Eliza Ladd Schwarz BIO
Eliza Ladd Schwarz is a director, choreographer, movement designer, performer, stage writer, and song maker from NYC. She has collaborated with Israel Horovitz, Adam Rapp, Karen O, Peter Amster, Eleanor Holdridge, Don Carrier, Benny Sato Ambush, Jonathan Epstein, Greg Leaming, Andrei Malaev, Babel, Jessie Jou, James Dean Palmer, and Leigh Fondakowski. Select productions, as movement designer/choreographer: The Liar, The Learned Ladies, The Cherry Orchard, Three Sisters, Nora, As you like It, Macbeth, Julius Caesar, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Much Ado About Nothing, The Tempest, Antigone, Oedipus, How I Learned to Drive, Everybody, Drunken City, Reckless, Dead Man’s Cell
Phone, Sense and Sensibility, Middletown, Casa Cushman, Stick Fly, and Men On Boats.
Eliza brings a wealth of knowledge to the collaborative process, including in the realms of movement for the actor, historical dance, Le Coq, Grotowski, Shakespeare, the Viewpoints, contemporary composition, contemplative practice, object work, intimacy coordination, Moment Work, devising, clown, Capoeira, Ashaya Yoga, Developmental Movement Technique, and ensemble development.
After ten years teaching at the FSU/Asolo Conservatory MFA, Eliza is thrilled to be in her second year on the faculty at CWRU/Cleveland Playhouse MFA, where she teaches MFA Movement, Devising Original Theater, and undergraduate Movement and Acting. Through the Glennan Fellowship she is currently developing a new curriculum, Live Sound Action: Learning at the Crossroads of Theatrical Training, and Spiritual Practice, an articulation of her performance research which integrates physical and musical storytelling with contemporary spiritual exploration.
Eliza has created original multi-disciplinary work in NYC at PS 122, Dixon Place, Movement Research, the Knitting Factory, Joyce Soho, and United Solo, and performed at La Mama, the Kitchen, NY Theater Workshop, and St. Ann’s Warehouse, as well as in Massachusetts with Shakespeare and Company. Notable recent projects include original works of music theatre Selfie of the Ancients and Tigers Above, Tigers Below, both curated by New Music New College Foundation; Agridulce/Bittersweet, an Andrew W. Mellon funded bi-lingual community project; Work/Play/Work, a theatrical ensemble zoom response to the 2020 call for social justice; her solo works Gravity and Levity and Autobiography of the Human Species, both presented by Sarasota Contemporary Dance; and Men On Boats, the first show Eliza has directed in Cleveland.
Eliza won the Audience Encore Award for her ensemble musical Elephants and Gold, produced at the Boulder Fringe and the Berkshire Fringe, and wrote and performed On Est Déshabillé, a comedy about death produced at the United Solo Theatre Festival and The Berkshire Fringe. Eliza is the recipient of a Franklin Furnace Emerging Artist Award for her original performance work, a Puffin Foundation Grant in support of her Live Sound Action theater training, and an Andrew W Mellon Foundation Grant for “Devised Theater and Collaboration for Social Engagement.”
Currently Eliza is initiating a new devised piece, Amidst All This: A Eulogy for the Earth, digging into the world surrounding precious natural resources as well as the prospect of facing disaster and carrying our climate affected world on our shoulders.
Eliza holds a BA in Comparative Religion from Harvard University and an MFA in Theater:
Contemporary Performance from Naropa University.
Testimonials/Reviews
“When emotional wilderness meets stage presence, timing meets music and sounds meet vibration, then you meet Eliza: sparkling theatricality. A delight to have been her clown teacher.”
“Eliza creates a poetic theater embedded with song, collage style images and objects that have a real aliveness, an overall feeling of power, depth, and raw beauty . . ."
“Eliza Ladd’s work is stunning. She is discovering a new genre of theater using image, ensemble movement, and found objects. These theatrical elements work together to make her work soar: soundscape becomes character; the human body becomes story telling in her unique theatrical events. ”