ruth margraff

RUTH MARGRAFF has been called a leader in the avant garde for her “audaciously original" (Moscow Times) poetics that provide “layer after layer of richly textured emotion...and imminent danger” (Dallas Morning News). Critically acclaimed for her 6 martial arts operas with Fred Ho for the Apollo, Guggenheim Museum, LaMama, Brooklyn Academy of Music, CAMI, Ruth’s work on SEVEN, began touring the world in 2008 introduced by Diane von Furstenberg, and in 2010 by Hillary Clinton with Meryl Streep at the Broadway Hudson Theater. Ruth has received awards from Rockefeller, McKnight, Jerome, NEA, TCG, TMUNY, NYSCA, IAC, Fulbright foundations; published by Innova Records, Dramatists Play Service, American Theatre, Theater Forum, Performing Arts Journal, Playscripts, Inc., Backstage Books, Autonomedia, New Village Press, NoPassport Press, Lexington Books/Roman & Littlefield. Theater Without Borders, New Dramatist and Playwrights’ Center alumna, Chicago Dramatist emeritus, and is a tenured Professor at the Art Institute of Chicago.

WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA:
Website: www.ruthmargraff.com
Additional website: https://www.innova.mu/composers/ruth-margraff 
Additional website: https://bakerartist.org/portfolios/ruth-margraff 
FB: https://www.facebook.com/ruth.margraff
IG: https://www.instagram.com/ruthmargraff
IG: https://www.instagram.com/opreglasso 

MORE ABOUT ME
I grew up the daughter of a fundamentalist preacher in a closed circuit of churches in the American heartland. So my first plays were otherworldly to pop culture, yet held a privacy of limelight and faith. My muses include punk/metal hysteria, rock opera, cubism, hong kong cinema, Sufi poetry, Rromani and Greek blues, barroom brawls, Evel Knievel and wild flowers. I think of my writing as art. It is growing more stealthy--larger than life--and much more “wild by nature”—hidden in plain sight. To resist complacence is to transcend cultures of fear, intolerance and greed and to ride free and far ahead of the curve. I want to rise above the madness of loving disaster. To inspire turns and returns of denouement "from the world and all its ways." 

WHAT I'M WORKING ON:
I am writing a pilot for TV and co-writing a screenplay with martial aritst Jose Figueroa. I was recently commissioned to write for Burning Coal/North Carolina Opera Co a suffrage aria for 19th Ammendment Project "Lost Music from the Heart of Everything" composed by Kamala Sankaram Aug 2020 (Raleigh). I'm also working on some short digital self-portrait poems related to my first solo album TEMPTATION: Chora (Serbia, Iowa forthcoming ESS): "deepfake: disaster's lover" (1:51) covideo #1 and #6 for Here Arts Center; "temptation: chora" (3:54), "temptation: trees" (2:56) shown at SETC 2021. Operas in development: MIRROR BUTTERFLY: MIGRATION LIBERATION SUITE with Afro Yaqui Music Collective (Pittsburgh/DC/Innova Records); PASSION OF LEYLA AnchorFM Jazz Ready Ep117; FLIGHT: TORN LIKE A ROSE Peggy Choy Dance Co AnchorFM Jazz Ready Ep116; and an EP digital framing of my LOCKET ARIAS

KEYWORDS:
​opera, art, cinematic, martial arts, fantasy, avant garde