OUR MISSION
Black Swan Arts & Media creates and produces original performance and multimedia works that travel beyond borders of race, religion, culture and politics.
OUR HISTORY
We started as ALICE: Arts and Literacy in Children's Education - a grassroots consortium of parents, teachers and artists committed to bringing the arts to underserved kids. Helen Stoltzfus created The Ancestor Project, an oral history theatre program for 2nd and 3rd graders. African-American and immigrant children interviewed their parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles and wrote down their stories. Over a six-year period, we collected more than 400 oral histories that spanned the globe from Yemen to Guatemala, and from Cambodia to East Texas.
We realized these extraordinary stories of Vietnamese boat people, Yemeni goat herders, and African-American slaves needed to be heard by the larger community.
These narratives became the genesis of our first performance work, Burning Libraries: Stories from the New Ellis Island. It brought 30 immigrant stories to life through music, dance, aerial arts, puppetry, and video effects. That, in turn, gave rise to a program for public radio, Invisible Americans: Stories from the New Immigrants. that continues to be broadcast nationally.
Our education program had a long and fruitful run, serving more than 12,000 children in the San Francisco Bay Area since 2004. But our focus has shifted full-time to our production arm. We are very grateful to all those who allowed us to bring the arts into their communities. We have now embarked on two seemingly disparate projects. One is an exploration of the post-9/11 wars, called, The Prepared Table: A Feast of Foods, Live Performance and Stories from Iraq, Afghanistan, and the FOB (Forward Operating Base of the U.S. Military). The other is The Lost American Jazzbook, a reimagining of the Great American Songbook.
ARTISTIC DIRECTORS
Helen Stoltzfus and Albert Greenberg
Helen Stoltzfus and Albert Greenberg are the founders and co-artistic directors of Black Swan Arts & Media (formerly ALICE Arts). They are creators of original performance works and new media, garnering numerous awards and grants, and touring their projects nationally and internationally over the past three decades. Ms. Stoltzfus serves primarily as writer/director; Mr. Greenberg as writer/composer. Prior to founding Black Swan, Mr. Greenberg and Ms. Stoltzfus were co-artistic directors, playwrights, and performers for the internationally-acclaimed ensemble A Traveling Jewish Theatre (which Mr. Greenberg co-founded). Their original works for the stage were produced worldwide, including the Los Angeles Theatre Festival, the Kampnagel Hamburg Sommer Festival, the Fool's Festival in Copenhagen, and the Baltimore International Theater Festival, traveling the globe from Toronto to Oslo, and from Prague to Appalachia. They have been awarded grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, California Council of the Arts, the City of Oakland/ Cultural Funding Program, the Djerassi Foundation, the Fleishhacker Family Foundation, the Koret Foundation, the San Francisco Foundation, the Swig Foundation, the Walter and Elise Haas Fund, and the Zellerbach Family Foundation, among others.
Mr. Greenberg has composed music for the American Public Radio program An Open Gate. Before moving to the Bay Area he was a recording artist with Pentagram Records and the Silvery Moon Production Company in Los Angeles. His original jazz work, The Lost American JazzBook won "Jazz Vocal Album of the Year" from the 14th Annual Independent Music Awards. Two songs in the project, "Jazz is like Rain" and "Sandy in the Rain" were finalists in the John Lennon International Songwriting Competition. That's a lot of rain.
In addition to her stage work, Ms. Stoltzfus co-wrote and starred in Send Word, Bear Mother, an adaptation by Crown Sephira Productions of her solo play, Like A Mother Bear. Bear explores the intersection of ecology, myth, and healing. It won the 1998 Best Docudrama award from the New York International Independent Film and Video Festival, and an award for creative excellence from the Earthvision Environmental Film and Video Festival.