About

 

Artist Statement

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I work in the field of visual and devised theatre. I define my practice as “theatrical poetry” – a place where powerful images, heartfelt performance, deep meaning, unique design, captivating sound, poetic language, and beautiful lighting meld together to create exquisite theatrical expression.

In my work, I blend live acting, shadow theatre, puppets, theatre of objects, masks, movement, scenography, and music to produce imaginative, aesthetically captivating, thought-provoking, and engaging theatre experiences for the audience. As an artist, I thrive through the creation of new and original work. In my artistic career, I strive to contribute my knowledge, skills, and passion to the national and international theatre community, to collaborate with diverse artists from around the world, and to develop, create and produce artistic work of purpose, relevance, and beauty. 

My work is born at the junction of personal experiences and social issues. As an immigrant woman, who was brought up in a socially conscious family, has experienced many social structures and world cultures, and who creates her art in the “fringes” of theatre, I am most interested in intersectional feminism, and the themes of greed, power, privilege, equity, and justice.

I create theatre through a highly collaborative, integrated, vision-driven devising process. Such process often brings the entire artistic team – director, performers, designers, composer - in the studio-laboratory and embraces investigations of form and content as fundamental components in creating theatrical language, expression, and narrative.

This process abolishes the traditional pyramidal hierarchy structure, and invites the team to form a circle of creation around the project. It reimagines traditional chronology (from design to rehearsal), and explores aspects of the production through reflexive, overlying, and non-linear design/devising/creation phases.

The process is highly demanding and at the same time it offers richness and potential for innovation that are unparalleled. It challenges notions of traditional, institutionalized, and commercial theatre creation in terms of form, as well as contemporary social and cultural values in terms of content. It allows for the creation of performances where all elements – theme, scenography, puppets, performers, story, music, costumes, and light – weave and work together to form a holistic theatrical expression, i.e., a theatrical experience in which all parts are integrated into a singular, collaboratively authored gesture. My latest productions, Unfolding and Ascend, are prime examples of this artistic process.

Bio


Margarita Blush is a Bulgarian American theatre artist. She holds a BFA degree in Performance and an MFA degree in Directing for Visual and Puppet Theatre from the National Academy for Theatre and Film Arts (NATFA) in Sofia, Bulgaria, and a certificate in Lecoq-based devised physical theatre and pedagogy from Embodied Poetics in London, UK.

Margarita works internationally and has performed, taught, directed, and studied in Bulgaria, France, Germany, Indonesia, Japan, Macedonia, Turkey, the UK, and the USA. 

Margarita moved to the US in 1995, where she later became a Teaching Artist and the Outreach Director for the Fort Wayne Dance Collective (FWDC) in Fort Wayne, IN. Margarita was also a performer and choreographer for the FWDC Touring Company, touring regionally and nationally.

Margarita moved to Boulder, CO in 2006. In Boulder she created and produced River Story (2008) and The Crane Wife (2011). Both shows won the Encore Award at the Boulder International Fringe Festival (2009, 2013). The Crane Wife was also presented at the 2015 National Puppetry Festival.

Margarita's production, Unfolding (2015), has been performed at festivals and venues in the U.S. (including the 2017 National Puppetry Festival), Bulgaria, Turkey (funded by The Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation USArtists International Program), and Indonesia. In spring 2019, the show had a 2-week run at The Tank in NYC with a great critical and audience acclaim.

From 2013-2017 Margarita worked as a professor in Directing and Performance at the University of Connecticut’s Puppet Arts Program.

In summer 2019, as a recipient of an Asian Cultural Council Individual Fellowship, Margarita traveled to Japan and over 8 weeks studied traditional Japanese theatre forms.

During the 2020/2021 academic year, Margarita was the Grant Wood Fellow/Visiting Assistant Professor in Directing at the Department of Theatre Arts at the University of Iowa.

In 2022, Margarita traveled to Indonesia, supported by a Network of Ensemble Theaters NET/TEN Travel Grant and over six weeks engaged with Indonesian artists, audiences, and students.