Juli Crockett | |
|---|---|
 Juli Crockett in 2008 | |
| Born | |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation(s) | Playwright, theater director, musician, retired professional boxer |
Juli Crockett is an American playwright and theater director, retired professional boxer and amateur champion, [1] lead singer of the alternative country band The Evangenitals, ordained minister, [2] and producer of The 1 Second Film . [3] Born in Coffee County, Enterprise, Alabama she is the daughter of writers Linda Crockett and Daniel Savage Gray.
Crockett studied Theater at Pinellas County Center for the Arts in St. Petersburg, Florida, received a BFA in acting at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts (1996) and MFA in directing at the California Institute of the Arts (2001). She received her PhD in the Philosophy of Media and Communication at the European Graduate School (2013), graduating summa cum laude, [4] also serving as Director of Alumni Relations during her time at the school. [5] Her dissertation, "Void Creation: Theater and the Faith of Signifying Nothing" was published in 2013 by Atropos Press, New York. [6]
Crockett recently completed an Artist in Residency at the California Institute of the Arts that focused on developing her new play Saint Simone. Her residency was completed between November and December 2015. [7]
As a playwright/director, Crockett is best known for her adaptations of classic works of literature. Crockett has composed scores for experimental opera pieces in addition to her directing and playwright experience.
The spoken word opera [or, the whale] is an adaptation of Herman Melville's Moby-Dick written and directed by Crockett with music by composer Jeremy Zuckerman. The piece debuted in Los Angeles in 2001, was presented at the 2001 Moby Dick Conference at Hofstra University, and performed by the TENT group in Portland, Maine in 2004. [8] In 2013 the piece was remounted for a reading with the Poor Dog Group. [or, the whale] was published in 2014 by Delere Press, Singapore, with illustrations by Ivy Maya. [9]
The Dawn of Quixote: Chapter the First, an adaptation of the first chapter of Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes, was presented in Los Angeles at the 24th Street Theater and as part of EdgeFest Theater Festival. In 2009, it was presented at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland.
Opheus Crawling, an experimental opera based on the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, was composed by Jeremy Zuckerman, with libretto and direction by Crockett. Orpheus Crawling was workshopped at the 24th Street Theatre and premiered at the New Original Works (NOW) Fest at REDCAT in Los Angeles in August 2006. [10]
Crockett's original work, History of Water, premiered at the 24th Street Theater's Saturday Explorer Series on May 10, 2008 and was performed as part of the Downtown Film Festival's Sustainable LA festival. Crockett has called this piece an "environmentally minded performance piece" that was heavily influenced by her work at iO West in 2008. [11]
History of Water and The Dawn of Quixote were also adapted into radio dramas and performed on KPFK's Pacifica Performance Showcase.
Crockett composed the original "Country/Western" score for Robert Cucuzza's play Cattywampus [11] which was workshopped at the Son of Semele Theatre in Los Angeles in 2012. Written and directed by Cucuzza, Cattywampus is an adaptation of August Strindberg's play Miss Julie , reimagining that the narrative in modern-day Appalachia. [12]
Excerpts of Crockett's new play Saint Simone now appear in the Padua Playwrights anthology "I Might Be the Person You Are Talking To" (2015). [13]
Crockett's directing-only credits include Bertolt Brecht's In The Jungle of Cities at the Red Room in New York City, Living in Boxes at the Salvation Theater in Los Angeles, and the US Premier of R. Murray Schafer's Loving at the CalArts Modular Theater.
As an amateur boxer, Crockett was the 2000 USA Boxing Blue and Gold National Lightweight Women's Champion, defeating an active-duty Marine from Camp Pendelton at the championship tournament in Baldwin Park, California. [14]
Crockett's brief professional boxing career ended when she retired undefeated at 3–0 (2 KO's). [15] Her boxing career was brought to the attention of the general public in 2005, after being mentioned in several media outlets, including Sports Illustrated and US News , due to her professional connection to F.X. Toole and the film Million Dollar Baby .
