about gallery archive statement review home demotic 2006		the creative team
		Tracey A. Leigh	Stage Director: Robert Allen Online Director: Antoinette LaFarge Sound Artists: Maria de los Angeles Esteves and Jeff Ridenour Theater Actor: Tracey A. Leigh ("American Memory") Plaintext Players: Ursula Endlicher ("immy"), Lise Patt ("hound"), Richard Smoley ("pap"), Heather Wagner ("landlord") Additional Text: Marlena Corcoran, Richard Foerstl Intern: Ellen Warkentine ("kid") ROBERT ALLEN (co-creator, stage director) is a theater movement specialist and teaches movement for actors when he is not directing. His recent projects include Dream Play by August Strindberg, adapted by Courtney Baron (Cal State Long Beach, 2003); The Roman Forum Project (Beall Center, 2003); Zwischen Fear und Sex: Fünf Proben (Hellerau, Germany, 2002); Twilight by Anna Deveare Smith (Cal State Long Beach, 2002); Virtual Live (Location One, NY, 2002); How I Got That Story by Amlin Gray (NY, August 2001); The Roman Forum (Side Street Live, LA, 2000); Dear Anton (Chekhov Now Festival, 1999); The Creditors (New York International Fringe Festival, 1999); "August in January," a festival celebrating August Strindberg's 150th birthday (Theater 22, 1999); Le Ménage (LaMama E.T.C. 1998); Still Lies Quiet Truth (New York International Fringe Festival, 1998); and The Good Night (Theatre for the New City, 1998). Upcoming projects include Brecht in America (spring 2005; staged reading at the Goethe Institute L.A., fall 2004). Robert has an M.F.A. in Theater from Columbia University, where he studied directing with Anne Bogart. His work as a director is grounded in prior experience as a choreographer and performer in German Tanztheater, working with Reinhild Hoffmann (a contemporary of Pina Bausch) and other German directors. Robert also possesses an M.F.A. in modern dance from UCLA and a B.F.A. in visual art from the San Francisco Art Institute. More info can be found on his web site. ANTOINETTE LAFARGE (co-creator, online director) is Associate Professor of Digital Media at the University of California, Irvine. An artist and writer with a special interest in virtual and mixed realities and net-based improvisation, her recent intermedia performance works include The Roman Forum Project (Beall Center, 2003), Reading Frankenstein (Beall Center, 2003), Virtual Live (Location One, NY, 2002); The Roman Forum (Side Street Live, LA, 2000), and Still Lies Quiet Truth (New York International Fringe Festival, 1998). Her essays and other other writings have appeared in several books, including Benjamin's Blind Spot (2001), as well as in such periodicals as Wired, Leonardo, and Gnosis. Upcoming projects include Brecht in America (spring 2005; staged reading at the Goethe Institute L.A., fall 2004). Antoinette is the founding director of the Plaintext Players, a pioneering Internet performance group that uses net-based virtual worlds to stage their performances. The Plaintext Players have appeared at a wide variety of international venues, including documenta x (1997), the Venice Biennale (1997), and the European Media Arts Festival (1993), and a transcript of one of their performances was published in Performance Art Journal in 2003.She is also the founder-director of the Museum of Forgery, a virtual institute dedicated to the aesthetics of forgery. Her domain is forger.com. MARIA DE LOS ANGELES ESTEVES (sound artist) was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She graduated as a piano and music teacher at the Conservatory in Buenos Aires in 1991, and in 1994 she went to Paris to study electroacoustic music, orchestration, composition, and film composition. In 1997 she continued her composition studies at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague in the Netherlands, graduating in 2001. In 2001-02 she participated as a performer and composer in the Internet performance of "Songs of Sorrow, Songs of Hope" (2001) and "Voyages of Aeneas--Fixed/Not" (2002) produced between the Dance and Music departments of UC Irvine and New York University. Her music has been performed in festivals in Europe and South America, including Gaudeamus International Composers Competition (Netherlands), Bartok Seminar (Hungary), Donna in Musica (Italy), and Buenos Aires No Duerme (Argentina). As an improviser, she has performed at various venues in the Netherlands with