Pioneer

Artist Bios (as of 1991)

Paul Dresher (Artistic Director/Composer) performs with live tape processing system and electronics and composes for chamber, orchestra and opera/musical theater ensembles. Recent commissions have included works for the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Kronos Quartet, the San Francisco Symphony, a Nonesuch Commission Award from the American Music Center and the Olympic Arts Festival. He has worked with director Robert Woodruff on two productions at the La Jolla Playhouse and has twice collaborated with the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company and ODC/San Francisco. Since 1979 he has performed throughout the U.S. and Europe, including performances at the Munich State Opera, Festival d'automne in Paris, San Francisco Symphony, Brooklyn Academy of Music's Next Wave Festival in New York, London International Festival of Theater and the New York Philharmonic. He formed the Ensemble in 1984 and has been the Artistic Director and composer for WAS ARE WILL BE, SLOW FIRE, and POWER FAILURE. Recordings of his works have been released on the Lovely Music and New Albion labels.

Robert Woodruff (Director) has most recently directed the Mark Taper Forum (Los Angeles) productions of Sam Shepard's A LIE OF THE MIND and A DAY IN THE LIFE by Jean Claude Van Italie with Joseph Chaikin. He directed two collaborations with the Flying Karamazov Brothers, Stravinsky's L'HISTOIRE DU SOLDAT for Brooklyn Academy of Music's Next Wave Festival in New York, and THE COMEDY OF ERRORS at Lincoln Center which was televised live nationally on PBS. He has worked as a director with many outstanding contemporary playwrights, among them, Sam Shepard, David Mamet, Michael Cristofer and Richard Nelson. His collaborations with Shepard include the premieres of CURSE OF THE STARVING CLASS and TRUE WEST, both for Joseph Papp at the New York Shakespeare Festival, and the Pulitzer Prize winner BURIED CHILD. He staged the English language premiere of RED RIVER by French playwright Pierre Laville, translated by Mamet. New York credits also include working with Cristofer on ICE at the Manhattan Theater Club and with British playwright Stephen Poliakoff on SHOUT ACROSS THE RIVER at the Phoenix Theater.

Terry Allen (Writer/Visual Designer) is an independent artist working since 1966 in a wide variety of media including musical and theatrical performance, sculpture, painting, drawing and video and installations which incorporate any and all of these media. His work is included in major collections, ranging from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York to the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art. Since 1983, much of Allen's time has been occupied with his cross-disciplinary series, YOUTH IN ASIA, which utilizes Allen's talents in drawing, painting, sculpture, collage and assemblage, poem and narrative, film, video, installation and live performances. His numerous performance collaborations include LEON & LENA (AND LENZ), directed by JoAnne Akalaitis at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis and PEDAL STEAL, with Margaret Jenkins Dance Company which premiered at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York and subsequently received a Bessie Award and an Isadora Duncan Award. Allen has recorded five albums, released on Fate Records, was recipient of National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships in 1972, 1979 and 1989, and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1986.

Rinde Eckert (Writer/Performer) is a writer, singer, director and actor who is known primarily for his remarkably flexible voice and inventive vocal techniques. As writer and performer with the Paul Dresher Ensemble, he wrote the text and collaborated in the creation of SLOW FIRE, POWER FAILURE and PIONEER. Eckert and Dresher received an Isadora Duncan Award for their score of SHELF LIFE, a collaboration with the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company. Eckert has composed sound and music scores for Contraband, The Dance Brigade and the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company. In 1987 he wrote and directed NOT FOR REAL for Leonard Pitt, wrote and performed SHELF LIFE, and wrote, composed and performed a solo radio musical called SHOOT THE MOVING THINGS which was featured on the New American Radio series of National Public Radio. In 1988 Eckert created a solo piece, DRY LAND DIVINE, which was commissioned by Cal Performances and later presented at the Dance Theater Workshop in New York. SHOREBIRDS ATLANTIC, a duet with Margaret Jenkins, was featured on PBS' "Alive from Off Center" series in 1989. Other works include SECRET HOUSE, for which he wrote the text, with the ODC/San Francisco. That year he also recorded an album entitled IN SLEEP A KING with bassist Clark Suprynowicz on the Sound Aspects label.

John Duykers (Performer/Collaborator) has appeared with major opera companies throughout North America and Europe. His most recent performances include the role of Mao Ze Dong in the widely acclaimed NIXON IN CHINA by John Adams; the Examiner in Michael Nyman's THE MAN WHO MISTOOK HIS WIFE FOR A HAT produced by the American Music Theater Festival at Alice Tully Hall in New York, Spain; and "Tannhaeuser"; in a production by the Lyric Opera of Chicago by the same name, conceived and directed by Peter Sellars; and as the Baron in Charles Wuorinen's opera THE W OF BABYLON. In addition to his performances in opera, Duykers is renowned for his work with new and experimental music theater projects, having been a co-founder of George Coates Performance Works and principal collaborator on five original productions with that company. He received The Los Angeles Times' Becknesser Award in 1983 for his performance of Hans Werner Henze's EL CIMARRON. In June 1989, Duykers created the role of Krillin the in the world premiere of Anthony Davis' UNDER THE DOUBLE MOON with the Opera Theater of St. Louis.

Robin Kirck (Producer) has been producing contemporary music and music theater since 1976, including works by Anthony Davis, Peter Sellars and Jon Hassell. In San Francisco, she also produced a contemporary music series at the Exploratorium Museum and New Music America '81. She was formerly Associate Director of the American Music Center in NYC and Director of American Music Week. Most recently she produced AID & COMFORT II, a benefit concert sponsored by the University of California at Berkeley and the leading Bay Area restaurants, hosted by Laurie Anderson and featuring the leading contemporary music artists including Herbie Hancock, Phillip Glass, the Kronos Quartet and John Adams.

