PIMA FACULTY

The Faculty of the PIMA program is comprised of members from the graduate Theater, Music, Film, Television & Radio, Art and Computer and Information Science departments.

Co-Director of the MFA Program in Performance and Interactive Media Arts. Artistic Director, Professor of Theatre, Brooklyn College. Areas of research: contemporary performance and technology; Theatre in the Age of Globalization; the Théâtre du Soleil; theories of directing; methods of collaborative creation. Artistic Director, Global Theatre Ensemble. http://www.globaltheatreensemble.org/Global_Theatre_Ensemble/About_Us.html, Co-curator, producer, and dramaturg of Global Theatre Ensemble’s project on Eliminating Violence Against Women, commissioned by the United Nations, 2008. Chapters on the theatre practices of the Théâtre du Soleil, in Actor Training (Routledge), Barrault, Mnouchkine, Stein (Methuen), Jacques Lecoq (Routledge). Editor, online text in progress, A Global History of Performance (Routledge). Worked internationally as stage director and trained with Ariane Mnouchkine of the Théâtre du Soleil, and Sotigui Kouyaté of the Peter Brook Company. Served as Artistic Director of the Stalhouderij Theatre Company, Amsterdam’s award winning English-language theatre, an international ensemble of actors creating new works in the 1990s. Director of The Game, by Mariella Romero, listed as the best production of the year in the Netherlands by Amsterdam’s City Life (later Time Out). Currently working on a contemporary adaptation of Euripides’ Medea, Medea Redux, originally workshopped at Oregon Shakespeare Co., and an opera on American Transcendentalist Margaret Fuller. Transcendent, with composer Christopher Drobny. Playwright UBU (Samuel French), Ph.D. in Dramatic Art with an emphasis in Directing, from U.C. Berkeley’s Director/ Scholars program. Editor, Signals: A Contemporary Performance Journal, featuring articles on international performance. Signals can be found at: http://contemporaryperformancejournal.com/)

Helen E. Richardson

Program Co-Director

Co-Director of the MFA Program in Performance and Interactive Media Arts, Artistic Director, Professor, Theater Department, Brooklyn College.

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André M. Zachery is a Chicago bred and now Brooklyn-based interdisciplinary artist, scholar and technologist with a BFA from Ailey/Fordham University and MFA in Performance & Interactive Media Arts from CUNY/Brooklyn College. As the artistic director of Renegade Performance Group his practice, research and community engagement artistically focuses on merging of choreography, technology and Black cultural practices through multimedia work. André is a 2016 New York Foundation for the Arts Gregory Millard Fellow in Choreography and 2019 Jerome Hill Foundation Fellow in Choreography. His works through RPG have been presented domestically and internationally, receiving support through several residencies, awards, commissions. These have included the CUNY Dance Initiative, Performance Project Residency at University Settlement, ChoreoQuest Residency at Restoration Arts Brooklyn, 3LD Art & Technology Center, HarvestWorks and a Jerome supported Movement Research AIR. Awarded grants have been from the Brooklyn Arts Council, Harlem Stage Fund for New Work and a Slate Property SPACE Award. Commissions have come from the Brooklyn Museum, Five Myles/BRIC Biennial and Danspace Project. 

André M. Zachery

Adjunct Lecturer

André M. Zachery is a Chicago bred and now Brooklyn-based interdisciplinary artist, scholar and technologist with a BFA from Ailey/Fordham University and MFA in Performance & Interactive Media Arts from CUNY/Brooklyn College.

