Pioneering Interdisciplinary Artist Rachel Rosenthal Celebrates Her 83rd Birthday, A New Book, And Announces New Performance Ensemble At Track 16 Gallery’s Cultural Event of the Year

“Rachel Rosenthal’s Birthday Bash 83”

LOS ANGELES, CA – Los Angeles’ own living legend Rachel Rosenthal has a lot to celebrate this November! The interdisciplinary performer, animal activist, master teacher, and iconic artist will be honored on Saturday, November 7, 2009, with the cultural event of the year – “Rachel Rosenthal’s Birthday Bash 83.” From 7:00 to 11:00 p.m., Track 16 Gallery at Bergamot Station in Santa Monica, California will host the occasion, which will celebrate Rosenthal’s 83rd birthday, the release of her upcoming book The DbD Experience: Chance Knows What it’s Doing!, and will announce her Company’s new performance troupe, TOHUBOHU! Extreme Theater Ensemble.


In honor of the 83 years Rosenthal has spent on the planet, the event will feature an exhibit and silent art auction of the highest caliber. The auction will include 83 abstract, conceptual, and representational “portraits” of Rosenthal in a diverse range of media by exceptional established and emerging artists including a number of art world legends such as John Baldessari, Mike Kelley and Robert Rauschenberg*. Admission will cost $25. Tickets will be available online through Rosenthal’s site and at the door on the night of the event. Track 16 Gallery is located at 2525 Michigan Ave. Building C1, Santa Monica, CA 90404. For more information on the venue, please call 310-264-4678 or visit http://www.track16.com. For more information on Rosenthal and this event, please call 310-839-0661 or visit http://www.rachelrosenthal.org.


The 83 artist works being donated for the event’s exhibit and silent auction are from a mind-blowing array of artists. In addition to Baldessari, Kelley and Rauschenberg, art world luminaries such as Lita Albuquerque, Eleanor Antin, Judy Baca, Llyn Foulkes, George Herms, Martin Kersels, Ed Moses, Lee Mullican, Betye Saar, Masami Teraoka, Patssi Valdez, and June Wayne have confirmed their involvement. For a full list of participating artists to date please visit: www.rachelrosenthal.org/rr/party.html. Auction proceeds will support Rachel Rosenthal Company’s TOHUBOHU! Extreme Theater Ensemble performances, student scholarships, and visiting artist stipends. This special evening will also include a Champagne toast, an outrageous cake created by Joan Spitler and Leigh Grode of the world-renowned Cake Divas, and live music by Amy Knoles from the California E.A.R. Unit as well as Jean Paul Monsché of the Mad Alsacians.


In the past 25 years, Rosenthal has presented over 35 of her own original performance pieces – thought provoking works centered on humanity’s place on the planet. According to Artweek Magazine, “Rosenthal defines what differentiates quality performance art from mundane theatrical exercise…she took us into her reality, and for that brief and precious moment, she altered our vision of the world. This is what great art can and should do.”


Rosenthal’s long-awaited book, The DbD Experience: Chance Knows What it’s Doing!, a mix of memoir, philosophical musing, manifesto and teaching manual, will be published this fall by Routledge. DbD (Doing by Doing) is Rosenthal’s signature brand of improvisational theater. This is the first time she has written about her teaching methods. In the 168-page book, she explores improvisational theater and its relationship to life, offering a blow-by-blow account of what happens in Rosenthal’s 32-hour DbD weekend intensive workshops. Throughout the book, she describes the processes and exercises she invented and developed over the last fifty years. Routledge, a global publisher of academic books, journals and online resources in the humanities and social sciences, will release the book in the UK this October, and in the US in December 2009.


Rosenthal opened her studio, Espace DbD, on Robertson Boulevard in Los Angeles in 1980. From 1980 to 1983, Rosenthal presented performances by many emerging and established performance artists including Barbara Smith, Eleanor Antin, Cheri Gaulke, Alan Kaprow, John White, Joyce Cutler Shaw, Tom Jenkins, and many others. Rosenthal founded The Rachel Rosenthal Company as an educational non-profit arts organization in 1989.


Rosenthal’s teaching methods were inspired by Jean-Louis Barrault‘s concept of “Total Theatre” and Antonin Artaud‘s “Le Theatre et Son Double.” What emerged is a zen-inspired performance aesthetic that integrates text, movement, voice, choreography, improvisation, costuming, lighting, and sets into seismic experiences. She has been nurturing a new troupe of performers that she will introduce to the world as her TOHUBOHU! Extreme Theater Ensemble in January 2010.


Rosenthal has performed in over 100 venues around the world including documenta 8 in Kassel, Germany, The Helsinki Festival, ICA London, The Performance Space in Sydney, The Whitney Museum in New York City, and Museum of Contemporary Art here in Los Angeles. The Pompidou Centre recently included her in its 2006 show Los Angeles 1955-1985. Her pioneering performances have earned Obie, Rockefeller, Getty, NEA and CAA awards, among others.


Born into an affluent Russian-Jewish family in Paris, Rosenthal’s father, Léonard Rosenthal, was a gem merchant widely known as The King of Pearls. During World War II, her family escaped France, moving to Rio de Janeiro by way of Portugal. After losing his material wealth to the Nazi’s, her father had to start over at age 65. In 1941, the family left Brazil to settle in New York where Rosenthal graduated from the High School of Music and Art and became a U.S. citizen. She studied art, theater and dance in Paris and New York after the war with such teachers as Hans Hoffmann, Merce Cunningham, Erwin Piscator, and Jean-Louis Barrault.


Rosenthal began her theatrical career in Los Angeles in the mid-1950s as artistic director and performer in her totally improvised “Instant Theater” for its ten-year run. A leading figure in the Southern California Arts movement of the 1960s and 1970s, Rosenthal was a pioneer in addressing feminist and animal rights issues, and was a founder of “Womanspace,” a hotbed of feminism.


In 1999, Rosenthal received an Honorary Doctorate from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago; and in 2000 she was honored by the City of Los Angeles as a “Living Cultural Treasure of Los Angeles.” Critics have called her “a monument and a marvel” and Richard Schechner, editor of The Drama Review (TDR), put Rosenthal into the same category as Robert Wilson, Ping Chong, Richard Foreman, Meredith Monk, and Laurie Anderson.


_{* Thanks to the Estate of Robert Rauschenberg, one of the 83 donated works for the auction is of particular interest. Among the silent auction items is a 1994 Rauschenberg print honoring Rosenthal. This piece is from Rauschenberg’s “Tribute 21” suite of prints – a portfolio that pays tribute to inspirational leaders – 21 artworks, celebrating 21 humans, all impacting themes in the 21st century such as peace, social justice, and a sustainable environment. In the portfolio, Rachel Rosenthal shares company with illustrious world figures such as Nelson Mandela, Toni Morrison, Jacques-Yves Cousteau, Carl Sagan, Buckminster Fuller, and the Dalai Lama, among others.}

For more information, photos, or to request an interview, please contact Green Galactic’s Lynn Hasty at 213-840-1201 or lynn@greengalactic.com.

“There is nothing quite like a Rachel Rosenthal artistic materialization. Seeing (her) and experiencing her after-show discussion session firsthand is like sitting for a few minutes with Plato, listening to Rousseau or Jung or Thoreau speak in person. An evening with Rachel Rosenthal will stay with you a lifetime; do it for your future.” - Entertainment Today