Object Collection was founded in 2004 by writer/director Kara Feely and composer/musician Travis Just. The Brooklyn-based group operates within the intersecting practices of performance, music, and theater. They are concerned with simultaneity, complexity, and radicality, combining dense layers of text, notation, objects, and processes. They work to give audiences unconventional viewing experiences through a merging of theatricality and pedestrian activity. The company’s works upset habitual notions of time, pace, progression, and virtuosity, and value accumulation above cohesion.
Object Collection performances can take the shape of large-scale performance projects, experimental operas, and duo performances. Object Collection has premiered six original operas. Their work has toured to Norway, Denmark, the UK, Japan, Canada, Italy, and the US. Object Collection’s pieces have appeared in New York at La MaMa, Performance Space 122, Ontological Theater at St. Mark’s Church, National Sawdust, Chocolate Factory Theater, Abrons Arts Center, Invisible Dog Art Center, Roulette, and Issue Project Room, among others. Albums have been released on Slip Imprint, Infrequent Seams, and khalija. Object Collection has received extended profiles in Frieze magazine, Pitchfork, The Guardian, The Wire, BOMB, and on BBC Radio.
Kara Feely is a writer, director and designer for theater and interdisciplinary performance, and co-director of Object Collection. Her work draws inspiration from experimental writing and music composition strategies, and combines a variety of materials, from found text fragments and landscapes of objects, to recorded interviews and radio broadcasts. She has written/directed over 14 projects for the company including the experimental operas You Are Under Our Space Control, It’s All True, cheap&easy OCTOBER, No Hotel, Innova, and Problem Radical(s). Her work has been presented at La MaMa, Performa, Abrons Arts Center, the Chocolate Factory Theater, PS122, the Incubator Arts Project, Roulette Intermedium, National Sawdust, Cafè OTO (London), Borealis Festival (Norway), and SPOR Festival (Denmark). Texts/plays have been published in Antennae, PLAY A JOURNAL OF PLAYS, MusikTexte, and futow. Kara teaches in the Theatre Department at Barnard College.
Travis Just is a composer. His music often uses text, objects, and gesture in addition to instruments, voice, and electronics. He has composed many evening-length pieces, primarily for Object Collection. These include films, operas, live-video, and a wide variety of performance and music. Pieces include Problem Radical(s) (2009), Innova (2011), Actua 1 (2011), NO HOTEL (2013), cheap&easy OCTOBER (2015), It’s All True (2016), You Are Under Our Space Control (2019) Look Out Shithead, Episodes 1-3 (2020-2022), as well as numerous hybrid performance pieces and individual musical works. Travis is active as an improviser. His music has been released on Slip/Warp, a wave press, khalija, and Infrequent Seams. Writings in Arcana, Tempo, and the Experimental Music Yearbook. Commissions by Bergen National Opera/Borealis Festival, Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung, MAP Fund, and NYSCA. Travis worked for Richard Foreman’s Ontological-Hysteric Theater, assisted La Monte Young, and adapted Robert Ashley’s music for the stage. He is co-director of Object Collection.
Catrin Lloyd-Bollard is a performer, artist and musician. She has performed with Object Collection since 2016, acted with Title:Point since 2013, and makes music as CATFOX. thecatfox.com
Hannah Dougherty is a multimedia visual artist. She studied at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, MD and the Royal College of Art in London, UK. She lives and works in Berlin, Germany. hannahdougherty.net
Avi Glickstein has been working with Object Collection since appearing in Is This a Gentleman? at the Ontological-Hysteric Theater in 2004, aka “the beginning.” Since then, he’s been in most of OC’s major theater pieces and operas, touring nationally and internationally, as well as a number of shorter, one-off concert pieces. Other writers and directors he’s performed for include Richard Foreman, David Herskovits/Target Margin Theater, Sylvan Oswald, Aaron Schimberg, and Reina Gossett. Holding a BA from Columbia University and an MFA in Dramatic Writing from NYU, he lives with his little family of four in Flatbush. After working creatively with OC for so long, he’s really excited for the opportunity to join OC’s board and to help Kara and Travis continue to bring their unique, exciting work to audiences in NYC and around the world.
Miranda K Hardy is a visual artist and light designer based in Portland, OR. Working nationally and internationally she has collaborated with many artists including: Mallory Cattlet, Richard Foreman, Tom Lee, Gian Carlo Menotti, Jay Scheib, John Janke, The Builders Association, Alec Duffy (Hoi Polloi), Object Collection, and Banana Bag & Bodice. She is a member of the performance by design collective TENT, has company affiliations with Banana Bag & Bodice and Latitude 14 as well as being a co-founder of tinyelephant a studio dedicated to the performing object.
Peter Ksander is a scenographer who’s stage design work has been presented both nationally and internationally. In 2005 Ksander was a recipient of the NEA/TCG Career Development Program. In 2006 He joined the curatorial board of the Ontological-Hysteric Incubator. In 2008 he won an Obie award for Untitled Mars (this title may change) and in 2014 he won a Bessie award for This was the End. He holds a MFA from the California Institute of the Arts, is an Associate Professor at Reed College.
