Lee Breuer directs

Director, writer, and founding member of the unique theater company, Mabou Mines, Lee Breuer balances compelling theatrics with penetrating human insight, an appreciation of classical mythology with genius originality. “Written and/or Directed by Lee Breuer” consistently connotes landmarks in the evolution of world drama.   Mabou Mines Dollhouse The Gospel at Colonus Red Beads Lee Breuer projects in development

Mabou Mines Dollhouse       Directed by Lee Breuer This Obie Award winning production continues Lee Breuer’s series of reinvented classics – most recently Peter and Wendy (OBIEs, Outer Critics Circle) – and brings Ibsen’s 19th Century feminism into an equation of power and scale. Shorter-than-average male actors (up to 4 feet tall) contrast women of normal height. The actors perform on a dollhouse set with child-sized furniture. Eve Beglarian’s Grieg-inspired piano concerti accompany, Martha Clarke’s choreography deconstructs melodrama’s posturing and Maude Mitchell’s Obie-award winning performance brings rare depth and unusual perspective to the role of Nora. Mabou Mines DollHouse turns bourgeois tragedy into high comedy with deep political bite.

“A passionate allegory that works – and plays – on many levels. The men embody small-minded convention and stunted possibilities. The women's big forms exude trapped energy, but they also remind us of the outsize roles that women played in the Victorian imagination. There they were angels, monsters, delectable maidens and decadent temptresses. Mr. Povinelli makes us feel Torvald's repressive sexual virility at every turn. Ms. Mitchell keeps us tense to the point of anguish with her ingratiating little cries and compulsive movement. The exaggerations are true to Ibsen. Emotional violence always pulses beneath his stern prose.” – Margo Jefferson, The New York Times

Lee Breuer and Bob Telson's      The Gospel at Colonus As featured on the 70th Anniversary season of New York’s renowned Apollo Theater in Fall 2004! On its 25th anniversary, this epic production which opened BAM’s Next Wave Festival and went on to Broadway and international fame, is being restaged by its creators, Lee Breuer (writer/director) and Bob Telson (composer). One of our civilization’s most enduring tragic tales, this presentation of the Oedipus myth in powerful Pentacostal Gospel form bridges race and creed and is guaranteed to move audiences emotionally and physically. “ The Gospel at Colonus has won a kind of immortality for itself that’s rare on our fickle stage and it has lost none of its grace and fire. If it fails to stir you, you may want to check your own vital signs.” - The San Francisco Examiner Youth Advisory: All ages

Mabou Mines’ newest, an investigation into the art of opera and puppetry. This multidisciplinary opera explores a haunting fantasy centering on an enduring literary theme: a young girl’s coming-of-age.

The story is based on a Siberian folktale in which a girl is promised her mother’s necklace of 13 red beads on her 13th birthday. The daughter’s ascension to womanhood and her mother’s corresponding demise is marked by a to-the-death battle with the mother swelling to a witch-like sentinel at the portal of womanhood as the girl clings to her beads. Red Beads uses vertical choreography – a synthesis of aerial acrobatics, contact improvisation and Japanese ceremonial dance – and wind puppetry to animate this symbolic tale. This is a visually stunning and aurally haunting fable evoking the dreamscape of Edgar Allan Poe’s dark and windswept world.