ESTHER NEFF

ESTHER NEFF was born on a sustainable organic farm in Indiana and homeschooled K-12. She has studied at the Royal Shakespeare Company, directed for the late Arthur Miller, and shown work at chashama, Brooklyn Arts Exchange, Dixon Place, the West End Theatre, Gathering of the Tribes Gallery, Manhattan Theatre Source, ABC No Rio, amongst other venues in NYC and Brooklyn, the New World Arts Center and the 555 Gallery in Detroit, and in parks, plazas, parkinglots, and other public spaces nationwide and in Munich, Germany. She is the founder of the Panoply Performance Laboratory.

With PPL, her work includes Workforce/Forced Work,On the Cranial Nerves of Barbarians (libretto, direction), Qualia (written and performed with Matthew Stephen Smith) The Silviculture Museum (text, direction, co-design), Schooled and Unschooled (script, direction, design), and In the Company of Eshu (script, direction, design), all with composition/sound design by Brian McCorkle, The Institute for Local Discovery Proudly Presents Bavaria Rundgang and CALL CONNECT COLLECT both with Dina Keller), Cultur(e)ality, Part I; Loud is the Oral Diary of the Western World (text and direction) with Chiasui Chen, Chelsea O'Connor, and Tess Jamias. She has been commissioned by Marilyn Rush (The Fear Birds), taught dukokinetics and acting for adults and children, and is a member of the Lincoln Center Theater Directors Lab. She has held residencies with the LMCC and chashama. Also a sculptor, painter, and essayist, Esther currently lives at Surreal Estate and works at the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA). She has a BFA from the University of Michigan.