Jay Scheib

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Jay Scheib (born 6 October 1969) is an American director noted for contemporary stagings of both classical and new plays and operas. Scheib is a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he teaches Performance Media, Motion Theater, Media and Methods, and Introduction to Acting. He is also a regular Guest Professor at the Mozarteum Institute für Regie und Schauspiel where he conducts a viewpoints and composition studio annually.

Biography

Early career

Scheib was born in Shenandoah, Iowa and attended the University of Minnesota and then in 1997 Columbia University School of the Arts where he received his MFA in Theater Directing. He began his career in Minneapolis, Minnesota with a 1991 production of Antonin Artaud's Le Jet du Sang followed by a commission from the International Festival of Free Theaters in Szeged, Hungary where Scheib was to premiere The Seasonal. Scheib went on to co-found The American Theater Institute (which eventually became The Arcade Studio). Productions included: The Kingdom, The Suicide, Poems for the Theater, The Device Machine, Lendra // Revolute, John Day, Galileo Sidereal, Witkacy's The Madman and the Nun, Heiner Müller's Mommsen's Block, The Battle (Die Schlacht), Prolegomenon, and Pickaxe.

Recent works

Scheib's work as a theater and opera director has been seen in the United States, Canada, Germany, France, Norway, Finland, Turkey, Netherlands, Czech Republic, Hungary, Serbia, Slovenia, Italy, and Austria. Known for his sometimes controversial contemporary stagings,^[1] Scheib has won numerous awards including the Richard Sherwood Award from Mark Taper Forum, The National Endowment for the Arts / Theater Communications Group Program for Directors, the Edgerton Award from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and in 2009 Scheib was named by American Theater Magazine as one of the 25 Artists shaping the next 25 years of American Theater.^[2]

Scheib's opera and musical theater works include Addicted to Bad Ideas, the post-punk "lieder abend" about the life and times of Peter Lorre with The World/Inferno Friendship Society. The production premiered at the Philadelphia Festival of Live Arts and went to tour numerous venues and festivals including the Luminato Festival in Toronto, The Urban Festival, Helsinki, Spoleto Festival USA, Under the Radar Festival / New York Public Theater, Peak Performances, and Noordezon festival Netherlands.^{[3][4][non-primary source needed]} He also directed Evan Ziporyn's monumental opera A House in Bali at Cal Performances in Berkley (fall 2009) which featured contemporary music ensemble Bang on a Can and the sixteen member Gamelan Salukat led by Dewa Ketut Alit.^[5] Other opera stagings have been the world premiere of Irena Popovich's Mozart Luster Lustik at the Sava Center in Belgrade; libretto direction and media design of The Making of Americans at the Walker Art Center after the novel by Gertrude Stein; and the five part Novaflot opera saga Kommander Kobayashi composed by Moritz Eggert, Aleksandra Gryka, Ricardas Kabelis, Juha Koskinen and Helmut Oehring, and conducted by Jonathan Kaell at the Saarbrücken Staatstheater in Germany.

Scheib's theatrical productions include Brecht's Puntila und sein Knecht Matti at Theater Augsburg in Germany; ^[6] Tolstoy's The Power of Darkness at Trafo House of Contemporary Art in Budapest; Daniel Veronese's Women Dreamt Horses at Performance Space 122, Vallejo Gantner Artistic Director; Chuck Mee's Iphigenia at the Norwegian Theater Institute; Lothar Trolle's Fernsehen 3 and Ein Vormittag in der Freiheit at the Volksbühne am Rosa Luxemburg Platz in Berlin. ^[7]

Also known for his adaptations of novels, films, and non-theatrical events Scheib staged adaptations include: Bellona, Destroyer of Cities adapted from Samuel R. Delany's novel, Dhalgren at The Kitchen in New York, Untitled Mars (This Title May Change) adapted from Lassewitz, Dick, Lem and the activities of the Mars Desert Research Station in Utah which premiered at Performance Space 122 in New York.^[8] Scheib's live-cinema adaptation of Antonioni's works This Place is a Desert was first workshopped with the Kretakor Ensemble in Budapest followed by a studio presentation at Massachusetts Institute of Technology before its world premiere at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston and its subsequent sold out run at the Public Theater as part of the Under the Radar Festival. Other adaptations include Margarethhamlet which premiered in Berlin and All Good Everything Good after Shakespeare's All's Well That Ends Well which premiered in Bologna at Raum. Both Shakespeare adaptations were made as choreographic works for solo performer with guitar and were presented with Margareth Kammerer.

Scheib is married to performer and independent producer Tanya Selvaratnam Scheib. They split their time between Cambridge Massachusetts and New York City.^{[citation needed]}

References

External links

• www.jayscheib.com
• Profile on arktype.org