Lisa Jo Epstein

Lisa Jo Epstein, Artistic Director and co-founder of Gas & Electric Arts in Philadelphia, is a theatre director, educator and community-based artist. Her foray into physical theatre began in Minneapolis at Theatre de la Jeune Lune. After graduate school at the University of Texas at Austin, she moved to Paris France for several years where she served as Ariane Mnouchkine's assistant during the Théâtre du Soleil's creation of Molière's Tartuffe.  While in Paris, she also worked at Augusto Boal's Center for the Theatre of the Oppressed. Upon returning to the States, Lisa Jo became an Assistant Professor of Theatre in the Department of Theatre & Dance at Tulane University where she won awards for teaching and directing, both inside the university and in the community.

Gas & Electric Arts was co-founded by Lisa Jo Epstein and David Brown in 2005 as a multi-faceted theatre organization that matches the development of unchartered theatrical territories for the stage with activism through theatre in the community. What distinguishes Gas & Electric Arts is the powerful combination of our hybrid performance style that emerges out of rigorous physical and vocal training followed by collaborative creation during rehearsals of fearless new plays, paired with our deeply-rooted investment in Theatre of the Oppressed-based workshops and storytelling events as catalysts for social change and community building.

Our performance style exists at the intersection of a spectrum of theatrical forms: from the epic, disciplined work of the Théâtre du Soleil to the joys of stage clowning and puppetry, from choreographic, movement-based performance to adventurous vocal exploration stemming from Roy Hart techniques, as well as the integration of new kinds of sung music. We use a physical dramaturgy to dive into written text, a mesh of movement and vocal improvisation to enable spoken and imagistic metaphor to emerge and consolidate, give density and desire, meaning and matter to what appears on stage. It is thus that we have begun to develop our niche in Philadelphia for a hybrid type of devised theatre that bridges our commitment to living playwrights with a rigorous physical acting style that leaves quotidian expression behind, leading actors to devise vivid, extra-ordinary forms for their bodies to be instruments of passion and resonators of our time. We have been instrumental in introducing Philadelphia to exemplary playwrights, producing local and/or world premieres by playwrights such as Lisa D’Amour, Abi Basch, Kira Obolensky, Deb Margolin and Juanita Rockwell.  For Gas & Electric Arts, Lisa Jo has directed: Cabinet of Wonders, An Impossible History(world premiere by Kira Obolensky), Anna Bella Eema(Lisa d'Amour)--2008 Barrymore Award nominations for Best Ensemble and Best Lead Actress , O Yes I Will(local premiere, Deb Margolin), Quick Silver(Kira Obolensky/local premiere), and Voices Underwater(rolling world premiere, Abi Basch). In Philadelphia, she has taught at Temple University, Arcadia, and University of the Arts, guest artist residency at Towson University, and most recently she has been a guest artist teaching movement and devising original performance at Rutgers-Camden.