Eliza Ladd Schwarz BIO
Eliza Ladd Schwarz is a performer, director, stage writer, song maker, and choreographer from NYC. She is thrilled to join the faculty at Case Western Reserve University / Cleveland Playhouse MFA as Associate Professor of Movement and Theater after 10 years teaching at the FSU / Asolo Conservatory. Previously Eliza taught at Marymount Manhattan College, Kingsborough Community College, the Terry Schreiber Acting Conservatory, Naropa University, and at Shakespeare and Company.
In NYC, Eliza has created original multi-disciplinary work at PS 122, Dixon Place, Movement Research, the Knitting Factory, and Joyce Soho, and performed at La Mama, the Kitchen, NY Theater Workshop, and St. Ann’s Warehouse, as well as with Shakespeare and Company in MA.
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 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.”
In Sarasota FL she created and performed Selfie of the Ancients and Tigers Above and Tigers Below at New Music New College, O Let Me Just Be the Greek Whore that I Am at the Sarasolo Festival, Dali +Picasso at the Dali Museum (in Collaboration with Sarasota Contemporary Dance), and the solo works Autobiography of the Human Species and Gravity and Levity at Sarasota Contemporary Dance. Notable recent works include Work /Play /Work, a theatrical ensemble zoom response to the 2020 call for social justice, and Agridulce/Bittersweet, a bilingual community collaboration.
In addition to extensive training in Clown, Improvisation, Primitive Voice, Developmental Movement, and Shakespeare, and as a percussionist, singer and actor, Eliza is a Licensed Ashaya™ Yoga teacher, as well as a certified Body Dynamics™ educator of Movement for the Actor. She 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. ”