Ain Gordon

Ain Gordon is an American playwright, director and actor based in New York City.^[1][2] His work frequently deals with the interstices of history, focusing on people and events which are often overlooked or marginalized in "official" histories. His style combines elements of traditional playwrighting with aspects of performance art.

Life and career

Gordon began writing and directing for the stage in 1985, emerging in the downtown dance/performance scene with four consecutive seasons at Dance Theater Workshop plus performances at Movement Research, The Poetry Project, and Performance Space 122. By 1990 Gordon was recognized in the inaugural round of the National Endowment for the Art’s "New Forms" initiative – funding for artists whose work defied clear classification. He then began touring to venues including the Baltimore Museum of Art in MAryland, and Dance Place in Washington, DC.

In 1991, Gordon entered a multi-project relationship with Soho Rep in New York City that encompassed five productions and workshops. In 1992, Gordon began a collaboration with his father, choreographer and director David Gordon, on The Family Business, which went on to be performed in New York at the Serious Fun! Festival at Lincoln Center, Dance Theatre Workshop (DTW), New York Theater Workshop and the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles.^[3] Also in 1992, Gordon became Co-Director of the Pick Up Performance Company, which had been founded by his father in 1971 and incorporated in 1978.

In 1994, Gordon won his first Obie Award as one of the creators of The Family Business. In 1996, Gordon won his second Obie Award for his play Wally's Ghost, which had been presented at Soho Rep.. In 1998, he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in Playwriting. It was here that Gordon gained recognition for his abiding subject; marginalized and forgotten history and the invisible players who inhabit that space. Gordon developed a particular blend of historical fact/imagined truth and complete fiction that continues to dominate his work.

Gordon's next few years were spent collaborating with David Gordon on two projects – Punch and Judy Get Divorced for American Music Theater Festival and American Repertory Theater, ^[4] and The First Picture Show for the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco and the Mark Taper Forum in L.A. In addition, Gordon received a commission from the Taper, and another from the Lincoln Center Institute, and had a new play workshopped at The Public Theater and Soho Rep in Nww York. In 2001, Gordon returned to his roots in the Manhattan downtown scene with several productions at HERE Arts Center, DTW, and P.S. 122, including Art Life & Show-Biz, which is scheduled to published by Palgrave Macmillan in the upcoming Dramaturgy of the Real.

Gordon continues to write theater that straddles the traditions of playwriting and performance art, blending fact and fiction. Since 2005, his work has been awarded both the Multi-Arts Production Fund (MAP) Grant and the Arts Presenters Ensemble Theatre Collaborations Program grant funded by the Doris Duke Charitable Trust, with productions at the Krannert Center in Illinois, VSA North Fourth Arts Center in New Mexico, 651 ARTS in Brooklyn, New York, LexArts in Lexington Kentucky, and DiverseWorks in Texas.

In 2007, Gordon won his third Obie Award for his performance in the Off-Broadway production of Spalding Gray: Stories Left To Tell, and he continues to tour the work to venues including UCLA Live, TBA Festival at the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art in Oregon, the ICA Boston, where he was an Elliot Norton Award nominess, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, and Painted Bride Art Center in Philadelphia, among other venues. In 2008/9 Gordon collaborated with choreographer Bebe Miller on Necessary Beauty, a multi-disciplinary evening-length work co-commissioned by the Wexner Center in Ohio, DTW, and the Myrna Loy Center/Helena Presents in Montana. He was commissioned by the VSA North Fourth Arts Center, rooted in Native American history, and developed a new two-person play, and one woman play, as a Core Writer of the Playwrights' Center in Minneapolis.^[5][6]

Works

• A Disaster Begins, HERE Arts Center Mainstage, Manhattan, New York City, 2009
• Private Ghosts - Public Stories, Cornerstone Theater Company, 2002
• In This Place..., Lexington, Kentucky; Brooklyn, New York; Ithaca, New York; Philadelphia, Pennsylvanmia
• Punch and Judy Get Divorced
• Wally's Ghost, Soho Rep, New York^[7]

References

Notes