AMY STEBBINS

WRITER/DIRECTOR

I am a writer-director active in opera, film and virtual reality. My work has been presented at institutions such as the Bavarian State Opera and the Deutsche Oper Berlin. Currently I am writing a virtual reality chamber opera for the Augsburg State Theater together with composer Hauke Berheide supported by the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire and the Liz Mohn Foundation.

My path into this career was somewhat indirect. After completing a B.A. in History & Literature at Harvard, I received a Fulbright to train at the Volksbühne in Berlin where I worked as an apprentice-director. From 2010-2018, I wrote and directed my own productions while pursuing a joint-doctorate in Cinema & Media Studies and Germanic Studies at the University of Chicago. These unlikely stopovers cultivated the artistic values at the core of my work today:

1. Technical precision. (I don't like trash.)

2. Poetic intuition. (I don't like realism.)

3. Critical rigor. (Art is not a means of self-expression, but an alternative means of expressing ideas.)

My commitment to new work occasionally takes the form of institutional intervention. From 2015-2017, I convened Transatlantic exchanges for artists and arts administrators in Chicago and Munich on the topic of new work development. In 2018, I co-founded New Opera Dialogues, an artist-led platform to promote international dialogue about aesthetics and best institutional practices for contemporary opera. I also write about issues in opera, performance theory, and Transatlantic exchange for academic journals, trade magazines, and newspapers.

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THEORY

INITIATIVES