New York, NY – June 1, 2023: The Stella Adler Center for the Arts is presenting new work created and
performed by Sophia Treanor and Deborah Black and developed in collaboration with Mary Overlie
through its Harold Clurman Center for New Works in Movement and Dance Theater (aka MAD) from
June 22-25, 2023.
Sophia Treanor is the 2023 Artist in Residence of MAD, which promotes the development of new work.
Housed in the Stella Adler Center for the Arts, which has been developing a thriving community and
audience base since 1949, MAD has a 15+ year history of supporting new work and emerging artists.
Said Artistic Director Tom Oppenheim, “I’m very excited to support and see this new work by two
important emerging theater makers. It is my hope that MAD can nourish creative artists like Sophia
Treanor and Deborah Black while stimulating audiences in encounters and conversations about what it
means to be human.”
In a final co-creation between living artists Sophia Treanor and Deborah Black with their late collaborator
Mary Overlie, Ephemera is a dance theater performance that explores entropy and the emergence of
difference in our universe. Prompted by Overlie’s directions and her last choreographic drawing, the two
choreographers study the webs of artistic lineage within a molecular dance. Amidst a forest of sequined
cook’s aprons and caps, vacuums, microwaves, and clowns, Ephemera makes visible the invisible. The
logic and illogic of life’s beginnings are made material by explosions of movement and sound, expansion,
contraction, symmetry, asymmetry, and popcorn, to ultimately ask: Is this all there is?
PERFORMANCE DETAILS
Thursday, June 22 at 7:30pm (Q+A to follow)
Friday, June 23 at 7:30pm
Saturday, June 24 at 2pm
Saturday, June 24 at 7:30pm
Sunday, June 25 at 2pm
Location:
Stella Adler Center of the Arts
65 Broadway, Floor 2
New York, NY 10006
In the interest of removing financial barriers for audiences to access great art and conversations, tickets
are available for free at: https://ci.ovationtix.com/34682/production/1159301
PARTICIPATING ARTISTS
Mary Overlie was born January 15, 1946 in Terry, Montana; conceived Movement Research, a
cooperative dance organization of international renown; founded Danspace Project with Barbara Dilley, a
dance presenting organization in New York City; first teacher hired to establish the Experimental Theatre
Wing at Tisch School of the Arts at New York University; a choreographer and performer with an
international reputation in the field of experimental dance, for many years teaching and performing as a
part of theInternational Tanz Wochen working with Ismael Ivo and Karl Regensburger in Vienna.
The Six Viewpoints was her child and it has done a unique thing in the world of theater and performance
philosophy; it has a quiet and infectious ability to represent itself without her. She joined those who
worked to elevate theater. Her leveling of the creative hierarchy by focusing on the materials has
conceptually and practically innovated the performance worlds of both theater and dance.
Sophia Treanor is a director, performer, and educator. She worked with Mary Overlie as a student,
teaching assistant, performer, and close companion throughout the United States, Europe, and China from
2011 until Overlie’s death in June of 2020. Sophia served as a primary reader for the Viewpoints book,
Standing in Space: The Six Viewpoints Theory and Practice. She is currently co-directing a documentary
about Mary Overlie (www.overliefilm.com), teaching the Viewpoints internationally along with the Jean
Hamilton Floor Barre Technique, and is a faculty member of the Stella Adler Studio of Acting. Sophia’s
live performance work has been seen in private and public spaces, theaters, and galleries across New York
City, including Danspace Project, the Living Theater, the Center for Performance Research, CAVE,
Triskelion Arts, and Dixon Place. Sophia is the Harold Clurman Center for New Works in Movement and
Dance Theater (MAD) 2023 Artist in Residence.
Deborah Black is a dance and theater artist, writer, and educator. She has performed in the work of
Deborah Hay, Mary Overlie, and Susan Rethorst. While living in Rotterdam from 2013-16, she created
and toured with the Tuning People (BE) and Ymist Company (NO). Her choreography has been presented
in New York at the TANK, Judson Church, Roulette, Joyce SoHo, Manhattan Repertory Theatre, Dixon
Place, AUNTS and in Germany at the Lucky Trimmer Tanz Performance Serie and ArToll. Deborah
taught physical theater and dance at the Fontys Hogeschool voor de Kunsten in Tilburg. She taught guest
and master classes at Goldsmiths University London, NYU’s Experimental Theatre Wing, Drama Studio
London, Ohio University, as well as private workshops in New York City and all across Europe.
Sophia and Deborah’s shared questions about the intersections of theater and dance led them to work
together in various capacities: teaching the Six Viewpoints and Jean Hamilton’s Floor Barre, stewarding
the Mary Overlie Legacy Project with Nicolás Noreña and Tony Perucci, and creating Ephemera.
About The Stella Adler Center for the Arts
Established in 1949 by Stella Adler, the Stella Adler Studio of Acting was founded upon Adler’s belief in
the supreme seriousness of her art, and has, for the last seven decades, enriched every part of the
American theater and film arts. Adler’s philosophies kept many well-known members of the theater
coming back for her intelligent and passionate advice and the school has since trained many of the
brilliant actors of our time, including Marlon Brando, Robert DeNiro, Elaine Stritch, Benicio del Toro and
Salma Hayek. The Stella Adler Studio of Acting is a not-for-profit organization, which trains over 500
actors annually and also presents world-class lectures, poetry readings, jazz, classical music, theater, and
dance theater events. www.stellaadler.com
