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Through the power of the ensemble process, Irondale creates and presents live, compelling theatre, performance, and education programs that challenge traditional assumptions about art, and help us to interpret contemporary culture better. The Irondale Ensemble Project was founded in 1983 by Jim Niesen, Terry Greiss and Barbara Mackenzie-Wood as an experimental/research theatre to further investigate the performance and education techniques that they had developed as resident artists at New Haven's Long Wharf Theatre in the late 1970s.
Irondale exists to challenge traditional assumptions about theatre—who makes it, how it gets made and how it can be used, all within the context of a permanent ensemble—artists working together, on a daily basis, over an extended period of time. The majority of the company's work follows two closely related performance styles: the presentation of established texts in unorthodox and often irreverent productions; and the creation of new theatre works, usually by combining original material with a classic and blending multiple styles of performance, music, dance, design and text.
Irondale has produced 40 major Off-Broadway shows including the American Premier of Brecht's Conversations in Exile, radical reinterpretations of Chekhov, Ibsen, Sophocles and Shakespeare, and 11 original works created collaboratively by the company. Since its inception, Irondale, in addition to developing and performing its theatrical pieces, has conducted extensive programs of educational and social outreach work.
These currently consist of workshops in New York City High Schools, the city jail at Riker's Island, and an in-depth Empire State Partnership with P106M in Manhattan.
The combination of the company's own daily rehearsal and performance work in conjunction with the para-theatrical use of Irondale techniques as a means of educating, and addressing social issues, has done much to shape the politics of Irondale as a company and to determine the nature and direction of its ongoing experiments.
From 1989 to 1994 Irondale maintained a collaboration with the St. Petersburg Salon Theater of Russia. Irondale and St. Petersburg performed the Uncle Vanya Show in a Joint production in New York City in the fall of 1990, Under the auspices of the Salon Theater, Irondale has travelled three times to Russia, performing in St. Petersburg, Estonia and Siberia.
In 1994 Irondale took the Grand Jury Prize at the St. Petersburg International Drama Theater Festival with its original piece You Can't Win.
THE TEAM
Jim Niesen, Artistic Director
Ensemble Company
Michaelangelo DeSerio, Amanda Forstrom, Michael-David Gordon, Terry Greiss, Amanda Hinkle, Nolan Kennedy, Sam Kinsman, Maria Knapp, Josie McAdam, Jim Niesen, Scarlet Maressa Rivera, Ken Rothchild, Damen Scranton, Welland Hardwick Scripps, Patrena Murray.
85 South Oxford Street
Brooklyn,
NY 11217
USA
press@irondale.org
http://www.irondale.org/index.html
Here are few videos reflect some of their work.