Jay Scheib
Encyclopedia
Jay Scheib is an American stage director noted for his contemporary productions of both classical and new plays and operas. Scheib is Associate Professor of Theater Arts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
where he teaches performance media, motion theater, media and methods, and introduction to acting. He is also a regular guest professor at the Mozarteum Institute für Regie und Schauspiel in Salzburg
, Austria, where he conducts an annual "viewpoints and composition" studio.
and attended the University of Minnesota
. In 1997 he entered Columbia University School of the Arts
from where he later received his Master of Fine Arts degree in Theater Directing. He began his career in Minneapolis, Minnesota
with a 1991 production of Antonin Artaud
's Le Jet du Sang followed by a commission from the International Festival of Free Theaters in Szeged
, Hungary where Scheib was to premiere The Seasonal. He went on to co-found The American Theater Institute, which eventually became The Arcade Studio. Productions here included: The Kingdom, The Suicide, Poems for the Theater, The Device Machine, Lendra // Revolute, John Day, Galileo Sidereal, Witkacy's The Madman and the Nun, Heiner Müller
's Mommsen's Block, The Battle (Die Schlacht), Prolegomenon, and Pickaxe.
Scheib's opera and musical theatrical works include Addicted to Bad Ideas, the post-punk "lieder abend" about the life and times of Peter Lorre
with The World/Inferno Friendship Society
. The production premiered at the Philadelphia Festival of Live Arts and went on to tour numerous venues and festivals including the Luminato Festival in Toronto, The Urban Festival, Helsinki, Spoleto Festival, USA, Under the Radar Festival / New York Public Theater, Peak Performances, and the Noorderzon Performing Arts Festival in Groningen, Netherlands. He also directed Evan Ziporyn
's opera A House in Bali at Cal Performances, Berkeley CA, Cutler Majestic Theater, Boston and the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Brooklyn, New York in fall 2010 featuring contemporary music ensemble Bang on a Can and Gamelan Salukat led by Dewa Ketut Alit. Scheib has also staged the world premiere of Irena Popovich's Mozart Luster Lustik at the Sava Center in Belgrade, carried out the libretto direction and media design for The Making of Americans at the Walker Art Center based on the novel by Gertrude Stein
and staged the five part Novaflot opera saga Kommander Kobayashi composed by Moritz Eggert, Aleksandra Gryka, Ricardas Kabelis, Juha Koskinen and Helmut Oehring, and conducted by Jonathan Kaell at the Saarbrücken
Staatstheater in Germany.
Scheib's theatrical productions include Brecht
's Puntila und sein Knecht Matti at the Theater Augsburg
in Germany; Tolstoy
's The Power of Darkness
at the Trafo House of Contemporary Art in Budapest, Daniel Veronese's Women Dreamt Horses at Performance Space 122, Vallejo Gantner Artistic Director, Chuck Mee's Iphigenia at the Norwegian Theater Institute, Lothar Trolle's Fernsehen 3 and Ein Vormittag in der Freiheit at the Volksbühne am Rosa Luxemburg Platz in Berlin.
Also known for his adaptations of novels, films, and non-theatrical events, Scheib's staged adaptations include: Bellona, Destroyer of Cities adapted from Samuel R. Delany's novel, Dhalgren
at The Kitchen in New York,Samuel R. Delany and Jay Scheib discuss Bellona, Destroyer of Cities with Ashley Crawford, Untitled Mars (This Title May Change) adapted from Lassewitz, Dick, Lem and the activities of the Mars Desert Research Station in Utah which premiered at Performance Space 122 in New York. His live-cinema adaptation of Antonioni's works This Place is a Desert was first performed as a workshop with the Kretakor Ensemble in Budapest then followed by a studio presentation at Massachusetts Institute of Technology before its world premiere at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston and its subsequent sold out run at the Public Theater as part of the Under the Radar Festival. Other adaptations include Margarethhamlet, which premiered in Berlin and All Good Everything Good after Shakespeare's All's Well That Ends Well
which premiered in Bologna at Raum. Both Shakespeare adaptations were choreograped for a solo performer on guitar and were presented with Margareth Kammerer.
Scheib is married to performer and independent producer Tanya Selvaratnam Scheib. The couple split their time between Cambridge, Massachusetts and New York City.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...
where he teaches performance media, motion theater, media and methods, and introduction to acting. He is also a regular guest professor at the Mozarteum Institute für Regie und Schauspiel in Salzburg
Salzburg
-Population development:In 1935, the population significantly increased when Salzburg absorbed adjacent municipalities. After World War II, numerous refugees found a new home in the city. New residential space was created for American soldiers of the postwar Occupation, and could be used for...
