ABOUT
“I make multi-media works of theater, contemporary opera, performance, cyberformance, live music and immersive experiences. This output comes from my belief that theater, live performance, and works made through the alchemical combination of rigor, craft and inspiration and that exist at the intersection of multiple media have the power to bypass an audience’s habituated ways of thinking, perceiving and feeling that they may see better the world around them. I am simultaneously an advocate of art for art’s sake and the necessity of art to keep (or make) a society healthy.”
Ashley Kelly Tata (they/ze/she/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 their 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 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 Prelude Festival, The National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing, and the Fisher Center’s Summerscape Festival at Bard.
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.
“In my work with younger artists I advocate and assist in enabling the sounding of brave truths and idiosyncratic, precious and unique voices to manifest however the impulse finds its way. In this pursuit I encourage young artists to explore a work from many different angles and to find what is interesting and will hold their fascination as a way in. In our collective work I encourage collaboration with colleagues who’s skills, perspectives and experiences complement and supplement one’s own.”
Tata is a recent recipient of a MAP Grant to help fund a project in development that intends to be a sonic installation with a virtual reality embed couched within a live music theater performance. More succinctly described as a “VR Opera about Trees” it is the first in what intends to be a developing practice of making performance works with Nature as collaborator. This work is being supported with residencies at the Brooklyn Academy of Music where Tata is a member of their inaugural residency cohort, a residency at Coffey Street Studios and from the Little Island Festival.
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 critically acclaimed 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_