Samantha Shay

Directed by Samantha Shay

Created with and Performed by
Ditte Berkeley, Kamila Klamut-Pawlik, Aleksandra Kugacz-Semerci, Anthony Nikolchev, Mertcan Semerci, Julie Shanahan, Julie Anne Stanzak, and Tess Voelker.

Assistant Director Sara Europeaous
Scenography: Salmah Beydoun
Lights and FX: Marcel Weber/MFO
Costume Design: Angela Trivino
Musical Dramaturgy & Sound Design: Aslaug Magnusdottir
Dramaturg: Georgia Peterson
Production Manager: Hollee Gunter
Production Assistant: Suzannah Inglis
Vocal Training Ditte Berkeley and Orest Sharak

The piece has undergone many drafts and iterations over time when it began. Numerous artists have made contributions to its ongoing artistic growth. The artists whose imprint lives on with tremendous gratitude for their involvement in the project are: Sam Szabo, Sadie Schwolsky, Keenan Reilly, Sandy Levitan, Donna Simone Johnson, James Cowan, Kaiso Hill, Nikhil Pai, Tiara Jackson, Raven Scott, Miles Hartfelder, Nina Caussa-Rius, Jenna May Cass, Annelise Lawson, Stephanie Regina, Josephine Ann Endicott, Emily Castelli, Oleg Stepanov, and Łukasz Przytarski.

Ditte Berkeley (Performer) is an independent artist particularly interested in the use of song in performance. Ditte is a performer and co-creator in Teatr ZAR’s first four performances, as well as researcher at the Grotowski Institute in Wrocław. As well as being a theatre practitioner she was the initiator of the cyclical festival event VoicEncounters, hosted by the Grotowski Institute, and dedicated to the phenomena of vocal traditions around the world. She also co-organized, in collaboration with CPR (Wales), the international festival “Giving Voice” in Wrocław in 2009. She has worked alongside Studio Matejka and has been responsible for some of their vocal/singing training. Co-leader of workshops: “Into the Sound” with Teatr ZAR and Awakening the Listening Body with Matejka. Now she conducts her own research in voice and leads her own workshop Voice Tale (Speaking Song) in Poland and internationally.

Salmah Beydoun (Set Designer) is a set designer, architect and deviser of collective work based in Mexico City and LA. Salmah’s designs for theater have been presented in venues like REDCAT (Los Angeles), Studio Teatr (Warsaw), Boska Komedia International Theater Festival (Krakow) and Centro Cultural del Bosque (Mexico). Selected credits include Metaphysics of a Two-Headed Calf, Black Like Me, Uncle Vanya, (Un)Covered, Paradise Island; and La Princesa, a co-devised political piece which won first prize in ArtChangeUS competition. Salmah holds an Architecture degree with honorable mention of excellence from Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México and a MFA in Scenic Design from the California Institute of the Arts. She started her theater career as an assistant scenic designer in 2015. Since then, she has worked in many plays, operas, ballets and musicals such as; Cosí Fan Tutte, Carmen, Constellations, Rent, Le Nozze de Fígaro, and more. Salmah is recipient of the 2019 Princess Grace Award, Fabergé Theater Honor and received 2nd place in the 2022 World Stage Design in the emerging category. Co-founder of Colectivo Berenjena and Bad Boy Sad Boy Group; both collectives created by young international artists devising new work for theater and film. Currently, she also works as a motion graphics and 3D designer for The Mill design studio in New York, developing work for major companies like Meta, Google and Zara.

Kamila Klamut (Performer) Since the mid-1990s Kamila has been closely associated with the Centre for Study of Jerzy Grotowski’s Work and for Cultural and Theatrical Research, and then, since 2007, with the Grotowski Institute. In 1996, at the invitation of Grzegorz Bral and Anna Zubrzycki, she took part in forming Song of the Goat Theatre and performed in its first piece, Song of the Goat: Dithyramb. Since 1999 she has collaborated with Jarosław Fret, with whom she has been on several expeditions searching for the oldest extant forms of music. She co-initiated the founding of Teatr ZAR, and appears in all three parts of Teatr ZAR’s triptych Gospels of Childhood (Gospels of Childhood, Caesarean Section, Anhelli), which has been performed in numerous cities around the world, including London, Florence, Paris, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, Cairo, Seoul, New Delhi, Beijing (The Theatre Olympics) and Edinburgh, where Caesarean Section: Essays on Suicide won a Total Theatre award for Physical Theatre and a Herald Angel at the 2012 Fringe Festival.

Aslaug Magnusdottir (Sound Design) is a composer and performer. She pursues her sound experimentations for theatre, ensembles and site-specific performances. Her performances play between composition and noise blending it with dramaturgy and text. She has released music through Subtext Recordings with Briget Ferill and at Haunter Records with Mia Ghabarou. She is the sound designer and musical dramaturg for many works by Samantha Shay.