Jo Harvey Allen (Writer/Actress) has had her plays produced everywhere from honky-tonks to art museums, truck stops to theaters throughout the United States and abroad. Her one-woman show, AS IT IS IN TEXAS, which opened off-Broadway at Dance Theater Workshop in 1985, is a constantly changing portrayal of Texas characters and stories, still being performed. Allen co-starred as "the lying woman" in David Byrne's film, TRUE STORIES, where she "nearly stole the show." In 1989 she co-stared in the CBS pilot ELYSIAN FIELDS, Faye Dunaway's Turner Network Film COLD SASSY TREE (both directed by Joan Tewkesbury) and in CHECKING OUT, produced by Handmade Films and directed by David Leland. She produced EVERY THREE MINUTES, with Bukka Allen, airing on the New American Radio Series for NPR, and performed in Terry Allen's JUAREZ. Allen has written two books, The Beautiful Waitress and Cheek to Cheek, in addition to her numerous plays and performances.

Jay Cloidt (Sound Designer/Audio Engineer) is a composer, performer and audio engineer whose music has been performed at the Venice Biennale, New Music America and Lincoln Center. He has also worked as sound designer and engineer for many Bay Area companies, including the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company and the Kronos Quartet. His work on the Paul Dresher Ensemble's SLOW FIRE won a Bay Area Critics Circle Award, and he received an Isadora Duncan Award in 1989 with Rinde Eckert for the sound design of Eckert's DRY LAND DIVINE. In 1989 he also completed compositions for dance: LOVE IT TO DEATH for the Gary Palmer Dance Company, and LIGHT FALL, for the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company, KOLE KAT KRUSH, for amplified string quartet and tape and SECRET HOUSE which he co-composed with Paul Dresher for ODC/San Francisco.

Phil Aaberg (Keyboard) after touring with Elvin Bishop, John Hiatt, Peter Gabriel and others, he began doing solo concerts of his own music and has recorded four albums on the Windham Hill label and one for the Nature Company. He was a member of the East Bay New Music Ensemble where he premiered Dresher's THIS SAME TEMPLE and has participated in the Marlboro Chamber Music Festival in Vermont. A native of Montana, Aaberg has an A.B. in Music from Harvard University and has studied with Margaret Ott, Leon Kirchner, Louise Vosgerchian and Kenneth Drake.

Craig Fry (Strings) regularly performs with several Northern California orchestras, including the Monterey County Symphony, the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra and the Santa Cruz County Symphony (principal, second violin). He also records and performs electronically processed and improvisational violin with P.F.S. and the Janus Ensemble and in 1984, toured Europe with Cartoon, an instrumental rock group with European avant-garde influences.

Gene Reffkin (Percussion) has played both jazz and rock and has been a member of various contemporary music ensembles. He has been performing with Paul Dresher since 1972, and most recently appeared with the Philip Glass Ensemble at Aid & Comfort II.

Larry Neff (Lighting Designer) received two Bay Area Theater Critic's Awards, Neff has designed lighting for many Bay Area avant garde companies including the Paul Dresher Ensemble's PIONEER, POWER FAILURE, SLOW FIRE, the George Coates Performance Works productions of RIGHT MIND, RARE AREA and ACTUAL SHO, the Kronos Quartet's productions of BLACK ANGELS, SALOME DANCES FOR PEACE, DIFFERENT TRAINS and LIVE VIDEO and, recently, a dance piece called SECRET HOUSE with ODC/San Francisco. Neff's work has been featured in Lighting Dimensions magazine.

Beaver Bauer (Costume Designer) was the Artistic Director of "Angels of Light" for fourteen years. She has done extensive design work with ACT the most recent work being costume design on Twelfth Night . She has also worked for many years with the Berkeley Repertoire Theater, San Francisco Shakespeare, the Magic Theater and the Eureka Theater.

Melissa Weaver (Production Director) directed John Duykers in Henze's EL CIMARRON which received the L.A. Times Becknesser Award (1983) for best contemporary performance; Rinde Eckert's solo performance, DRY LAND DIVINE, which premiered at Cal Performances and was presented at DTW in New York, and most recently, A.GA.PE.,an original work which premiered in San Francisco in 1988. Prior to joining the Paul Dresher Ensemble as Production Manager for SLOW FIRE in 1987, Weaver collaborated on George Coates Performance Works' THE WAY OF HOW, ARE/ARE, SEEHEAR and RARE AREA.

Justin Hersh (Technical Director/Design Consultant) has worked in and out of theater as a technical director and designer. His recent credits include technical director for George Coates Performance Works, 1988 and technical director and lighting designer for Tandy Beal Dance Company. Currently he is a co-owner of Delphi, a San Francisco Bay Area production company.

David Hyry and Associates (Marketing/Press Agent) is a public relations, marketing and artist management organization committed to expanding the role of innovative performance that challenges the boundaries of theater, music and dance in America and abroad. Clients have included Gina Wendkos, Diamanda Galas, George Coates Performances Works, Whoopi Goldberg, Bill Irwin, the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company, American Inroads and Antenna Theater.

Theater Artaud is dedicated to innovative performances in a variety of different dissciplines that reflect a diversity of our cultural experience. They provide professional, technical and administrative services to performing arts companies while presenting work that is adventurous within its genre as well as to the field of art as a whole. Artaud's management and artistic sensibilities embody social, cultural, political and artistic viewpoints sharing a profound belief in freedom of personal expression. They present, produce and collaborate on productions as well as provide an expansive alternative performance space to the companies they serve.