Annie Loui

Professor of Acting

Annie Loui is a professor of drama at the Claire Trevor School of the Arts at UC Irvine, where she directs the Movement Program for the M.F.A. Actor Training and serves as Co-Head of Acting. She is also a director, choreographer, and Artistic Director of CounterBalance Theater.

Loui trained with dancer Carolyn Carlson at the Paris Opera and studied in France with Etienne Decroux, Ella Jarosivitcz, and Jerzy Grotowski. Her original physical theater pieces have been presented internationally in France, Monaco, Germany, and Italy, and in the United States at venues including Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival. She has choreographed for the American Repertory Theater, Trinity Repertory Theater, South Coast Repertory, and Off-Broadway at the Signature Theatre.

Her directing credits include two world premieres of Chuck Mee’s scripts (Café le Monde and War to End War), as well as CounterBalance Theater productions of Jane Eyre, Longitude, and Elsewhere. Her intermedia collaborations include Reading Frankenstein with Antoinette LaFarge at UCI’s Beall Center for Art and Technology and the xMPL, and In the Grace of the World, commissioned by the Orchestra of St. Luke’s in New York. Her interactive video installation Falling Girl, created with Scott Snibbe, has been exhibited at the Berkeley Art Museum and the ArtRock Festival in Saint-Brieuc, France.

She has received a Massachusetts Choreographer’s Fellowship, a Belgium Artist’s Abroad Award, a Beall Center for Art + Technology Grant, and a National Endowment for the Arts New Forms Grant. Her book The Physical Actor was published by Routledge Press, with a second edition released in 2018.

More about her work can be found at http://counterbalancetheater.com/

My emphasis in Movement for the Actor is on developing each individual student's strength, flexibility, awareness, co-ordination and specificity; and creating viable theatrical connections between emotion and physicality.

To facilitate this daunting task, I am committed to daily physical warm-up based on exercises gleaned from yoga, modern dance and aikido designed to develop strength, stretch and alignment. In the first year of Graduate Training, mime isolations and figures oriented to specificity and intention are explored, as well as choreographic exercises designed to develop an awareness of self in space and self in relationship to the group. Contact improvisation, a major component of our physical work in the first year, is an improvisation form based on energy and weight exchange with a partner. The requisite tools of physical partnering (dance lifts, rudimentary tumbling, and counter-balance and weight exchange) are taught and practiced in this class. Contact improvisation in the context of an actor-training program is oriented, ultimately, to scene work; and honest, alert and engaged relationships with scene partners. The technique is also used to develop personal presence and the intuitive physical abilities of the actor (as well as improved coordination, balance, relaxation while engaging with a partner, and control). This work culminates in acting scenes worked within the context of a contact improvisation.

Contact Improvisation to Scene Study: authenticity in word and deed
Author's Accepted Manuscript of an article published in Dance, Theater and Performance Training TDPT, Fall 2012, copyright Taylor & Francis, available online at http://www.tandfonline.com.

During the second year of training, we work on period dance styles, emphasizing Elizabethan court manners and dances (Pavane, galliard and traditional country-dances). This work also culminates in scene work, usually Shakespearean dialogues spoken while dancing. Baroque minuets and manners are also covered, and the course ends with 19th and 20th century social dances (Viennese waltz, foxtrot, and tango) also placed in the context of a scene.

The third year of training in my classes is oriented to character development using techniques developed by Michael Chekhov. Imaging exercises, creative visualization, and incorporation are explored and shown in class towards a final goal of developing an honest and complete physical character. In preparation for future auditions, monologues are explored using contact improvisation. Actors are also coached in leadership of the morning warm-up, which they lead for the entire Graduate Acting Program during this final year of training.

In my role as the Head of the Movement Component of the Graduate Acting Program, I coordinate additional course work. Also included in the three years of movement training for the Graduate Acting Training Program are two courses in aikido/stage combat with Sensai Katz, and two six week courses dedicated to musical theater dance taught by Professor Andrew Palermo.

Choreography and/or Movement for Professional Theater

Signature Theater Company, NYC – American Clock (Jim Houghton)
South Coast Repertory Theater – Ridiculous Fraud (Sharon Ott)
American Repertory Theater, MA – Alcestis (Robert Wilson)
American Repertory Theater, MA – Fall of the House of Usher (Richard Foreman)
American Repertory Theater, MA – Gillette (David Wheeler)
American Repertory Theater, MA – Good Person of Setzuan (Andrei Serban)
American Repertory Theater, MA – T’is Pity She’s a Whore (Michael Kahn)
American Repertory Theater, MA – Uncle Vanya (David Wheeler)
Trinity Repertory Theater, RI – The Idiot (Jonas Jurasas)
Irvine Meadows Theater, CA – All American Anthem (Pacific Symphony)

Choreography and/or Movement for Academic Theater

UC Irvine – Dancing at Lughnasa (Keith Fowler)
UC Irvine – Trojan Women (Dudley Knight)
UC Irvine – Dangerous Liasons (Robert Cohen)
A.R.T. Institute, MA – Katchen von Heilbronn (Anne Bogart)
A.R.T. Institute, MA – The Rover (David Herskovits)
Brandeis University, MA – Comedy of Errors (commedia del’arte mask)
Brandeis University, MA – Madwoman of Chaillot (Ted Kazanoff)
Brandeis University, MA – Midsummer Night’s Dream (Danny Gidrone)
Brandeis University, MA – Time of Your Life (Jose Quintero)
Suffolk University, MA – Hard Times (Marilyn Plotkins)

