Artist bio:

Margaret Chase is a writer and performer who intends for her art to galvanize, heal, and give voice to human experience. Her BFA is from Boston University. She is a member of the Socially Distant Art initiative and was interviewed by DisArt about disability and art amid COVID. Her work has been featured on diverse platforms – including live from atop an industrial container in Staten Island, New York. She is at work on her fifth play.

Artist Statement:

My background is interdisciplinary and eclectic, grounded in theatre. I believe artists are pivotal in the drive toward justice, accessibility, and community. The transgressive ghosts and demons of history fascinate me. I savor the rogue’s gallery of humanity, what drives people to quest for a vision, and how that affects behavior. I am imprinted with my early experiences performing political street theatre, with the thrill and terror of its immediacy and raw audience reaction. Having bilateral hearing loss and being bionic as a cochlear implant user, I navigate a complex landscape of communication. I seek unexpected combinations in physicality, voice, characterization, and interaction. To illuminate the essence of a character, play, or poem, I am willing to be vulnerable and take risks.

Playwriting “Pendulum” (mind games in the age of terrorism) finalist, Manhattan Repertory Theatre short play competition, premiered at HUB17 Staten Island, New York (SINY); “Shelf Life” (a black and white dystopia disrupted by color), Staten Island Playwrights Collective; “Discipleships” (misadventures in seeking enlightenment) at Wings Theatre, New York City (NYC), and Living Art Space, Brooklyn; “Maria Mitchell: Astronomer and Feminist” at the Science Museum of Minnesota (MN). Currently writing “Resurrecting Lady Dada: 3 Voices for Now” (about the outrageous/courageous legacies of artists Emmy Hennings, Celine Arnauld, and Sophie Taeuber-Arp).

Videos - double click for full screen/Pictures - roll cursor over photos to see captions.

Acting/Performance: Day de Dada Wish Sisters at FIGMENT NYC https://newyork.figmentproject.org/artists_2022; Day de Dada Collective at LUMEN Waterfront Festival; LaMaMa Experimental Theatre Club, NYC; Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM); Lincoln Center Street Theatre Festival, NYC; Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition (BWAC); Soho Repertory Theater, NYC; Wings Theatre. NYC; MN Public Radio; Loeb Drama Center at Harvard University; HUB17. SINY; Staten Island OutLOUD; TheatreWorks USA; Theatre of the Open Eye, NYC; St. Paul History Theatre, MN.

Poetry/Writing: Eastern PA Poetry Review 2023 (forthcoming) “In the Schoolyard, at Eight”; Raritan Valley Community College, NJ, The Future Is (2022 exhibition) “Mom at 98” 
Silver Birch Press: “Kathmandu on My Mind” https://silverbirchpress.wordpress.com/2020/08/02/kathmandu-on-my-mind-by-margaret-chase-landmarks-series/
the breaking point project – abolition through narrative: “In the Hole/100 beats per minute” https://www.thebreakingpointproject.com/no-10
NYSAI Press: “From the Inside Out”
https://www.nysai.org/wecarryus2020
(To Be) Young and Disabled zine, volume 1, pp.20-21 “Aural Negative”
To Be Young (And Disabled)

Spoken Word: Socially Distant Art, Liminal Beings (2021 virtual exhibition) “Litany, Untitled” https://www.liminalbeings.art/12-chase-sr
Digital Symbiotes Collective, “Signal Malfunction” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4GzQ54twgY
NON:op Open Opera Works “Who’s That Summer 2020”
https://www.nonopera.org/WP2/voices/american-biography/archive/margaret-chase/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_nbDrcJSyU
Maker Park, SINY, (Armor and Adornment installation by Nancy Quin), “Warrior’s Breath”; Edgewater Reading Series @ HUB17; Borough Hall, Staten Island (Poet Laureate induction); SI Creative Community/Art on the Terrace; ETG Bookstore & Café; Punk Rock Poetry @ Maker Space, SI; Deep Tanks, SINY

Singing: Studied opera, pop and Broadway repertoire, eight years with Maestro Carmine Gagliardi, NYC. (I once sang The Star-Spangled Banner on 15 minutes’ notice for 800 people).

Directing/Producing: “Jazz Hands,” film by Milenka Berengolc, performance artist, 2021; “Pendulum” at HUB17 and Manhattan Repertory Theatre; directed “Green Tea” and “Red Maple” by Lawrence Schwabacher; “Mr. Welk and Jersey Jim” by Howard Sackler; produced Love on a Razor’s Edge, and Night of Noir theatre evenings, all at Deep Tanks; “Where the Eagle Meets the Dragon” World Culture Open in Seoul, Korea (Sifu Jesse Teasley’s School of Wushu USA) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Culture_Open; Theatre Coordinator, Brooklyn College Hillel House (multiple productions); Theatre Coordinator, Science Museum of MN (resident company/rotating repertoire of short plays).

Training and Teaching: After receiving a BFA in Theatre Arts from Boston University, I trained with Stella Adler, Michael Howard, Peter Frisch, and Paul Austin in NYC, and in Poland with the Teatr Laboratorium of Jerzy Grotowski and with the Wroclaw Mime Theatre of Henryk Tomaszewski. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerzy_Grotowski https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henryk_Tomaszewski_(mime)

I have developed, taught, and evaluated arts/education programs, workshops, and performances; and worked as a teaching artist/artist-in-residence in museums, public schools, and community organizations in MN, NYC, Westchester, and Long Island. All my life, I have worked in the theatre and nonprofit sector as an artist and fundraiser (helped one organization obtain their first-ever million-dollar gift); I mentor young professionals in the field.

Museums include The Science Museum of MN (I was privileged to work there with August Wilson, the late playwright); NY Hall of Science; Fraunces Tavern Museum, NYC; Brooklyn Children’s Museum; and SI Children’s Museum. At the Jacques Marchais Museum of Tibetan Art (SINY), I created and facilitated “Mandala Dreams” as one of two artists from Staten Island selected by the Asian American Arts Alliance for their Locating the Sacred festival, spanning five boroughs and twenty events. (https://vimeo.com/31162195) I was the first Vice President of the International Museum Theatre Alliance (https://www.imtal-us.org/history-of-imtal).

Curator/Exhibition Developer: Co-curator, RE/Configurations: art, disability, identity (Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art, Snug Harbor, SINY); Artists Undeterred: boldly exploring disability (Pride Center of Staten Island). These two multi-media exhibitions formed the core of Artists Undeterred, a year-long project that showcased work by more than seventy-five disabled artists, representing all mediums, from the US and abroad. I was project manager, grant writer, and public programs coordinator for the initiative, which was supported in part by a SI Arts NYC DCA Fund Grant awarded to project originator and co-curator Milenka Berengolc, and a NY Humanities Quick Grant awarded to me.

I was a content developer for Sounds Around and for Home: A Place in the World at the Brooklyn Children’s Museum, and producer of “Einstein for Breakfast” (Allan Havis, playwright) at the NY Hall of Science

I believe in cramming as many lives as possible into this earthwalk, and I’m pretty sure that in parallel lives I’m a race car driver and rock ‘n roll singer.