mama dramas postcard


 

About Lenora Champagne

BioCV

 

"I'm interested in perception - in how the world looks depending on where you stand to see, and on what you're looking for. I'm interested in representation - how the aesthetic portrayal of individuals and groups gives a picture of their "value" in society. I'm interested in language (words, images, movement) as a means to play with and affect perception and representation. With my intricate stories metaphors, I aim to move audiences both intellectually and emotionally - to challenge them to think and feel about the complex ways in which we are implicated in each other's stories, and in the larger society."


"Eye of the Garden," Art on the Beach, New York

Lenora Champagne came to New York from Louisiana to be a painter, but found her voice in performance. She collaborates with sculptors and designers, composers and media artists on large-scale work, and also makes solo performances. An alumna of New Dramatists, she has been working as a performance and theatre artist since 1981.

Her multiple awards include fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts in playwriting and solo performance, support and grant awards from the N.E.A. and NYSCA, and residencies at MacDowell, Yaddo, and Bogliasco. She lived in Japan on a Fulbright in 2012-13.

TRACES/Fades
"TRACES/Fades," An intergenerational performance with music and video that is a meditation on memory, loss and our national inability to remember history.

Champagne's publications include New World Plays, Out from Under: Texts by Women Performance Artists, The Singing: a cyberspace opera in Epic Plays II, TRACES/fades in Plays and Playwrights 2009, Dusk in PAJ and performance texts and essays in Performance Research, Women and Performance, PAJ, Chain and The Iowa Review. She has a Ph.D. from NYU and is Professor of Theatre and Performance at Purchase College, SUNY.