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Andrew Kircher is a CUNY teaching fellow with the Theatre department and adjunct lecturer for the Performance And Interactive Media Arts (PIMA) MFA program. He is pursuing a PhD at the CUNY Graduate Center and has an MA in Theatre History from Brooklyn College. Research interests include digital technology and remix culture, Creative Commons and copyright alternatives, and Don Juan play adaptations. He has presented at ATHE, ASTR, MATC, IFTR, and is the Graduate Representative for the ATHE Latino Focus Group. He has produced with companies including Ars Nova and Les Freres Corbusier, and is currently the Associate Producer for the Devised Theater Initiative & Under the Radar Festival at the Public Theater/New York Shakespeare Festival

Andrew Kircher

Adjunct Lecturer

Andrew Kircher is a CUNY teaching fellow with the Theatre department and adjunct lecturer for the Performance And Interactive Media Arts (PIMA) MFA program.

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Ryan Holsopple is a performer, programmer and designer that creates interactive hardware and software for performances with his own company, 31 Down, and other artists including Annie Dorsen, Bill Morrison, Jim Findlay, Radiohole and Mallory Catlett with whom Ryan won a 2014 Special Citation OBIE Award for Design with his work on, This Was The End.  Recent works with Annie Dorsen include: Infinite Sun (Sharjah Art Biennial 14, 2019) The Great Outdoors, Slow Room, Yesterday Tomorrow, A Piece of Work.  Works with Radiohole include Tarzana (The Performing Garage, Mass Live Arts), Myth Or Meth by Tom Murrin (LaMaMa, OBIE Nominee) and Inflatable Frankenstein (The Kitchen). Ryan is a graduate of NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP). Photo by Maria Baranova from Radiohole's Tarzana.

Ryan Holsopple

Adjunct Lecturer

Ryan Holsopple is a performer, programmer and designer who creates interactive hardware and software for live performance.

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David Grubbs is an associate professor in the Conservatory of Music at Brooklyn College, CUNY. He is the author of Records Ruin the Landscape: John Cage, The Sixties, and Sound Recording (Duke University Press). Grubbs has released twelve solo albums and appeared on more than 150 commercially-released recordings. He is known for his cross-disciplinary collaborations with writers such as Susan Howe and Rick Moody, and with visual artists such as Anthony McCall, Angela Bulloch, Cosima von Bonin, and Stephen Prina. His work has been presented at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, MoMA, the Tate Modern, and the Centre Pompidou. Grubbs was a 2005-6 grant recipient from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts and is a member of ISSUE Project Room’s Board of Directors.

David Grubbs

Program Co-Director

David Grubbs is an associate professor in the Conservatory of Music at Brooklyn College, CUNY. He is the author of Records Ruin the Landscape: John Cage, The Sixties, and Sound Recording (Duke University Press).

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Erwin Maas is a New York based theatermaker, educator and international arts advocate from the Netherlands. He has worked extensively in Australia, Europe, South Africa, South Korea and USA. In New York, he directs numerous productions Off Broadway, Off Off Broadway as well as Site Specific. Maas is the Co-Founding Director of the Pan-African Creative Exchange (PACE), Artistic Associate & Director of the Fellowship Program for the International Performing Arts for Youth (IPAY), and the Programming Director for the Off Broadway Origin Theatre Company. He is a frequently invited director, facilitator, educator, and speaker for international cultural organizations, festivals, universities, congresses and think tanks. From 2016 to 2020, Maas was the Artistic/Creative Director of the International Society for Performing Arts (ISPA), and from 2010 to 2014, he was the Director of Performing Arts for the Cultural Department of the Royal Netherlands Embassy & Consulates in the USA. He currently teaches as Adjunct Professor at CUNY Brooklyn College's MFA Performance & Interactive Media Arts Program (PIMA). Erwin is a core-member of Theater Without Borders, a member of Georgetown University's Laboratory for Global Performance & Politics and of the Netherland-America Foundation Cultural Committee. He also serves on the Artistic Advisory Board of the ISSUE Project Room in Brooklyn, the First Nation Spiderwoman Theater, and DecadesOut, an organization at the intersection of Arts, Science & Policy. Maas was a Fulbright Scholar for his MFA in Theatre Directing at Columbia University School of the Arts in NYC. He also holds a M.A. in Drama Teaching from the Academy of Dramatic Arts Eindhoven in the Netherlands, and a M.A. in Media Arts and Production/Documentary Filmmaking from the University of Technology Sydney - Australia.

