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BIOS

BERTIE FERDMAN (Artistic co-Director)

Originally from Puerto Rico, Bertie is a theatre artist, curator, producer, and teacher. She is a founder and co-artistic director of Ex.Pgirl, with whom she created Ablution, Waving Hello, 10 Plates, and Paris Syndrome. She holds a BA in Theater from Yale University, an MA in Performance Studies from NYU, and is completing a PhD in theatre at The Graduate Center, CUNY, where her specialty is on site-specific theatrical performance.

Bertie trained as a performer at the Jacques Lecoq School in Paris. Performance credits include: Strange Attractors and The Hour We Knew Nothing of Each Other, director Phil Soltanoff (Five Myles, Mass MoCA, Williamstown Theater Festival); Now and Then, you put your hand over, directed by Tai Dang; video for Acts of a Disappearing Woman director Coco Fusco, The Bakkhai, Nosferatu, and Carlos Goldoni’s The Servant and Two Masters, directoed by Rene Migliaccio (HERE Arts Center). Bertie worked as dramaturg for the Builders Association’s Invisible Cities, a video installation directed by Marianne Weems (3 Legged Dog); was an associate artist of Shadow Casters New York, a site-specific and multi-disciplinary exploration of NYC directed by Boris Bakal and produced by Dancing in the Streets (The Kitchen); and was company member of Phil Soltanoff’s mad dog.

In 2006, Bertie initiated and co-curated the first International Site-Specific Symposium in the US, with such panelists as Meredith Monk, Philip Bither, Stephen Koplowitz, Elise Bernhardt, and Charles Mee at the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Site-Specific Performance Symposium 2009, which she curated alongside Gulgun Kayim and Frank Hentschker, focused on Space, Theatrical Intervention, & Innovation. She has curated such events as the US premiere of Rodrigo Garcia’s Accidens; Nouveau Cirque with Aurelien Bory/Cie 111 and Phil Soltanoff; Staging Presence with Marianne Weems and Nick Kaye; and Urban Performance with Maud Le Floc’h.

Bertie worked as a teaching artist for five years throughout NYC’s public schools, has worked in instructional technology at The Graduate Center and Hunter College, and was a Chateaubriand Fellow in France in 2002-2003. She currently teaches in the theater departments at City College of New York and Manhattanville College. She is a fellow at the Center for Place, Politics, and Culture at The Graduate Center for 2009-2010.

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