicksburg Project described as a song cycle following women's lives in Mississippi from the Civil War to today.

Karen most recently appeared in Jackie Sibblies Drury'S Marys Seacole (dir. Lileana Blain-Cruz, Lincoln Center Theatre) Select Off-Broadway credits include: The Assignment (Houses on the Moon); Washi Tales (Asia Society); Futurity (Lortel nomination, Soho Rep/Ars Nova); Love and Information, A Civil War Christmas (NYTW); Peter and Wendy (Lortel, Helen Hayes noms), Talk (Foundry Theater/The Public), Mabou Mines' Lear (Obie Awards). Karen is the recipient of numerous awards and honors. Among them are three OBIEs, the Connecticut Critics Circle Award, Drama League Outstanding Performance Citation, United States Artists, Ziporyn Fellowship, and Asian Cultural Council Fellowship. She was one of only six recipients of the Audrey Skirball-Kenis T.I.M.E. Grant.

About Sharon Ann Fogarty:

Sharon Ann Fogarty has been a Co-Artistic Director with Mabou Mines since 1999. As a producer she helped launch most of Mabou Mines' work since 1994, including award-winning productions such as Belén - A Book of Hours and Song for New York, directed by Ruth Maleczech, and An Epidog, Ecco Porco, Red Beads, and Mabou Mines DollHouse, directed by Lee Breuer. As an artistic director, she wrote and directed Cara Lucia at HERE Arts Center which was nominated for five American Theater Wing Design Awards. The production, re-conceived for touring as Lucia's Chapters of Coming Forth by Day, was nominated for two Elliot Norton Awards (Boston) and received the Best Design Award from The 1st Irish Festival (NYC).

Fogarty conceived and directed Finn with collaborators playwright Jocelyn Clarke, composer Phil Cunningham, and the digital artists at Misha Films. The production combined digital animation and live performance and premiered at NYU Skirball Center for the Performing Arts. Most recently at Mabou Mines new theater she directed Faust 2.0 adapted from Goethe by Matthew Maguire with design collaborators Marsha Ginsburg, Jim Clayburgh, Fitz Patton and Jeff Sugg. Previously Fogarty served as Artistic Director of the New York City-based Daedalus Theater Company and directed many of the company′s productions, including Sebastian Barry′s White Woman Street and Brighde Mullins′ Fire Eater. Additional productions she directed include Hippolytus, St. Joan of the Stockyard, Ubu Roi, Translations, Marat Sade, and Every Night Life.

Fogarty was nominated for the CalArts/Alpert Award and awarded grants from the Irish Institute, The NEA, NYSCA, and Culture Ireland. Her teaching credits include her current position, Lecturer of Acting/Directing at Barnard College/Columbia University.

About Mabou Mines:

Mabou Mines is an artist driven intergenerational artist collective whose performance pieces subvert and shatter social, cultural and disciplinary constructs.

Mabou Mines is a collaborative hub for diverse, avant-garde theater artists. Our mission is to generate, support, and connect audiences with original works of experimental performance and inventive re-imaginings of the classics, while nurturing the next generations of innovative theater artists. Mabou Mines' creative vision is informed by the ethos of our co-founders: JoAnne Akalaitis, Lee Breuer, Philip Glass, Ruth Maleczech, and David Warrilow. Fifty years later, the company remains committed to collaboration and providing a platform for work that interrogates, innovates, and represents a multiplicity of identities and experiences.

History of the Company:

In the summer of 1970, a group of artists-David Warrilow, Lee Breuer, Ruth Maleczech, JoAnne Akalaitis and Philip Glass-retreated to Philip and JoAnne's house near Mabou Mines, Nova Scotia to create their first theater piece, Red Horse Animation. The company took the name "Mabou Mines," and has since become not only a collective of artists, but of ideas and approaches.

The company was born out of the influences and inspirations of Europe's seminal avant-garde theater collectives. Before arriving in New York in 1970, the would-be ensemble of Mabou Mines spent five years in Europe observing and studying the working methods of the Berliner Ensemble, the politics of the exiled Living Theater and the demands of physical training with Jerzy Grotowski. Since that time, Mabou Mines has created more than 120 works, and has been honored with more than 100 major awards.

Founding Company Members: Lee Breuer, JoAnne Akalaitis, Philip Glass, Ruth Maleczech (1939-2013),and David Warrilow (1934-1995). Former Company members include: Fred Neumann (1926-2012), Bill Raymond, Ellen McElduff, L.B. Dallas, Greg Mehrten, B-St. John Schofield (1952-2013), Dawn Gray, Julie Archer, Honora Fergusson (1936-2012), and Terry O'Reilly. The Company's leadership has evolved over the years to include seventeen members in its fifty year history. This will mark the first time the theatre will not be led by a founding member.

The 122 Community Center:

Mabou Mines' home in the newly completed 122 Community Center where, for the first time, the company has their own fully equipped 99-seat theater, with dressing rooms and a rehearsal studio.

The return to the 122CC in 2017 has been a meaningful homecoming. Since 1978, the Company has been a resident at the 122 Community Center (122 CC), the City-owned former PS 122 in NYC's East Village. In February 2013, a city-funded four-year renovation of the building commenced. The City of New York, the Department of Cultural Affairs and the Department of Design and Construction have led the extensive renovation of 122 Community Center, that now houses Mabou Mines, The Alliance for Positive Change, Performance Space New York, Painting Space 122 and Movement Research. For the first time, Mabou Mines has the opportunity to present their own work, and to host emerging and mid-career artists in a variety of new and continuing programs.

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