Rachel Rosenthal, Spontaneous Collaboration Mentor
In 1989, Rachel Rosenthal founded a non-profit organization in her name designed to give creative artists a company where they could work collaboratively with each other and hone their skills. The Rachel Rosenthal Company focuses on a unique technique called "Doing by Doing," a method of learning to perform spontaneously. The company produces regular theatrical productions and holds workshops on various performance techniques. The basic mission of the company is to communicate to a broad audience a wide variety of artistic, environmental, technological, social, cultural, and spiritual issues.
Rachel Rosenthal was born in Paris to Russian parents. Her family was forced to flee Europe during World War II, landing in New York. Rosenthal attended the High School of Music and Art, after which she became a United States citizen. After the war was over, she spent time in New York City and Paris studying art, dance, and theater with world-renowned teachers including Erwin Piscator, Merce Cunningham, Jean-Louis Barrault, and Hans Hoffman.
Moving to California in 1955, Rosenthal developed an experimental project she called Instant Theater, which she directed and performed in for ten years. She was a prominent presence in the Women's Art Movement in Los Angeles in the 1970s, during which she was a co-founder of Womanspace. Since that time she has remained very active in the arts by performing, teaching, writing, and developing new works. She has taught numerous workshops and classes throughout North America and Europe, and has served as a lecturer in Pennsylvania State University and Carnegie-Mellon University. Her wide-ranging career has included positions as a visiting artist at New York University, The Art Institute of Chicago, and the California State University in Long Beach, Irvine, Los Angeles, and Santa Barbara.
Rosenthal's current ensemble focuses on the performance of visual works that combine art, sound, and movement into a visceral theatrical performance. The Rachel Rosenthal Company gives emerging artists a forum for creating and fine-tuning experimental, cutting-edge works in collaboration with Rosenthal herself. Now 82 years old, Rachel Rosenthal is a master director and performer, an animal rights activist, a vegetarian, and owner of three dogs. Having spend her life centering her work around the basic issue of humanity and the role people play in the universe, her legacy carries on through her company.
