Welcome: Erika Latta, Assistant Professor
Hold onto your seats, SCA theatre folks, because we have more good news for you. We're thrilled to announce Erika Latta as a new Assistant Professor in our Theatre Performance area, beginning in the Fall term. She'll bring a broad and varied practice and considerable experience to the Theatre Performance area, and to the SCA. With both Latta and Ryan Tacata, our other just-announced Theatre Performance hire, it's going to be a very different, very exciting Fall – and into the future. Welcome, Erika!
Biography
Erika Latta is originally from the Pacific Northwest, and grew up on the Lummi Nation reservation near Bellingham, Washington. She holds a BFA in Theater from the University of Washington, and an MFA in Acting from Columbia University. After attending Columbia, she remained in New York and has lived and worked in Brooklyn for the last twenty-five years, where she has made innovative work in traditional and non-traditional spaces, creating long lasting, interdisciplinary, international collaborations in Eastern Europe, France, Italy, Latin America and Germany.
She is the artistic co-director and co-founder of WaxFactory, a NYC theater company.
WaxFactory continues to nurture a hybrid approach, based on unconventional narrative styles, originally dramaturgy, visual and physical rigor, technological experimentation and site-responsive work. With the company, she works as director, writer, actor, sound designer and educator. As an actor she has performed at international venues and festivals such as the ICA/Institute of Contemporary Art (London, UK), The Gulbenkian Museum (Lisbon, Portugal), SommerSzene (Salzburg, Austria), OLTRE90 (Milan, Italy), FIT/ Festival Internacional de Teatro (Caracas, Venezuela), MES Festival (Sarajevo, Bosnia), the Exodos Festival and Cankarjev Dom Center For The Performing Arts (Ljubljana, Slovenia), and SummerSzene (Salzburg, Austria,) among others. In New York she has acted at La Mama E.T.C, HERE, P.S 122 (Performance Space 122), New York Theater Workshop, Lincoln Center, Soho Rep, Old American Can Factory, En Garde Arts, Raw Space, Ohio Theater, The Culture Project, and the Act French Festival, the Invisible Dog and 3LD Art + Technology Center.
Erika is also an associate director of the French trans-media company Begat Theater. For Begat, she co-conceived, directed /co-directed, designed sound and co-wrote LA DISPARITION, HIDDEN STORIES, LES DEMEURÉES and LE JARDIN AVEUGLE as well as Begat’s commissioned sound walk by the Marseille’s MUCEM (Museum of Civilizations in the Mediterranean) titled LA TRAVERSÉE.
Recently, Hidden Stories toured at the Boom Arts Festival in Portland, Oregon, the Wow Festival in San Diego, CA and the Downtown Brooklyn Festival / French Moves Festival in New York. Begat’s productions have toured in international festivals in France, Germany, Croatia, Spain, Holland, Czech Republic, Italy, South Korea and Australia. Begat Theater’s productions have been awarded numerous grants, co-productions and partnerships, as well as the generous support from FACE (French American Fund for Contemporary Theater). Erika is a member of the Society of Authors (SACD) in France, and she continues to author and co-author many of the original productions for both WaxFactory and Begat Theater.
Outside her company, she has worked with Felix Barret and Maxine Doyle of Punchdrunk (SLEEP NO MORE), Robert Wilson at the Watermill Center, Anne Bogart (SITI Company), Robert Woodruff, Victor Gautier Martin, Tina Landau, Chuck Mee, Andrei Serban, Guilia Murreddu and Rachel Dickstein, among others.
Erika has been awarded a number of European performing arts grants and residencies, most notably the Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart, Germany and the Bogliasco Foundation in Bogliasco, Italy.
In cinema, she has seen in CONCUSSION (Sundance Film Festival), LILY (Tribeca Film Festival), RUE DU GRAND PRIEURE directed by Alex Rodriguez (editor of Y Tu Mamma También + Academy Nominated editor of Children of Men). She was the lead actor in the film sections for X, a video-opera created by WaxFactory in collaboration with composer Katharina Rosenberger, which premiered at the Zürcher Theaterspektakel in Zurich and in WaxFactory's feature length film 416 MINUTES, both directed by Ivan Talijancic.
Erika shot film stills for the Oscar nominated film CAPTAIN FANTASTIC, directed by Matt Ross with Viggo Mortensen, and BOTTLED UP, directed by Enid Zentelis with Melissa Leo. Her photographs of theater and film, as well as her personal photography work, have been widely published.
She has also studied and trained in modern dance; Viewpoints with Anne Bogart (SITI Company), the Suzuki Method of acting in Toga-Mura, Japan with Robyn Hunt, and at Columbia University with Ellen Lauren.
She was recently a visiting assistant professor at Colgate University, and at the University of North Carolina, School of the Arts, where she taught Viewpoints, the Suzuki Method of Acting, and composition in devised theater. She has taught workshops in devised theater for directors and trained actors at Theater &TD (Croatia), Dartington College of Arts (England), The Gulbenkian Museum (Portugal), AFDAS and Begat Theater (France), Festival Internacional de Teatro (Venezuela), Akademie Schloss Solitude (Germany,) Towson University (Baltimore, MD), and Shout House in Portland, Oregon.
Most recently she has performed in WaxFactory’s one-woman show LULU XX directed by Ivan Talijancic at the Connelly Theater in New York, PULL YOURSELF TOGETHER! at the Rubenstein Atrium in Lincoln Center, Punchdrunk's SLEEP NO MORE at the McKittrick Hotel (NYC) and TIME, A FAIR HUSTLER at the Artist Repertory in Portland, Oregon. Her direction of HOPE by Hope Salas, a one woman show was last seen at the Wild Project in New York. Upcoming projects include: HOME a WaxFactory / Begat Theater / Hand2Mouth collaboration, the LULU XX international tour, the direction of STRANGE JOY, ARTIFICIAL EDEN, and the continued tours of HIDDEN STORIES and LA DISPARITION.
waxfactory.org | begat.org | IMDB