Amy Knoles & Eric Clark; photo courtesy of The California EAR Unit

Rachel Rosenthal Company is excited to feature Guest Artists Amy Knoles and Eric Clark of the acclaimed electro acoustic chamber ensemble the California EAR Unit, at TOHUBOHU! Extreme Theater Ensemble performances in July. The California EAR Unit’s Amy Knoles and Rachel Rosenthal have been friends and collaborators for many years.  As TOHUBOHU! guest artists, Knoles and Clark will be integrated into The Ensemble with their live improvisational music performance. The TOHUBOHU! “total free improvisation” performances featuring the California EAR Unit run Friday, Saturday and Sunday, July 9, 10, and 11, 2010.

LOS ANGELES, CA – Rachel Rosenthal Company is excited to feature Guest Artists Amy Knoles and Eric Clark of the acclaimed electro acoustic chamber ensemble the California EAR Unit, at TOHUBOHU! Extreme Theater Ensemble performances in July. The TOHUBOHU! “total free improvisation” performances featuring the California EAR Unit run Friday, Saturday and Sunday, July 9, 10, and 11, 2010. Friday and Saturday performances begin at 8:30 p.m., Sunday performances at 7:30 p.m. Tickets cost $20. Reservations are necessary to insure seats and can be made online via Brown Paper Tickets at www.rachelrosenthal.org or www.brownpapertickets.com/event/89856. The Rachel Rosenthal Company’s venue, Espace DbD, is located at 2847 South Robertson Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90034. Street parking is available.

The California EAR Unit’s Amy Knoles and Rachel Rosenthal have been friends and collaborators for many years.  Knoles collaborated on Rosenthal’s final full-length solo piece UR-BOOR. She also scored Rosenthal’s 60-performer piece Zone at the UCLA Center for the Performing Arts, as well as performed live with Rosenthal in Pangean Dreams, Timepiece, and The Unexpurgated Virgin throughout the US and Europe.  As TOHUBOHU! guest artists, Knoles and Clark will be integrated into The Ensemble with their live improvisational music performance.

The Unit has performed in respected venues such as the Kennedy Center in Washington DC and Queen Elizabeth Hall in London. They have toured throughout the world: Brussels, Aspen, Kiev, Paris, Cologne, New York, Boston, Minneapolis, San Francisco, Santa Fe, Amsterdam, and Reykjavik. They have also been featured in programs on the BBC, Japanese television, National Public Radio, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Danish National Radio, and WGBH.  From 1987 to 2004, the EAR Unit was Ensemble-in-Residence at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Since then, they have been in residence at the Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater (REDCAT) housed in the Walt Disney Hall. Over the years, the Unit has worked closely with many composers such as Elliott Carter, Steve Reich, Morton Feldman, John Luther Adams, Fred Frith, Tod Machover, Julia Wolfe, Louis Andriessen, John Cage, Mauricio Kagel, Michael Gordon, Charles Wuorinen, Morton Subotnick, and Alison Knowles, among others.

In 1999, Rosenthal received an Honorary Doctorate from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago; and in 2000 she was honored by the City of Los Angeles as a “Living Cultural Treasure of Los Angeles.” Critics have called her “a monument and a marvel” and Richard Schechner, editor of The Drama Review (TDR), put Rosenthal into the same category as Robert Wilson, Ping Chong, Richard Foreman, Meredith Monk, and Laurie Anderson.

Photo Credit: Helena Ruffin

Legendary interdisciplinary artist Rachel Rosenthal is set to introduce the world to her new improvisational theater group, TOHUBOHU! Extreme Theater Ensemble, with monthly performances starting the weekend of February 19, 2010. The name, loosely translated, means “collision or chaos” which Rosenthal describes as not what the Company does, but the process they go through to do what they do. Each monthly performance will span three nights during one weekend. All performance begin at 8:30pm. Tickets cost $20. Reservations are necessary to insure seats…For Immediate Release: December 21, 2009

Pioneering Interdisciplinary Artist Rachel Rosenthal
Introduces Her New Improvisational Theater Group
TOHUBOHU! Extreme Theater Ensemble

With Monthly Performances in Los Angeles
Premiering February 19 – 21, 2010

LOS ANGELES, CA – Legendary interdisciplinary artist Rachel Rosenthal is set to introduce the world to her new improvisational theater group, TOHUBOHU! Extreme Theater Ensemble, with monthly performances starting the weekend of February 19, 2010. The name, loosely translated, means “collision or chaos” which Rosenthal describes as not what the Company does, but the process they go through to do what they do. Each monthly performance will span three nights during one weekend. All performance begin at 8:30pm. Tickets cost $20. Reservations are necessary to insure seats and can be made by calling 310-839-0661 or online via Brown Paper Tickets at www.rachelrosenthal.org. The Rachel Rosenthal Company’s venue, Espace DbD, is located at 2847 South Robertson Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90034. Street parking is available.

