January 29, 2003

Contact: Sarah Ray



802-443-5794

sray@middlebury.edu

Posted: January 29, 2003

MIDDLEBURY,

VT - Fans of the American stage are in for a Valentine’s Day treat

when acclaimed director and dynamic educator Anne Bogart visits Middlebury

College for a discussion of her experience in the theatre. Bogart presents

“Six Things I Know For Sure About Being a Director in the American

Theatre” at 4:30 p.m., Friday, Feb. 14, in Wright Memorial Theatre

on Château Road off College Street (Route 125). The talk is free

and open to the public.

For more than 25 years, Bogart

has been active in American theatre as a director, playwright, essayist

and teacher. Her discussion will focus on creating art in the 21st century,

and will include forthright challenges to artists in all disciplines.

Bogart is an associate professor

of theatre arts at Columbia University’s School of the Arts, where she

teaches directing. She is also the artistic director and co-founder of

the 10-year-old Saratoga International Theatre Institute (SITI), an ensemble-based

company that creates new work, trains young artists, and experiments in

international collaboration. Begun as a summer program, SITI operates

most of the year in New York City with a summer season in Saratoga, N.Y.

Bogart is known for her cross-disciplinary

work. Her most recent production at Middlebury, which was presented in

2001, was The Foundry Theatre’s “Gertrude and Alice,” a first-person

portrayal of writer Gertrude Stein and her relationship with Alice B.

Toklas. Other efforts in recent years include her co-direction with Laurie

Anderson of “Songs and Stories from Moby Dick,” which toured

nationally and internationally in1999-2000. She also directed “War

of the Worlds,” a play about the life of Orson Wells by Naomi Iizuka

that opened the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival in 2000.

Since graduating in 1974

from Bard College, Bogart has accumulated numerous honors for her signature

approach to the stage. In 2001, she won the Edwin Booth Award and the

Charles Flint Kellogg Award. Other achievements include a Guggenheim Fellowship,

two Obie Awards, and a Bessie Award.

Bogart has staged operas

and musicals, as well as a range of plays from classical to contemporary.

Her repertoire includes plays by Pierre Marivaux, Anton Chekhov, Paula

Vogel, Leonard Bernstein, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Calderon de la Barca

and Mac Wellman. She has taught at a number of institutions, including

New York University, the University of California in San Diego, and the

Playwrights Horizons Theater School.

Bogart’s visit is sponsored

by the Middlebury College Performing Arts Series.

For more information, contact Liza Sacheli at sacheli@middlebury.edu

or 802-443-3169.