Mary Hall Surface | |
---|---|
Born | Bowling Green, Kentucky, U.S. | June 15, 1958
Alma mater | Centre College |
Occupation(s) | Theater Director, Playwright, Teaching Artist |
Years active | 1982–present |
Spouse | Kevin Reese (m. 1987) |
Children | Malinda Kathleen Reese |
Website | maryhallsurface.com |
Mary Hall Surface (born June 15, 1958) is an award-winning American theatre director, playwright, and teaching artist devoted to deepening understanding, creating connection, and building empathy through the arts. Based in Washington, DC, her work focuses on theatre productions for family audiences. She also specializes in leading visual art-inspired writing workshops.
In 2022, Surface received the Orlin Corey Medallion Award from the Children's Theatre Foundation of America, celebrating her "visionary work for youth [that] has created transformative connections across cultures, communities, and art forms for young audiences." [1] Surface has been nominated for 12 Helen Hayes Awards and received the 2002 Helen Hayes Award for Outstanding Direction of a musical for her production of Perseus Bayou .
In her innovative approach as a creative writing teacher and mentor, Surface uses visual art to inspire the writing process. [2] As described in a Washington Post feature about her work at the National Gallery of Art, "Surface searches for a powerful link between a work of art and an aspect of writing." [3]
Mary Hall Surface (a double first name, named after her grandmother) was born in Bowling Green, Kentucky. She graduated from Centre College in 1980 with a self-designed major in Comparative Arts and was awarded the Gavin Easton Wiseman Valedictorian Prize. Upon graduation, she received a Thomas Watson Fellowship which enabled her to spend a year in 15 different European countries exploring contemporary theatre for young and family audiences. Working through the International Association of Theatre & Performing Arts for Children & Young People (also known as ASSITEJ Internationa l) Surface's year abroad established what grew to be a career-long engagement with the international theatre community.
Surface moved to California in 1982 and served as the associate director of the California Theatre Center (CTC) from 1982–1988. She wrote her first plays for and with the acting company of CTC, including Prodigy, Blessings and Most Valuable Player , a play about Jackie Robinson. Most Valuable Player received multiple productions across the US, toured internationally, and was directed by Surface for Theatre Seigei in Japan in 1992.
In 1989, Surface moved to Washington, DC, to write and direct for the John F. Kennedy Center’s first season of Theatre for Young Audiences. She has since written and/or directed productions for both young and adult audiences at numerous Washington theaters including Arena Stage, Round House Theatre, Folger Theatre, and Constellation Theatre, and has had nineteen productions at the Kennedy Center. Her plays have also been produced at major professional theaters, museums, and festivals throughout the US, Europe, Japan, Taiwan, and Canada. Surface is the founding Artistic Director (2009–2015) of the Atlas INTERSECTIONS Festival, an all-arts festival that fosters connection across boundaries of age, perspective, and community.
Female characters center prominently in Surface's work. She was commissioned by Arena Stage to write a monologue for My Body, No Choice (2022) and she directed She Persisted (a musical by Adam Tobin and Deborah Wicks La Puma, based on the book by Chelsea Clinton) for Adventure Theatre in 2024.
Surface's 1997 Kennedy Center commission and three-time national touring production of The Nightingale , [4] a dance-theater piece created with choreographer Dana Tai Soon Burgess, launched her 10-year collaboration with composer David Maddox. Together, Surface and Maddox created five music-theater works commissioned by Theater of the First Amendment (TFA), George Mason University’s professional theater from 1990–2012. These inventive pieces combined text, live music, large-scale puppets, and movement to reimagine classic stories through diverse American roots musical forms. These collaborative productions included:
Four of these shows were nominated for the Charles MacArthur Award for Best New Play. Surface received the 2002 Helen Hayes Award for Outstanding Director of a Musical for Perseus Bayou, a production celebrated for its engaging theatricality and appeal to audiences of all ages.
