Bard College Launches 'Live Arts Bard' Residency and Commissioning Program

This September, Bard College will launch a residency and commissioning program for the performing arts, Live Arts Bard (LAB). LAB is a partnership between the Theater and Performance Program and the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts, and will be run under the leadership of Gideon Lester, the college's new Director of Theater Programs.

As its acronym suggests, Live Arts Bard is a laboratory for new performance-spanning and transcending the traditionAl Fields of theater, performance, dance, music, film, and live art. Its aim is to develop a fertile and nurturing community of visiting artists and students, who work side by side to generate projects and new creative methodologies.

Each year LAB will provide residencies for individual artists, or groups of collaborators, in theater, performance, dance, live arts, and allied art forms. The 2012–13 pilot program of LAB will support five residences. By 2015, LAB will operate between seven and ten residencies per year. Residencies will last between two weeks and three months. While in residence, artists will participate in a combination of activities, determined between the program director and visiting artist. LAB projects may include: commissioning residencies for projects to be inaugurated at the Fisher Center, either in the annual Bard SummerScape Festival or at other times of year; developmental residencies for projects commissioned by other institutions; directing productions or creating projects with Bard students; teaching semester-long courses in the Theater and Performance Program; teaching master classes and workshops for Bard students, for the public, or in local schools; and mentoring Bard students in the development of their own projects.

This year's visiting artists in the 2012–13 LAB pilot program include: Amanda Palmer, Annie Dorsen / Scott Shepherd, Jack Ferver,and Jànos Szàsz. Further visiting artists will be announced later in the fall.