Benjamin Stuber is a New York-based theatre artist working across the disciplines of acting, dance, design, puppetry, direction, choreography and adaptation to create original material for the stage. His work concerns highly visual movement-and-text-based adaptations combining fiction and non-fiction sources. He is available for hire as a performer, designer, illustrator, or theatrical collaborator on various types of projects.
Benjamin Stuber | Brooklyn, NY | 1+ 917 340 1932 | benjamin@benjaminstuber.com
Benjamin will share a short new piece co-created with Téana David at the 2010 BRAG Festival, a dazzling display of heterogenous splendor designed to educate, edify, amaze and uplift. The show will be on Friday September 27 at 8pm at the Gene Frankel Theatre at 24 Bond Street. Tickets are $15.
Benjamin currently teaches Pilates private and duet classes at The Art of Fitness and Six Degree of Pilates.
The Pilates Method is a form of exercise developed by German gymnast Joseph Pilates during the First World War to rehabilitate injured veterans. Pilates incorporated elements of martial arts, yoga, boxing, gymnastics and dance to create strengthening, stretching, and stabilizing exercises. These exercises were refined into a programme using principles of proper alignment, centering, concentration, control, precision, breathing, and flowing movement to aid spinal health, muscle tone and posture.
Current class schedules and prices may be found at The Art of Fitness and Six Degree of Pilates.
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Benjamin Stuber grew up along the western ridge of the verdant Cumberland plateau in the small town of Cookeville, Tennessee, where he lived on the edge of a mountain. Although he painted and drew from an early age, he began working in performance as an actor in stock musicals and American classics in his early teens. From there moved to northwest Ohio where he attended Oberlin College, studying acting, dance, visual art, and interdisciplinary performance theory.
After graduating in 2003 with a BA in theatre and a minor in dance, he moved to Chicago, Illinois where he was active in the Windy City's vibrant grassroots performance scene. There he worked with theatre and dance companies such as Blushing Poppy Butoh, Wing and Groove Theatre Company and Collision Theatre Company while studying Butoh dance with Nicole LeGette, Capoeira Angola at the world-famous Gingarte studio, and yoga with Chicago Yoga Center founder Suddha Weixler. He joined the experimental performance group The Anatomy Collective in 2005, working as an originator of numerous roles while designing costumes and puppets, co-founded the still-active performance duo One Continuous Mistake in 2006, and was named a Spareroom Artist-In-Residence in 2007.
That fall he journeyed west to Boulder, Colorado to enter Naropa University's groundbreaking Theatre: Contemporary Performance MFA program. There his training focused on technique and composition supported by a contemplative bodymind, under master teachers such as Wendell Beavers, Steve Wangh, Barbara Dilley, Leigh Fondakowski, Katsura Kan, Kevin Kuhlke, Peggy Pettitt, Leon Ingulsrud and Barney O'Hanlan. In addition to teaching, designing costumes and puppets and performing in numerous roles at Naropa, he concentrated on creating new work such as a one-man Butoh/Clown piece arising from the American heartland, a radical two-man adaptation of Chekhov's The Three Sisters by way of Beckett's Waiting for Godot, and an hour-long trio dance concert based on Jorge Luis Borges's short story of the minotaur, The House of Asterion.
Benjamin currently resides in Brooklyn, New York, where he collaborates with other theatre artists to create time-based, visual stories founded in the body. In his spare time, he enjoys classical Russian literature, zazen, and exquisitely bad fantasy.
The body and mind are not one, not two. This integration is the essential ground of differentiation into numerous modes of artistic expression. Where the bodymind meets the world art finds its source and direction; imagery, emotion, impulse, choice, desire, and risk are the verbs of art, but the body, the materiel, movement, space, and time are its nouns. From this foundation, a theatre artist speaks.
Beauty demands from art direct perception of the world as it is - not as we judge it to be. Truth may only be approached through right effort born from revelatory intention; the desire to unlock the world’s contradictions, wonders and terrors.
Form is a paper bag, only given shape by its contents. Without the bag, the contents will spill out onto the floor.
The artist, working with extended range, bravery, and a balanced bodymind, runs the risk of failure.
Art functions through a healthy relationship of precise composition, rigorous practice, and faithful execution. The stars are reached by constructing stairs, step by step.
Art must fulfill a fundamental need for us as individuals, for audiences, and for our culture.
Art answers needs, but does so through the fulfillment of wants. Working with the experience of the audience always in mind, the artist captivates elites, children, and drunks alike.
You can also click here to download a PDF version of my headshot and résumé.
| ‡ Uncle Vodka | Serebryakov | dir. Jeremy Williams, Mabou Mines R.A.P., NYC |
| Port Out, Starboard Home | Mack | dir. Ben Yalom, New Dramatists, NYC |
| The Tempest | Trinculo / Antonio | dir. Paul Moser, Oberlin Theatre Festival, Oberlin, OH |
| Our Town | George Gibbs | dir. Steve Wangh, Naropa University, Boulder, CO |
| ‡ The Three Sisters | Irina | One Continuous Mistake, Boulder Fringe 2008 |
| 23 Seconds on John Cage | Ensemble | dir. Leon Ingulsrud & Barney O'Hanlan, Naropa |
| Inanna | Dumuzi | dir. Jeremy Williams, Naropa University |
| † Droughts | Performer | dir. Benjamin Stuber, Naropa University |
| Scab | Mary Androgyny | dir. Libby Ford, Collision Theater Company, Chicago |
| Endgame | Clov | One Continuous Mistake, Locus, Chicago |
| The Prometheus Myth | Oceanid | dir. Stephanie Acosta, The Anatomy Collective, Chicago |
| Many Things are Destroying Me | Gromp/Parker | dir. Stephanie Acosta, The Anatomy Collective, Chicago |
| How to Explain the History... | Stepan Rozanov / Stalin | dir. Bryan White, Wing and Groove Theatre, Chicago |
| ‡ Gaijin Seppuku! | Performer | One Continuous Mistake, Locus, Chicago |
| † Centrifuge | The Actor | dir. Benjamin Stuber, Oberlin College, OH |
| The Desolate Delight Project | dir. Barbara Dilley, Naropa University | |
| † The Asterion Project | dir. Benjamin Stuber, Naropa University | |
| Gallop of the Embryo | dir. Katsura Kan, VIVA/Naropa University | |
| Beckett:Butoh | dir. Katsura Kan, The Atlas Institute/Naropa University | |
| What Kind of Sky Do You Like? | dir. Ginger Krebs, Site Unseen/Chicago Cultural Center | |
| Untitled Butoh/Taiko Performance | dir. Nicole LeGette, Blushing Poppy Butoh, Chicago | |
| And a Lack Thereof | dir. Kasey Foster, The Anatomy Collective, Chicago | |
| Splintered Idylls | dir. Devin Brain/Glen Cullen, Tangerine Arts Group | |
| Uncle Vodka | Costume/prop designer | dir. Jeremy Williams, Mabou Mines R.A.P., NYC |
| The Trojan Women | Costume designer | dir. Kevin Kuhlke, Naropa University, Boulder |
| ‡ I Am Not What I Am | Costume designer | dir. Jeremy Williams, Naropa University |
| ‡ The Three Sisters | Costume designer | One Continuous Mistake |
| Inanna | Puppet/prop designer | dir. Jeremy Williams, Convergences Theater Collective |
| 23 Seconds on John Cage | Costume designer | dir. Leon Ingulsrud & Barney O'Hanlan, Naropa |
| Endgame | Costume designer | One Continuous Mistake, Locus, Chicago |
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