Anthony Nikolchev (Performer) is the co-artistic director of The Useless Room, a movement-based experimental performance group in Los Angeles, USA, and is on the faculty at the California Institute of the Arts School of Theater. He is an award-winning, critically acclaimed performer between dance and theater, film and live performance.
He is published by the Saint Petersburg Theatre Journal (Russia), the Claremont College Mime Journal, and excerpts of his text for the performance, Exile, directed by Vivien Wood, are published in Celtic Daily Prayers (HarperCollins). He has lectured on the topic of “Human Rights and Political Theater” at St. Petersburg’s Smolny University, was a guest speaker at the 2017 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity with his partner Gema Galiana and collaborator Annie Saunders from Wilderness, and in 2015, was commissioned to create a site specific movement performance for children by the Skirball Center in Los Angeles.

Mertcan Semerci (Performer) Mertcan Semerci was born in Istanbul and graduated from Bilkent University in Ankara, Faculty of Music, Dramatic Arts and Theatre. He appeared as an actor in more than 20 plays and dance performances in Istanbul and Ankara. Mertcan moved to Poland and collaborated with Studio Matejka from 2016 till 2018, taking part in the company’s projects and workshops and co-created Studio’s last project, “Angry Man”. He took part in the project of Alkemisterna, ensemble led by Cecilia Lagerström based in Gothenburg (Suffering: On Our Perception of Pain, 2017) and in the performance of Theatre CHOREA directed by Tomasz Rodowicz ( 2.0.4.5. Metaphysical Mini Opera). Since 2018, actor in Teatr ZAR theatre company. He has performed in performances: Medeas:On Getting Across, Anhelli: The Howl and co-created the performance Nobody Meets Nobody. He is working at the Grotowski Institute as a theater pedagog. He received the “Super Diamond” award from the president of the city in 2022.

Aleksandra Kugazc – Semerci (Performer) is an actress and theater pedagogue working at the Grotowski Institute in Wroclaw, Poland. Her primary focus is on researching the performer’s physical expression and dramaturgical craft. Since 2019, she has been associated with Theater ZAR, based in Wrocław, Poland, where she has performed in productions such as “Anhelli: The Howl,” “Medee/Moiras,” “Back to Beckett,” and has participated in various music expeditions and workshops organized by the company. In collaboration with Mertcan Semerci and Jaroslaw Fret, she co-created the performance “Nobody Meets Nobody.”From 2014 to 2018, she was associated with the Matejka Studio, led by Matej Matejka and operating under the auspices of the Grotowski Institute. Her involvement extended to the creation of the site-specific performance “Harmony of Contradictions: Poland” (2014) and the production of the film “No More Heroes” (2016). She was also part of “Palimpsest of Space: Reconstruction,” a collaboration with the Turkish artistic collective Budalasultan from Izmir in 2016, as part of the Tandem program initiated by Studio Matejka. Furthermore, she played a key role in the performance “Angry Man: Variations in Defense of Anger” (2017-2018). Aleksandra participated in an educational project with Anatoly Wasiljew as part of the Masters in Residence program at the Jerzy Grotowski Institute. With Jerzy Welter, she co-created award-winning performances, including “Watt,” inspired by Samuel Beckett’s novel, and “The Exits,” based on which drew inspiration from contemporary history and Romanian culture, as well as the prose of Herta Muller. She received a scholarship from the Minister of Culture and National Heritage, enabling her to execute the project “Be at Home” in 2015 and 2016. This project delved into the post-war experiences of former Breslau inhabitants. She has been engaged in many multidisciplinary social and artistic projects dedicated to diverse communities and addressing social exclusion. In collaboration with Samantha Shay (Source Material) and in partnership with Pina Bausch Zentrum and the Grotowski Institute (Germany/Poland), Aleksandra has been actively involved in the ongoing project Life in this House is Over. Additionally, she has engaged in the research project “EnraiZar,” realized together with Enkidu Theatre and inspired by the rich culture of flamenco in Spain.

Julie Shanahan (Performer) A staple of Pina Bausch’s Tanztheater Wuppertal since joining in 1988, Julie Shanahn continues to dance in the company, serve as a rehearsal director, and restage signature repertoire for the Pina Bausch Foundation, recently the Rite of Spring with dancers across Africa, and Kontakthof in the Opera de Paris. In recent years, Shanahan has made creations with Tim Etchells, Alan Lucien Oyen, Rainer Behr, Samantha Shay, and Gisele Vienne. In 2021, she acted in Robert Wilson’s legendary minimalist movement monologue “I was sitting on my patio…” and in 2023 performed in the US premiere of Bausch’s Agua at BAM.

