Annie Dorsen

Annie Dorsen (born 1973) is a New York theater director. She is the co-creator and director of the Broadway musical Passing Strange, and her work in "algorithmic theater" includes the plays Hello Hi There, A Piece of Work, and Yesterday Tomorrow. Dorsen has received an Alpert Award in the Arts, a Guggenheim Fellowship and a MacArthur Fellowship.

Annie Dorsen
Dorsen in 2010
Born1973 (age 47–48)
New York City
NationalityAmerican
OccupationPlaywright, director
Parent(s)
Awards

Early life and education

Dorsen was born in 1973 in New York City to Harriette and Norman Dorsen.[1][2] She has two sisters.[2] She graduated with a BA degree from Yale University in 1996, and received an MFA degree from Yale School of Drama in 2000.[3][4]

Career

In collaboration with Heidi Rodewald and Stew, Dorsen created and directed the rock musical Passing Strange, a semi-fictional story about Stew's life that was co-commissioned by Berkeley Repertory Theatre and The Public Theater.[5] The show opened Off-Broadway at The Public Theater in 2007, and had its Broadway premiere at the Belasco Theatre in 2008.[6][7] While Passing Strange was running on Broadway, Dorsen also created Democracy in America, an Off-Broadway satire of American politics and polling, in which anyone could pay a fee to add their own material to the script being performed.[8]

Dorsen has collaborated with computer programmers to produce "algorithmic theater" in which custom algorithms process source material to generate live scripts and scores that are performed by chatbots and human actors.[9] Her first piece of "algorithmic theater" was Hello Hi There, in which chatbots use text from the Chomsky–Foucault debate, the works of William Shakespeare, the Bible, and YouTube comments to create unique dialogue for each performance.[10] In the five-act play A Piece of Work, chatbots and a human actor perform a script created in real-time by processing the text of Hamlet.[11] Yesterday Tomorrow, the final piece in Dorsen's trilogy of algorithmic performances, uses custom algorithms to produce a live score, performed by three singers, that transitions from the Beatles song "Yesterday" to the song "Tomorrow" from the musical Annie.[12]

In 2017, Dorsen received a grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts to support her play The Great Outdoors, in which audience members lie down inside an inflatable planetarium and listen to a human performer read recent Internet comments selected and processed by an algorithm.[1][13] A year later, Dorsen received the Spalding Gray Award, which provided funds to produce her play The Slow Room.[14] The play, a human performance of a fixed script assembled from virtual sex chat room messages, premiered later that year at Performance Space New York.[15]

Recognition

Dorsen received one of the 2014 Alpert Awards in the Arts, which recognize the work of experimental artists by providing a US$75,000 prize to each recipient.[16] In 2018, she received a Guggenheim Fellowship.[17] The following year she received a MacArthur Fellowship.[18] She was one of six MacArthur fellows from New York City.[19]

References
  1. "Grants to Artists: Annie Dorsen". Foundation for Contemporary Arts. Retrieved October 2, 2019.
  2. Bromwich, Jonah Engel (July 2, 2017). "Norman Dorsen, Tenacious Civil Rights Advocate, Dies at 86". The New York Times. Retrieved October 2, 2019.
  3. Gonzalez, Susan (September 25, 2019). "Six Yale affiliates are winners of unrestricted MacArthur 'genius' grants". YaleNews. Yale University. Retrieved October 2, 2019.
  4. "Annie Dorsen". MacArthur Foundation. Retrieved October 2, 2019.
  5. Blankenship, Mark (May 14, 2007). "Passing Strange". Variety. Retrieved October 2, 2019.
  6. Lunden, Jeff (February 28, 2008). "'Passing Strange' a Real Rock Musical". National Public Radio. Retrieved October 2, 2019.
  7. Isherwood, Charles (February 29, 2008). "It's a Hard Rock Life". The New York Times. Retrieved October 2, 2019.
  8. Zinoman, Jason (April 5, 2008). "Performance Art for Sale, Like Elections". The New York Times. Retrieved October 2, 2019.
  9. Clement, Olivia (September 25, 2019). "Theatre Director Annie Dorsen Among 2019 MacArthur 'Genius' Grant Recipients". Playbill. Retrieved September 27, 2019.
  10. Piepenburg, Erik (January 10, 2011). "Coil Festival: 5 Questions About 'Hello Hi There'". ArtsBeat Blog. The New York Times. Retrieved October 2, 2019.
  11. La Rocco, Claudia (December 15, 2013). "To Thine Own Algorithm Be True". The New York Times. Retrieved October 2, 2019.
  12. Isherwood, Charles (January 14, 2016). "Review: 'Yesterday Tomorrow,' a Meeting of Songs About Time". The New York Times. Retrieved October 2, 2019.
  13. Grogan, Molly (September 29, 2017). "Review: The Great Outdoors at FIAF Florence Gould Hall". Exeunt Magazine. Retrieved October 2, 2019.
  14. "Annie Dorsen Receives the Spalding Gray Award". Artforum. August 23, 2018. Retrieved October 2, 2019.
  15. Lucie, Sarah (May 2019). "Posthuman Visions". PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art. MIT Press. 41 (2): 75–79. doi:10.1162/pajj_a_00473.
  16. Boehm, Mike (April 8, 2014). "A $75,000 Herb Alpert arts award goes to Daniel Joseph Martinez". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved October 2, 2019.
  17. "John Simon Guggenheim Foundation | Annie Dorsen". Retrieved September 27, 2019.
  18. Schuessler, Jennifer (September 25, 2019). "MacArthur 'Genius' Grant Winners for 2019: The Full List". The New York Times. Retrieved September 27, 2019.
  19. Gralla, Joan (September 25, 2019). "LIer a 2019 MacArthur 'genius' grant recipient". Newsday. Retrieved September 29, 2019.
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