The Rachel Rosenthal Company TOHUBOHU! Extreme Theater Ensemble schedule
– start time for every performance is 8:30 p.m. –
- February 2010 – Fri. 19th / Sat. 20th / Sun. 21st
- March 2010 – Fri. 12th / Sat. 13th / Sun. 14th
- April 2010 – Fri. 9th / Sat. 10th / Sun.11th
- May 2010 – Fri. 7th / Sat. 8th / Sun. 9th
– June 2010 – Fri. 11th / Sat. 12th / Sun. 13th

The Rachel Rosenthal Company’s TOHUBOHU! Extreme Theater Ensemble, the latest offering in the 83-year-old Rosenthal’s remarkable career, is inspired by Jean-Louis Barrault’s concept of “Total Theatre” and Antonin Artaud’s “Theatre of Cruelty.” Echoing Barrault’s and Artaud’s revolutionary notions about theater, Rosenthal’s performance aesthetic integrates movement, voice, choreography, improvisation, costuming, lighting, and sets into seismic experiences. This genre of work, total free improvisation, is completely unique. Nobody knows in advance what will happen – not Rosenthal, not Company members, and certainly not the audience. This uncertainty makes the performances psychologically charged for all involved.

“Improvisational theater is the most difficult art form in the world. You can’t perfect your technique and there are no lines to rehearse,” says Rosenthal, “Everything happens in the moment.”

TOHUBOHU! total free improvisation pieces typically start in a similar manner; there is a group warm-up, then Rosenthal directs the group with a few words — sometimes only three or four. The words she selects reflect an idea she’s been thinking about, something related to a current event, a random verb, or perhaps instructions for the number of elements to include on stage. The studio space is darkened for a few moments. One of Rosenthal’s dogs might run by, wagging its tail, as colored lights and sound emerge from the darkness.

Sets are composed on the spot from lengths of bright fabric, boxes, and folding chairs. Props might be added in by Company members from a large backstage collection of objects that include items such as a dress form, telephone handsets, old books, a houseplant, a bird cage, an oscillating fan, fake plastic flowers, and paper bags. The Company stirs in recorded music, sounds, live music, or perhaps chanting.

These initial seeds germinate a piece. From here, the convulsive physicality of the Company begins. The members’ primal actions operate in concert with each other as well as the formal aesthetic elements of light, sound, props, and physical space. Text, which is primary, even tyrannical, in traditional theater, is absent in uniquely ephemeral TOHUBOHU! Through a mysterious alchemical process, the players act, react, and respond to surprises. They collaborate with each other, and everything around them, to create composition, form, and meaning. Since there is no established narrative to satisfy audience expectations, viewers are forced out of passive complacency as they digest what’s going on and anticipate what might happen next.

Performances function formally in space more like visual art than traditional theater, requiring the audience to actively interpret all the various elements. Results can be either abstract or realistic.

“When it’s good, it’s sublime. And when it’s bad, it can be a painful experience. Much like human existence,” says Rosenthal in a naked assessment of the art form, “Sometimes you walk away scratching your head wondering what the hell you just watched. We embrace that sort of uncertainty and chaos which is counter to highly processed culture.”

The Rachel Rosenthal Company members include visual artists, dancers, aerialists, a Cake Diva, and the operator of the Tyrannosaurus Rex model at the Natural History Museum, among others….

Franc Baliton is a performance and installation artist.

Nathalie Broizat is a French performance artist and actress. She has been featured as a soloist in Los Angeles venues such as MOCA, The Getty Center, REDCAT, Highways Performance Space, and the Electric Lodge. A former Fulbright grantee, she has been working with Rachel Rosenthal for the past five years.

Jarred Cairns is in the Studio Arts program at University of California, Irvine. He has been studying with Rachel Rosenthal for over a year.

