Rachel Rosenthal Company
Rachel Rosenthal was an interdisciplinary artist, a teacher and animal rights activist based in Los Angeles, California.
June 11, 2016 Kate Noonan, the new artistic director answers a few questions, by: Kelsey Amara.
KA What is your vision for the year?
KN My vision for the year is to expand the number of classes during the fall, to curate a guest artist season
for the company's TOHUBOHU! ensemble performances, and to grow our audience. The overall vision and goal of the company to is honor Rachel Rosenthal's legacy and carry her work forward.
KA What is the Rachel Rosenthall methodology?
KN Not an easy question to answer briefly. Rachel and I wrote a book on her methodolgycalled The DbD Experience (Chance knows what it's doing) Routledge 2009
The methods were developed after a life working in various disciplines, in visual art as a painter and sculptor, as a dancer with Merce Cunningham, and in the theatre. Antonin Artaud's The Theatre and it's Double gave Rachel the desire to combine all the arts in one theatrical form. Her first company was called "Instant Theatre" in 1955, and they performed totally improvised evenings of theatre.
Our ensemble is the latest iteration of Instant Theatre and is comprised of visual artists -painters, designers, sculptors— as well as dancers, actors, musicians, storytellers and martial artists. Each brings unique talents to the fore in this form.
Totally improvised, spoken text is minimal in our performances. This opens the possibility for multiple points of entry for an audience, and welcomes as many interpretations as there are audience members.
KA How do you work with performers?
KN I teach the Dbd workshops, which is process oriented, and an 8 week class that is more geared toward creating structured pieces. The ensemble meets once a week and we workshop for several hours, improvising and doing exercises to develop new muscles and to identify and break physical habits and habitual ways of being in relationship to one another.
KA What advise would you would give to young artistic directors and choreographers?
KN Don't second guess what an audience wants. Speak with your own voice.
KA How do you use new media and costume design in the show?
KN We have a large prop and costume area that is filled with a variety of items collected through the decades. New things keep showing up all the time. The overall aesthetic is arte povera; we use everyday items in unexpected ways, and everything we utilize has a handmade look, cardboard boxes, cloth, recyclables, etc. The costume design is done on the fly, and it's amazing the odd and inventive combinations that arise. As to new media, we sometimes use projections in performance, and have had many visual artists as guests in performance. One of our frequent collaborators is Multimedia Artist/Percussionist/Composer Amy Knoles. Amy tours globally as a soloist performing computer assisted live electronic music with electronic percussion controllers and linear/interactive video.