Mark DeChiazza (Co-Director, Environmental Design)
is a director, filmmaker, designer, and choreographer. Many of his projects explore interactions between music performance and media to discover new expressive possibilities. His work can bring together composers, ensemble, and musicians with visual artists, dancers, music ensembles, and makers of all types. Investigating the body and its relationships to space, time, and experience remain vital to his process across all disciplines. Mark DeChiazza conceived and directed Orpheus Unsung, an evening-length music-dance-theater collaboration with composer Steven Mackey, which premiered at Guthrie Theater and was presented this fall at Princeton University. His large-scale music-theater production Quixote premiered this spring at Peak Performances continuing a creative partnership with composer Amy Beth Kirsten begun with their Columbine’s Paradise Theater, produced and performed by eighth blackbird. DeChiazza’s ongoing creative partnership with this multiple-Grammy winning ensemble began in 2009 with his Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire, and continues with Dan Trueman’s Olagón, now in development. Recent projects include: co-direction, video projection, and set design for My Lai, an opera monodrama by Jonathan Berger featuring Kronos Quartet, traditional Vietnamese instrumentalist Van-Ahn Voh, and actor/tenor Rinde Eckert; Waveguide Model I, a four screen interactive installation for Prism Quartet made in collaboration with Dan Trueman; direction and editing of the film Hireath, which partners with performance of Sarah Kirkland Snider’s 35-minute orchestral work commissioned by North Carolina Symphony and Princeton Symphony Orchestra; staging and design for composer John Luther Adams’ Sila, a massive site-determined piece for 80 musicians commissioned by Lincoln Center.