Doug Hammett, who received an MFA from Art Center in Pasadena, blends the worlds of the visual arts and theatrical arts into works for the wall and stage. He is a past member of CoMMit, Invisible Theater, and Fauve Conspiracy, and a current member of TOHUBOHU! and YesAnd.

Alexis Hunt is a visual and performance artist currently living in Los Angeles.

New York native Nehara Kalev is a dancer, choreographer and co-founder of Catch Me Bird Dance Theater, a reality-based performance collaboration with her husband C. Derrick Jones. She has performed as an aerial dancer with Airealistic and has been featured in the acrobatic Diavolo Dance Theater. She has a BA from Oberlin College and an MFA from University of California, Los Angeles. Kalev has been working with Rachel Rosenthal for several years.

Josué Martinez has a BA in Theater Arts and Dance from Cal State Los Angeles, studying under José Cruz González, Tanya Kane-Parry, and Hae Kyung Lee. He has performed as part of the Teatro Nueva Alma Company, Danielle Brazell’s Queer Exchange Group, and Tim Miller’s Performance Art Group. Currently he teaches theater to children and conducts story times to promote reading at the Commerce Public Library. This is his first year working with Rachel Rosenthal.

Michael Morrissey has performed across the city, from Al’s Bar downtown (Ubu da King, Exeunt, Porno), to Highways on the Westside (Last Queer Taboo, Voluptuous Madness) to The Rachel Rosenthal Company (Timepiece, Ur-Boor, etc.) and beyond… (Last Waltz, Crook.)

Craig Ng has accumulated dozens of credits in film, television, and theater. He is an award-winning Foley artist (post sound film production) currently working in animation on several Disney projects. He also brings a history of dance and martial arts to his explorations with TOHUBOHU!

Dan Poirier is an illustrator, graphic designer, puppeteer, and performer. He has degrees in Illustration from Art Center College of Design, and Theater Arts from University of California, Los Angeles. His creative experience includes set design, live event production management, and storyboarding for animated films. Poirier has studied with Rachel Rosenthal for two years.

Pamela Samuelson has performed as a dancer, aerialist, actor, and musician in New York City, Puerto Rico, and Los Angeles since graduating from Sarah Lawrence College with a degree in Choreography and Religion. She has studied with Rachel Rosenthal for nearly four years.

Joan Spitler is an artist who has performed with Rachel Rosenthal for many years. She has studied with some of the originators of performance art including Eleanor Antin, Alan Kaprow, and Jerome Rothenberg. Her artistic talents as a performer and a renowned cake designer have been featured internationally in gallery settings, onstage, and in television and film.

Mike Steckel studied fine and performance art at the University of Northern Iowa under Jeffery Byrd. He now works at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, primarily as a dinosaur puppeteer. He has been studying with Rachel Rosenthal for two and a half years.

Interdisciplinary artist/arts educator Kate Noonan is the managing director, lighting designer, and sound designer for The Rachel Rosenthal Company. She was also a Company member in a previous incarnation of TOHUBOHU! She has worked in collaboration with Mehmet Sander, The Fabulous Monsters, John Fleck, and Susan Tyrrell, among many others in the Los Angeles theater community. As a performer, she was last seen in Bill Viola’s Dense Presence, a film installation that is part of his Passions series, which had its world premiere at the Getty Center in Los Angeles. She has taught theater arts and Performance from Scratch workshops across the United States.

Rachel Rosenthal, a leading figure from the Southern California arts movement in the 1960s and 1970s, has been inspiring audiences for decades. Born into an affluent Russian-Jewish family in Paris, Rosenthal’s father, Léonard Rosenthal, was a gem merchant widely known as “The King of Pearls.” During World War II, her family escaped France, moving to Rio de Janeiro by way of Portugal. After losing his material wealth to the Nazi’s, her father had to start over at age 65. In 1941, the family left Brazil to settle in New York where Rosenthal graduated from the High School of Music and Art and became a US citizen.

She studied art, theater and dance in Paris and New York after the war with such teachers as Hans Hoffmann, Erwin Piscator, and Jean-Louis Barrault. Her circle included Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Merce Cunningham and John Cage, whose Zen sensibility informed and influenced Rosenthal’s aesthetic. With this foundation, she moved West and began her theatrical career in Los Angeles in the mid-1950s as artistic director and performer for the ten-year run of the totally improvised and influential underground Instant Theatre which created Happenings that drew upon notions of chance.

