AIN GORDON is a three-
time Obie Award-winning writer/director/actor, a two-
time NYFA recipient and a
John Simon Guggenheim
Memorial Foundation Fellow
in Playwriting.
AIN GORDON ASKS
QUESTIONS IN NEW MEXICO
Gordon, on his research trip to
New Mexico in Sept.
worked alongside his
collaborators - filmmakers
Kelly Byars & Ramona Emerson -
to interview 12 local
citizens for his project
“THE HISTORY OF ASKING
THE WRONG QUESTION” set
to Premiere Nov 2012,
w/support from MAP Fund,
and North 4th Arts
Center Albuquerque.
He’ll return to NM for fur-
ther research.
(in development)
Theatrically debating the
relationship Native American’s
have to the history Anglo culture
has forcibly written for
them – conceived/written/
directed by Ain Gordon
in collaboration with New Mexico-
based filmmakers
Ramona Emerson and Kelly Byars
(married Native-American artists;
she is Navajo, he is Choctaw).
Commissioned by the
North Fourth Arts Center
Albuquerque NM, and
recently funded by the
Multi-Arts Production (MAP) Fund,
Leon Lowenstein Foundation
Rooted in the real lives of
Daphney and Samuel Oldham,
the first free African-American’s
to build their own house in
Lexington, KY - in 1830.
Told from Daphney’s perspective,
IN THIS PLACE... conjures a
dead woman striving to preserve
her “living days.” “Haunting,” she says,
“is just a ghost trying to remember”
Written/directed by Ain Gordon
with video by Joan Brannon.
Co-Commissioned with LexArts,
funding by the NEA and the
Multi-Arts Production (MAP) Fund.
Performances:
Downtown Arts Lexington KY 2008,
651Arts Brooklyn w/Irondale Center 2009,
Kitchen Theatre Co. Ithaca NY 2010.
A lone woman’s unbreakable
bond with the hurricane
that devastated Galveston, TX
in 1900, taking 6,000 lives in one night.
Equipped with a pitcher of water and
drinking glass she unravels the outrageous
truth behind this disaster, plus tales of
presidential corruption, pubescent despair,
patriotic fervor, pre-marital passion and
paralyzing writer’s block.
Written/directed by Ain Gordon.
Co- Commissioning funds
from National Performance Network(NPN),
DiverseWorks, Houston TX;
HERE Arts Center, 2009,
funding from the
NYC Department of Cultural Affairs
and NYSCA
Written and performed in
American Sign Language and spoken English,
EPIC detonates familial
(mis)communication in two languages.
Navigating a vertiginous world of history
that won’t die, the characters ask;
“must genetics equal destiny?”
Cast with deaf, hard of hearing,
and hearing performers.
Written/directed by Ain Gordon.
Co-Commissioned by
Dance Theater Workshop
originally in 1988 and again by
DTW for the remount in 2003.
Additional Performances:
North 4th Arts Center Albuquerque NM 2007,
Krannert Center University of Illinois 2007.