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Dead Genius Productions
- called "outrageously creative" by the Philadelphia Weekly - produces
sweet, absurd, and culturally savvy performances that defy easy
classification. This four-member company includes a
dancer/choreographer (Alison D'Amato), a scholar/actor/director
(Christian DuComb), a playwright (Alena Smith), and a lighting, sound,
and set designer (Matt Sharp), all of whom share a strong commitment to
interdisciplinary collaboration.
Because of the varied and hybrid nature of our work, Dead Genius
frequently collaborates with guest artists on a project-specific basis
- most recently with Paige McGinley, the director of our upcoming piece
It or Her. Other artists we've worked with in the past include David Disbrow and Rick Henderson (Karen Bollaert), Michelle Shaffer (Substitution Chart), and Charlotte Ford, Bonnie Friel, and Julianna Zinkel (Apple of Discord).
Individual Bios:
ALISON D'AMATO is a
cofounder of DGP and a dancer, choreographer, and actor. In
addition to co-creating and performing in works by Dead Genius, Alison
has worked with several Philadelphia dance companies and independent
choreographers, and last appeared in the Philadelphia Live Arts
Festival in Nichole Canuso's We Spar Down the Lane (2005). She has performed internationally in London (Struan Leslie's No(Sea) No(Gull) at the National Theatre) and Bytom, Poland (Jacek Luminski's Where to Put the Blanket at
the International Contemporary Dance Conference and Performance
Festival). In 2005, she was awarded the Jack Kent Cooke Graduate
Scholarship to pursue an MA in European Dance Theatre Practice at the
Laban Centre in London; she graduated in 2006 with Distinction.
Alison now lives and works in New York. She also writes for The
Dance Insider, an online critical dance publication.
CHRISTIAN DUCOMB is a
cofounder of DGP and a theater/performance scholar, actor, and
director. Recent projects in Philadelphia include co-creating and
performing in A Theatrical Rendering of the Modern Life of Karen Bollaert with Dead Genius, and dramaturgy for Accumulation Process with
The Wayward Wind (both 2005). Christian lives in Providence,
where he is working towards a Ph.D. in Perfomance Studies at Brown
University.
MATT SHARP is a
lighting, sound, and set designer who has worked on all of DGP's
pieces. He has also designed for the Bryn Mawr College Theater
Department, Big House (plays & spectacles), Fetch Theater Company,
Group Motion Dance Company, and the New Edge Resident Artist Series at
Philadelphia's Community Education Center. In his spare time he
occasionally writes music, fixes things, and breaks things.
ALENA SMITH is a cofounder of DGP and a playwright. Her plays include The Lacy Project
(O'Neill Playwrights Conference Finalist, 2006; workshopped at Ohio Theater's Soho Think Tank, 2006; perfomed in the
Carlotta Festival of New Plays at the Yale School of Drama, 2006), Alice Eat Your Words (Northwestern University, 2006; Yale Cabaret, 2005; Haverford College, 2001), and Saturnalia in Poughkeepsie (Yale School of Drama, 2004). Plays written for DGP include It or Her, A Theatrical Rendering of the Modern Life of Karen Bollaert, and Apple of Discord. She received her MFA in Playwriting from the Yale School of Drama in 2006.
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