JEFF BECKER
Jeff Becker is a director, designer and sculptor based in New Orleans who specializes in site-responsive performances and outdoor spectacles. Jeff creates fantastical interactive worlds in which the audience leaves their seats and moves with the performance. In 1990 he co-founded CRISUS, a performance group that utilized innovative kinetic sets, sculpture, film and machines. From 2003-2015 he was an ensemble member of ArtSpot Productions, creating original theater that explored racism, abuse of power and environmental justice. Jeff has collaborated with several theater companies and artists including Cuttingball Theater, Pan Pan Theatre, Hand2Mouth, Carpetbag Theater, Mondo Bizarro, Clear Creek Creative, Thaddeus Philips and with choreographer Elizabeth Streb, developing “Ascension'' a 25’ spinning ladder machine that was featured in Trafalgar Square during the 2012 Summer Olympics.
Jeff is the recipient of several awards and grants including an NEA RAP Grant, a SURDNA professional development grant, and multiple Big Easy Awards. In 2009, he received a Louisiana Division of the Arts Fellowship and a NEA/TCG Career Development Fellowship. Jeff was also awarded a MAP Grant for Vessels in collaboration with Rebecca Mwase and a Creative Capital Project Grant, NEFA, NTP Grant, NPN Creation Fund and NET 10 Grant for his epic performance Sea of Common Catastrophe. More recently, Jeff has worked with MacArthur Fellow, Anne Basting on Wendy’s Neverland, a creative storytelling project in assisted care homes throughout Kentucky. He is currently working with director Dmitry Krymov on Anton Checov's The Cherry Orchard which will premiere in 2022 at the Wilma Theater in Philadelphia.
His current touring projects include Requiem for a Stranger with Vagabond Inventions, Ezell, Ballad of a Land Man with Clear Creek Creative and Invisible Rivers in collaboration with Monique Verdin and Mondo Bizarro.
CATAPULT
Founded in 2012 by NEW NOISE, Mondo Bizarro, ArtSpot Productions, and Jeff Becker and Lisa Shattuck, Catapult is a performance laboratory dedicated to the development of original theater and innovative design. Housed in a 4000-square-foot warehouse that features rehearsal space, offices, design studio and fabrication shop, Catapult provides space for rehearsals, trainings, meetings, and workshop performances, Catapult is a gathering place for experimentation and creative collision for the New Orleans community and colleagues nationally and abroad.
Go Here for more information
WORKSHOPS
Jeff offers Design Workshops focusing on non-traditional space and outdoor performances. His workshops center on design-driven dramaturgy, where the visual world of the performance plays a central role in how shows are crafted from start to finish. His unique approach addresses space as character and how it interacts with the other performers in the production. The workshops vary from a few hours to week-long. For more information, email him at jeff@setsalive.com.
