Co-Founder, Co-Artistic/Managing Director
Charles is an interdisciplinary artist with glasses and patched pants. Interested in work that thinks for itself, he has created multiple pieces including his most recent 12 audio works for Please Remain Seated, and two videos: The Hidden Life of Hands for the Dance Film Project 2010 and Still Life: or when you’re away the walls speak your name for Cubicle, Skewed Visions’ new series of podcasts. In addition to research on his latest live work, Black Water, he produced the second season, Cubicle2: on the internet nobody knows. His 2009 movement-theater piece He Woke Up In A Strange Place Called Home And Although Looking For Bed He Kept Finding Death Instead was an examination of global violence and domestic acceptance that took audiences through houses and streets of a quiet middle-class neighborhood. Past work includes Jasper Johns: GRAY (2008), Islands of Chekhov for the 2008 Twin Cities Chekhov Festival, Visits With Woyzeck for Open Eye Figure Theatre‘s 2008 Toy Theatre After Dark series, Theater Piece for Unbranded (2008), Strange Love (performance) (2007) in a coffin factory, A Quiet Ambition (2006) with Cherri Macht in a brewery office (which also traveled to Yaroslavl, Russia, as part of the International Festival of Movement and Dance), The Car: The Taxi (2004) in a taxi, The House (2004), Pipes (2003), as well as You Are Here (2002) in an observatory and The Bicycle (1999) with architect-sculptor Steve Epley.
He was a finalist for the 2009 Bush Foundation Artist Fellowship, and recipient of the 2007 Electric Eyes: New Music and New Media Festival commission, the 2003 Intermedia Arts Naked Stages performance art commission, the Weisman Art Museum’s 2000 Temporary Public Art on Campus commission, and a 2001 Jerome Foundation Building Administrative Capacity grant. He has also been seen on The History Channel, in Jaime Carrera and Tyler Jensen’s Hustle, and with Flaneur Productions in Minneapolis, Minnesota; Leeds, England; and Edinburgh, Scotland.
His current project is inspired by W.G. Sebald’s novel Austerlitz as well as detective fiction and Les Liaisons Dangereuse, and is titled Black Water, elements of which were seen at Link Vostok‘s 2011 fundraiser and July 2011′s 9×22: A Dance Lab.
He blogs as necessary at One Skewed Vision.
Normative education includes a BA from Sarah Lawrence College, study as a part of the Chautauqua Conservatory Theater Company and at the Classic Stage Conservatory in New York City. In 1991 he entered the University of Minnesota where he sneaked an MA in Theater, studied with the Margolis-Brown Company, and wrested a PhD out of some cold dead hands in 1997, where he has since been seen teaching. He has been assiduously studying the theories and practices of Tadeusz Kantor since 1993.
Interested in exploring work that troubles disciplinary categories, he has recently taken a shine to the bountiful Twin Cities experimental dance community and has been fortunate enough to twice take part in the award-winning work of choreographer, dancer and photographer, Megan Mayer. He is excited to spend some quality art time as part of her crew at the prestigious MANCC this February. This past summer he also made an appearance this July in the rascal performance group Mad King Thomas‘s All Sparkles, No Heart.
Perhaps most interestingly, he is the stay-at-home parent for two young boys who will soon grow to be rich and support him.