*From Director Dayna Hanson:
In April 2013 The Clay Duke ensemble had a visitor.

At my invitation, theater-maker and co-artistic director of NYC-based Big Dance Theater Paul Lazar joined us during an intensive residency at West of Lenin in Fremont.

As director and performer, I wanted to bring someone in to the creative process that I trusted and respected, someone who could offer incisive feedback and direction relatively early on.

Paul observed rehearsals and talked with us at length about the work and source material. His off-handed comments about contemporary performance (“An ounce of seduction is worth a pound of dramaturgy”) and questions about the dark realness of our subject matter (“As artists, may we react to this at all?”) helped propel us beyond our own troposphere into higher levels of inquiry, rigor and experimentation.

Pictured with Paul in these photos taken by Linas Phillips are Thomas Graves, Wade Madsen, Peggy Piacenza, Dave Proscia, Sarah Rudinoff and me.

*Bonus: Listen to Lazar speak with NYC artists, intellectuals, and other  thinkers and doers on his radio podcast, Talk to Paulie.