PearlDamour & Todd Shalom

Katie Pearl and Lisa D’Amour (pictured above) have a 14-year history of creating performance work for theaters and non-traditional sites in New York, Austin, Minneapolis, Chicago and New Orleans as PearlDamour. Ranging from intimate (15 people in a Manhattan basement) to large-scale (a 24-hour performance at Stone Arch Bridge in Minneapolis for over 1,000), the duo is known for mysterious and often interactive work that combines theater with installation and is attentive to the performer-audience relationship. Their process is deeply collaborative and continually evolving, with a different writer/director/performer partner for each project.

In 2003, they received an OBIE for Nita & Zita, which was created with Kathy Randels of ArtSpot Productions. Commissions include Terrible Things (PS 122), LIMO (Whitney Museum’s Performance on 42nd Series) and Bird Eye Blue Print (Brookfield Properties @ WTF).

Their work has been produced and presented by HERE Arts Center (NYC), Walker Art Center
(Minneapolis), FuseBox Festival (Austin), ArtSpot Productions/Contemporary Arts Center (New Orleans), Brown University (Providence) and more. How to Build a Forest was developed through residencies at The Mitchell Center for the Arts (Houston), Appalachian State University and Hampshire College. They are currently developing a performance for the meadow at Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, PA with designer Mimi Lien.

PearlDamour are 3-time winners of the Rockefeller MAP Fund grant, and are 2009 recipients of a Creative Capital Award for the research, development and production of How to Build a Forest.