ABOUT
Ashley Kelly Tata (they/ze/tata) is a director whose works have been called “fervently inventive,” by Ben Brantley in the New York Times, “extraordinarily powerful” by the LA Times, like something that “reaches out across the centuries and punches you in the throat” by Alexis Soloski in the New York Times and zir production of Kate Soper’s Ipsa Dixit was named a notable production of the decade by Alex Ross in The New Yorker. These works have been presented in venues and festivals throughout the US and internationally including at Carnegie Hall, The Wexner Center, The Umbrella Performing Arts Center, Theatre for a New Audience, Ars Nova, PS21, LA Opera, Austin Opera, The Miller Theater, National Sawdust, EMPAC, BPAC, The Crossing the Line Festival, the Holland Festival, The Big Sing Festival, The Big Ears Festival, The Prelude Festival, The National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing, and the Fisher Center’s Summerscape Festival at Bard. Tata’s collaborators include the composers Kate Soper, Ted Hearne, David T. Little, Bora Yoon, Robert M. Johanson, playwrights Jerry Lieblich, Kati Schwartz, Chana Porter and the collectives thingNY and Anonymous Ensemble, among others.
Tata has been directing since 2001 when after years of performing and learning through assisting Kelly Eggers, the artistic director of the Oyster River Players, Tata and Robert Eggers co-adapted and co-directed F. W. Murnau’s 1922 silent film Nosferatu to the stage as a high school senior project. Rather than a dialogic made-for-theater adaptation, the work was performed silently, designed in grey-scale, through-scored with a “found score” that Tata edited - and played-back - on a mini-disc player and included interstitial projected video in which their own cast of performers (including R. Eggers as Orlock) were edited into the 1922 footage and digitally aged to appear as a 1920s expressionist film. The result was a sort of silent-opera-expressionist-ballet. It was first performed on their school’s multi-purpose room cafeteria stage where Edouard Langois saw it and invited the production for a four week run at his theater, The Edwin Booth in Dover, NH where it played to sold-out houses. This was a first experiment in what would become an over two-decades-long practice of integrating multiple disciplines and media into live performance.
During the pandemic-induced theatrical shut down, Tata worked consistently, creating a live cyberformance of Caryl Churchill’s Mad Forest which transferred from Bard College’s Fisher Center, Off-Broadway to TFANA, a Zoom-based production of performance band Sky-Pony’s work entitled The (Virtual) Wildness at Ars Nova, a Zoom-accessed Virtual Nightclub and dance party called The Boot with Beth Morrison Projects, a music video for rock band Sylvan Esso which aired on Colbert’s YouTube Covid channel, a physically-distanced adherent, landscape-integrating adaptation of John Luther Adams’s Ten Thousand Birds with ensemble Alarm Will Sound at PS21 in Chatham, NY and a multimedia live-streaming event from National Sawdust to mark the release of the quarantine-created album Con Alma with Paola Prestini and Magos Herrera and broadcast to Canal 22 in Mexico, WNET All-Arts and WQXR.
Tata’s creative output also manifests in immersive entertainment, escape rooms and advertising encompassing roles such as Creative Director of Immersive Escape Productions; devising environmental, multi-platform, immersive escape rooms; creating an experience for musician St. Vincent tailored for the drop of her album, Masseduction; and leading the team that was awarded a gold medal in Medical, Marketing & Media awards in 2018 for an immersive escape experience tailored for the release of a cholesterol-reducing drug for Amgen.
Tata’s MFA in directing was earned at Columbia University under the mentorship of Anne Bogart and Brian Kulick. In turn Tata has taught, guest taught or been a guest artist at Columbia University, Bard College, Mannes School of Music, Harvard University, MIT, Marymount Manhattan College, Colgate College, and LIU Post. Tata is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of Theater and Performance and Artistic Producer for Theater and Performance at Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson.
Tata’s work has been supported by a MAP Grant and residencies at the Brooklyn Academy of Music where Tata is a member of their inaugural residency cohort, Coffey Street Studios, the Little Island Festival and numerous Mercury Store residencies.
Tata has been a member of the Lincoln Center Theater’s Directors’ Lab, the recipient of the Lotos Foundation's Emerging Artist Award in Arts and Sciences and a winner of a Robert L. B. Tobin Director/Designer grant.
Tata has also worked as an associate director with Robert Woodruff, Jay Scheib, Daniel Fish, David Levine, David Lang and Richard Jones among others in such venues as St. Ann’s Warehouse (on the Tony-Award-winning production of Oklahoma!), Brooklyn Academy of Music, The Lincoln Center Theater Festival, The Park Avenue Armory, Spoleto Festival, USA, Fort Worth Opera and LAOpera at REDCAT.
More info including contact for collaboration can be found at: tatatime.live
ig/threads/twitch: @tatatime_
bluesky: @tatatime.bsky.social