MARK SUSSMAN, directs, designs, teaches, and writes. Since 1985, he
has worked in New York and on tour with Mabou Mines, Antenna Theater,
Janie Geiser, Circus Amok, Ninth Street Theater, Paul Zaloom, and
the Bread & Puppet Theater, often exploring the theatrical possibilities
of both new and old technologies. In 1996-98, he adapted and directed
the Great Small Works production of The Man Who Was Thursday:
A Nightmare, from the novel by G.K. Chesterton, at Performance
Space 122. In Fall, 1999, he was a Visiting Artist at the Cotsen Center
for Puppetry at CalArts, where he participated in creating Theater
of the Ears / Théâtre des Oreilles, a solo performance
for electronic marionette with text by Valère Novarina, which
premiered at the Jim Henson International Festival of Puppet Theater
in Fall, 2000 and toured France in Summer, 2001. With Ears co-director
Allen S. Weiss and support from the Étant Donnés French-American
Fund for Contemporary Art, he collaborated on a second
project, Danse Macabre, which ran at the Halle St. Pierre,
the museum of Outsider Art in Paris in 2004. He holds a Ph.D. from
New York University’s Department of Performance Studies, where
he received the Michael Kirby Memorial Award for distinguished doctoral
dissertation. His essays have appeared in The Drama Review, (ai)
performance for the planet, Connect, Stagebill, Cabinet, Radical Street
Performance (Routledge, 1999), and Puppets, Masks, and Performing
Objects (MIT, 2001), edited by John Bell. He has taught at Barnard
College/Columbia University, New York University, CUNY, CalArts, Wesleyan
University, the Parsons School of Design/New School University, and
in the Performance Studies Summer Institute at NYU since 2002. He
is Assistant Professor of Theatre at Concordia University in Montréal,
Québec, where he lives during the academic year with MJ Thompson,
Sam Sussman, and Finn Sussman. For Great Small Works, he is continuing
work on Soil Desire People Dance, a collaboration with Roberto
Rossi based on the writings of German author W.G. Sebald.