In the past 25 years, Rosenthal has presented over 35 of her own original performance pieces – thought provoking works centered on humanity’s place on the planet. According to Artweek Magazine, “Rosenthal defines what differentiates quality performance art from mundane theatrical exercise…she took us into her reality, and for that brief and precious moment, she altered our vision of the world. This is what great art can and should do.”

Rosenthal has performed in over 100 venues around the world including documenta 8 in Kassel, Germany, The Helsinki Festival, ICA London, The Performance Space in Sydney, The Whitney Museum in New York City, and Museum of Contemporary Art here in Los Angeles. The Pompidou Centre recently included her in its 2006 show Los Angeles 1955-1985. Her pioneering performances have earned Obie, Rockefeller, Getty, NEA and CAA awards, among others.

In 1999, Rosenthal received an Honorary Doctorate from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago; and in 2000 she was honored by the City of Los Angeles as a “Living Cultural Treasure of Los Angeles.” Critics have called her “a monument and a marvel” and Richard Schechner, editor of The Drama Review (TDR), put Rosenthal into the same category as Robert Wilson, Ping Chong, Richard Foreman, Meredith Monk, and Laurie Anderson.

She opened her studio, Espace DbD, on Robertson Boulevard in Los Angeles in 1980. From 1980 to 1983, Rosenthal presented performances by many emerging and established performance artists including Barbara Smith, Eleanor Antin, Cheri Gaulke, Alan Kaprow, John White, Joyce Cutler Shaw, Tom Jenkins, and many others. Rosenthal founded The Rachel Rosenthal Company as an educational non-profit arts organization in 1989.

Rosenthal’s new book, The DbD Experience: Chance Knows What It’s Doing!, was released this month by Routledge. DbD, or “Doing by Doing,” describes her signature method of teaching improvisational theater. In the 130-page book, Rosenthal explores improvisational theater and its relationship to life, offering a blow-by-blow account of what happens in her 34-hour DbD weekend intensive workshops (currently still happening on a bi-annual basis in Los Angeles). This mix of memoir, teaching manual, and manifesto was edited by Kate Noonan (ISBN 978-0-415-55102-1, www.routledge.com). For the full press release on The DbD Experience: Chance Knows What It’s Doing!, see: http://www.greengalactic.com/2009/dbd-experience/

“Chance is the core of improvisation,” says Rosenthal when crystallizing the point of her teaching methods which come to life in TOHUBOHU!, “It’s about breaking down borders, opening up to the givens, activating the moment, and paying attention to what is.”

# # #

For more information, to get on the press list for an upcoming TOHUBOHU! Extreme Theater performance, photos, a copy of Rosenthal’s new book, or to arrange an interview, please contact Green Galactic’s Lynn Hasty at 213.840.1201 and lynn@greengalactic.com

# # #

- event details –

The Rachel Rosenthal Company Introduces
TOHUBOHU! Extreme Theater Ensemble

Friday – Sunday night
Feb. 19, 20, 21, 2010
8:30 – 10:00pm

The Rachel Rosenthal Company
at Espace DbD
2847 South Robertson Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90034

$20
Reservations Required

310-839-0661
www.rachelrosenthal.org

]]> http://www.greengalactic.com/2010/rachel-rosenthal-tohubohu/feed/ 0 http://www.greengalactic.com/2009/dbd-experience/ http://www.greengalactic.com/2009/dbd-experience/#comments Fri, 20 Nov 2009 08:25:08 +0000 lynn-hasty http://www.greengalactic.com/?p=337 Pioneering interdisciplinary artist Rachel Rosenthal, 83, is set to release her long-awaited book, The DbD Experience: Chance Knows What It’s Doing! DbD, or “Doing by Doing” describes her signature method of teaching improvisational theater. In the 130-page book, the Obie winning performer explores improvisational theater and its relationship to life, offering a blow-by-blow account of what happens in her 34-hour DbD weekend intensive workshops (currently still happening on a bi-annual basis in Los Angeles). This mix of memoir, teaching manual, and manifesto was edited by Kate Noonan and is set for US release in December 2009 by Routledge.
For Immediate Release: November 13, 2009

