Erica Wray, Director
Erica Wray (Vannon) is a new play director and holds a certificate in Laban Movement Analysis and is currently seeking certification for Intimacy Direction. She uses aspects of these movement modalities to create work that is highly kinetic, physically expressive, and makes the impossible possible. Specializing in directing new plays by feminist and queer writers that explore relationships, loneliness, and the need for human connection, she is fascinated by shifting energy between people onstage and attempts to harness this energy to tell stories.
Erica is a proud Chicago theatre ex-pat and served as Co-Founder of Knife & Fork, a theatre company dedicated to social practice around food, feminism, and body politics and as Co-Artistic Director of Blank Line Collective, a movement-based and devised theater company.
Some of her favorite artists and influences include Pina Bausch, Annie B-Parson, Crystal Pite of Kidd Pivot, Kyle Abraham, Will Davis, Kimberley Senior, and Tina Parker. As a graduate of the University of Iowa, she has had the great pleasure of working with Playwrights Workshop writers Marisela Treviño Orta, Courtney Meaker, Charles Green, Eric Marlin, Leigh M. Marshall, K.T. Peterson, and SP O’Brien.
Erica is most energized when teaching approaches to movement via Bartenieff Fundamentals, Laban Movement Analysis, and consent workshops for Intimacy for the Stage.
SDC Associate, Lincoln Center Directors Lab, Chicago Directors Lab.
BA: University of North Texas. MFA in Directing: University of Iowa.
Erica is a proud Chicago theatre ex-pat and served as Co-Founder of Knife & Fork, a theatre company dedicated to social practice around food, feminism, and body politics and as Co-Artistic Director of Blank Line Collective, a movement-based and devised theater company.
Some of her favorite artists and influences include Pina Bausch, Annie B-Parson, Crystal Pite of Kidd Pivot, Kyle Abraham, Will Davis, Kimberley Senior, and Tina Parker. As a graduate of the University of Iowa, she has had the great pleasure of working with Playwrights Workshop writers Marisela Treviño Orta, Courtney Meaker, Charles Green, Eric Marlin, Leigh M. Marshall, K.T. Peterson, and SP O’Brien.
Erica is most energized when teaching approaches to movement via Bartenieff Fundamentals, Laban Movement Analysis, and consent workshops for Intimacy for the Stage.
SDC Associate, Lincoln Center Directors Lab, Chicago Directors Lab.
BA: University of North Texas. MFA in Directing: University of Iowa.
In the News
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"Created by Dani Bryant and directed by Erica Vannon, [Gender Breakdown] is a funny, poignant and enraging exploration of size-ism, racism and sexism in the theater, and how these “isms” are deployed against women who have the nerve to try to break the boxes of stereotyping. In all, the cast succeeds mightily on two fronts: The call for change is loud, clear, unapologetic and needed. It is also a marvelous piece of theater." --Catey Sullivan, Chicago Sun-Times, Gender Breakdown at Collaboraction "While the tone set by many plays was rather humorous, they all held powerful underlying critiques of society. Whether it be from the riotously and righteously feminist Spanx You Very Much, each sketch forced you to think about social issues in its own unique way." --Chicago Stage Standard, Spanx You Very Much at Collaboraction Sketchbook "....the choreography [is} particularly memorable, turning the women into everything from a large warship to a gang of menacing suitors." --Marissa Oberlander, Chicago Reader, The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood "Last Meal Man" is a "most compelling" (Chicago Tribune) "powerful" (TimeOut Chicago), "frightful and fascinating" (NewCity) "festival highlight"(The Reader). --Last Meal Man at Collaboration Sketchbook "Director Erica Barnes captures this mood piece's flight from consensual reality by inverting the theater-in-the-round format: audience members sit huddled in the center of an unfinished Pilsen loft space while the action whirls around them...but Barnes's format suits the story's sense of perpetual, ungrounded motion." --Keith Griffith, Chicago Reader, Disgrace by John O'Keefe |
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Episode 15 – Erica Vannon /February 5, 2017 Director Erica Vannon is drawn to the kind of work that makes you “giggle into a bit of horror.” Or stand up and scream like you’re at a football game. Or cry (a lot (if you’re me)). She produces the impossible, like a devised opera performed in a hotel room or a 3 minute dance piece with 47 performers. |