About The Eva Steinmetz Project

The Eva Steinmetz Project creates original, ensemble-driven works of theater in Philadelphia, PA. Helmed by director Eva Steinmetz, core collaborators of The Project vary and are determined by the needs of each piece, but almost always involve a mash-up of performers, including musicians, dancers, visual artists, and actors, all of whom become active participants in the writing and creation of the piece.

A core mission of The Eva Steinmetz Project is to use live performance as an exercise in radical compassion, self-examination, and human connection. Pieces created by The Project follow dream-like rules of magical realism to explore the muddy space between narrative and abstraction, between tragedy and delight, between ego and humility, and between justice and crime. Each new work begins with a line of political inquiry or a feeling of unrest. The ensemble explores related questions and ideas through text, movement, music, and conversation, developing interdisciplinary variations on the theme. These exercises and compositions ultimately serve as building blocks for the final piece. The result of this process is an original work of theater, where musical motifs, dance structures, and narrative rules of magical realism combine to illustrate the ever-flawed complexities and hypocrisies of human relationships.

The Eva Steinmetz Project demonstrated its commitment to radical compassion and self-examination with the May 2017 premier of Shuttlefish: a dancetheater fugue about grief and the mundanity of coping with life after death. In a series of vignettes, five women and a string trio expressed both the banal and the torrential emotions that are stirred by recent loss. Lily Kind wrote for Phindie, “I kept needing to articulate the experience to my friends, encouraging them to attend… Shuttlefish reminds me to be grateful for the unremarkable.” Eva Steinmetz and producer/performer Johanna Kasimow are currently submitting an application to bring Shuttlefish to the Teszt festival in Romania, for the upcoming season in May 2018.

The Eva Steinmetz Project continues its mission into self-exploration and political inquiry through a re-imagining of Franz Kafka’s The Trial. During workshops in November and December 2017, an ensemble of four performers and a foley artist will explore issues of violence and visibility. The piece will draw inspiration from Kafka’s labyrinthine court system, taking into consideration current expressions of fascism in the American political landscape. Our line of inquiry will stem from the various forms of violence that we tolerate in our society, and the kinds that we hide–behind walls, in slaughterhouses, prisons, asylums, refugee camps, and underserved neighborhoods, to name a few. A longer rehearsal process and performance run is scheduled for early summer 2018.