Bio

WENDELL BEAVERS    A founding faculty and Director (1985-90) of NYU’s Experimental Theater Wing (ETW) and founder of Naropa University’s innovative MFA Theater: Contemporary Performance Program 2004-2020. An early collaborator with Viewpoints originator Mary Overlie creating and teaching Viewpoints curriculum at ETW from its inception in 1978 until moving to Naropa University in 2003. He is also a member of the founding artists group of Movement Research (NYC, 1978 to present), directing that collective from 1980-83, recently teaching in the Movement Research at MOMA series. He is currently teaching and mentoring a growing global community of teachers, performing and devising artists, writers and theorists who have been influenced by the Viewpoints work and his own performance practice and somatic research. He is an advisor to The Mary Overlie Legacy Project which is dedicated to the further unfolding of the Viewpoints as a body of work in the service of change and radical transformation. He has also been a longtime colleague of Anne Bogart and the SITI CO, collaborating with the company as a teacher and presenter of the Viewpoints in a variety of venues and circumstances since the company’s inception.  He is a principal contributor to On The Horizontal: Mary Overlie and The Viewpoints, edited by Tony Perucci, to be published by Univ. of Michigan Press.  He is currently Emeritus Professor of Performing Arts at Naropa University, and Master Teacher (ret.), Experimental Theater Wing (ETW), Tisch School of The Arts, NYU. Based on his work with Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, founder of Body-Mind Centering®, he continues to teach Developmental Technique™. his own foundational physical technique for dancers, actors and all physical performers. His company, SomaticPerformer supports his solo performance work, writing, lecturing, and ongoing professional development workshops with his partner Erika Berland combining new somatic research, Buddhist practice and phenomenology, and the Six-Viewpoints work of Mary Overlie.

Recent residencies and guest artist/faculty appointments include: Ohio University (2015), SITI CO Skidmore Intensives (2015—2018), NYU/ETW and BFA Open Arts (2016-2019), Nine Years Theater/Singapore(2016), University of Colorado, Boulder (2018, 2019), Rose Bruford University, London (2019), Toneelschool, Maastricht, Netherlands (2019), Vertico, Madrid (2019), Concordia University,Montreal (2020), Boston Conservatory @ Berklee (2022), MIT Dance (2022).