Artistic Directors

 

Jenn Ben-Yakov

Katharina Conradi

Stichting Freshtracks

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jenn Ben-Yakov

Artistic Directors home

Westbeth Artist Housing
463 West Street
New York City, 10014

Mail: jennstudioseven@gmail.com

Jenn Ben-Yakov performed, directed and taught in New York, London, and Amsterdam. She studied at Yale Drama Graduate School and with Joseph Chaikin and Uta Hagen. She was invited by Chaikin to join his new ensemble and went to Europe as a member of the now-famous Open Theatre. She helped create, perform and tour the Obie Award-winning The Serpent and Masks. Before sailing from NYC she completed the WNET-TV production of Home, written by Megan Terry. After the birth of her first son in Holland, she began working in BEWTH (Netherlands Movement Theatre) and then made Stigma, based on the book by Irving Goffman, while in Theatre Group Sater. She returned to NYC to perform in the ensemble of Anski’s The Dybbuk at the Public Theatre in Manhattan directed by Chaikin and Rafalowicz.
Based in London with the English Friends Roadshow, a communal clown company, Jenn played in entertainment for children and their parents. Now (together with Robert Hahn and their young family), they toured, performing outdoors during spring and summer—from England to Holland, France, Spain and to festivals in North Africa. She directed Spaghetti’s ½ Ring Circus during the four years in the Roadshow, and developed the satire Friends in High Places (sponsored by the British Arts Council) for the Roadshow’s winter season in London’s Bush, Cockpit and ICA Theaters.

She has performed, directed, and created collaborative works in Holland since 1978. Working with live music, and together with Pauline de Groot, they created a dance theatre piece on the theme of lost sisters and brothers called Traces (Sporen). The collage entitled One Man’s Ceiling is Another Man’s Floor emerged on the themes of faith and no faith, both plays funded by Jan Kasies Instituut voor Theatre Onderzoek (Institute for Theatre Research). She also acted a role in the Academy Award-nominated short film No Breakfast by Annemarie Prins.

As she has said, “The early plays in Amsterdam, Nagalm (Reverberations) and Rubber Baby Buggy Bumpers, sponsored by the international Mickery Theater, were made partly in hopes of helping to revive the post-war Jewish theatre, and with Dea Kort and the fine ensemble of English, Dutch and German performers, music by Sharon Landau and Burton Greene, artwork by Jeffrey Shaw, we toured Holland on the Mickery circuit., followed by 1+2 in 3D—a struggle in the imagination of a young woman not to be divided by divorce. Then my attention turned to the longings of displaced South African ex-patriots in exile in Holland, and (with grants from the Minister of Culture), I researched, created and directed Second Choices for the African Roots Festival, Balie Theatre, based on the themes of home and homelessness. After years of ensemble work, I next directed a series of solos… Gogol’s Diary of a Madman for South African actor Jeroen Krannenberg and in Studio 35 the musical Living in a Dream for singer Jodi Gilbert and You’re Not Allowed to Play Here for dancer Wies Bloomen. My last homage to dance and dancers was in creating Consommé, a group piece concerning eating pressures, performed in the DanceLab.

“After research trips to Poland, Russia, and learning about the Maharal of Prague, I follwed my own ancestral trail. Filmmaker Ornella DÄgostino and I made Golems – A Jewish Legend, a light and lively production (via the Amsterdam Arts Council) with parts for both male and female “golems.” (bovenzaal Stadsschouberg). By 1996 I was immersed in the love story The 2 in 1, based on a section of the Ramayana. This was a site-specific play for the magnificent Odeon Theater, produced by Jill van der Aa, featuring William Sutton and Sima van Dulleman. This was to be the last of the large-cast Dutch productions.”

In her three recent plays, Jenn shifted from playwright to storyteller. Performed in the Westbeth Gallery, Manhattan, Met Life Insurance, with Joyce Aaron and Steve Clorfeine, is based on the interviews of a NYC insurance doctor who makes his rounds gathering the same information in thousands of home settings or “sets.” This play is based on portraits of the people he interviewed through their responses to one fixed questionnaire. Laughable connections appear between the insecurities and anxieties of the characters and their attempts to insure their “pay-as-you-go” lives.

After 9-11, she wrote There’s No place like Noplace for an American actress living far from home. The character, in love with a Dutchman, struggles to be politically correct but is unwilling to lose her mind in the process of living in Europe. (Cameleon Theater)

Her current adaptation of the poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay will be performed in Capetown, South Africa, at Theater in the Muze the end of 2010. In this piece, two neighbors, separated by a wall of petite rigidities, can sense and almost hear the other’s inner monologue. In the time between plays, Jenn wrote KIN (Once Removed), her first not-for-performance novel.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Stichting Fresh Tracks

Artistic Directors home

Robert Hahn /Technical Director
Phone: 06 249 078 42
Mail: r.hahn3@chello.nl

Stichting Fresh Tracks is 1992 opgericht door Katharina Conradi, choreograaf en danseres, en Fabian Chyle, choreograaf. Jenn Ben Yakov is lid van de Stichting. Stichting Fresh Tracks heeft ten doel het stimuleren en activeren van artistieke activiteiten in elke vorm op het gebied van podiumkunst, in het bijzonder het stimuleren van de samenwerking van dansers en choreografen op het gebied va hedendaagse dans.

Stichting Fresh Tracks heeft ten doel het organiseren, stimuleren en financieren van alle activiteiten en evenementen welke aan het voorgaande bevorderlijk kunnen zijn, zoals ondermeer voorstellingen, uitvoeringen, workshops, danslessen, studiereizen en - dagen, het bijhouden en de verstrekking van administraties en soortgelijke bestanden, alsmede het uitgeven van periodieken; en voorts al hetgeen hiermede rechtstreeks of zijdelings verband houdt of daartoe bevorderlijk is of kan zijn, alles in de ruimste zin.

De Stichting kan ter realisering of ter bevordering van haar doelstelling fondsen werven, donaties in ontvangst nemen en met elk ander passend middel haar doelstelling trachten te bereiken. Stichting Fresh Tracks heeft geen winstoogmerk.

Stichting Fresh Tracks is gesubsidieerd door het Prins Bernhard Fonds, het Anjer Fonds, het VSB Fonds, Mama Cash, Theaterinstituut Amsterdam. Stichting Fresh Tracks had coproducties met de Danswerkplaats Amsterdam, Berenkuil in Utrecht, Tweetakt Festival in Utrecht, en verschillende theaters in het binnen- en buitenland