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.
