page_title: Luke Leonard
section_title: Life and career
hierarchical_section_title: Luke Leonard / Life and career
caption_attribution_description: English: "Third Telling", a scene from David Lang and Mac Wellman's opera "The Difficulty of Crossing a Field", directed by Luke Leonard, produced by The University of Texas at Austin, 2010.
context_page_description: Luke Leonard is an American artist whose work spans the performing and visual arts. He is a theater director, designer, experimental playwright, actor, filmmaker, and the Founding Artistic Director of Monk Parrots, a New York-based multidisciplinary theatre company. Leonard's stage productions have been described as "outstanding" by The New York Times, and “bold and experimental...a clear vision...pure theatrical experience” by nytheatre.com. He lives in New York.
context_section_description: Luke Landric Leonard was born and raised in Houston, Texas where he attended Cypress Creek High School, played football, and acted in school plays. He left the football team after his junior year to become president of Cy Creek's Theatre Department and to focus solely on acting in preparation for college auditions. He studied theatre at Sam Houston State University before moving to New York City in 1995 to enroll in the BFA Acting Program at Brooklyn College where he graduated in 1998.
  1996–2001
  Leonard was among the pioneering artists living and working in DUMBO, Brooklyn where he founded DUMBO Theater eXchange a/k/a DTX with Natalie Cook Leonard and Yukihiro Nishiyama.  DTX promoted emerging talent by presenting new writers and directors and fostered neighborhood development within the downtown Brooklyn area.  DTX; however, did not survive gentrification and the venue was added to the list of artist casualties forced out of DUMBO. On December 15, 2000, a week before Christmas, Leonard and his wife were illegally vacated from their loft on Water Street along with 60 other tenants. DTX presented approximately 30 productions (short and full length) circa 2000–2001 and hosted all theater events for the 4th Annual DUMBO Arts Festival, produced by Joy Glidden/d.u.m.b.o. arts center (dac). Leonard also studied acting and directing with legendary, experimental director Joseph Chaikin during this time and corresponded with Chaikin by letters until his passing in 2003.
  2002–2004
  Michelle Moskowitz-Brown hired Leonard to create a theatre series for a new performance space at Brooklyn Information and Culture called BRIC Studio (now BRIC Arts Media House).  Leonard established Theater Nexus, a monthly series devoted to emerging and established theatre artists.  After losing the DUMBO space, BRIC became DTX's new home for promoting alternative theatre in NYC.  Curated by S. Melinda Dunlap and Leonard, Theater Nexus presented experimental work by numerous artists, such as, 13P, Mac Wellman, Jeffrey M. Jones, Young Jean Lee, Erin Courtney, Ken Rus Schmoll, Connie Congdon, S. Melinda Dunlap, Luke Leonard, David Todd, B. Walker Sampson, Barbara Cassidy, Jonathan Bernstein and Douglas Green, to name a few. In 2003, Leonard became the father of actress Gates Leonard.
  2007–2010
  DTX changed its name to Monk Parrots in 2007 and Leonard was accepted to the highly selective graduate directing program at The University of Texas at Austin where he studied stage direction and studio art and received a Master of Fine Arts in 2010. Leonard was influenced by renowned artists at UT-Austin, such as, Michael Smith, sculptor Margo Sawyer, and playwrights Kirk Lynn and Steven Dietz. In 2009 he worked at Berliner Ensemble for experimental theatre director and visual artist Robert Wilson (director) and directed the Italian Premiere of Israel Horovitz's L'indiano vuole il Bronx (The Indian Wants the Bronx). In 2010 he directed the Texas Premiere of David Lang and Mac Wellman's The Difficulty of Crossing a Field, which was nominated for eight Austin Critics' Table Awards including Best Opera.
  2010–2012
  Leonard returned to New York to resume his role as Artistic Director of Monk Parrots and began building a new body of performance work. His concept-driven approach explores the possibilities of theatre and with his company he began to hone an "edgy choreographed directorial style"
  Luke Leonard/Monk Parrots made Here I Go with playwright David Todd; a theatrical portrait of a Texan housewife in her 60s contemplating suicide inspired by the death of Leonard's grandmother. It was presented at 59E59 Theaters from May 22, 2012 to June 3, 2012.  Leonard created the main character, Lynette, her circumstances and a performance structure, then asked Todd to write six monologues that Monk Parrots could arrange during rehearsals. The staging was created first with five, nonspeaking actors, then a prerecorded voice of Lynette was added to the actors' movements; blurring the lines between dance and theatre. Reviewer David Roberts described Here I Go as "a brilliantly conce
caption: "Third Telling", a scene from David Lang and Mac Wellman's "The Difficulty of Crossing a Field", directed by Luke Leonard
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