Samantha Shay (Director) is a multidisciplinary artist, performer, director of theatre and film, and movement artist. As a creative instigator, catalyzer and master collaborator, her acclaimed body of work challenges traditional boundaries, creates new connections, and dances across the fault lines between disciplines. She is currently a Special Research Fellow in Theatre Directing at the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale, and is also the Artistic Director of Source Material, an interdisciplinary production company and artist collective, which she founded in 2014. From 2021 – 2023 Samantha was a Guest Artist & Researcher at Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch, where she began as a Fulbright Scholar in 2021. During that time she created and launched numerous projects, some of which are still in development. www.samanthashay.art.

Julie Anne Stanzak (Performer) was born in Charlotte, North Carolina, and grew up in New Orleans. As a child she took ballet classes and attended summer schools that were taught by renowned dancers and choreographers. In 1976 she went to Chicago, where she danced with the Chicago Lyric Opera Ballet under Maria Tallchief for three years. Julie Anne Stanzak then went to Europe to audition for dance companies there. Rudi van Danzig invited her to join Het Nationale Ballet in Amsterdam, where she remained from 1979 to 1986. During this time, Pina Bausch and her Tanztheater were frequently performing in Amsterdam. In 1982, when they were rehearsing “Walzer” for the Holland Dance Festival, Julie Anne Stanzak observed the choreographer’s creation process. She was thrilled by the ensemble and its unique atmosphere. “I found the ideas and the way that Pina and her dancers communicated with each other incredibly moving. I was particularly interested in Pina’s investigation of humanity and all its depths.” In New York in 1985, during a tour by the Tanztheater Wuppertal, Julie Anne Stanzak met Pina Bausch again, auditioned for her and was accepted into the company. She has been a permanent member of the ensemble since 1986 and has danced in more than 30 of Pina Bausch’s pieces.

Tess Voelker (Performer) is both a dancer and choreographer, born 1997 in San Francisco though grew up between Chicago and the east coast USA. She began with commercial jazz dance, then trained in ballet from the age of 11 with the Rock School for Dance Education and Barbara Sandonato School of Ballet in Philadelphia. After graduating high school in 2015 from Walnut Hill School for the Arts in Boston, she trained at Joffrey Ballet Chicago while spending her weekends studying improvisation methods with a contemporary dance company founded by Ronn Stewart. While training, she has gone on to win awards from both the YoungArts Foundation and Youth American Grand Prix. Her professional career started in 2016 when she moved to Germany to join Ballett Dortmund for a year before joining Nederlands Dans Theater II in 2017 and then the main company NDT I in 2020. That same year, Aurélie Dupont recognized Tess for her own improvisation style and commissioned her, thus becoming the youngest choreographer to create for the Paris Opera Ballet at 23 years old. Since then, Tess has focused on more collaborative and creative pursuits which has led her to become a solo artist starting July 2023.

Marcel Weber/MFO (Lighting Design / SFX) narrates spaces, creates sensations, and works in light, video and scenography. In the early 2000s mw/mfo started out by VJing in the realms of electronic dance music, over time becoming more conversant with scenography and light. Working in theatre was another formative influence and led to his Gesamtkunstwerk understanding and performance orientated approach to everything. Over the years increasingly taking on an artistic vantage point, he became an avid collaborator of many; and a strong believer in exciting synergies through group potentials. mw/mfo’s work of the past 20 years has been concerned with perception and cognition, with memory and identity, and with their dissolution in mind-altering experiences in the context of unlimited futures, an incomprehensible Now and underlying mythologies. mw/mfo has been directing A/V performances, video works and installations, as well as creating scenography for theatre and musical pieces. As such he works as Berlin-Atonal‘s director for light and visual and as a long time collaborator of Unsound festival in Krakow/Adelaide/Toronto. Recent projects of note include work with Caterina Barbieri on her “Light Years” label and solo tour, with Lyra Pramuk on the large-scale installation “This Too Will Pass”, performance pieces “Nervous System 2020” and “Snowcloud” with choreographer Guillaume Marie, Arte TV and Tresor Records’ series of staged concerts, or the operatic “Kistvaen” with Roly Porter. Further mw/mfo has been extensively touring with sound artists like Aisha Devi, Ben Frost and Tim Hecker. mw/mfo’s performances and installations have been commissioned and featured at renown venues like the Barbican, British Film Institute, Centre Pompidou, CERN, Dark Mofo /Mona,Martin Gropius Bau, Kraftwerk Berlin-Mitte, Volksbühne, Muziekgebouw aan ‘t IJ, Palais des Beaux-Arts Brussels and many more.

Co-produced by Source Material, The Grotowski Institute, Teatr ZAR in cooperation with the Pina Bausch Zentrum. This performances was co-financed by the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage from the Culture Promotion Fund as part of the Dance program, implemented by National Institute of Music and Dance in Poland.