| gmcconnellcv.pdf |
Bio
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I graduated with a BA in Theatre Performance from Western Michigan University in 1997. I then spent several years in Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York City as a professional actor. Most notably, I originated the role of Pointer Scully in the original Chicago production of Adam Rapp’s Ghosts in the Cottonwoods directed by Jeremy Cohen.
In 2004, I began work on my graduate degrees. I started with an MA in Theatre Studies at Florida State University and went on to earn my PhD in Theatre Historiography from the University of Minnesota. While I worked on these scholarly degrees, I kept my artistic practice engaged by founding a theatre company in Tallahassee—THE BRINK—and then moved it to Minneapolis. |
THE BRINK was shuttered after several successful productions in Tallahassee, and two in Minneapolis. I then began my decade-long directing/devising collaboration with Samantha Johns and continued on directing devised projects on my own, or with other directing partners since then.
Since 2010, I have directed/created/designed over twenty critically-acclaimed original ensemble performances and performed in more than fifteen performance art pieces across the country. My work has been shown at the Center for Performance Research and Panoply Performance Lab (Brooklyn), the Walker Art Center, Bedlam Theater and the Southern Theater (Minneapolis), the Annex Theatre (Baltimore), the Breakthrough Theater (Orlando), the UNCG Project Space (Greensboro), and found-space venues in Chicago, Denver, Alamosa, Tallahassee, and Tucson. In December of 2019, my 2010 site-specific performance/installation The Thing (co-directed with Samantha Johns) was recognized by the Minneapolis City Pages as one of the “ten best performances of the past decade in the Twin Cities.” FUCK YEAH was awarded the #FringeAF Award by the 2022 Denver Fringe festival for "embodying the true essence of the fringe." In their textbook Explore Theater: A Backstage Pass, Beth Osborne and Michael O’Hara describe my work as performance made for audiences that are, “often young people in search of a different, challenging, and engaging live theatrical experience—one that cannot be replicated in large theaters or reproduced for mass consumption."
I have taught Introduction to Theatre, Acting, Advanced Acting, Voice, Directing, Devising, Devising Two, Encounters: Beckett and Ionesco, Performance Art, Performance Theory, and Theatre History (Classical and Contemporary) at Florida State University, Northern Illinois University, Guilford Technical Community College and Adams State University. I am currently an Associate Professor of Devised Theatre at Texas A&M University.
I am a big fan of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I am a leo. I have a dog named rabbit.
https://voyageminnesota.com/interview/check-out-george-mcconnells-story/
Since 2010, I have directed/created/designed over twenty critically-acclaimed original ensemble performances and performed in more than fifteen performance art pieces across the country. My work has been shown at the Center for Performance Research and Panoply Performance Lab (Brooklyn), the Walker Art Center, Bedlam Theater and the Southern Theater (Minneapolis), the Annex Theatre (Baltimore), the Breakthrough Theater (Orlando), the UNCG Project Space (Greensboro), and found-space venues in Chicago, Denver, Alamosa, Tallahassee, and Tucson. In December of 2019, my 2010 site-specific performance/installation The Thing (co-directed with Samantha Johns) was recognized by the Minneapolis City Pages as one of the “ten best performances of the past decade in the Twin Cities.” FUCK YEAH was awarded the #FringeAF Award by the 2022 Denver Fringe festival for "embodying the true essence of the fringe." In their textbook Explore Theater: A Backstage Pass, Beth Osborne and Michael O’Hara describe my work as performance made for audiences that are, “often young people in search of a different, challenging, and engaging live theatrical experience—one that cannot be replicated in large theaters or reproduced for mass consumption."
I have taught Introduction to Theatre, Acting, Advanced Acting, Voice, Directing, Devising, Devising Two, Encounters: Beckett and Ionesco, Performance Art, Performance Theory, and Theatre History (Classical and Contemporary) at Florida State University, Northern Illinois University, Guilford Technical Community College and Adams State University. I am currently an Associate Professor of Devised Theatre at Texas A&M University.
I am a big fan of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I am a leo. I have a dog named rabbit.
https://voyageminnesota.com/interview/check-out-george-mcconnells-story/
Artist Statement
The theatre I make is weird--good weird. What has always intrigued me about theatre is the encounter between spectator and performance. It is not the conventions of role playing, the narratives, or the mimetic veil of make believe that compel me to make it. What captivates me instead is the actual event that is always taking place beneath the veneer of representation: the sharing of time and space of performance that underlies the theatricality. Here someone is doing something and has invited someone else to watch. It’s a strange bargain, infinitely fascinating and fecund with possibility.
I direct devised performances that focus on the process of performance making, and are situated at the porous boundary between performance art and theatre. My theatre colleagues often tell me that my devised work is performance art, but my performance art colleagues tell me that I definitely make theatre. Always grounded in the event that is unfolding here and now, my performance work strips away most of the superfluous trappings of theatricality while still maintaining some minimal frame that bounds the performance in the theatrical.
Working from the idea that “you are enough” and that no fictional character needs to be overlaid on the performer, I develop movement sequences, images, and textual fragments with my performer/collaborators through a series of prompts and proposals. Each performer has intense ownership over the work because they have a strong hand in making it. For example, during the devising of swim team I prompted my co-creators, “to bring in a short performance that uses food in an unexpected way.” What was then proposed was a wonderfully strange ritual where the yolks of soft-boiled eggs were sucked out through straws, the empty eggy cavities filled with toothpaste, and then this minty fresh delicacy was swallowed and a line of text from a pop song was spoken, “I eat boys like you for breakfast.” This democratic generative process is anti-hierarchical at the core and works to decolonize the theatrical tendency of directors enforcing power over their collaborators instead of sharing power alongside, and with them.
