“Recently, Paula Vogel’s Civil War Christmas (New York Theater Workshop); now, Bill Irwin and David Shiner’s Old Hats (Signature).
BEGINNINGS ‘I was like that kid in Annie Hall who says, ‘I’m into leather,’ except I’d walk around as a 6-year-old and say, ‘I’m into directing.’ I was raised on, and fell in love with, Broadway musicals and later fell in love with more experimental forms.’
AESTHETIC ‘I don’t gravitate toward new plays set in middle- or upper-class living rooms or kitchens. I prefer giving voice to the outsider, the minority, the renegade, and I love texts with stage directions like, ‘And then they fly to the moon and have a picnic with food that keeps changing color.”
CHANGING TIMES ‘I’ve always experienced Off Broadway and Off Off Broadway as being hospitable to me and other women I know. That said, I didn’t realize there were so many doing so much great work in New York right now.’
DREAM PROJECT ‘My own adaptation (with many collaborators) of Dante’s Divine Comedy, with characters and stories transposed to contemporary culture, with music by folks like John Zorn, Ratatat, Janelle Monáe.'” —Eric Grode, The New York Times, January 31, 2013
M. Ward and Dante
“In a telephone interview during the South by Southwest music festival Mr. Ward described music as a puzzle he’d been working on since his youth in a Los Angeles suburb. He spoke about his desire to balance dark moods and joyous elements in his music, about his love for Dante and Marvin Gaye, and about how delving into pop music history has become vital to his songwriting.” [. . .] –James C. McKinley Jr., The New York Times (April 1, 2012)
Profs. Guy Raffa and Arielle Saiber on EA’s “Dante’s Inferno” Video Game
Jon Gordon interviews Arielle Saiber on Future Tense (now Marketplace Tech) February 17, 2010.
Read more about the interview on the Bowdoin website.
Benjamin Popper interviews Guy Raffa and Arielle Saiber for his article “Dante Alighieri: Epic Poet, Ass Kicker”
The Atlantic, February 2010.
