Helen Stoltzfus
“Dispatches From the Great Burning”
The sobering subject of climate change is met head-on.
Over the past 25 years, Ms. Stoltzfus has created, directed, performed, and produced over a dozen devised ensemble performance works. She is co-founder and co-artistic director of Black Swan Arts & Media, a San Francisco Bay area company that has created and produced performance and multimedia plays that travel beyond borders of race, religion, culture, and politics since 2004.
Ms. Stoltzfus is the creator and solo performer of Dispatches from the Great Burning, one woman’s reckoning with the climate crisis, which premiered at San Francisco’s Marsh and was featured in its “Solo Highlights” in 2021. Other works include: Like A Mother Bear, a solo performance exploring personal and planetary health (Ko Festival, Amherst, Massachusetts), Heart of America: Stories from the New Ellis Island, a dance/aerial arts performance featuring immigrant stories recorded by children (San Francisco’s Theatre Artaud), and The Prepared Table: A Feast of Foods, Live Performance, and Stories from Iraq, Afghanistan, and the FOB (Forward Operating Base of the US Military), a multi-media performance and culinary event illuminating first-person narratives from the post 9/11 wars. (Oakland’s historic Bellevue Club).