, Austria, where he conducts an annual "viewpoints and composition" studio.
Early career
Scheib was born in Shenandoah, IowaShenandoah, Iowa
Shenandoah is a city in Fremont and Page Counties in the U.S. state of Iowa. The population was 5,546 at the 2000 census.Once referred to as the "seed and nursery center of the world," Shenandoah is the home to Earl May Seed Company and the radio station KMA, founded by Earl May...
and attended the University of Minnesota
University of Minnesota
The University of Minnesota, Twin Cities is a public research university located in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, United States. It is the oldest and largest part of the University of Minnesota system and has the fourth-largest main campus student body in the United States, with 52,557...
. In 1997 he entered Columbia University School of the Arts
Columbia University School of the Arts
The Columbia University School of the Arts , also known simply as the School of the Arts or as SoA, is the division of the university that offers Master of Fine Arts degrees in Film, Visual Arts, Theatre Arts, and Writing, as well as a Master of Arts degree in Film Studies...
from where he later received his Master of Fine Arts degree in Theater Directing. He began his career in Minneapolis, Minnesota
Minneapolis, Minnesota
Minneapolis , nicknamed "City of Lakes" and the "Mill City," is the county seat of Hennepin County, the largest city in the U.S. state of Minnesota, and the 48th largest in the United States...
with a 1991 production of Antonin Artaud
Antonin Artaud
Antoine Marie Joseph Artaud, more well-known as Antonin Artaud was a French playwright, poet, actor and theatre director...
's Le Jet du Sang followed by a commission from the International Festival of Free Theaters in Szeged
Szeged
' is the third largest city of Hungary, the largest city and regional centre of the Southern Great Plain and the county town of Csongrád county. The University of Szeged is one of the most distinguished universities in Hungary....
, Hungary where Scheib was to premiere The Seasonal. He went on to co-found The American Theater Institute, which eventually became The Arcade Studio. Productions here included: The Kingdom, The Suicide, Poems for the Theater, The Device Machine, Lendra // Revolute, John Day, Galileo Sidereal, Witkacy's The Madman and the Nun, Heiner Müller
Heiner Müller
Heiner Müller was a German dramatist, poet, writer, essayist and theatre director. Described as "the theatre's greatest living poet" since Samuel Beckett, Müller is arguably the most important German dramatist of the 20th century after Bertolt Brecht...
's Mommsen's Block, The Battle (Die Schlacht), Prolegomenon, and Pickaxe.
Recent works
Scheib's work as a theater and opera director has been seen in the United States, Canada, Germany, France, Norway, Finland, Turkey, Netherlands, Czech Republic, Hungary, Serbia, Slovenia, Italy, and Austria. Known for his sometimes controversial contemporary stagings, he has won numerous awards including the Richard Sherwood Award from the Mark Taper Forum, The National Endowment for the Arts / Theater Communications Group Program for Directors, and the Edgerton Award from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 2009 Scheib was named by American Theater Magazine as one of the 25 Artists who will shape the next 25 years of American Theater.Scheib's opera and musical theatrical works include Addicted to Bad Ideas, the post-punk "lieder abend" about the life and times of Peter Lorre
Peter Lorre
Peter Lorre was an Austrian-American actor frequently typecast as a sinister foreigner.He caused an international sensation in 1931 with his portrayal of a serial killer who preys on little girls in the German film M...
with The World/Inferno Friendship Society
The World/Inferno Friendship Society
The World/Inferno Friendship Society is a band from Brooklyn, New York. Its style merges punk, soul, klezmer and jazz, while its collective membership features horns, piano and guitar. The ensemble has over 30 members, including a former member of Dexys Midnight Runners. About nine or ten members...
. The production premiered at the Philadelphia Festival of Live Arts and went on to tour numerous venues and festivals including the Luminato Festival in Toronto, The Urban Festival, Helsinki, Spoleto Festival, USA, Under the Radar Festival / New York Public Theater, Peak Performances, and the Noorderzon Performing Arts Festival in Groningen, Netherlands. He also directed Evan Ziporyn
Evan Ziporyn
Evan Ziporyn is an American composer of post-minimalist music and music for Balinese gamelans. He plays the clarinet, bass clarinet, saxophone, and metallophone, borrowing from classical music, avant-garde, and jazz...
