ROCHELLE OWENS
A central figure in the international avant-garde for over thirty-five years, Rochelle Owens is a playwright, poet, translator, and video artist. A pioneer of the experimental Off-Broadway theater movement, she is widely recognized as one of the most innovative and controversial writers of her generation, whose groundbreaking work has influenced subsequent experimental playwrights and poets. Since its first publication in 1961, FUTZ has become a classic of the American avant-garde theater and an international success. The play was made into a film which has itself attained the status of a cult following. Among her other works for the stage are THE STRING GAME, BECLCH, ISTANBOUL, HOMO, HE WANTS SHIH, and THE KARL MARX PLAY. She has published four collections of plays and sixteen books of poetry. Her newest books are New and Selected Poems 1961-1996, and Luca: Discourse on Life & Death. Her plays have been presented at festivals in Avignon, Berlin, Edinburgh, and Paris, and translated into French, German, Greek, Japanese, Spanish, Swedish, and Ukrainian. She has been the recepient of five Village Voice Obie Awards, and honors from the New York Drama Critics Circle. She has also been the recipient of grants from the Solomon R Guggenheim Foundation, The New York Creative Artists in Public Service Program, The National Endowment for the Arts, and The Rockefeller Foundation. She has taught at Brown University, the University of California-San Diego, the University of Oklahoma, and the University of Southwestern Louisiana. She has lectured and read widely in the United States and Europe.