Come join Sebastienne Mundheim/White Box Theatre over the next 5 months in a workshop/ volunteer opportunity to construct sculpture, puppetry, and two-dimensional imagery for the world premiere of ArkHIVE: an interdisciplinary performance integrating sculpture, puppetry, dance, and sound that examines our relationship to history through the material world. ArkHIVE is commissioned by the Historical Society of Pennsylvania for the Philadelphia International Festival for the Arts (PIFA) 2013 and will be a headlining event of the festival. Mundheim is known for integrating historic research, lyrical storytelling, sculpture, dance, and puppetry into immersive environments of story. Mundheim will be building armored samurai costumes, table top puppets, a large paper boat, and many tiny trees for a site-specific work. She will be working with composer, James Sugg, performers Lee Etzold, Sarah Sanford, and Lesya Popil, dramaturge Mark Lord, and Bryn Mawr College.
If you have experience with power tools, sewing machines, an x-acto knife, scissors, or clay -- if you like integrating ideas and image -- please contact us. Mundheim enjoys creating a production environment of learning, invention, and fun as part of her process to create interdisciplinary performance. If this studio schedule does not match your availability, be in touch any way -- its possible that you could work on an individual basis as well.
Studio time will be spent in short discussions about the overall thematic content and intention of the sculpture and environment. Then there will individual review of technical approaches to construction.
DATES OF PROJECT: November 5, 2012, through April 20, 2013
Studio Times: M, W 4-9 or by arrangement
Crane Arts Building 1400 North American Street, Studio B-5
Mundheim's studio will be open for workshops.
Sebastienne Mundheim is an interdisciplinary storyteller, installation artist, and educator. Mundheim has been creating arts-based interdisciplinary performance and community events for 20 years. She began her arts career as a painter and writer, earning her BA and BFA at the University of Pennsylvania in 1990. Wanting to get away from the solitary practice of studio and get out into the world to make work with more clear social impact, Mundheim began creating interdisciplinary community arts programs and events in Philadelphia and New Orleans, designing and implementing parades, installations, and arts-based learning experiences through museums, cultural organizations, schools, and community centers. In 1994, Mundheim began to include performance in her practice. Since then, she has created 21 interdisciplinary performances, performed nationally and internationally. Works include: A Potable Joyce: A Watered-down Ulysses The Story of James Joyce and His Manuscript, Under the Hat: The Life and Works of Marianne Moore, Currently Franklin: The Story of a Paper Boy, Sea of Birds, Paris Wheels and The Ready –Maids. Works have been commissioned and/or presented by: The Rosenbach Museum and Library, The University of Pennsylvania, Franklin and Marshall College, Keene State University, Vermont Performance Lab, Marlboro College, The Philadelphia Live Arts Festival, Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Arts, The Irish Ministry of Arts and Culture, The Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Kimmel Center for Performing Arts.
Mundheim has collaborated in the works of other artists including: Whit MacLaughlin, New Paradise Laboratories, Kate Watson-Wallace, Anonymous Bodies, Thaddeus Phillips, Lucidity Suitcase, Stan Heleva, Walking Fish Theatre, and Hua-Hua Zhang. In 2010 she received a Philadelphia Theatre Initiative Fellowship to study with the Handspring Puppet Company in South Africa. In 2011, Mundheim was finalist for the Pew Fellowship in the Arts. She received her EdM from Harvard in 2000.
Contact Sebastienne Mundheim at SMundheim@gmail.com.