Donna Kaz is a multi-genre writer and the author of “UN/MASKED, Memoirs of a Guerrilla Girl On Tour.” Her plays and musicals have been produced around the world at Harlem Stage, New York Musical Theatre Festival, Trinity College/Dublin, The Spit Lit Festival/London, International Women’s Arts Festival/UK, Women Playwrights International Conference/Sweden, City of Women Festival/Slovenia, Kultury w Poznaniu/Poland, Lincoln Center and the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. She has received the Venus Theatre Lifetime Achievement Award and as a member of the Guerrilla Girls, the Yoko Ono Courage Award for the Arts and the Skowhegan Medal. In 2017 “UN/MASKED,” was named best nonfiction prose book of the year by the Devils Kitchen Literary Festival. donnakaz.com
Ivan Talijancic, director QUARTET v4.0 Live performance/installation premiere: Abrons Arts Center, February 2010 photo credit: Tasja Keetman
Ivan Talijancic is a multidisciplinary time-based artist: director, choreographer, visual and graphic designer, video- and film-maker, as well as a performing arts producer, curator and journalist. He is a founder and artistic co-director of New York City based WaxFactory (waxfactory.nyc). Directing highlights for the company include: Sarah Kane’s CLEANSED; and ...SHE SAID (based on Marguerite Duras) both of which premiered in co-production with Cankarjev Dom (Ljubljana, Slovenia) as well as WILD ANIMUS, a multimedia spectacle commissioned by Too Far (San Francisco, CA) which toured to over 50 cities in Europe, US, Canada and Australia in 2006 and 2007. Original productions he created with WaxFactory were mentioned twice in Ballet-Tanz International performing arts journal (Berlin, Germany): in 2000 for LADYFROMTHESEA at the Old American Can Factory (Brooklyn, NY) as “the most innovative production of the year” and in 2007 for X: A VIDEO OPERA at the Zürcher Theaterspektakel (Zurich, Switzerland) as “the most important multidisciplinary collaboration of the year”. Some of his earlier directing credits include site-specific productions of Charles Mee’s THE BACCHAE and THE TROJAN WOMEN: A LOVE STORY; Heiner Müller’s MEDEAMATERIAL and HAMLETMACHINE; Fassbinder’s BREMEN FREEDOM and THE BITTER TEARS OF PETRA VON KANT; DON JUAN COMES BACK FROM THE WAR: a Little Dance of Death by Ödön von Horvath; THE TROJAN WOMEN, a collaboration with the playwright Ellen McLaughlin and a cast of refugees from the former Yugoslavia (Classic Stage Company); IPHIGENIA IN AULIS (Aaron Davis Hall,) and two shows for the Lincoln Center Theatre/Directors Lab, WOYZECK OF SARAJEVO and THE K’S (AN EPILOGUE) after Dostoyevski. While pursuing his Master of Fine Arts degree in directing from Columbia University’s School of the Arts in New York City, Ivan has assisted with Robert Wilson and Julie Taymor. He has taught and extensively in the United States and abroad including New York University, Brown University, Gulbenkian Foundation (Portugal), Fundateneo (Venezuela) and Columbia University/Barnard College. He was a recipient of a year-long Performing Arts Fellowship at Akademie Schloss Solitude in Germany, where he developed 39 FRAMES, subsequently presented as a highly innovative performance event, unfolding simultaneously on the Internet, television and in the public realm over a two-week period and in more than 30 locations throughout the city of Salzburg, Austria, commissioned by SommerSzene festival in 2006. Other residencies include Bogliasco Foundation (Genova, Italy), Emily Harvey Foundation (Venice, Italy), the Hermitage Artist Retreat (Manasota Key, FL), as well as HERE Artist in Residence Program (HARP) and Brooklyn Arts Exchange (BAX) in New York City. Ivan’s productions have been seen extensively in New York (Performance Space 122, New York Theater Workshop, Lincoln Center, Dixon Place, HERE, Brooklyn Arts Exchange, The Invisible Dog, Japan Society, Abrons Art Center, Incubator Arts Project, 3LD Art+Technology Center, PRELUDE and COIL Festivals, etc.) and internationally at numerous venues and festivals in 20+ countries and 4 continents, including ICA/Institute of Contemporary Art (London, UK), Gulbenkian Museum (Lisbon, Portugal), Sonar (Barcelona, Spain), Adelaide Festival (Australia), Cankarjev Dom (Ljubljana, Slovenia) and FIT/International Theater Festivas (Caracas, Venezuela), among others. Recently, his short film SLEEPWALKER was presented at Diane Pernet’s A Shaded View of Fashion Film Festival at the Centre Pompidou (Paris, France( and his first feature film 416 MINUTES is currently in post-production, slated for completion in 2018. Ivan is currently serving a three-year term as a panelist for the New York State Council on the Arts.
