A Face for Radio Video Series with Sarah LaDuke

A virtual kick-off event for the festival, WAMC Northeast Public Radio’s Sarah LaDuke  will interview artists and faculty participating in this year’s Modfest as well as check in with the staff of the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center during “Late Night at the Loeb.” LaDuke will give audiences a preview of what is to come and speak with the following:

• Sarah LaDuke has been a public radio producer for over a decade. She grew up in Saranac Lake, New York where she worked part time at Pendragon Theatre all through high school and college (UAlbany). She graduated from SUNY Albany in 2006 with a BA in English and started at WAMC a few weeks later as a part-time board-op in the control room. Through a series of offered and seized opportunities she is now the Senior Contributing Producer of The Roundtable  and Producer of The Book Show.  

Source: https://www.wamc.org/people/sarah-laduke. Accessed 1/11/21.

• Chris Burney from New York Stage & Film will preview Powerhouse event for Modfest, Mexodus, and its unique collaboration.  
• Chris Burney is the Tony nominated Artistic Producer of Second Stage. He has worked with Second Stage since 1996. Among the many notable productions at Second Stage, selected productions he has shepherded include Dear Evan Hansen (book by Steven Levenson, music and lyrics by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul); Bachelorette (Leslye Headland, playwright); Murder for Two (book and music by Joe Kinosian, book and lyrics by Kellen Blair); Animals Out of Paper (Rajiv Joseph, playwright); Lonely, I’m Not (Paul Weitz, playwright); the Pulitzer Prize-winning Next to Normal (music by Tom Kitt, book and lyrics by Brian Yorkey); Warrior Class (by Kenneth Lin); King Liz (by Fernanda Coppel); and Mala Hierba (Tanya Saracho, playwright). While at Second Stage he has worked with such writers as Anna Deavere Smith, Douglas Carter Beane, Gina Gionfriddo, Craig Lucas, Lanford Wilson, Theresa Rebeck, William Finn, Sam Shepard, David Ives, Kenneth Lonergan, Cheryl West, Martin Sherman, Jason Miller, Wendy Kesselman, August Wilson, Michael John LaChiusa, and Stephen Sondheim. He has worked with many leading directors such as Thomas Kail, Trip Cullman, Carolyn Cantor, Kenny Leon, Peter DuBois, Leigh Silverman, Mark Brokaw, Scott Ellis, Michael Greif, Garry Hynes, James Lapine, and Kathleen Marshall. As curator for 2ST Uptown, he has developed numerous emerging writers and directors including Rajiv Joseph, Bess Wohl, Erica Lipez, Marisa Wegrzyn, Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, Brooke Berman, Adam Bock, Carly Mensch, Michael Golamco, Trip Cullman, and Joe Calarco, among others. He has consulted for various organizations including the Philadelphia Theatre Initiative, the Kesselring Prize, the Kurt Weill Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Asian American Arts Alliance, and the Jerome Fellowship. Previously, he worked from 1991-1997 at Lincoln Center Theater as the Assistant to the Director of Musical Theatre. He teaches creative producing and New York theatre history at Columbia University in the Graduate School of the Arts. He has lectured at Barnard College, the Einhorn School for the Performing Arts at Primary Stages, the Juilliard School, Bard College, the Boston School of Music, Marymount Manhattan College, and the New England Theatre Conference. He is on the artistic advisory board of the Detroit Public Theatre, the first professional theatre in a reborn Detroit. He is a graduate of Brandeis University, B.A., and Columbia University, M.F.A. Source: https://www.newyorkstageandfilm.org/nextartisticdirector Accessed 1/11/21.

• Drew Minter from the Music Department will discuss how imagination has shaped his teaching and practices as an artist during these strange circumstances as he reflects on the fall semester and his process for preparing for an upcoming virtual cabaret. He may perform or share a recording for this upcoming event.. 

In addition to numerous workshops in the vocal and dramatic performance of baroque music, Drew Minter has taught voice for the past ten years at Vassar College, where he also directs the Vassar Opera Workshop and conducts the Vassar Madrigal Singers. He has taught since 1989 at the Amherst Early Music Institute. In addition to an active singing career of his own, he teaches frequent masterclasses in opera and oratorio; in recent years these have taken place at Indiana University, Boston University, the University of Massachusetts, West Chester University and the Crittendon Opera Workshops in Boston. 

Source: https://www.vassar.edu/faculty/drminter/. Accessed 1/11/21.

• Andre Bouchard from Indigenous Performances Productions will discuss how the FLLAC will engage with more native artists and host an indigenous artists panel to take place on February 4 during Modfest as well as a visit later in the semester by Delanna Studi and her devised play, And So We Walked. 

Principal and Founder, Andre Bouchard (of Kootenai/Ojibwe/Pend d’Oreille/Salish descent) is an internationally recognized agent, producer and consultant who was born and raised on the Flathead Reservation in western Montana the son a CSKT enrolled father and a white mother.   As a person with a background in both Native and non-native worlds Andre aspires to serve as an inter-cultural activist, working to build bridges and reverse the invisibility that serves to marginalize Native people in the US.  Andre's primary background is as producer of dance, theatre, music and multi-disciplinary performance but has worked in practically every roll in the performing arts since he began as an active artist and arts administrator in 1999.  In 2001 he founded Walrus Performance Productions, a non-profit dedicated to providing first opportunities to choreographers, playwrights and multi-disciplinary performing artists in the Pacific Northwest.  In this role he opened the Walrus Theatre, a blackbox venue in the heart of Seattle's Capital Hill which fell victim to the real estate boom of 2008.  In 2010 he founded Walrus Arts Management and Consulting which was expanded in 2015 to serve as a home to the first Native run performing arts booking agency representing Indigenous dance, theatre, music and multi-disciplinary artists .  In 2019 he founded Indigenous Performance Productions, a non-profit company dedicated to production of touring Indigenous performing arts festivals. 

Source: https://www.walrusarts.com/about Accessed 1/8/21.

• Someone from the FLLAC staff will discuss the upcoming exhibition, Women Picturing Women: From Personal Spaces to Public Ventures that will run February 6- June 13, 2021