![]() ![]() ![]() The theatrical and artistic reverberations are unceasing." -National Public Radio, Morning Edition "What emerges in Roadside Theater's work is a portrait of Americans in a locale, Appalachia, that's more rich and immediate than you're likely to read in any social history. In 2020, Ben was recognized by Time magazine as one of “27 People Bridging Divides Across America.” His work in theater, organizing, pedagogy, and economic development has been featured by, the Brookings Institution, TDR/The Drama Review, Harvard Law School, Americans for the Arts, PolicyLink, and the National Endowment for the Arts. He has also served as dramaturg on the German premieres of two Broadway musicals. The plays in Volume 2 come from Roadside’s intercultural and issue-specific theater work, including long-term collaborations with the African American Junebug Productions in New Orleans and the Puerto Rican Pregones Theater in the South Bronx, as well as with residents on both sides of the walls of prisons.īen Fink worked with the Roadside ensemble from 2015 through 2020, as a member of the Betsy! Scholars’ Circle, as the founding organizer of the Letcher County Culture Hub and the Performing Our Future coalition, and as the cofounder of the cross-partisan dialogue project Hands Across the Hills. The plays in Volume 1 offer a people’s history of the Appalachian coalfields, from the European incursion through the American War in Vietnam. Its two illustrated volumes explore a century-plus legacy of place-based theater in the United States and make the democratic populist theater tradition both attractive and widely accessible. The award-winning plays and their accompanying essays trace Roadside’s rural coalfield origin through its 45-year development of Appalachia’s first regionally-produced body of original musical drama, its experience touring 48 states and seven foreign countries, and its proven methodology for building diverse, inclusive audiences reflective of whole communities.Īrt in a Democracy: Selected Plays surveys Roadside’s exuberant and widely-performed People’s History of Appalachia series, its intercultural plays co-created with other culturally specific ensembles, and its collaborations with folk artists in Appalachia and Native America. The anthology makes public the ensemble’s grassroots creation and presentation process. And just as with an original painting, each work in this series is unique.This two-volume anthology tells the story of Roadside Theater’s first 45 years and includes nine award-winning original play scripts ten essays by authors from different disciplines and generations, which explore the plays’ social, economic, and political circumstances and a critical recounting of the theater’s history from 1975 through 2020. These processes heighten the depth of the images by building up the surface. I use the technique of encaustic layering the surface with wax, resin, and pigment. The Mythologies series, as objects straddle these mediums as some key compositions are rendered on canvas or panels. Not limited to this time period or genre, I am also inspired by literature and folklore, by the romanticism of photographers like Edward Steichen, Margaret Cameron, and by the hyper-sexual intent of photos by Robert Mapplethorpe. The final results are reminiscent of Baroque painters such as Schönfeld-Opferszene, Caravaggio, and Tiepolo. Renaissance painters such as Jan van Eyck, Michelangelo, and Titian inspire the compositions and narrative. The work exists between painting and photography, influenced equally by artists in both disciplines. Each image has an indeterminate narrative quality, which allows viewers to emotionally connect to the work and give it its final shape. This blending of elements creates an otherworldly effect and makes the models often appear godlike. To create the elaborate backgrounds I combine fragments of paintings with the photographs of the models. I also like to explore gender and body types and on occasion the idea of alien and cross-species integration into the human form. ![]() Most of my subjects are seen through an objectifying gaze, others as archetypes, some being hyper-masculine, others being characters in novels or plays, allowing them to be vulnerable and show emotions. Through extensive post-production, I place them into settings of epic proportion. I collaborate with models from virtually all walks of life – from doctors to sex workers, actors, and other artists. In “Modern Mythologies” I transform everyday people into characters of romantic and fantastical works to create contemporary mythology. ![]()
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