Ensemble

Founded in January 2002 by Kathy Randels with J Hammons and Lucas Cox, our ensemble develops performer training and utilizes collaborative processes in the creation of new works.

Kathy Randels Bio

Kathy Randels is a native New Orleanian, a theatre artist/educator, and the Artistic Director of ArtSpot Productions. She studied, lived and worked in Chicago from 1987-1994, receiving a Bachelor of Science in Performance Studies in 1991 from Northwestern University. Upon returning to New Orleans in January 1995, she founded ArtSpot Productions. A performance artist who writes and produces her own work, Randels has performed her renowned one-woman show Rage Within/Without nationally and internationally since 1991. She founded the Drama Club at the Louisiana Correctional Institute for Women in 1996 with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). In the spring of 1996 she received a grant from the Louisiana Division of the Arts (LDOA) to create and produce a new original work, How to be a Man in the 21st Century. In the fall of 1996 she received a grant from the LDOA to develop Lower 9 Stories—a site-specific performance piece with a group of high school students from New Orleans' lower 9th ward exploring environmental racism in their neighborhood--for Junebug Productions' 1998 Environmental Justice Festival. In the 1996-97 school year she taught movement for actors at New Orleans Center for Creative Arts (of which she is also an alumnus).

In December 1997 she was awarded the theatre artist fellowship from the L-DOA. With this funding, she traveled to Belgrade, Yugoslavia to train with Dah Teatar. In 1998 she created a solo performance, with composer and fellow ArtSpot Productions company member Sean LaRocca, The End and Back Again, My Friend, about her travels through former Yugoslavia, which has been performed in New Orleans, San Francisco, Chicago, Oklahoma, Iowa, Slovenia and Denmark. From October 1998 to March 1999 she lived in Belgrade, collaborating with Dah Teatar as musical director for Travelers, and performing in Travelers and The Helen Keller Case, funded by a grant from Artslink International. In January and February 2000, ArtSpot Productions produced The Dah Teatar U.S. Tour that brought the theatre company's workshops and performances to eight cities. In March 2001, she directed Gifts of Our Ancestors with African dancer and choreographer Ausettua Amor Amenkum for the LCIW Drama Club. In October 2001 she premiered a large-scale performance piece entitled Rumours of War at the Contemporary Arts Center in New Orleans. With funding from The Fund for U.S. Artists at International Festivals and Exhibitions, Rumours of War was featured at Magdalena Pacifica in September 2002, an International Festival of Women in Theatre in Cali, Colombia. Recent projects have included: Maps of Forbidden Remembrance, a collaboration with Dah Teatar and 7 Stages of Atlanta, which toured the U.S. in the fall of 2002; and Venus, Vulcan, Mars and The Dancing Dwarf and The Maid of Orléans, with Moving Humans. In 2003, Kathy won an OBIE award for her work with Katie Pearl and playwright Lisa D'Amour in Nita & Zita, which premiered in New Orleans in May 2002 and toured the U.S. in the spring of 2003.