Ain Gordon is an American playwright, and director.[1][2]
He began writing and directing for the stage in 1985. He emerged on to the downtown dance/performance scene with four consecutive seasons at Dance Theater Workshop plus performances at Movement Research, The Poetry Project, and Performance Space 122. By 1990 Gordon was recognized in the inaugural round of the NEA’s “New Forms” initiative – funding for artists whose work defied clear classification. He then began touring to venues including the Baltimore Museum of Art (MD) and Dance Place (DC). In 1991, Gordon entered a multi-project relationship with Soho Rep (NY) that encompassed five productions and workshops. In 1992, Gordon began a collaboration with his father, David Gordon, on The Family Business; the work went on to be performed at Serious Fun! at Lincoln Center, DTW, New York Theater Workshop (all NY) and the Mark Taper Forum (CA).[3] Also in 1992, Gordon became Co-Director of the Pick Up Performance Company (founded by his father in 1971 and incorporated in 1978).
In 1994, Gordon won his first Obie Award as one of the creators of The Family Business. In 1996, Gordon won his second Obie Award for his play Wally's Ghost. In 1998, Gordon was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in Playwriting. It was here that Gordon gained recognition for his abiding subject; marginalized/forgotten history and the invisible players who inhabit that space. Gordon developed a particular blend of historical fact/imagined truth and complete fiction that continues to dominate his work. The next few years were spent collaborating with David Gordon on two projects—one for American Music Theater Festival (PA) and American Repertory Theater (MA),[4] the other for American Conservatory Theater (CA) and the Taper – plus a solo commission from the Taper, another from the Lincoln Center Institute and a new play workshopped at The Public Theater and Soho Rep (both NY). In 2001, Gordon returned to his roots in the NY downtown scene with several productions at HERE Arts Center, DTW, and PS122 including Art Life & Show-Biz; A Non-Fiction Play, which will be published by Palgrave Macmillan in the upcoming “Dramaturgy of the Real.”
Gordon continues to write theater that straddles the traditions of playwriting and performance art blending fact and fiction toward a theatrical truth. Since 2005, his work has been awarded both the Multi-Arts Production Fund (MAP) Grant and the Arts Presenters Ensemble Theatre Collaborations Program grant funded by the Doris Duke Charitable Trust with productions at the Krannert Center (IL), VSA North Fourth Arts Center (NM), 651 ARTS (NY), LexArts (KY), and DiverseWorks (TX), etc. In 2007, Gordon won his third Obie Award for his performance in the Off-Broadway production of Spalding Gray: Stories Left To Tell, and he continues to tour the work to venues including UCLA Live, TBA Festival at the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (OR), The ICA Boston (Elliot Norton Award nom), the Walker Art Center (MN), and Painted Bride Art Center (PA), etc. In 2008/9 Gordon collaborated with Choreographer Bebe Miller on Necessary Beauty, a multi-disciplinary evening-length work co-commissioned by the Wexner Center (OH), DTW, and Myrna Loy Center/Helena Presents (MT). He was commissioned by the VSA North Fourth Arts Center, rooted in Native American history, and developed a new two-person play, and one woman play, as a Core Writer of the Playwrights' Center in Minneapolis.[5][6]