Gloribel Hernandez (Duo Glo+Cuca) and also produced three CDs, Café y Mate, My Uninhibited Husband, and Love Songs. Her latest works include the sound design (with Jeff Ridenour) for The Roman Forum Forum Project (Beall Center, 2003). She also composed the music for the choreography Projection/Reflection of Amber McCall (premiere May 2004), and the music for a short film by Robert McLendon, Transcendence. She is currently working on the production of a film documentary about the trailer park at UCI, and on a composition for the California Ear Unit, to premiere November 8 at LACMA. JEFF RIDENOUR (sound artist; voice synthesization) was born in California, and grew up in Lincoln, Nebraska. While at UC Berkeley studying music and physics, he had his experiences with computer music, studying with David Wessel at CNMAT. After completing studies at Berkeley, Jeff studied at UC San Diego, receiving a Masters in Contrabass performance. While there, he worked extensively with Miller Puckette, assisting him with teaching a computer music course, as well as learning DSP algorithms and programming external objects in C for Max and Pd. Jeff also studied improvisation with George Lewis and was influenced by his approach to computer music. Subsequently Jeff received a Heartz traveling scholarship and studied for three years at the Royal Conservatory in the Hague and received a Second Phase degree at the Institute of Sonology. Jeff is currently pursuing a PhD degree in Information and Computer Science at UC Irvine. TRACEY A. LEIGH (stage actor) recently appeared in the world premieres of Amy Freed's Safe in Hell at South Coast Repertory and Hilly Hicks' How to Unload a Dishwasher at the Echo Theater Company. Other credits include The Vagina Monologues national tour, as well as the New York premieres of A Lesson Before Dying (Signature Theatre), Up Against the Wind (New York Theatre Workshop), Krisit (Primary Stages), Le Ménage (La MaMa E.T.C.), and Attempts on Her Life (Soho Rep). Regional credits include productions at Arena Stage, La Jolla Playhouse, Milwaukee Repertory Theatre, Arizona Theatre Company, Indiana Repertory Theatre, Intiman, A Contemporary Theatre, and San Diego Repertory Theatre, among others. TV and radio credits include "Strong Medicine," "Charmed," "Law and Order," "Under Suspicion," and "Under One Roof," and the Lifetime Channel's "Intimate Portrait: Terry McMillan" (narrator), as well as numerous commercials, voice-overs, PBS radio plays, and audio books for Books on Tape and BBC North America. URSULA ENDLICHER (online performer: immy) is a multiple-media artist working between the World Wide Web, performance, and multi-media installation. Her art reflects upon the (un)usabilities of technology in everyday life, its relationship to the human body, and its cultural-political implications on the individual and on society in terms of (online) identity. Her work has been shown in the U.S., Canada, and Europe and on the Internet. More details can be gathered from www.ursenal.net. She is pleased to perform again as yet another online character in one of Antoinette's and Robert's projects. RICHARD FOERSTL (additional text). Not much is known about Richard, who prefers to keep his age, nationality, and politics a mystery. It is rumored that he was drafted into the German Army at a young age and made to serve as a messenger, on motorbike, between Hitler and the Russian front. While on one of these dangerous missions, he escaped into the countryside and was presumed dead. He resurfaced many years later after World War II had ended, but out of habit maintains an elusive identity. He is an associate of the Institute of Cultural Inquiry and a long time contributor to the Plaintext Players. MARLENA CORCORAN (additional text) is a writer and member of the Plaintext Players. LISE PATT (online performer: hound) is an artist and member of the Plaintext Players. RICHARD SMOLEY (online performer: pap) is a writer and member of the Plaintext Players. HEATHER WAGNER (online performer: landlord) is a practicing pataphysician and bored-certified fabulist with a black belt in Taiwan (inadvertently left in the hotel room). She plays drums with Brooklyn-basted rock band Morex Optimo and thinks Robert and Antoinette are brilliant and will be involved in any project they work on, invited or not. She is a member of the Plaintext Players.