LISA FAY AND JEFF GLASSMAN

     Lisa Fay and Jeff Glassman are composing and performing movement-based theatre artists, working together since 1991, who apply complex composed structures to ordinary daily human behavior.  Notated movement scores often accompany their productions.  In their collaborative work for theatre ‘natural-looking’ behavior is subjected to contortions, subversions and convolutions, letting ‘naturalism’ show its socially constructed face.  They invent systems for organizing movement and speech in theatre, similarly to how new systems for organizing sound have been invented for composing music.  Each theatre composition, utilizing a repertory of gestural-choreographic innovations invented by the duo, proposes a specific critical look at social life.  These inventions include a technique for the orchestration of instantaneous shifts of time and place in complex patterns. 

     Performances consist of 4-7 pieces selected from the repertory of theatre compositions, and run from 1-2 hours.  Preferably, a performance is tied to a workshop or demonstration-lecture. 

     Their collective professional histories since 1971 include tours, teaching and performance residencies, and featured performances at theatres, festivals, colleges, and public television in the U.S., Eastern and Western Europe, Mexico, Cuba and Korea, as well as awards that include a Choreography Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and two Artist Fellowship Awards for Choreography from the Illinois Arts Council. The duo is a member ensemble of the Network of Ensemble Theaters.    

     The duo welcomes invitations to create works for other ensembles, engage in collaborative projects, and conduct performance and teaching residencies.  They live in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, in the USA, and can be contacted through JeffGlassman0@gmail.com