HISTORY
THEATER IN ASYLUM is a New York-based dance-theater company founded in 2010 to provide asylum to highly-charged subjects and characters. With thrilling performance, we suspend preconceptions, analyze a subject’s origins and leave audiences with newfound understanding and empathy.
Suspend beliefs, believe again.
Co-artistic directors Paul Bedard and Katie Palmer created THEATER IN ASYLUM simultaneous with the company’s first production: NIJINSKY IN ASYLUM. The show focused on the life of Vaslav Nijinsky, an influential dancer and choreographer whose creative flame burnt brilliantly and briefly as Europe approached World War I. Amidst artistic turmoil and two tumultuous affairs, he allegedly suffered from a mental breakdown and was interned in an asylum for the remaining half of his life. While the real Nijinsky spent thirty years in one kind of asylum, our production sought to exalt him to another – one where his story could be told from multiple angles, including an angle surmised from his own diary. This asylum would not be a place for the “crazy” and the judged to be locked up, “treated” and forgotten, but instead a safe place for compassionate reexamination.
Suspend beliefs, believe again.
Co-artistic directors Paul Bedard and Katie Palmer created THEATER IN ASYLUM simultaneous with the company’s first production: NIJINSKY IN ASYLUM. The show focused on the life of Vaslav Nijinsky, an influential dancer and choreographer whose creative flame burnt brilliantly and briefly as Europe approached World War I. Amidst artistic turmoil and two tumultuous affairs, he allegedly suffered from a mental breakdown and was interned in an asylum for the remaining half of his life. While the real Nijinsky spent thirty years in one kind of asylum, our production sought to exalt him to another – one where his story could be told from multiple angles, including an angle surmised from his own diary. This asylum would not be a place for the “crazy” and the judged to be locked up, “treated” and forgotten, but instead a safe place for compassionate reexamination.
In 2012 we began an Artist in Residence program for several frequent collaborators to become larger stakeholders in the work of the company. In the same year, THEATER IN ASYLUM became a resident company of the Horse Trade Theater Group, where all three of the season’s mainstages were produced.
Over the past three years THEATER IN ASYLUM has created six original productions, presented seven cabaret-style events, and cultivated the work of over 150 young artists. We look to 2013/14 as another year of growth for the company as we begin touring ¡Olé! and begin work on a new project.
Over the past three years THEATER IN ASYLUM has created six original productions, presented seven cabaret-style events, and cultivated the work of over 150 young artists. We look to 2013/14 as another year of growth for the company as we begin touring ¡Olé! and begin work on a new project.
We believe theater is the medium through which empathy is spread. We are proud to encourage ourselves and others to take pause, reexamine and build a more informed understanding of our world and each other. Suspend beliefs, believe again.
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