The Evangenitals, which Crockett co-founded with singer Lisa Dee in 2003, has earned praise from some of the media for their neo-folk style of music. [16] The band has played at many festivals in the United States and the UK, including Lightning in a Bottle, Eagle Rock Music Festival, Lummis Day, and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland. [17]
Writer Colum McCann spoke in an interview of Juli Crockett and the music of the Evangenitals saying, "For pure craziness, there are lots of other bands, including one that I can't write to but I've become a big fan; they're called the Evangenitals. They're from Los Angeles. One of the front singers is a former boxer-slash-philosopher. She's a fantastic singer. Her name is Juli Crockett." [18]
In addition to fronting The Evangenitals, Crockett has performed with Cash'd Out, a Johnny Cash tribute band, singing the June Carter parts in their stage show, folk singer Jim Kweskin, and Dorian Wood. Crockett and Lisa Dee also perform outside of the band under the name Crockett Sisters.
In October 2012 Crockett composed and recorded the title music for director Nirvan Mullick's short film Caine's Arcade which became a viral sensation on the Internet and gave birth to the non-profit Imagination Foundation.
Crockett has been married since 2013 [6] to composer Michael Feldman. [19] The couple have one child, son Thelonious. [19]
The Threepenny Opera is a German "play with music" by Bertolt Brecht, adapted from a translation by Elisabeth Hauptmann of John Gay's 18th-century English ballad opera, The Beggar's Opera, and four ballads by François Villon, with music by Kurt Weill. Although there is debate as to how much, if any, contribution Hauptmann might have made to the text, Brecht is usually listed as sole author.
The Los Angeles Music Center is one of the largest performing arts centers in the United States. Located in downtown Los Angeles, The Music Center is composed of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Ahmanson Theatre, Mark Taper Forum, Roy & Edna Disney CalArts Theatre (REDCAT), and Walt Disney Concert Hall.
Mother Courage and Her Children is a play written in 1939 by the German dramatist and poet Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956), with significant contributions from Margarete Steffin. Four theatrical productions were produced in Switzerland and Germany from 1941 to 1952, the last three supervised and/or directed by Brecht, who had returned to East Germany from the United States.
Eric Russell Bentley was a British-born American theater critic, playwright, singer, editor, and translator. In 1998, he was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame. He was also a member of the New York Theater Hall of Fame, recognizing his many years of cabaret performances.
María de los Ángeles Felisa Santamaría Espinosa, known professionally as Massiel, is a Spanish pop and protest singer. She won the Eurovision Song Contest 1968 with the song "La, la, la", being the first performer from Spain to ever win the contest.
The Mother is a play by the German modernist playwright Bertolt Brecht. It is based on Maxim Gorky's 1906 novel of the same name.
George Costello Wolfe is an American playwright and director of theater and film. He won a Tony Award in 1993 for directing Angels in America: Millennium Approaches and another Tony Award in 1996 for his direction of the musical Bring in 'da Noise/Bring in 'da Funk. He served as Artistic Director of The Public Theater from 1993 until 2004.
Roy and Edna Disney CalArts Theater (REDCAT) is an interdisciplinary contemporary arts center for innovative visual, performing and media arts in downtown Los Angeles, California, located inside the Walt Disney Concert Hall complex. Named for Roy O. Disney and his wife, it was opened in November 2003 as an extension of the California Institute of the Arts' mission into downtown Los Angeles.
Man Equals Man, or A Man's a Man, is a play by the German modernist playwright Bertolt Brecht. One of Brecht's earlier works, it explores themes of war, human fungibility, and identity. One of the agitprop works inspired by the developments in USSR praising the bolshevik collectivism and replaceability of each member of the collective.
Jeremy Zuckerman is an American composer of concert music, film and television music, music for modern dance, and experimental music. He is best known as the composer for the animated series Avatar: The Last Airbender and its sequel series The Legend of Korra.
