Theodora Skipitares

Theodora Skipitares (* in San Francisco ) is an American performance artist who is primarily active in the field of puppet theater .

The daughter of Greek immigrants came to New York in 1970, where she trained as a sculptor and set designer . She briefly worked for groups such as Richard Schechner's The Performance Group and Omar Shapli's Section Ten , before moving on to solo appearances with life-size dolls from the mid-1970s. Live music, film and video material and documentary texts were integrated into the performances, with Skipitares working with composers such as Virgil Moorefield , Bobby Previte , Scott Johnson , Pat Irwin , Barry Greenhut , David First , Tim Schellenbaum , Arnold Dreyblatt and Sxip Shirey .

These works include The Age of Invention , Defenders of the Code , The Radiant City and Under the Knife . In 1998 the chamber opera A Harlot's Progress, based on engravings by William Hogarth, premiered. Optiv Fever was created in 2001 in response to Renaissance art . In 1997 she performed an opera with Ellen Stewart and her La MaMa Theater in Vietnam in collaboration with the Vietnamese State Theater and Puppet Theater, in the same year she directed a performance of Charles Ludlam's The Enchanted Pig at the Sundance Theater .

In 1999 and 2000 Skipetares worked as a Fulbright scholar in India, where she realized two pieces with Indian puppeteers and choreographers. In 2002 she worked again in India and Cambodia. With the beginning of the Iraq war she turned to classical Greek works around the Trojan War and realized the trilogy ( Helen, Queen of Sparta , Odyssey: The Homecoming and Iphigenia ), which she completed in 2005.

Web link

• Theodora Skipitares' homepage

swell

• New York Times, February 25, 2007 - Theodora Skipitares
• Lauren Hobbs Sexton: SELECTED PERSPECTIVES ON THE PUPPETRY OF THEODORA SKIPITARES , The University of Georgia 2007