The Loneliness of Noam Chomsky: (a performance)

February 19 - 28, 2004
(check calendar below)

Starring: Judson Kniffen, Alanna Medlock, Aya Ogawa

Their website for the production http://www.chomsky.8m.com
Press Representation: Publicity Outfitters

Artists' Bioaraphies
Katie Down (sound designer/composer) is a multi-instrumentalist, composer and sound artist. She has created and performed numerous sound scores for theatre, dance, multi-media events and installations. Katie uses unusual and homemade instruments and found sounds she collects and records throughout her travels to create original sound collages and compositions. She plays the flute, frame drum and doumbek, guitar, ukulele, didgeridoo, and a variety of homemade and household percussion. Katie performs in a wide variety of musical genres, including free improvisation, jazz, classical, Irish, Balkan, and Sephardic music. She works with both children and adults on improvisation and artistic exploration of body, voice and other instruments, She has co-produced a CD with composer Dave Soldier of Free Improvisation with children ages 2 to 9 titled "Aliens Took My Mom!" on Mulatta Records. Katie has toured with BrokenOpenHeart Productions, in conjunction with Croatian-based Polygon Center for Arts and Research in which she co-conducted theatre, vocal and music improvisation workshops for festivals throughout Croatia and Slovenia. She has also been a guest artist at the Hvar Up-Beat Music Festival in which she taught improvisation to composers. She is resident composer for both Ripe Time and Pilgrim Theatre, and was a recent fellow this year at Music/Omi in upstate New York. Katie has produced concerts and festivals including theatrical, poetry and experimental performance events and is music curator for a monthly music series at the gallery/performance space, TIXE at Chashama. She is an active steering committee member for THAW (Theaters Against War).

David Esler's (set and costume designer) New York design credits include The Bomb, Soon My Work and HvperReal America (International WOW Company); On The Verge (WATTS Collaborative); One Hit Wonder (Two Noses Productions); Bloody Poetry (Westbeth Theatre); Mrs. Dallowav and the Aeroplane (Playwrights Horizons Theatre School); Measure For Measure (New Generations Theatre); and costumes for A Musical: Madame Bovary (Judith Anderson Theatre); Riders to the Sea (starring Helen Gallagher, Chelsea Playhouse); Peak Sacred (for choreographer Doug Varone). Designs for regional theatre include The Fantasticks at Muhlenberg Summer Theatre; The Baker's Wife (with director Scott Schwartz) at the Joseph Stein Stage; As You Like It and King Lear (Princeton Rep); Oklahoma! (Augusta Opera); seasons at the Hangar Theatre, Williamstown, Surflight and others. David holds an MFA from NYU.

Judson Kniffen (performer) worked as the Associate Director for the Ontological Theater for four years. During this time he served as Production Stage Manager for Richard Foreman in New York, Europe, and Japan; curator for several emerging artists' series; and Assistant Artistic Director for the summer seasons. He directed and performed in Jean Cocteau's Orphee in 2001 and stage managed Ken Nintzel's Lapse and Juliana Francis' St. Latrice at P.S. 122 in 2002. He has a BA in drama from Vassar College.

Christopher Landy (lighting designer) has worked on a wide range of productions including theatre and musicals, opera, dance, concerts and television as well as consulting on architectural projects. For theatre he has recently designed Hav Fever for the Westport Country Playhouse, where he has also lit productions of Princess Turandot and Gaslight . Off-Broadway credits include Princess Turandot, Hotel Universe, and Oedipus all for Blue Light Theatre Co.; as well as Retribution and Uncle Vanya, among others. Regionally he has designed A Little Niaht Music for Goodspeed Opera House, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead for Williamstown Theatre Festival and Long Wharf, and over a dozen productions for Gateway Theatrical including Tommy (CT Critic Circle Award), Phantom of the Opera, Showboat, West Side Story and Jekyll and Hyde. For Opera he has lit Orfeo et Euridice and Turandot for Virginia Opera as well as Madame Butterfly, Riooletto, Die Fliedermaus and Nozze di Figaro for Boheme Opera. His dance credits include Hartford Ballet and Elisa Monte/David Brown Dance Company, with whom he also toured with as lighting director. Working in television he has designed extensively for MTV, having lit "Total Request Live," " Direct Effect," "VJ for a Day," "MTV Beach House," "MTV New Year's Eve Special," and "MTV Mardi Gras." Countless concerts including U2, Britney Spears, Dave Mathews Band, Justin Timberlake, Destiny's Child and "Unplugged" with REM, Jay-Z, Lauryn Hill, Stained, Dashboard Confessional and Ken Hirai (MTV Japan). He is the designer of the Oxygen Networks Custom Concert series featuring Macy Gray, Goo Goo Dolls, Tori Amos, Alanis Morissette, India.Arie. Other credits include various shows for CNN, Nickelodeon, The Food Network, NBAE and Trio. Presently he is the designer for Comedy Central's "Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn." Christopher has an MFA in lighting and scenic design from NYU and is a member of United Scenic Artists, Local 829.

Brian Nishii (video designer) has been designing video and audio for theatre and a variety of artists since 1995. He is the resident digital designer for Maura Donohue/In Mixed Company, and his collaborative work with Noel Salzman has been screened in the United States, Europe and South America. He is a recipient of the 2003 Dance Theatre Workshop's Digital Artist Resource fellowship.

Aya Ogawa (performer, Noam Chomsky) was born in Tokyo and raised in Atlanta, Houston and Northern California. She is a performer, writer, director, and the Associate Artistic Director of the International WOW Company. She has been critically acclaimed for her roles in HvperReal America. Macbeth, the title role in Alice's Evidence, and as J Robert Oppenheimer in Ihe Bomb. She has worked internationally in Japan and Thailand. Her plays have been produced at Soho Rep, Ensemble Studio Theatre, and was a winner at the Kennedy Center/American College Theatre Festival 1996. She wrote and directed A Girl Of Sixteen at Latea Theatre last spring.

Noel Salzman (director) is a writer and director of theater and video work that has been seen nationally and internationally. His award-winning video adaptation of The Merchant of Venice (created with Brian Nishii) has been screened throughout the United States, Europe and South America. He received his BA from UCLA where he studied with Peter Sellars. In Los Angeles, he was co-artistic director of The Butane Group, a theater collective presenting new work based on non-fictive material, and participated in The Platform, a political cabaret, before moving to New York to teach directing to NYU undergraduates at Playwrights Horizons Theatre School. He has assisted directors Robert Moss, James Peck and Reza Abdoh, and was an intern with the Wooster Group a very long time ago. This project represents the culmination of his work at NYU's Gallatin School for Individualized Study, where he studied digital media and social activism. The written part of his thesis will focus on the history of multimedia political theatre. He is on the Steering Committee of THAW (Theaters Against War), and is co-coordinator of its monthly Freedom Follies. He is currently editing an audio version of Gertrude Stein's Listen To Me with Brian Nishii, as well as in the planning stages for its live production in New York. He will hopefully be directing Stein's Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights in Los Angeles next spring, as well as a series of Beckett poems with actress Christen Clifford. He has been accepted to Columbia's School of Social Work, but probably won't go.

Tamara Schmidt (dramaturg) is a senior at NYU's Undergraduate Drama department. The focus of her studies has been in directing, dramaturgy and design at Playwrights Horizons Theatre School. At NYU she has directed The General of Hot Desire ,by John Guare, Three More Sleepless Nights by Caryl Churchill, and two staged readings of the new plays Morninq and New Moons Rising. She designed the set for Heiner Muller's Quartet. She is continuing her studies in dramaturgy with Norman Frisch.