John Malpede and Henriette Brouwers
Henriette Brouwers, (performance view at Highways Performance Space) CPR, Performance, 2009 (courtesy of artist)
Henriëtte Brouwers is a performer, teacher and director. Born in the Netherlands, she completed work at the Academy for Expression by Word and Gesture in her native country and studied corporeal mime with Etiènne Décroux and theatre of the oppressed with Augusto Boal in Paris. She was invited to perform in the US by the Theatre Project in Baltimore in 1993 and has since worked with 7 Stages in Atlanta, UT in Knoxville and Touchstone Theatre in Bethlehem. Highways Performance Space presented her solo: la Lengua, the tongue of Cortés in 2000. She was movement director for Blue Monk, directed by Ed Smith for the 1996 Olympic Arts Festival in Atlanta, Georgia.
As Associate Director Brouwers has worked with the Los Angeles Poverty Department since 2000 and directed La Llorona, Weeping Women on Skid Row, performed in 2003 on Skid Row in Los Angeles and at a national conference on women and poverty at Scripps College. This performance is part of a ‘Weeping Women’ series. Earlier in 2003— just before the US declared war on Iraq—she directed Pomona College students in Weeping Women and War.
In 2003–4, Brouwers worked with John Malpede on the creation of RFK in EKY a community-based re-enactment of Robert F. Kennedy’s 1968 trip to investigate poverty in Appalachia. She is also featured in artist Bill Viola’s renowned The Passions series, which has been exhibited extensively in major museums throughout the world.
John Malpede, (performance view at Highways Performance Space) CPR, Performance, 2009 (courtesy of artist)
John Malpede is a director, actor, activist, and writer. In 1985, Malpede founded and continues to direct the Los Angeles Poverty Department (LAPD), the first performance group in the nation comprised primarily of homeless and formerly homeless people. LAPD’s mission is to create performances that connect lived experience to the social forces that shape the lives and communities of people living in poverty. “A nationally acclaimed theater radical and social visionary, Malpede has been confounding audience expectations for two decades,” said Linda Eisenstein in the Cleveland Plain Dealer this year. Directed by Malpede, LAPD is current touring Agents & Assets, a performance that addresses the consequences of the U.S. government’s escalating war on drugs and the misuse of U.S. intelligence agencies by the executive branch of the government. Agents & Assets has been produced in Los Angeles, Detroit, and at the Cleveland Public Theater. Malpede has taught at UCLA Dept. Dance / World Arts and Cultures; NYU Tisch School of the Arts; the Amsterdam School for Advanced Research in Theater and Dance (DasArts); and California College of Arts and Crafts. His individual artist fellowships include grants from New York State Council on the Arts; National Endowment for the Arts; and California Arts Council. He has received Dance Theater Workshop’s Bessie Creation Award; San Francisco Art Institute’s Adeline Kent Award; and a Theater LA Ovation Award, as well as numerous government and foundation project grants. He has performed throughout the United States in solo performances including Inappropriate Laughing Responses, Generic Performance, Pre-existing Conditions, and GET.
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