“What’s Luck Got to Do with It?”: The Extraordinary in Art and Life

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Rachel Rosenthal, the acclaimed artistic director and founder of The Rachel Rosenthal Company, innovative and revolutionary performer, and bold animal rights activist, will deliver the third annual lecture in the Leading Women in the Arts series and the final lecture in the 2007-2008 Bearing Witness lecture series of the Weissman Center for Leadership and the Liberal Arts. Rosenthal believes in the power of interdisciplinarity, change, and the bold unpredictability of forms, bodies, sights, and sounds.  She has been hailed by critics as a "monument and a marvel" for her pioneering performance techniques.

Rosenthal is known widely for developing a performance technique that is revolution for its integration of elements.  She blends text, movement, voice, choreography, improvisation, inventive costuming, dramatic lighting and wildly imaginative sets in ways that produce " an unforgettable 'total theater' experience."  In the last two and a half decades, she has presented over forty full-scale performance pieces nationally & internationally.  Critics celebrate her performance triumphs and she has been ranked alongside Robert Wilson, Ping Chong, Richard Foreman, Meredith Monk and Laurie Anderson. 

In her Spring 2008 Leading Women in the Arts lecture, Rosenthal, who asserts, “who are you and what you make cannot be separated,” will deliberate further on her perspectives on the inextricable links between the personal and the political, and reflect further on the extra-ordinary nature of art and life.  In addition to the public lecture, Rachel Rosenthal's guest residency will include a movement workshop, discussions with students and faculty in the arts, and a leadership lunch with students from all disciplines.

Event Details
Date: Thursday, April 10
Time: 7:00 p.m.
Speakers: Rachel Rosenthal
Place: Gamble Auditorium, Art Building, Mount Holyoke College
Free and open to the public.