TOO Episode 184 - Conversation with Theatre Director, Actor, and Teacher Eugene Ma
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In this episode, Budi and Adam sit down with Eugene Ma to discuss his practice spanning many decades, and many countries and continents.
Eugene Ma is a multidisciplinary performance-maker and educator currently working across Toronto, New York and Hong Kong. He founded Performance Atelier Toronto (www.performanceatelier.ca), dedicated to embodied and liberatory actor training practices for all mediums, and is Artistic Director of the new third-culture theater company, Deliberate Collision Performance.
Trained primarily as a director, he has helmed the works of Suzan-Lori Parks, Paula Vogel, Thornton Wilder, Moliere, Sarah Kane, Mark Ravenhill and Saviana Stănescu. He has also developed new works with Lisa Clair, Cherry Lou Sy, Mike Lew, Shane Sakhrani, EllaRose Chary and Sooyeon Lee among others, as well as collaborating with the Hong Kong City Chamber Orchestra on the orchestral concert-theatre spectacle, Wild (Public Choice Award 2022, YAM Awards held in Belgium).
From 2016 to 2018 he was appointed resident director at The Flea Theatre in New York, where he commissioned an original musical theatre work. As a member of the Actors’ Equity Association in the USA, Eugene Ma has worked under Tony Award-winning director Mary Zimmerman and celebrated auteur Stan Lai Sheng Chuan.
His acting credits include performances for Theatre for a New Audience, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Yale Repertory Theatre, Seattle Rep, Berkeley Repertory Theatre and the Wallis Annenberg Centre for the Performing Arts in Los Angeles.
Eugene Ma is also a Drama Desk-nominated composer and a lauded acting teacher. A specialist in Clown and Commedia dell’Arte, he completed his teaching apprenticeship at the Yale School of Drama and at the Juilliard School under Master Clown Teacher and Professor Christopher Bayes, and has since given workshops at The Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts, Hong Kong Repertory Theatre, The Dome Studio and New York University and has coached on a number of projects for the screen. Eugene Ma has served as a faculty member of Columbia University’s Graduate Acting Programme, Yale School of Drama and at Harvard. More recently he has been teaching at the Hong Kong Baptist University and at Toronto Metropolitan University.
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Show Credits
Co-Hosts: Adam Marple & Budi Miller
Producer: Jack Burmeister
Music: (Intro) Jack Burmeister, (Outro) https://www.purple-planet.com
Additional compositions by @jack_burmeister