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Rachel Schroeder Moving Theatre |
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About Rachel Schroeder, Artistic Director
Rachel has directed / developed several experimental works including a live circus-theatre adaptation of Pink Floyd’s The Wall, in collaboration with Stagefright, a UK based aerial circus theatre company — presented with a cast of over two hundred youths ages 9-18, at French Woods Festival for the Performing Arts, a summer camp in Hancock, NY. Also with Stagefiright, Rachel collaborated on Levity, an aerial circus theatre myth enacted on the grounds of a 19th century castle in Bangor, North Wales with grants from the North Wales Arts Council and Circus Syrcus. From 2001 to 2003, she dramaturged Lone Wolf Tribe's production, Animal, a Henson Foundation grant-winning experimental puppet theatre piece commissioned by Here Arts Center. In May 2004, she co-directed Kevin Augustine in Lone Wolf Tribe's Once Vaudeville, at the Harare International Festival of Arts in Zimbabwe. Currently Rachel is directing Karen Bernard’s performance art piece, Surfing the Shadow that has been presented at Movement Research Judson Church, The Caring Community, Shady Corner Festival and will be seen at the 2008 Performance Mix @ JoyceSoho.
Involvement in community-based performance includes directing a cast of 8-11 year old children in Ceridwen's Cauldron, as part of the Taliesin Festival in Conway, North Wales. Also in Wales, Rachel taught Mime workshops to teen and adult non-performers. In NYC she gave a mime workshop to children at the JCC. As a volunteer, she offered theatre classes in London to the Dalston Youth Project, a program designed to reintegrate (high school aged) truant / expelled students into the education system. Here in NYC she taught "Rock-n-Roll Theater" for Create-a-Play in after school programs, and she volunteers with the 52nd Street Project, helping inner city youths write, perform and produce plays. Recently she taught a workshop entitled “Journeying into Character Through Movement” at the Creative Center: an arts haven for women surviving cancer.
Rachel has taught courses and workshops in movement for actors / mime at Dartmouth College, Wellesley College, Hofstra University, Pace University, CAP21, The Ward Studio, Ecole de Mime Corporel Dramatique (London), Danceworks (London), and University of Bangor (North Wales).
An alumna of the modern mime company, Théâtre de l’Ange Fou (Theatre of the Crazy Angel), Rachel appeared at venues such as Battersea Arts Center and the Plaisance Theatre as part of the London International Mime Festival. She has also worked and/or studied with Mark Morris, Pilobolus, Michael Greif, Marge Champion, Eugenio Barba, Rinde Eckert, Craig Carnelia, Keely Garfield and Lawrence Goldhuber.
Rachel has a diploma from l’Ecole de Mime Corporel Dramatique in the Decroux technique of Corporeal Mime (a modern art of dramatic movement that gives performers a rigorous physical vocabulary); and a BA in Theatre Arts from Brandeis University. She has studied Alexander Technique since 2000 and is participating in DTW’s 2008 Bessie Schonberg Laboratory in Composition culminating in a performance on their main-stage.
Since 2006, Rachel has served as a member of New Dance Alliance’s Board of Directors, and also sat on NDA’s 2005-2006 Artist Advisory Panel.
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RACHEL SCHROEDER is a multi-disciplinary artist who choreographs, writes, acts, dances, mimes, sings, directs, dramaturges and teaches. She regularly collaborates on creative projects with choreographers, directors, dancers, mimes, actors, musicians, circus artists, puppeteers, video artists and non-performers. She has worked in France, England, Wales, Zimbabwe and the United States.
Original solo works include Elephant By a Thread, produced in New York at Lark Theater and Michael Howard Studios; and in Massachusetts at Berkshire Theatre Festival and Simon's Rock College. In 2002 Rachel began developing Heliantha. She has shown excerpts in NYC produced by Dixon Place at University Settlement and Chashama; at 92nd St. Y, OneArmRed, D.U.M.B.O. Arts Festival, CoolNY Festival and JoyceSoho. With a Manhattan Community Arts Fund grant from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council in partnership with the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, Rachel staged a full-evening workshop production of Heliantha at P.S.122 in February 2005. Rachel was invited in the summer of 2005 to participate in DanceOmi’s inaugural year of its collaboration residency with an international group of dancer/choreographers that culminated in a walking tour/ site-specific festival of dance at ArtOmi in Ghent, NY. In the Spring of 2006, Rachel appeared in RedShift Dance’s In Case of Rapture at University Settlement. Rachel performed her work-in-progress, Who’s Rite at JoyceSoho in March 2007. Currently she is reworking Heliantha with director Joshua Hecht and will present a work-in-progress showing in May at Dixon Place with an MCAF grant from LMCC. |