Directing for Academic Theater

UC Irvine – Restoration Comedy (Amy Freed)
UC Irvine – Orlando (Sarah Ruhl)
UC Irvine – Fetes de la Nuit (Chuck Mee)
UC Irvine, CA – Dark of the Moon (Richardson and Berney)
UC Irvine, CA – Arabian Nights (Mary Zimmerman)
UC Irvine, CA – Big Love (Chuck Mee)
UC Irvine, CA – War to End War (Chuck Mee)
UC Irvine, CA – Love of Three Oranges (Carlo Gozzi)
UC Irvine, CA – Blood Wedding (Garcia Lorca)
UC Irvine, CA – Hansel and Gretel (Humperdinck, opera)
Brandeis University, MA – Exchange at Café Mimosa (Oana Maria Hock)
Brandeis University, MA – Berlin/Berlin (Oana Maria Hock)
Brandeis University, MA – Women of Trachis (Ezra Pound)

My central artistic interest is the creation of new theater works, both my own movement theater adaptations and working directly with playwrights on new projects. Since 2012, Counter-Balance Theater has been an umbrella for my new devised physical theater creations (please see website).

The following productions are either original movement theater works that I have created and staged, often in collaboration with a visual artist or composer, or premieres of new plays that I have directed.

2014 – A Christmas Carol, director/adapter of the Dickens classic, Winifred Smith Hall, November 2014
2013 – The Dwarf, director/adapter of the Nobel Prize-winning novel by Pars Lagerkvist (Counter-Balance Theater). Workshop productions: Grotowski Barn (Jan & May 2013); Clark Memorial Library, Sept 2013.
2012 – The Lost Estate (Le Grand Meaules), director/adapter of the classic French novel by Alain Fournier, xMPL May 2012. “Best Ensemble 2012” LA Arts Examiner
2012 – Jane Eyre, director/adapter of the classic novel (Counter-Balance Theater). Edison Theater, St Louis (Sept 2012); Claire Trevor Theater (Aug 2012); workshop Part 1, Grotowski Barn (June 2011); workshop Part 2, xMPL Theater (Dec 2011)
2010 – Cafe le Monde, director/choreographer, world premiere of a dance/theater script by Chuck Mee, ARK Theater, LA (May 2010)
2009/2010 – Blue Light, creator/director. Intermedia performance with writer Michelle Latiolais, video designer Greg Pacificar, projection designer Adam Levine. Workshop performance (June 2009); full production (Jan 2010), UCI Studio Theatre
2008/2010 – Falling Girl, co-creator/choreographer. Media installation with Scott Snibbe. ArtRock Festival 2010, St Briac, France; Berkeley Art Museum (June–Sept 2008)
2007 – In the Grace of the World, co-creator/director. Inter-media production for the Orchestra of St. Luke’s NYC, premiere Kaiser Theater, Montclair, NJ
2005 – Dans L'Ombre De Soi-Meme, co-creator/performer. Intermedia video collaboration with Mark Zaki, SEAMUS (Oregon), UCI Dance Film Festival
2004 – War To End War, director/choreographer. World premiere of a play/opera by Chuck Mee/Nathan Birnbaum, Claire Trevor Theater, UCI
2004 – Absence/Presence, choreographer and performer. Intermedia video collaboration with Mark Zaki, Not Still Art Festival (NYC, Oct 2004); UCR/California Museum of Photography (May–July 2004)
2002, 2003 – Reading Frankenstein, co-creator and director. Multimedia production with Antoinette LaFarge and Dr. James Fallon. Beall Center for Art & Technology, CA. Digital presentation at Freie Universität, Berlin (Nov 2002)
2000 – Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, adapter and director. Multimedia production with animator John Chi and composer Ben Israel. Irvine Barclay Theater, CA; Grimaldi Forum, Monaco
1999 – Vivaldi – The Red Priest, director. Premiere workshop production of a new play by Lee Kalcheim, Barrington Theater Company, MA
1999, 1998, 1997, 1995 – Sympathetic Magic, choreographer and performer. Solo movement theater concert with animator Karen Aqua. Performed in Germany, MA, CA, Boston University, and at international festivals (Decroux Symposium, IDAT, ADSA, etc.)
1997 – Transformations, adapter and director. Original movement theater work based on the poetry of Anne Sexton, Working Group, Home Front Theater, NYC
1995 – Moose Mating, director. Premiere of a new play by David Grae, HERE Theater, NYC (“Best Bets of 1995” Backstage)
1995 – Another Day in Paradise; The California Project, director and co-creator. Multimedia work with writer Klaus Lintzinger, performed at UCI Art Gallery, UC Berkeley, and UCSB
1993 – Nosferatu, adapter and director. Movement theater/film with Murnau’s 1926 film, original score by Caleb Sampson, UCI Concert Hall
1991 – The West Wing, adapter and director. Music theater with composer David Eggar, based on Edward Gorey. Boston Music Theater Project, C. Walsh Theater, MA
1990 – Parzival, adapter and director. Collaboration with composer Robert Kyr and Project Ars Nova, Newton Arts Center, MA
1988 – Vintage Alice, creator. Original movement theater work based on the score by David del Tredici, Newton Arts Center and Radcliffe College, MA
1986 – The Dybbuk, director and co-creator. Created with composer Alan Bern, based on the Jewish folktale, Laurie Theater, Brandeis University, MA
1984 – Shoes Trilogy, choreographer and performer. Work for dancer, saxophone, and 30 pairs of shoes. Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, MA; Boston Film and Video Foundation; Sanders Theater, Harvard University. Recipient of Massachusetts Choreographer’s Award
1983 – Night Spent Flying and Falling, Annie Loui and Company. Solo and group works performed at venues including Sanders Theater (Harvard), S.U.N.Y. Brockport, Massachusetts College of Art, and Hasty Pudding Theater, MA