Pioneering Interdisciplinary Artist Rachel Rosenthal
Shares Life’s Work in Anticipated New Book
The DbD Experience:
Chance Knows What It’s Doing!
U.S. Release in December 2009 by Routledge

LOS ANGELES, CA – Pioneering interdisciplinary artist Rachel Rosenthal, 83, is set to release her long-awaited book, The DbD Experience: Chance Knows What It’s Doing! DbD, or “Doing by Doing” describes her signature method of teaching improvisational theater. In the 130-page book, the Obie winning performer explores improvisational theater and its relationship to life, offering a blow-by-blow account of what happens in her 34-hour DbD weekend intensive workshops (currently still happening on a bi-annual basis in Los Angeles). This mix of memoir, teaching manual, and manifesto was edited by Kate Noonan and is set for US release in December 2009 by Routledge (ISBN 978-0-415-55102-1, www.routledge.com).

“Chance is the core of improvisation,” says Rosenthal when crystallizing the point of her teaching methods, “The DbD Experience is about breaking down borders, opening up to the givens, activating the moment, and paying attention to what is.”

Memoir
The book starts with a biographical introduction that summarizes Rosenthal’s colorful personal history. Born into an affluent Russian-Jewish family in Paris, Rosenthal’s father, Léonard Rosenthal, was a gem merchant widely known as The King of Pearls. During World War II, her family escaped France, moving to Rio de Janeiro by way of Portugal. After losing his material wealth to the Nazi’s, her father had to start over at age 65. In 1941, the family left Brazil to settle in New York where Rosenthal graduated from the High School of Music and Art and became a U.S. citizen.

She studied art, theater and dance in Paris and New York after the war with such teachers as Hans Hoffmann, Erwin Piscator, and Jean-Louis Barrault. Her circle included Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Merce Cunningham and John Cage, whose Zen sensibility informed and influenced Rosenthal’s aesthetic. With this foundation, she moved West and began her theatrical career in Los Angeles in the mid-1950s as artistic director and performer in her totally improvised and influential underground Instant Theatre for its ten-year run.

Manual
The DbD Experience: Chance Knows What It’s Doing! lays out the processes and exercises Rosenthal invented and developed over the last fifty years. It offers a step-by-step, nuts and bolts guide to the methods Rosenthal employs during her 34-hour DbD Experience Weekend workshop. Her teaching methods were inspired by Jean-Louis Barrault’s concept of “Total Theatre” and Antonin Artaud’s “Le Theatre et Son Double.” What emerged is a performance aesthetic that integrates text, movement, voice, choreography, improvisation, costuming, lighting, and sets into seismic experiences.

The book jacket outlines the DbD Experience Weekend process that Rosenthal orchestrates in her Los Angeles studio with a force “equal parts shaman and drill sergeant” (High Performance):

FRIDAY – Origins
Arrive at the Doing by Doing workshop to be greeted by Rosenthal, pioneering theater explorer and your host for the weekend ahead. Explore non-human ways of living and moving. Begin to develop a shared vocabulary with your fellow students through exercises.

SATURDAY – Connections
Continue to connect with the group on an energetic level. Make the journey from Kansas to OZ. Collaborate and create as a group, moving and vocalizing without language. Improvise boldly at every step. Treat music, voice, lighting, costume, sets, props and fellow performers as equals.

SUNDAY – Power
Learn to arrive in the moment when you are needed. Engage with transformative processes and take part in the Star Meditation. Understand your own individual power, joining your physical and emotional self. Perform solo improvisations and the Rambler – the final, extended culmination of everything that you have learned through the 34-hour experience.

Rosenthal says: “The experience can be transformational not only for performers, but anyone – it gives them courage and allows them to take risks.”

Manifesto
Rosenthal’s personal, philosophical and political beliefs are very much present throughout the book. Woven into its pages are tasty ideological morsels that Rosenthal has gleaned in her years as an interdisciplinary performer, activist, master teacher, director, iconic artist, and worrier for mankind. A leading figure in the Southern California Arts movement of the 1960s and 1970s, Rosenthal was an outspoken pioneer in addressing environmental and animal rights issues, and was a founder of “Womanspace,” a hotbed of feminist art and activism. She also brings to the DbD table years of research and meditation, facts and impressions on science, art, philosophy, transformational psychology, holistic health, and personal power.