's opera A House in Bali at Cal Performances, Berkeley CA, Cutler Majestic Theater, Boston and the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Brooklyn, New York in fall 2010 featuring contemporary music ensemble Bang on a Can and Gamelan Salukat led by Dewa Ketut Alit. Scheib has also staged the world premiere of Irena Popovich's Mozart Luster Lustik at the Sava Center in Belgrade, carried out the libretto direction and media design for The Making of Americans at the Walker Art Center based on the novel by Gertrude Stein
Gertrude Stein
Gertrude Stein was an American writer, poet and art collector who spent most of her life in France.-Early life:...
and staged the five part Novaflot opera saga Kommander Kobayashi composed by Moritz Eggert, Aleksandra Gryka, Ricardas Kabelis, Juha Koskinen and Helmut Oehring, and conducted by Jonathan Kaell at the Saarbrücken
Saarbrücken
Saarbrücken is the capital of the state of Saarland in Germany. The city is situated at the heart of a metropolitan area that borders on the west on Dillingen and to the north-east on Neunkirchen, where most of the people of the Saarland live....
Staatstheater in Germany.
Scheib's theatrical productions include Brecht
Brecht
Brecht is a municipality located in the Belgian province of Antwerp. The municipality comprises the towns of Brecht proper, Sint-Job-in't-Goor and Sint-Lenaarts. On January 1, 2006 Brecht had a total population of 26,464...
's Puntila und sein Knecht Matti at the Theater Augsburg
Augsburg
Augsburg is a city in the south-west of Bavaria, Germany. It is a university town and home of the Regierungsbezirk Schwaben and the Bezirk Schwaben. Augsburg is an urban district and home to the institutions of the Landkreis Augsburg. It is, as of 2008, the third-largest city in Bavaria with a...
in Germany; Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy was a Russian writer who primarily wrote novels and short stories. Later in life, he also wrote plays and essays. His two most famous works, the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, are acknowledged as two of the greatest novels of all time and a pinnacle of realist...
's The Power of Darkness
The Power of Darkness
The Power of Darkness is a five-act drama by Leo Tolstoy. Written in 1886, the play was banned in Russia until 1902.The central character is a peasant, Nikita, who seduces and abandons a young girl Marinka; then the lovely Anisija murders her own husband to marry Nikita. He impregnates his new...
at the Trafo House of Contemporary Art in Budapest, Daniel Veronese's Women Dreamt Horses at Performance Space 122, Vallejo Gantner Artistic Director, Chuck Mee's Iphigenia at the Norwegian Theater Institute, Lothar Trolle's Fernsehen 3 and Ein Vormittag in der Freiheit at the Volksbühne am Rosa Luxemburg Platz in Berlin.
Also known for his adaptations of novels, films, and non-theatrical events, Scheib's staged adaptations include: Bellona, Destroyer of Cities adapted from Samuel R. Delany's novel, Dhalgren
Dhalgren
Dhalgren is a science fiction novel by Samuel R. Delany. The story begins with a cryptic passage:to wound the autumnal city.So howled out for the world to give him a name.The in-dark answered with wind....
at The Kitchen in New York,Samuel R. Delany and Jay Scheib discuss Bellona, Destroyer of Cities with Ashley Crawford, Untitled Mars (This Title May Change) adapted from Lassewitz, Dick, Lem and the activities of the Mars Desert Research Station in Utah which premiered at Performance Space 122 in New York. His live-cinema adaptation of Antonioni's works This Place is a Desert was first performed as a workshop with the Kretakor Ensemble in Budapest then followed by a studio presentation at Massachusetts Institute of Technology before its world premiere at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston and its subsequent sold out run at the Public Theater as part of the Under the Radar Festival. Other adaptations include Margarethhamlet, which premiered in Berlin and All Good Everything Good after Shakespeare's All's Well That Ends Well
All's Well That Ends Well
All's Well That Ends Well is a play by William Shakespeare. It is believed to have been written between 1604 and 1605, and was originally published in the First Folio in 1623....
which premiered in Bologna at Raum. Both Shakespeare adaptations were choreograped for a solo performer on guitar and were presented with Margareth Kammerer.
Scheib is married to performer and independent producer Tanya Selvaratnam Scheib. The couple split their time between Cambridge, Massachusetts and New York City.