Erwin Maas

Faculty Member

Erwin Maas is a New York based theatermaker, educator and international arts advocate from the Netherlands. With a passion for creating arts with communities and organizations around the world and connecting artists globally, he has worked extensively in Australia, Europe, South Africa, South Korea and USA.

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Justine is an interdisciplinary artist and performer interested in art as social practice. From 2002-2012, Justine was co-artistic director of The Glass Contraption, an ensemble-based company that presented original works of performance and film, led artist training and carried out collaborative art projects with communities locally and abroad. Current projects include a performance/media piece created with senior artists from the Westbeth for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Media Lab and the David Lunch Movie Truck, a cinema-cum-theater housed inside a box truck. Education: Brown University (BA), New School (MA in International Affairs/Media & Culture). Faculty: Yale School of Drama.

Justine Williams

Adjunct Lecturer

Justine is an interdisciplinary artist and performer interested in art as social practice. From 2002-2012, Justine was co-artistic director of The Glass Contraption.

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The work of the American artists team Jennifer and Kevin McCoy has been exhibited at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, P.S.1, The Museum of Modern Art, The New Museum, and the Brooklyn Museum. International exhibitions… include projects at the Pompidou Center, the British Film Institute, ZKM, the Hanover Kunstverien, the Bonn Kunstverein, and F.A.C.T. (Liverpool, UK). Grants include a 2002 Creative Capital Grant for Emerging Fields, a 2005 Wired Rave Award, and a 2011 Guggenheim Fellowship. Articles about their work have appeared in Art in America, Artforum, Flash Art, Art News, The New York Times, and Newsweek. Residencies include work at the Headlands Center for the Arts, and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. 
Their work is represented in New York by Postmasters Gallery and Gallerie Guy Bartschi, Geneva and can be seen in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Milwaukee Art Museum, and MUDAM in Luxembourg.

Jennifer McCoy

Faculty Member

The work of the American artists team Jennifer and Kevin McCoy has been exhibited at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, P.S.1, The Museum of Modern Art, The New Museum, and the Brooklyn Museum.

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Margaret (Meg) Araneo is an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Theater at Brooklyn College. She holds a Ph.D. in Theater History from the Graduate Center, CUNY, an MFA in Acting from Carnegie Mellon University, and a BA in Political Science from Johns Hopkins University. Meg teaches courses at several universities in New York, including NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, the New School’s Lang College, and Columbia University’s School of the Arts. Her research focuses on the intersection of modernist performance and neuropsychology. Meg has published material in PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art, Interdisciplinary Science Reviews, Cosmopolitan Review, and Slavic and East European Performance. In addition to her scholarly work, Meg has collaborated on several performance projects in New York City. Her current original project, Salomania, which she is writing and directing, was presented as a work-in-progress at Teatro Círculo and the Martin E. Segal Center. Meg co-founded the non-profit organization Citizen Arts and Education and currently serves as its co-artistic director.

Margaret Araneo

Adjunct Assistant Professor

Margaret (Meg) Araneo is an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Theater at Brooklyn College. She holds a Ph.D. in Theater History from the Graduate Center, CUNY, an MFA in Acting from Carnegie Mellon University, and a BA in Political Science from Johns Hopkins University.

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Briggan Krauss in an internationally recognized saxophonist, composer and sound artist who has been a strong presence on the New York creative music scene since 1994. He is a founding member of the band Sexmob, has played on Grammy Award winning and nominated recordings, and leads several of his own projects as well as collaborating with many other improvisers and composers in New York City and around the world. He has recently earned an MFA from Brooklyn College’s Performance and Interactive Media Arts [PIMA] program.

Briggan Krauss

Adjunct Lecturer

Briggan Krauss in an internationally recognized saxophonist, composer and sound artist who has been a strong presence on the New York creative music scene since 1994.

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