Alessandro Magania has previously performed with Object Collection in You Are Under Our Space Control (La MaMa), Text Score Dataset 1.0 All Characters In Space Are Fictitious (Performa 2021), Look Out Sh!^head, and HOUSECONCERT (2023). Also in works by The Million Underscores, The Wooster Group, Ben Gassman, Sibyl Kempson, Pioneers Go East, Eliza Bent, The Million Underscores, Allison Plamondon, Tereke Ortiz, and Roman Ondak, among others. Recent film and TV: Nomotopowell by Brent Chesanek (2022 FID Marseille), The Tumbler by Savannah Knoop, Autotrophia by Anton Vidokle (2021 Berlinale), and the Netflix series Living With Yourself.
Robin Margolis is working sound and visuals for love & jazz. He previously connected with Object Collection for Look Out Shithead Episode 3 and You Are Under Our Space Control (joining at the Brick Theater and its world premiere at La MaMa). As part of XFR Collective and Interference Archive he supports community arts and social movements as an AV archivist. He works as a media producer with El Grito and Academy Foundation Oral History Projects, and helps publish experimental arts at Ayin Press. He and Travis Just share a secret past as ska saxophonists.
Daniel Allen Nelson is a writer/performer, & founding member of Woofnova. Original works include: Microcosmitor, Give Back My Beast, Spoleum, Don’t Peek, Hearts & Tongues, and The Vanishing Play. He has performed at venues including: PS122, Public Theater, Target Margin, HERE, Ontological-Hysteric, DTW, Dixon Place, The Kitchen, Mabou Mines, 3LD, St. Ann’s Warehouse, Invisible Dog, Roulette, Issue Project Room; and in projects by John Jesurun, Richard Foreman, Object Collection, Jeff McMahon, and Joshua Gelb. Regional Theater/Touring: Berkeley Rep, Guthrie Theater, LaJolla Playhouse, Center Stage, Ensemble Theater, Theatre Jeune Lune, Jungle Theater, Red Eye, Ko Festival, Cafe Oto (London), Birmingham Rep (UK), & Borealis Festival (Norway). BFA: UCSB; MFA: Towson University.
Nicolás Noreña is a theater maker and performer born in Bogotá and based in Brooklyn. He has worked with Richard Foreman, Mary Overlie, The Talking Band, and Jess Barbagallo among others. He is is the artistic director of THE MILLION UNDERSCORES an experimental theater company through which he has developed, produced, directed and designed over ten original productions that have been presented at The Museum of Modern Art, FringeNYC, The Exponential Festival, The Brick Theater and Target Margin Theater. He was a LEIMAY fellow 2015-2020, LAB artist with Target Margin Theater in 2019 and was a resident artist with MABOU MINES. Nicolas currently teaches Six Viewpoints at the Experimental Theater Wing in New York University, and is the archive director of the Mary Overlie Legacy Project.
Fulya Peker is a New York and Istanbul based theater artist and educator. She has performed in works by Richard Foreman, John Zorn, Robert Ashley, Katsura Kan, David Michalek and Object Collection. Some of her most prominent credits as a writer/director include: Requiem Aeternam Deo, The Void, The Plague, The Red Book, DEM, The Blind!(s), and Maldoror. She is the founder and artistic director of Katharsis Performance Project and Modern Mythologies Project. Her articles on experimental theater, translations, and poems have been published both in Turkey and in the USA. Currently, she teaches at Istanbul Bilgi University and continues to present performances internationally.
David Pym is a filmmaker & video designer for live performance. Recent video designs: The Making of King Kong by Lisa Clair, directed by Eugene Ma (Target Margin), Bonnie’s Last Flight by Eliza Bent, directed by Annie Tippe (New York Theatre Workshop), Madame Lynch by Normandy Sherwood & Craig Flanagin (New Ohio).
Timothy Scott is a Brooklyn based performer. He has been working with The Million Underscores for all of its almost ten years in existence, performing, writing, producing and sometimes directing with them. He trained extensively with Mary Overlie studying her Six Viewpoints theory/philosophy and eventually performing alongside her.
Shannon Sindelar is a director and producer based in NYC. She’s the current producing director for the Obie Award-winning company The Builders Association and managing director for the composer-driven non-profit Experiments in Opera. She served as the producing artistic director of Brave New World Repertory Theatre, and has directed many productions with the cross-media performance group 31 Down. She was managing and programming director for Richard Foreman’s Ontological-Hysteric Theater, where the organization’s Incubator program garnered an Obie award under her direction. She’s an adjunct lecturer at Barnard College and an affiliated artist with New Georges. She was a John Wells Fellow at Carnegie Mellon University, where she received her MFA.
Peiyi Wong is a Bessie-Award winning scenographer and interdisciplinary artist based in Brooklyn, NY. She designs sets, installations, and costumes for live performance and film. A regular Object Collection collaborator, previous designs include You Are Under Our Space Control and The Geometry (co-design). Select credits – sets/costume: The Trial of the Catonsville Nine (Transport Group), A Hunger Artist (Sinking Ship/The Tank), MukhAgni (The Public UTR), The Seventh Voyage and All the Different Ways…(TiQ); sets/installation: Songs About Trains (Radical Evolution/Working Theater), The Vicksburg Project (Mabou Mines), Memoirs of a…Unicorn (NYLA, 2018 Bessie Outstanding Design), Charleses (The Tank, Hewes Award nomination). Faculty at Playwrights Horizons Theater School, NYU Tisch. MFA, CalArts. peiyiameliawong.com
Avi Glickstein Kara Feely Richard Foreman Mimi Johnson Travis Just Paula Matthusen Vanessa McDonnell Alice Reagan Aaron Schimberg Shannon Sindelar