FOUNDER BIOS:

Ivan has worked with Robert Wilson on HAMLET: A MONOLOGUE at the Alley Theatre in Houston and on PROMETEO La Monnaie Royal Opera House in Brussels, Belgium and Julie Taymor (THE FLYING DUTCHMAN) at the Los Angeles Opera. He studied theatre at the University of California, San Diego, and received his MFA in Directing from Columbia University, New York.

He has taught and been artist-in-residence at several institutions in the United States and abroad including Barnard College/Columbia University (New York), Brown University (Providence, RI), Towson University (Baltimore, MD), City University of New York, CDU/Center for Drama Art (Zagreb, Croatia), the Gulbenkian Foundation (Lisbon, Portugal), Fundateneo (Caracas, Venezuela), Brooklyn Arts Exchange and HERE. He is an alumnus of the Lincoln Center Theater Directors Lab, HERE Artist-in-Residence Program (HARP): and is a Usual Suspect at the New York Theatre Workshop. In 2004 and 2005, Ivan was a Performing Arts Fellow at the Akademie Schloss Solitude (Stuttgart, Germany), where he has developed 39 FRAMES, a simulated-reality durational event inspired by the mind and work of Alfred Hitchcock, which had its world premiere at the 2006 SommerSzene festival (Salzburg, Austria). In the same year, Ivan was also commissioned by San Francisco based Too Far independent media to create a multimedia event based on the novel WILD ANIMUS which subsequently toured to over 50 cities in Europe, United States, Canada and Australia until 2007.

 

More recently, Ivan staged X, a video-opera he created in collaboration with the composer Katharina Rosenberger, which premiered in Switzerland in August 2007 at the Zürcher Theaterspektakel in Zurich and at La Batie festival in Geneva, once again being included in the Worldwide Critics Survey / 2007 yearbook issue of Ballet-Tanz Magazine as the "important cross-disciplinary collaboration". He created MALFI, an adaptation of John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi in collaboration with Simona Semenič at Mladinsko Theatre in Ljubljana, Slovenia in May 2008. In the fall of 2008, he staged BLIND.NESS, an original WaxFactory project, at the Performance Space 122 in New York – also presented in Ljubljana in December 2008 in co-production with Cankarjev dom.

 

2010 projects include: WaxFactory’s Year 11 Retrospective at the Abrons Arts Center in Manhattan, including three recent works -- BLIND.NESS, QUARTET v4.0, and DELIRIUM 27; SPOTLIGHT CROATIA, the first exchange project between Croatian and American playwrights at the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center in New York and ZKM/Zagreb Youth Theatre in Croatia; the mini-festival of groundbreaking dance performances from Slovenia, Croatia, and Serbia, titled X-YU at Dixon Place and DNA/Dance New Amsterdam (May 2010).

 

Current project: 416 MINUTES feature film and installation/performance at the Japan Society, New York and elsewhere (2011 and 2012).

ERIKA LATTA is originally from the Northwest, raised on the Lummi Reservation near Bellingham, Washington. She holds a BFA in Theater at the University of Washington where she studied installation art, dance, photography and acting. She then traveled to New York to receive her MFA in Acting from Columbia University. 

She has been creating new innovative work in traditional and non-traditional space, creating long lasting International collaborations in Europe and New York for the last fourteen years. She is the artistic co-director and co-founder of WaxFactory in New York City. With the company, she works as an actor, director, writer, choreographer and teacher.  
As an actor she has been seen at international venues and festivals such as the ICA/Institute of Contemporary Art (London, UK), The Gulbenkian Museum (Lisbon, Portugal), SommerSzene (Salzburg, Austria), OLTRE90 (Milan, Italy), FIT/ Festival Internacional de Teatro (Caracas, Venezuela), MESS (Sarajevo, Bosnia), the Exodos Festival and Cankarjev Dom Center For The Performing Arts (Ljubljana, Slovenia), and SummerSzene in Salzburg, Austria among others in the following shows: In LULU (one woman performance), STORY OF RATS based on the work of George Bataille, MOLIERE'S MONSTER based on the work of Moliere, Heiner Müller's QUARTET, Ibsen's LADY FROM THE SEA, Sarah Kane’s CLEANSED, and ...SHE SAID, 39 FRAMES – The Hitchcock Project and BLIND.NESS.  She was the lead actor in the film sections for X, a video-opera created in collaboration with the composer Katharina Rosenberger, which premiered at the Zürcher Theaterspektakel in Zurich and went on to perform at La Batie festival in Geneva, Switzerland.
In New York she has acted at La Mama E.T.C, HERE, P.S 122 (Performance Space 122), New York Theater Workshop, Lincoln Center’s Clark Studio, Soho Rep, Old American Can Factory, En Garde Arts, Raw Space, Ohio Theater, The Culture Project, and the Act French Festival.  She has been a participant at Robert Wilson’s international summer program (4 years) at the Watermill Center as an actor and photographer. She has worked with French Director Victor Gautier Martin in GENOA 01 at Robert Wilson’s Watermill Center. 
She recently performed in New York at Abrons Art Center in WaxFactory’s retrospective season, including QUARTET V.4.0 with Todd Peters, BLIND.NESS and her play DELIRIUM 27.

She is a guest Associate Director of Begat Theatre (France), where she has a long standing collaboration with Artistic Director’s Karin Holmström, Philippe Laliard and Benedict Blanc. With Begat she has directed LE JARDIN AVEUGLE, a site-specific work based on the novel by Janet Frame, which won the first prize for the Concours de Projets Associatifs, Fondation Regards de Provence. Also, with Begat she directed the actors and designed the sound for a site-specific installation of Jeanne Benameur’s novel LES DEMEURÉES  in Marseille, France. LES DEMEURÉES is currently touring in Europe. Recently, in 2010 she directed and designed the sound for Begat Theater’s production of HIDDEN STORIES, featuring music from Peter Holmström from the Dandy Warhols. HIDDEN STORIES is a new, site-specific, time based work using synchronized headsets for the audience following live actors within a city. HS was awarded residence at the Le Citron Jaune and in Auriac, France. HS is currently touring in Europe.

She has worked in New York as a director for AUTO GRAPHIC NOVEL by Johnny Klein at the Flea Theater and TALES FROM BORDER TOWN by Eric Dean Scott at the New York Underground Zero Festival at PS 122 (New York) for which the production won “Best Production”.