“We live in a world filled with competition, anxiety and fear which locks us all up,” says Rosenthal connecting the ideals put forth in the book to the reality of modern life, “By allowing ourselves to let go, to improvise, we learn to embrace life as it comes. To truly be in the moment, we can face the unknown with open eyes, work with what is, and open the door to magic.”

Rosenthal’s Career
In the past 25 years, Rosenthal has presented over 35 of her own original performance pieces – thought provoking works centered on humanity’s place on the planet. According to Artweek Magazine, “Rosenthal defines what differentiates quality performance art from mundane theatrical exercise…she took us into her reality, and for that brief and precious moment, she altered our vision of the world. This is what great art can and should do.”
Rosenthal has performed in over 100 venues around the world including documenta 8 in Kassel, Germany, The Helsinki Festival, ICA London, The Performance Space in Sydney, The Whitney Museum in New York City, and Museum of Contemporary Art here in Los Angeles. The Pompidou Centre recently included her in its 2006 show “Los Angeles 1955-1985.” Her pioneering performances have earned Obie, Rockefeller, Getty, NEA and CAA awards, among others.

In 1999, Rosenthal received an Honorary Doctorate from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago; and in 2000 she was honored by the City of Los Angeles as a “Living Cultural Treasure of Los Angeles.” Critics have called her “a monument and a marvel” and Richard Schechner, editor of The Drama Review (TDR), put Rosenthal into the same category as Robert Wilson, Ping Chong, Richard Foreman, Meredith Monk, and Laurie Anderson.

She opened her studio, Espace DbD, on Robertson Boulevard in Los Angeles in 1980. From 1980 to 1983, Rosenthal presented performances by many emerging and established performance artists including Barbara Smith, Eleanor Antin, Cheri Gaulke, Alan Kaprow, John White, Joyce Cutler Shaw, Tom Jenkins, and many others. Rosenthal founded The Rachel Rosenthal Company as an educational non-profit arts organization in 1989. She is currently nurturing a new troupe of performers that she will introduce to the world as The Rachel Rosenthal Company’s TOHUBOHU! Extreme Theater Ensemble in February 2010. The name loosely translated means “collision or chaos” which Rosenthal describes as not what the Company does, but the process they go through to do what they do. For more on The Rachel Rosenthal Company and upcoming DbD workshops, see http://www.rachelrosenthal.org.

The DbD Experience: Chance Knows What It’s Doing! was edited by Kate Noonan, an interdisciplinary artist/arts educator who has taught theater arts and Performance from Scratch workshops across the US. Noonan is also the managing director of The Rachel Rosenthal Company.

Routledge is a global publisher of academic books, journals and online resources in the humanities.

#         #        #

For more information, a copy of the book, photos, or to arrange an interview, please contact Green Galactic’s Lynn Hasty at 213-840-1201 and lynn (at) greengalactic.com.

Just the Facts:

Author: Rachel Rosenthal
Edited and with a foreword by: Kate Noonan
Title: The DbD Experience: Chance Knows What It’s Doing!
Published by: Routledge
ISBN: 978-0-415-55102-1 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-415-55101-4 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-203-87241-X (ebk)
Book cover photo by: Daniel Joseph Martinez

Table of Contents

1. Foreword by Kate Noonan
2. Preface
3. Introduction (Biography)
4. What is Doing by Doing?
5. Friday: Origins
6. Saturday: Connections
7. Sunday: Power
8. The Dibidi Story
9. Addenda: Post DbD Letters

Online Distribution

Routledge:
http://www.routledge.com/9780415551021

Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/DbD-Experience-Chance-knows-doing/dp/0415551021/ref=tmm_pap_title_0

]]> http://www.greengalactic.com/2009/dbd-experience/feed/ 0 http://www.greengalactic.com/2009/rachel-rosenthal-83/ http://www.greengalactic.com/2009/rachel-rosenthal-83/#comments Tue, 27 Oct 2009 00:26:11 +0000 lynn-hasty http://dev.greengalactic.com/?p=221

