Jessica Wallenfels
Director/Choreographer
Hello!
I am a queer, female artist-educator committed to fighting the biases, norms and systemic racism of dominant culture, including white supremacist and patriarchal systems of oppression which are endemic in our society and that require deep reflection, as well as daily action, to eradicate.
Antiracist work
My antiracist work is best demonstrated by the original work produced by my theater company, Many Hats Collaboration, over the past four years as we worked to center underrepresented voices through the creation of new works under the 5 in 5 Initiative.
In my casting, particularly in educational settings, I am always looking to upend expectations about race, class, gender and ability and advocate for those who haven’t had the privilege of prior opportunities. Currently, conversations around casting are ground zero for teaching around race and representation. These conversations call for courageous transparency by those in leadership. I find it imperative to draw from an inclusive and wide-ranging selection of texts, authors and playwrights, and to acknowledge my own socio-cultural identity as part of the lens through which I communicate. I recognize gender fluidity as an evolving expression of identity, and its impact on how we will view casting and storytelling going forward.
My professional choreography career started with one of the founding producers of community-engaged work, Cornerstone Theater, in Los Angeles, and had a profound effect on my commitment to inclusion in the theater work I create.
Bio
Jessica Wallenfels is a director/choreographer and educator. She creates new work that is music and movement-driven as artistic director of Many Hats Collaboration, and also works as a freelance director/choreographer and educator. She teaches movement, devising and acting and is currently an adjunct professor at Portland State University and Mt. Hood Community College.
Directorial work includes direction/choreography of The Wolves at Portland Playhouse and Into the Woods for Broadway Rose. She co-directed/choreographed Everybody at Artists Repertory Theatre and Scarlet, a new musical, at Portland Playhouse. She has also directed Dragons Love Tacos, Ella Enchanted and Pete the Cat for Oregon Children’s Theatre. In early 2019, she started the 5 in 5 project with Many Hats, and since then has embarked on seven new works spanning mainstage, video, workshop, and classroom projects, centering BIPOC voices in the majority of projects.
Wallenfels was a choreographer for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival for four seasons and six shows. Regional choreography includes: Cymbeline, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Robin Hood, Love’s Labors Lost, Dead Man’s Cell Phone, and Romeo and Juliet (Oregon Shakespeare Festival). Regional productions include Dancing at Lughnasa (Seattle Repertory Theatre); Sometimes a Great Notion (Portland Center Stage); Gracie and the Atom (Artists Repertory Theatre); You For Me For You and Light in the Piazza (Portland Playhouse). New York: Canard, Canard, Goose with The Civilians (Joe’s Pub), Speed Hedda (La Ma Ma e.t.c.), original works at HERE Arts Center, ps 122, WAX, University Settlement, Culture Project. Los Angeles credits include the Walt Disney Concert Hall, The Old Globe Theater, and The Mark Taper Forum. Other places: Ainadamar at Tanglewood Music Center. Wallenfels provided choreography for three shows in Cornerstone Theatre's BH Cycle including A Beautiful Country by Chay Yew, Magic Trix, adapted by Rickerby Kinds and Broken Hearts: A BH Mystery by Lisa Loomer.
Original works with Many Hats Collaboration include The Snowstorm, Find Me Beside You, Truth and Beauty, Rest Room, Mutt, Stages, and Break, Then Open.
Educational productions include direction of Richard & Jane & Dick & Sally, Wolves Eat Elk and The Servant of Two Masters at Portland State University, The Laramie Project, Arabian Nights, and Dead Man’s Cell Phone at Portland Community College, Little Prisons, an evening of new works for video, at Western Oregon University and Adding Machine, A Musical at Willamette University. She has created choreography for Spring Awakening at Lewis & Clark College and The Conference of the Birds at Willamette University. Wallenfels has directed devised pieces at Western Oregon University and Pacific University. She taught acting and movement at California State School of the Arts 2011-2018. Wallenfels has been an adjunct faculty member at University of Portland, Mt. Hood Community College, and PSU. She has taught devising and movement to the Portland Playhouse apprentices, co-taught in Oregon Children’s Theater’s Intergenerational Theater program through Kaiser Permanente, worked for Dance for Parkinson’s Oregon as an instructor, and taught for Staged! Conservatory since 2013.
Wallenfels holds an MFA from University of Portland, a BFA in Acting from California Institute of the Arts and attended Dell’Arte International. She is a four-time Drammy Award winner for Outstanding Choreography and a PAMTA Award winner for Outstanding Choreography; Many Hats Collaboration and Coho Productions share the Drammy for Outstanding Production, 2014-2015.
Teaching and learning
Theater artists must provide breathtaking, visceral experiences that subvert expectations about race, class, ability and gender in order to rewrite cultural and societal stories about ourselves, and reveal the similarities in our experiences. It is my mission to create brave spaces for students where we can embody our riskiest, most innovative and urgent work. With students who grew up with screens as entertainment, I seek to create spaces where people can exchange breath and story, share frailty, celebrate the virtuosity of the human body and the quixotic nature of this human experience.
Essential to teaching is my own continued learning. In my consent-based practice, I am on track to receive my Level 2 certificate in Foundations of Intimacy from Intimacy Directors & Coordinators in March 2023. I have also completed two Linklater trainings in the past year, one studying Sound & Movement in Orkney, Scotland. In my constantly evolving teaching practice, I continually search for new ways to speak to multiple learning styles, identities and backgrounds including neurodiverse populations.
Devising is the unique expression of self-authorship in live practice, which is the heart of my teaching. Helping students to find their own authorial voices through performance is what excites me most. I teach acting, voice, movement, devising, intro to theater, acting for nonmajors and an arts survey course. Yet it is the student’s choicemaking process concerning self-expression and agency, that enters the room regardless of what subject I am teaching.
My theater company, Many Hats Collaboration, creates theater performances which reimagine music and movement on stage.