THEATER

CECILE PINEDA completed her theater studies in 1970, taking an advanced M.A. degree in theater from San Francisco State at the time of the San Francisco State student strike, the longest student strike in American university history. Among her chief formative influences she counts Peter Schumann of the Bread & Puppet Theater, Paul Rebillot of the Drama faculty of San Francisco State and later Stanford University; and the writings of Antonin Artaud. Her mentors include Dugald MacArthur, formerly of the drama faculty of San Francisco State and later of Temple University; and R. G. Davis former director of the S.F. Mime Troupe, who was responsible for organizing the Radical Theater Festival which took place at S. F. State in 1969.

She founded Theatre of Man which she directed from 1969 to 1981. Envisioned as a poet's theater, her work drew on the hidden sources of dream, archetype and myth to move an audience in ways other than the purely rational. Performance pieces were developed in an intense rehearsal process in which actors collaborated with composers, designers, choreographers, playwrights, and sculptors under her direction. Her work in the theater eventually became the apprenticeship she would require to transform her primary medium to fiction.

Among her collaborators were William E. Young and Martin Bresnick, composers; Roger Berry, Nancy Worthington, and Peter Veres, sculptors; and Michel Indergand, conceptual artist and designer.

PERFORMANCE WORKS

EXPERIMENTS IN THE UNDERGROUND

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