Eduardo Oscar Machado is a Cuban playwright living in the United States. Notable plays by Machado include Broken Eggs, Havana is Waiting and The Cook. Many of his plays are autobiographical or deal with Cuba in some way. Machado teaches playwriting at New York University. He has served as the artistic director of the INTAR Theatre in New York City since 2004. He is openly gay.
Mirjana Joković is a Serbian film and stage actress, best known for her role as Natalija Zovkov in Emir Kusturica's Underground (1995). She currently is Director of Performance for Acting and an acting teacher in the Theater Faculty of the California Institute of the Arts near Los Angeles.
Matthew Earnest is an American theater director. He has also written plays, as well as adapted plays from novels, non-fiction books, short stories, and essays, and he has translated works in other languages for his direction.
Lamp At Midnight is a play that was written by Barrie Stavis, and first produced in 1947 at New Stages, New York. The play treats the 17th Century Galileo affair, which was a profound conflict between the Roman Catholic Church and Galileo Galilei over the interpretation of his astronomical observations using the newly invented telescope. By coincidence, Bertolt Brecht's play on the same theme, Life of Galileo, opened in New York just a few weeks before Lamp at Midnight. Some critics now consider Galileo to be a masterpiece, but in 1947 the New York Times reviewer, Brooks Atkinson, preferred Lamp at Midnight.
Round Heads and Pointed Heads is an epic parable play written by the German dramatist Bertolt Brecht, in collaboration with Margarete Steffin, Emil Burri, Elisabeth Hauptmann, and the composer Hanns Eisler. The play's subtitle is Money Calls to Money and its authors describe it as "a tale of horror." The play is a satirical anti-Nazi parable about a fictitious country called Yahoo in which the rulers maintain their control by setting the people with round heads against those with pointed heads, thereby substituting racial relations for their antagonistic class relations. The play is composed of 11 scenes in prose and blank verse and 13 songs. Unlike another of Brecht's plays from this period, The Mother, Round Heads and Pointed Heads was addressed to a wide audience, Brecht suggested, and took account of "purely entertainment considerations." Brecht's notes on the play, written in 1936, contain the earliest theoretical application of his "defamiliarization" principle to his own "non-Aristotelian" drama.
Leland Crooke is an American actor from stage and film. He is known from several stage plays and films by David Beaird.
The Judith of Shimoda is a play attributed to Bertolt Brecht. Long believed to be incomplete, a full German playscript of The Judith of Shimoda was reconstructed by Hans Peter Neureuter and published by Suhrkamp (Frankfurt/Main) in 2006. Markus Wessendorf's 2008 translation of this playscript into English received its first stage production in April 2010 at the Kennedy Theatre in Honolulu and was published in 2019 in a collection of Brecht's dramatic fragments.
Laurie Woolery is a Latinx playwright, director, and educator based in New York City. She is the director of Public Works at The Public Theater and founding member of The Sol Project. In 2014 she was awarded a Fuller Road Artist Residency for Women Directors of Color. She is best known for her 2017 musical adaptation of As You Like It.
Michael E. Feingold was an American critic, translator, lyricist, playwright and dramaturg. He was the lead theater critic of The Village Voice from 1982 to 2013, for which he was twice named a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism finalist, and was a two-time recipient of the George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism. He was a judge for the Obie Awards for 31 years, and the chairman for nine years. For his work as the translator and adapter of the book and lyrics of the Kurt Weill, Elisabeth Hauptmann, and Bertolt Brecht musical Happy End, he was nominated for two Tony Awards in 1977.
Krishanadasa Narayana Bandaranayaka Brahmachari Mudiyanselage Parakrama Bandara Niriella, popularly as Parakrama Niriella, is a Sri Lankan director in Sri Lankan cinema, theater and television. One of the pioneer dramatists in Sri Lankan drama, Niriella is the founder of the "Janakaraliya" Drama troupe. He is also a stage playwright, a film script writer.
