Using materials such as the skeletal remains of old plant roots, vintage clothes and fabric, papier mâché and armatures made of recycled electrical wires, Anastacia Bolina creates costumes rich with fine detail, exploring a natural, wild edge in design balanced by an earthly elegance, while erring on the dark side. Each costume is subtlety layered to enhance the effect of her bold creations of character.
Bolina’s designs are influenced by her life in the Catskill mountains. In 2006 she founded The Vegetable Gardener, a company whose mission is to create organic edible gardens which are works of art. Using native plants and the landscape of each individual garden, Bolina collaborates with art non-profits (notably Mount Tremper Arts) and various artists and homeowners in the Catskill region to create garden designs that are practical as well as beautiful. The influence from the time she spends outside gardening in the Catskills can be seen in her costume designs.
Recent projects include two projects directed by Hélène Lesterlin (Praxis, 2007 and Darkling, 2011), Jeremy Bernstein’s music videos “Tincture” directed by Antoine Wagner (2012) and “Fire on the Lake” directed by Philip Andelman (2011), Laurie Berkner Band Live Birthday Concerts, (Manhattan Theater Source, 2010) and Northern Kingdom directed by Dorothy Lyman (2009). She is currently working on a video dance project of her own that focuses on the transition of seasons involving creatures, made up of part plant, part forest animal and part human set in the Catskill Mountains.
Scott Bolman is an NYC-based designer and educator working in a diverse array of performance mediums, including theater, dance, music and opera. Scott is currently developing several projects with Robert Wilson, including The Odyssey (Athens, Greece, 2012), and Zinnias: The Clementine Hunter Story, opening at Peak Performances in 2013. He previously collaborated with Robert Wilson on KOOL: Dancing in my mind, which was performed at the Guggenheim Museum NYC, Guild Hall, the Akademie der Kunst (Berlin) and the Barishnikov Arts Center. Recent projects include re-creating David Finn’s lighting for Parsifal (Metropolitan Opera), 50 Ways (Chautauqua Theater Center), FEAST (Incubator Arts), We Play for the Gods (Women’s Project), Songs from the Uproar (The Kitchen), Brooklyn Village (Brooklyn Philharmonic at Roulette), Tango and Parade (Brown/Trinity Rep Consortium), Darcy James Argue’s Brooklyn Babylon (BAM, SUNY Purchase), Shen Wei’s performance for the opening of Zhang Huan’s Q Confucious exhibit (Rockbund Museum, Shanghai), West Side Story (El Paso Opera), In the Next Room (PlayMakers Repertory Theater), Sty of the Blind Pig and The Understudy (TheaterWorks Hartford). He is also served as the theatrical lighting consultant for the new Roulette performance space, which opened in Brooklyn in the fall of 2011. For more: wingspace.com
Laura Brenneman was raised by musician parents in San Diego, California, and grew up on a steady diet of show tunes, English choral music, and Abba. She started singing at 2 and playing the piano by 6. Described as “the love child of Joni Mitchell and Stephen Sondheim, raised by Muppets,” Laura writes pop music. After studying music composition at UCLA, she moved to New York City and was accepted into the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop. A short musical, Ryan and Lucy, was developed with Raw Impressions at HERE, NYC. For Theatreworks/USA, she directed Play To Win, an AUDELCO award-winning educational musical about Jackie Robinson. She is the resident musical director of the neo-vaudevillian performance troupe, The Fabulists, and regularly performs as part of the Bushwick Book Club. In January 2013 she worked with director Martha Clarke on a workshop reading of The Threepenny Opera (Atlantic Theatre Company, NYC), serving as arranger and multi-instrumentalist. She was recently commissioned by the Women’s Project (NYC) to write music and lyrics for Gurley, a new musical based on the life of Helen Gurley Brown. As a singer-songwriter, Laura performs her original songs in NYC. Her self-titled EP was released in 2010, and produced by Tony Maimone (They Might Be Giants).