"Perseus Bayou" is a triumph of atmosphere and theatrical imagination." [5] —The Washington Post
The original cast recording of Perseus Bayou received multiple awards, including Parents’ Choice Gold Award, Parents’ Guide to Children’s Media Award, and Oppenheim Toy Portfolio’s Platinum Award for Audio.
"To fully appreciate their efforts and ingenuity, not to mention the show's mossy atmospherics and gator-masked cast, nothing short of seeing "Perseus Bayou" will do. Yet the soundtrack recording, now available, reveals many of the show's charms as it traces Perseus's adventures and misadventures in the post-bellum South." [6] —The Washington Post
Surface has been commissioned by the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, to write, direct, and produce four plays for family audiences inspired by visual art:
Surface explains, "...these plays essentially were to engage the public in a very emotional and lively, personal way in the art. [The plays were] inspired by the artist's life and the artist's methods, but they weren’t...biographical plays. They were really sort of fantasies inspired by the work." [11]
Surface then became the founding instructor of the National Gallery of Art’s Writing Salon, [12] a popular public program from 2014–2020 that approaches art as an inspiration for writing and writing as a way to deepen connection to visual art.
In a 2018 article for the Journal of Museum Education, Surface and article co-author Nathalie Ryan share the pedagogical approach of the program:
"Highlighting the parallels between the writing and art-making processes, the program demonstrates that writing can be a tool for encouraging visitors to slow down, look closely, spark creativity, and find deep meaning within works of art." [13]
A Writing Salon regular, Julie Segal Walters, praised the Salon workshops "for offering mind-freeing, inspiring, educational and free craft workshops to the community." [3]
Surface now leads a popular series, “Write into Art,” as well as reflective writing workshops inspired by art through the Smithsonian Associates, the Washington National Cathedral and the Chautauqua Institute. She also facilitates popular Writers' Studios in the US and Europe.
Surface designs each art-based writing workshop to pair a specific type of writing with a specific work of art, such as using landscapes to explore setting or portraits to explore character. As she explains,
"...[I] align the writing exercises that we’re doing with some particular aspect of...the painting, or the some aspect of the artist's life or practice...I encourage the writers to describe the painting, really trying to parallel the tone of their language, the length of their sentences,...the word choices, the punctuation, ...their verbal choices with the artists visual choices." [11]
Surface's approach to connecting writing and visual art providers writers with a new perspective and new tools. In an interview with the Ekphrastic Review, Surface explains,
"Art gives writers another medium through which they can question, wonder, wrestle, and perhaps even discover what matters most to them. Moreover, experiencing how artists choose their visual vocabularies...offers an enriching parallel for writers to consider the choices we make as writers. How do you compose the colors, shapes and tones of a sentence, a paragraph, a story?" [14]
2022 | Orlin Corey Medallion Award |
For significant achievements for the enrichment of children in the United States and Canada through nurturing artistic work in theatre and the arts, Children's Theatre Foundation of America | |
2006 | Charlotte Chorpenning Award |
American Alliance for Theatre and Education for Outstanding body of work as a playwright. | |
2002 | Helen Hayes Award |
Outstanding Director, Resident Musical, Perseus Bayou, Theatre of the First Amendment, Fairfax, VA |
1993 | Outstanding Director, Resident Musical | |
Tintypes , Round House Theatre | Nomination [15] | |
2000 | Outstanding Director, Resident Musical | |
Grimm Tales, [16] [17] Theater of the First Amendment | Nomination [18] | |
2001 | The Charles MacArthur Award for Outstanding New Play | |
Sing Down the Moon, Appalachian Wonder Tales , Theater of the First Amendment | Nomination [19] | |
2001 | Outstanding Director, Resident Musical | |
Sing Down the Moon, Appalachian Wonder Tales , Theater of the First Amendment | Nomination [20] | |
2002 | The Charles MacArthur Award for Outstanding New Play | |
Perseus Bayou , Theater of the First Amendment | Nomination [21] | |
2002 | Outstanding Director, Resident Musical | |
Perseus Bayou , Theater of the First Amendment | Award Recipient [22] | |
2003 | The Charles MacArthur Award for Outstanding New Musical | |
Mississippi Pinocchio , Theater of the First Amendment | Nomination [23] | |
2007 | The Charles MacArthur Award for Outstanding New Play or Musical | |
Lift: Icarus and Me , Theater of the First Amendment | Nomination | |
2009 | Outstanding Director, Resident Musical | |
Goodnight Moon, Tribute Productions and Adventure Theatre | Nomination [24] |
Beach of Dreams, devised by Mary Hall Surface and Graziano Melano, 1990, Teatro dell’ Angolo, Turino, Italy and California Theatre Centre, Sunnyvale, CA.