Rachel Rosenthal photo by Michael Childers

Los Angeles’ own living legend Rachel Rosenthal has a lot to celebrate this November! The interdisciplinary performer, animal activist, master teacher, and iconic artist will be honored on Saturday, November 7, 2009, with the cultural event of the year – “Rachel Rosenthal’s Birthday Bash 83.” From 7:00 to 11:00 p.m., Track 16 Gallery at Bergamot Station in Santa Monica, California will host the occasion, which will celebrate Rosenthal’s 83rd birthday, the release of her upcoming book The DbD Experience: Chance Knows What it’s Doing!, and will announce her Company’s new performance troupe, TOHUBOHU! Extreme Theater Ensemble. In honor of the 83 years Rosenthal has spent on the planet, the event will feature an exhibit and silent art auction of the highest caliber. The auction will include 83 artist works in a diverse range of media by exceptional established and emerging artists including a number of art world legends such as John Baldessari, Mike Kelley and Robert Rauschenberg*. Admission will cost $25. Tickets will be available online through Rosenthal’s site and at the door on the night of the event. Track 16 Gallery is located at 2525 Michigan Ave. Building C1, Santa Monica, CA 90404.

Also coming up for Ms. Roshenthal…
- Dec. – the US release of her new book (The DbD Experience by Routledge)
- Feb. – the debut of her new theater ensemble (Rachel Rosenthal Company’s TOHUBOHU! Extreme Theater Ensemble) 2/19 – 2/21/10
For Immediate Release: September 10, 2009

Pioneering Interdisciplinary Artist Rachel Rosenthal
Celebrates Her 83rd Birthday, A New Book,
And Announces New Performance Ensemble
At Track 16 Gallery’s Cultural Event of the Year
“Rachel Rosenthal’s Birthday Bash 83”
Saturday, November 7, 2009

LOS ANGELES, CA – Los Angeles’ own living legend Rachel Rosenthal has a lot to celebrate this November! The interdisciplinary performer, animal activist, master teacher, and iconic artist will be honored on Saturday, November 7, 2009, with the cultural event of the year – “Rachel Rosenthal’s Birthday Bash 83.” From 7:00 to 11:00 p.m., Track 16 Gallery at Bergamot Station in Santa Monica, California will host the occasion, which will celebrate Rosenthal’s 83rd birthday, the release of her upcoming book The DbD Experience: Chance Knows What it’s Doing!, and will announce her Company’s new performance troupe, TOHUBOHU! Extreme Theater Ensemble. In honor of the 83 years Rosenthal has spent on the planet, the event will feature an exhibit and silent art auction of the highest caliber. The auction will include 83 abstract, conceptual, and representational “portraits” of Rosenthal in a diverse range of media by exceptional established and emerging artists including a number of art world legends such as John Baldessari, Mike Kelley and Robert Rauschenberg*. Admission will cost $25. Tickets will be available online through Rosenthal’s site and at the door on the night of the event. Track 16 Gallery is located at 2525 Michigan Ave. Building C1, Santa Monica, CA 90404. For more information on the venue, please call 310-264-4678 or visit http://www.track16.com. For more information on Rosenthal and this event, please call 310-839-0661 or visit http://www.rachelrosenthal.org.

The 83 artist works being donated for the event’s exhibit and silent auction are from a mind-blowing array of artists. In addition to Antin, Kelley and Rauschenberg, art world luminaries such as Lita Albuquerque, Eleanor Antin, Judy Baca, Llyn Foulkes, George Herms, Martin Kersels, Ed Moses, Lee Mullican, Betye Saar, Masami Teraoka, Patssi Valdez, and June Wayne have confirmed their involvement. For a full list of participating artists to date please visit: www.rachelrosenthal.org/rr/party.html. Auction proceeds will support Rachel Rosenthal Company’s TOHUBOHU! Extreme Theater Ensemble performances, student scholarships, and visiting artist stipends. This special evening will also include wines sponsored by Bitch along with a champagne toast thanks to Bitch Bubbly, an outrageous cake created by Joan Spitler and Leigh Grode of the world-renowned Cake Divas, and live music by Amy Knoles from the California E.A.R. Unit as well as Jean Paul Monsché of the Mad Alsacians.

In the past 25 years, Rosenthal has presented over 35 of her own original performance pieces – thought provoking works centered on humanity’s place on the planet. According to Artweek Magazine, “Rosenthal defines what differentiates quality performance art from mundane theatrical exercise…she took us into her reality, and for that brief and precious moment, she altered our vision of the world. This is what great art can and should do.”

