Download Lindsay`s Bio 2015

Lindsay Abromaitis-Smith BIO
[email protected]
Sheisdescending.tumblr.com
Lindsay Abromaitis-Smith is a story collector and artist who practices storytelling mainly
through puppetry and gesture. She is working towards bringing back ritual into theater
so that people might remember what is essential to being.
In 2012, shortly before she was diagnosed with ALS, Lindsay debuted two puppet
works. Epyllion, came about through a three year artist residency program at HERE
Arts Center, for which she received a Jim Henson Project Grant. Mental Hygiene (what
makes brains dirty and how to get them clean) was a part of Labapalooza at St.
Ann's Warehouse.
Since her diagnosis, Lindsay has been working on Bloom, She is Descending. The
piece began as a one woman show about Lindsay's exploration of ALS: "The night
before I was diagnosed with ALS, I dreamed of a goddess made entirely of flowers and
plants who told me I had to learn how to physically manifest differently. People ask me
how it feels. This is my answer." Over the past three years it has had many iterations.
The piece was workshopped at Dixon Place and The Tigermen Den, in New Orleans.
The most recent version at Five Myles Gallery, incorporated dance, puppetry, video,
and sculpture installation. Lindsay is currently creating a documentary film about the
show with Bobby Sheehan and looking for venues to produce the show again as a multi
media installation.
Her writing on ritual through puppetry and the use of the idol in art was published in The
New York Arts Magazine's summer 2011 issue.
She began her study of puppetry with Alain Recoing at the Theatre Aux Mains Nues in
Paris, France. Since moving to New York she has participated in a wide range of
performance projects. As a puppeteer she has worked with Basil Twist in Arias with
a Twist and Petrushka. With Mabou Mines and Lee Bruer, she has worked on La
Divina, Peter and Wendy, and Red Beads. Lindsay has also had the opportunity to
work on such projects as Chris Greens's Firebird, Lake Simon's White Elephant, Nami
Yamamoto and Matt Acheson's Flying with My Shooting Stars, Happenstance
Theater's Prufbox, Tom Lee's Odysseus and Ajax, and David Michael Friend's
Moonfishing. As a performer, Lindsay has worked with Joey Arias and Manfred
Thierry Mugler in the film Z Chromosome, as a percussionist with The Clearing, and
as an aerialist in the solo performance piece, Domestic Snakes.
As a designer and puppet choreographer, Lindsay has collaborated with Nu
Dance Theater for several years on projects including Hinterland, Elle d'Elles and Si
Suelement Si. Other design credits include Montgomery College's Butoh Macbeth
and Alexis Macnab's Trigger Happy Jack. Her own work includes an adaptation of
Cupid and Psyche with composer/writer Daniel Jose Older and composer Caroline
Yes; and a dance piece, Finding a Way Back, that she co-created, designed and
composed music for with Caroline Yes. She wrote, designed and directed two
children's shows, Grandfather Frost and Dragon Dreams for The New York Public
Library's Holiday Extravaganza. She has created various short puppet shows that have
been seen in many downtown New York art spaces including HERE Arts Center, the
Theatre for the New City, Galapagos Art Space and One Arm Red.
Lindsay's other artistic inclinations lean towards dancing, painting, gardening, aspiring
to be Joseph Cornell and Remedio Varo, kazoo playing and making experimental
cookies.