Photo courtesy of the artist
Kate Valk began working with director Elizabeth LeCompte and The Wooster Group in 1979 after receiving her B.A. from New York University.
Since then she has co-composed and performed in all of the Group’s theater productions, dance pieces, and works for film, video, and radio. Theater productions include Troilus & Cressida (in progress); Early Shaker Spirituals (director,in progress); Vieux Carré (2011); La Didone (2009); Hamlet (2007, 2012); Who’s Your Dada?! (2006); Poor Theater (2004); To You, The Birdie! (Phèdre) (2002); House/Lights (1998, 2005); The Hairy Ape (1996); Fish Story (1994); The Emperor Jones (1993, 2006); Brace Up! (1991, 2003); North Atlantic (1984, 1999, 2010); Frank Dell’s The Temptation Of St. Antony (1988); L.S.D. (…Just The High Points…) (1984); and Route 1 & 9 (1981). Dance pieces include I Am Jerome Bel (2008); Erase-E(x) (2004); Dances With T.V. And Mic (1998); For The Good Times (1982); and Hula (1981). Film and media works include the Dailies (2010-present); To You, The Birdie! (Phèdre) (2011); Brace Up! (2009); There Is Still Time..Brother (2007); House/Lights (2004); The Emperor Jones (1999); Wrong Guys (1996); Rhyme ‘Em To Death (1994); White Homeland Commando (1992); Today, I Must Sincerely Congratulate You (1991); and Flaubert Dreams Of Travel, But The Illness Of His Mother Prevents It (1986). Theater collaborations include Early Plays (2012) with Richard Maxwell and the New York City Players; Symphony Of Rats (1988) and Miss Universal Happiness (1985) with Richard Foreman and the Ontological-Hysteric Theater; and And That’s How The Rent Gets Paid (1984) with Jeff Weiss. Audio works include the album Love Songs (2002); and three radio plays—The Peggy Carstairs Report (2002); Racine’s Phèdre (2000); and The Emperor Jones (1998)—each a BBC Radio 3 Broadcast for a Festival Radio Production.
Valk founded The Wooster Group’s MS 131 Residency at Dr. Sun Yat Sen Middle School in the Chinatown neighborhood of Lower Manhattan, and the Group’s Summer Institute, a free, three-week performance intensive program for public high school students. She has led workshops and master classes at American University, Brown University, Carnegie Mellon University, Columbia University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, The New School, New York University, Northeastern University, The O’Neill Center, Smith College, and Wesleyan College.
Articles and publications Valk and her work have appeared in Art Forum, Bomb Magazine, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, Newcity Stage, Time Out New York, among others, as well as the The Wooster Group Work Book by Andrew Quick and Breaking The Rules: The Wooster Group by David Savran.
Valk has received an OBIE Award in 1998 for Sustained Excellence of Performance, a BESSIE Award in 2002 for her performance in To You, The Birdie! (Phèdre), and a Foundation for Contemporary Performance Art Fellowship in 2004. She was a mentor in the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative for 2008-2009, and was awarded a TCG/Fox Foundation Resident Actor Fellowship in the Distinguished Achievement category in 2009.