Tales of Custard the Dragon, music by Brad Ross, Lyrics by Danny Whitman, Book by Mary Hall Surface. Directed by Mary Hall Surface, 2002, National Symphony Orchestra, Kennedy Center, Washington, DC. [25]
Apollo: to the Moon , a solo multi-media performance piece, inspired by the history of the Apollo Space Program, written and directed by Mary Hall Surface, designed and performed by Kevin Reese, presented over 1600 times throughout the US and in Ireland, 1988–2014.
A Perfect Balance, [26] a solo multi-media performance piece, inspired by the work of artist Alexander Calder, written and directed by Mary Hall Surface, designed and performed by Kevin Reese, presented over 1500 times throughout the US and in France and Taiwan, 1991–2018.
The Hundred Dresses , adapted and directed by Mary Hall Surface, 2006, Imagination Stage, Bethesda, MD
The Second Shepherds’ Play , adapted and directed by Mary Hall Surface, 2007 & 2016, Folger Consort, Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, DC. [27] [28]
Miranda’s Waltz , music by Susan Kander, written and directed by Mary Hall Surface, 2009, National Symphony Orchestra, Kennedy Center, Washington, DC.
Preludes: Duncan, Sand & Chopin, conceived by Cynthia Word, written and directed by Mary Hall Surface, 2010, Word Dance Theater, Washington, DC
Stay Awake, written and directed by Mary Hall Surface, presented as part of the Women’s Theatre Festival, 2015, Atlas Performing Arts Center, Washington, DC.
Ella Enchanted, music by Deborah Wicks La Puma, book by Karen Zacarias, co-premiere directed by Mary Hall Surface, 2017, Adventure Theatre MCT, Glen Echo, MD. Received the 2018 Helen Hayes Award for Outstanding Original Play or Musical Adaptation.
The Skin of Our Teeth , by Thornton Wilder, directed by Mary Hall Surface, 2018, Constellation Theatre Company, Washington, DC. Named among top 10 regional theatre productions in 2018 by Terry Teachout, Wall Street Journal. [29]
Inside the Music, Young People’s Concert, [30] written and directed by Mary Hall Surface, 2018, National Symphony Orchestra, Kennedy Center, Washington, DC.
In 1987, Surface married actor and sculptor, Kevin Reese. [31] They have one daughter, American YouTuber, singer-songwriter, actor, and filmmaker, Malinda Kathleen Reese (https://www.malindamusic.com/). Surface's brother is the writer and teaching artist David Surface.
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Malinda Kathleen Reese is an American internet personality, singer-songwriter and stage actress. She is best known for her Irish music covers on Tiktok, as well as Twisted Translations on YouTube, in which she previously created songs and performances from song lyrics and other texts that have been translated through multiple languages and back into English using Google Translate; in that guise, she has over one million subscribers. Currently, she releases original music and vlogs on her main channel, MALINDA. Her debut is a 2018 EP, Love Letter. In addition, she has performed in numerous theatre plays in the Washington, D.C., area, including playing Girl in the musical Once, for which she won a Helen Hayes Award in 2020.