Travis Preston (born September 20, 1959) is an American director and theater artist known for his staging of classical and contemporary operas and plays. He is the Artistic Director of the CalArts Center for New Performance and Dean of the CalArts School of Theater. His notable works include Prometheus Bound, The Master Builder, Brewsie and Willie, Macbeth and King Lear.[1]

Travis Preston
Born	(1959-09-20) September 20, 1959 (age 63) East Chicago, Indiana
Nationality	American
Education	Yale School of Drama
Known for	Visual/Theater Artist, Performance Art
Awards	Ordre des Arts et des Lettres – Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters 2008 Contributions to the arts in France and throughout the world – Director Best Opera production in Germany – Opern Welt 1999 Al Gran Sole Carico d’Amore – Director Best Opera Production Citation – Scandinavian Press Society 1996 Lulu – Director
Website	Travis Preston Official Website

Background

Preston was born in September 1959 in East Chicago, Indiana. He applied for Yale School of Drama while working on his Ph.D. in psychology Indiana University.[2]

Career

In 2017, Preston directed Fantômas: Revenge of the Image and staged it at the Wuzhen Theatre Festival in China.[3] He also directed and produced Sam Shepard's Buried Child for the Hong Kong Repertory Theatre.[4]

In 2013, Preston revisited Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound, staging it at the Getty Villa at the Barbara and Lawrence Fleischman outdoor Amphitheater.[5] The performance featured Emmy award winner Ron Cephas Jones in the role of Prometheus, and Mirjana Joković as Io. For the play, he and set designer Efren Delgadillo Jr, employed a 23-foot-tall rotating steel wheel symbolizing time and representing the protagonist being bound to a mountaintop, as per the Greek tragedy.[5]

Preston was appointed as the Artistic Director of the CalArts Center for New Performance[6] in 2005 and Dean of the CalArts School of Theater[7] in August 2010.[8] In the same year, he directed Ibsen's The Master Builder at the Almeida Theatre in London, starring Gemma Arterton and Stephen Dillane.[9][10]

In 2005, Preston directed Stephen Dillane in the popular Shakespeare tragedy Macbeth (A Modern Ecstasy). In the play, he explored the inner landscape of Macbeth's soul and staged this one performer drama in a minimalist set at REDCAT in Disney Hall.[11][12] The play was also performed at the Almeida Theater in London and at the Sydney and Adelaide Festivals in Australia.[13]

Preston has been teaching faculty at universities and theater training programs including The Yale School of Drama, Columbia School of the Arts, New York University, the National Theater School of Denmark, Indiana University, Hong Kong Academy for the Performing Arts, and Harvard University.[8]

Devised work

Preston began applying his work on classic texts and text-based methods to devising projects derived from various sources in rehearsal. Using the physical/gestural techniques he developed as a basis, Preston devised a wide ranging series of works that expanded the discourse and practice of contemporary performance creation. These included Paradise Bound: Part II,[14] a spectacle with 100 performers mounted at the Central Park bandshell in New York that involved a chorus of boom boxes “conducted” in an urban ritual of radio cacophony; Woyzeck/Nosferatu (Samuel Beckett Theater, NYC), a meditation on silent cinema and hypnosis; Apocrypha at Cucaracha in New York in 1995, an oratorio based on the Gnostic Gospels: Democracy in America, based on Alexis de Tocqueville's work of the same name, created together with Colette Brooks for the Yale Repertory Theatre.

Opera

As part of Copenhagen's activities as Cultural City of Europe, Travis Preston directed Lulu by Alban Berg - a co-operation between the Danish National Symphony, the Lille Grønnegåde Theater, and the Royal Family of Denmark, performed in the Queen's riding stables of Christiansborg Palace. This began a series of opera works: Luigi Nono's Al gran sole carico d'amore and Boris Godounov at the Hamburg State Opera, Don Pasquale, Falstaff, Don Giovanni, Semiramide, The Pearl Fishers, and Saul and the Witch of Endor at Opera at the Academy in New York. He directed the opening performance gala at Daniel Libeskind's Jewish Museum in Berlin.[14]

Recognition

In 2006, Preston was awarded Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French Minister of Culture.[15]

References