Rosenthal’s long-awaited book, The DbD Experience: Chance Knows What it’s Doing!, a mix of memoir, philosophical musing, manifesto and teaching manual, will be published this fall by Routledge. DbD (Doing by Doing) is Rosenthal’s signature brand of improvisational theater. This is the first time she has written about her teaching methods. In the 168-page book, she explores improvisational theater and its relationship to life, offering a blow-by-blow account of what happens in Rosenthal’s 32-hour DbD weekend intensive workshops (currently still happening on a bi-annual basis). Throughout the book, she describes the processes and exercises she invented and developed over the last fifty years. Routledge, a global publisher of academic books, journals and online resources in the humanities and social sciences, will release the book in the UK this October, and in the US in December 2009 [http://www.routledge.com/shopping_cart/products/product_detail.asp?curTab=BIO&id=&parent_id=&sku=&isbn=9780415551021&pc=].

Rosenthal opened her studio, Espace DbD, on Robertson Boulevard in Los Angeles in 1980. From 1980 to 1983, Rosenthal presented performances by many emerging and established performance artists including Barbara Smith, Eleanor Antin, Cheri Gaulke, Alan Kaprow, John White, Joyce Cutler Shaw, Tom Jenkins, and many others. Rosenthal founded The Rachel Rosenthal Company as an educational non-profit arts organization in 1989.

Rosenthal’s teaching methods were inspired by Jean-Louis Barrault’s concept of “Total Theatre” and Antonin Artaud’s “Le Theatre et Son Double.” What emerged is a zen-inspired performance aesthetic that integrates text, movement, voice, choreography, improvisation, costuming, lighting, and sets into seismic experiences. She has been nurturing a new troupe of performers that she will introduce to the world as the Rachel Rosenthal Company’s TOHUBOHU! Extreme Theater Ensemble in February 2010.

Rosenthal has performed in over 100 venues around the world including documenta 8 in Kassel, Germany, The Helsinki Festival, ICA London, The Performance Space in Sydney, The Whitney Museum in New York City, and Museum of Contemporary Art here in Los Angeles. The Pompidou Centre recently included her in its 2006 show Los Angeles 1955-1985. Her pioneering performances have earned Obie, Rockefeller, Getty, NEA and CAA awards, among others.

Born into an affluent Russian-Jewish family in Paris, Rosenthal’s father, Léonard Rosenthal, was a gem merchant widely known as The King of Pearls. During World War II, her family escaped France, moving to Rio de Janeiro by way of Portugal. After losing his material wealth to the Nazi’s, her father had to start over at age 65. In 1941, the family left Brazil to settle in New York where Rosenthal graduated from the High School of Music and Art and became a U.S. citizen. She studied art, theater and dance in Paris and New York after the war with such teachers as Hans Hoffmann, Merce Cunningham, Erwin Piscator, and Jean-Louis Barrault.

Rosenthal began her theatrical career in Los Angeles in the mid-1950s as artistic director and performer in her totally improvised “Instant Theater” for its ten-year run. A leading figure in the Southern California Arts movement of the 1960s and 1970s, Rosenthal was a pioneer in addressing feminist and animal rights issues, and was a founder of “Womanspace,” a hotbed of feminism.

In 1999, Rosenthal received an Honorary Doctorate from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago; and in 2000 she was honored by the City of Los Angeles as a “Living Cultural Treasure of Los Angeles.” Critics have called her “a monument and a marvel” and Richard Schechner, editor of The Drama Review (TDR), put Rosenthal into the same category as Robert Wilson, Ping Chong, Richard Foreman, Meredith Monk, and Laurie Anderson.

* Thanks to the Estate of Robert Rauschenberg, one of the 83 donated works for the auction is of particular interest. Among the silent auction items is a 1994 Rauschenberg print honoring Rosenthal. This piece is from Rauschenberg’s “Tribute 21” suite of prints – a portfolio that pays tribute to inspirational leaders – 21 artworks, celebrating 21 humans, all impacting themes in the 21st century such as peace, social justice, and a sustainable environment. In the portfolio, Rachel Rosenthal shares company with illustrious world figures such as Nelson Mandela, Toni Morrison, Jacques-Yves Cousteau, Carl Sagan, Buckminster Fuller, and the Dalai Lama, among others.

# # #

For more information, photos, or to request an interview, please contact Green Galactic’s Lynn Hasty at 213-840-1201 or lynn@greengalactic.com.