I excel at encouraging my collaborator/performers to reveal themselves in all of their idiosyncratic diversity. One way I accomplish this is to choreograph synchronized movement sequences made from gestures proposed by my collaborator/performers. The point is not to have perfect synchronicity like some low-budget version of the Rockettes. Instead, in the failed attempt at synchronicity the awkward idiosyncrasies of each performer are revealed and they are seen as they are—the diversely perfect version of themselves as they imperfectly move just out of sync. They are not playing a pre-written character and so have the freedom to mold their performance around who they individually identify as. I strive to work with ensembles that are as diverse as possible, with as many BIPOC collaborators as possible, and who add a polyphony of voices to the process.
In order to disrupt the theatrical expectations of my devised performances, I most often stage the work outside of proper theatre spaces. I devised a site-specific and immersive piece that took place at three picnic tables under a picnic ramada in a Tucson park. One performer sat at each table with five audience members across from them in an intimate performance about intimate experiences. I found myself obsessed with a loading dock in Tallahassee, and so I used it as a performance space. In the loading dock, I choreographed and performed a duo about friendship, labor, and heartbreak as a creative response to the song “Feel the Lightning” by Dan Deacon. My directing partner and I once spent a summer collecting objects from Minneapolis garage sales five dollars at a time and covered the basement of a nearly-condemned building with those objects to build the critically acclaimed installation/performance: The Thing. Taking my performances into these found spaces helps to guide the spectators’ expectation that this is not going to be a conventional night of theatre, and opens up a critically engaged relationship between spectator and performance.
I imagine my performances as site-specific kinetic assemblages that are composed of found music, found gestures, found images and found texts. The performances have an immediacy to them that is difficult to capture in words and people often remark, “you just had to be there.” The event is intimate. The music is loud. The lights are dim. There’s heartbreak and awkwardness. It isn’t about something—it is something. It was made for you.
https://canvasrebel.com/meet-george-mcconnell/
I direct devised performances that focus on the process of performance making, and are situated at the porous boundary between performance art and theatre. My theatre colleagues often tell me that my devised work is performance art, but my performance art colleagues tell me that I definitely make theatre. Always grounded in the event that is unfolding here and now, my performance work strips away most of the superfluous trappings of theatricality while still maintaining some minimal frame that bounds the performance in the theatrical.
Working from the idea that “you are enough” and that no fictional character needs to be overlaid on the performer, I develop movement sequences, images, and textual fragments with my performer/collaborators through a series of prompts and proposals. Each performer has intense ownership over the work because they have a strong hand in making it. For example, during the devising of swim team I prompted my co-creators, “to bring in a short performance that uses food in an unexpected way.” What was then proposed was a wonderfully strange ritual where the yolks of soft-boiled eggs were sucked out through straws, the empty eggy cavities filled with toothpaste, and then this minty fresh delicacy was swallowed and a line of text from a pop song was spoken, “I eat boys like you for breakfast.” This democratic generative process is anti-hierarchical at the core and works to decolonize the theatrical tendency of directors enforcing power over their collaborators instead of sharing power alongside, and with them.
I excel at encouraging my collaborator/performers to reveal themselves in all of their idiosyncratic diversity. One way I accomplish this is to choreograph synchronized movement sequences made from gestures proposed by my collaborator/performers. The point is not to have perfect synchronicity like some low-budget version of the Rockettes. Instead, in the failed attempt at synchronicity the awkward idiosyncrasies of each performer are revealed and they are seen as they are—the diversely perfect version of themselves as they imperfectly move just out of sync. They are not playing a pre-written character and so have the freedom to mold their performance around who they individually identify as. I strive to work with ensembles that are as diverse as possible, with as many BIPOC collaborators as possible, and who add a polyphony of voices to the process.
In order to disrupt the theatrical expectations of my devised performances, I most often stage the work outside of proper theatre spaces. I devised a site-specific and immersive piece that took place at three picnic tables under a picnic ramada in a Tucson park. One performer sat at each table with five audience members across from them in an intimate performance about intimate experiences. I found myself obsessed with a loading dock in Tallahassee, and so I used it as a performance space. In the loading dock, I choreographed and performed a duo about friendship, labor, and heartbreak as a creative response to the song “Feel the Lightning” by Dan Deacon. My directing partner and I once spent a summer collecting objects from Minneapolis garage sales five dollars at a time and covered the basement of a nearly-condemned building with those objects to build the critically acclaimed installation/performance: The Thing. Taking my performances into these found spaces helps to guide the spectators’ expectation that this is not going to be a conventional night of theatre, and opens up a critically engaged relationship between spectator and performance.
I imagine my performances as site-specific kinetic assemblages that are composed of found music, found gestures, found images and found texts. The performances have an immediacy to them that is difficult to capture in words and people often remark, “you just had to be there.” The event is intimate. The music is loud. The lights are dim. There’s heartbreak and awkwardness. It isn’t about something—it is something. It was made for you.
https://canvasrebel.com/meet-george-mcconnell/