How To Die / Bios

How To Die - Performer Stories
Keith Hennessy, Jules Beckman, Seth Eisen

Jules Beckman and Keith Hennessy have worked together since 1987 on several projects spanning performance, teaching, ritual and protest, including the companies Contraband, CORE, and Cahin-caha, cirque b‚tard. From solo performance to sex ritual to street action, Jules has provided the beat for Keith’s life/art interventions; a brother-muse-ness of mutual inspiration. Seth Eisen and Hennessy have collaborated on several projects since 2000 including Circo Zero’s Sol niger, American Tweaker, and Pride/Shame.

Jules Beckman is a San Francisco native who now lives in France with his partner and
their two boys. He is a co-director, with Fanny Soriano, of "libertivore", a circus-performance company and is currently on an extensive circus tour with Collectif AOC. He has performed with French companies (Cahin-caha, cirque b‚tard) Mark Tompkins/IDA, ex-nihilo, Christof Haleb/La Zouze and others. And in the US with Contraband, CORE, Anna Halprin, Zaccho/Joanna Haigood, Remy Charlip and many others.

Seth Eisen’s work is a hybrid of contemporary performance: Butoh, puppetry, clowning, drag, musical theater, performance art, and video. Seth is also a visual artist working in the forms of installation, book arts, fetish object and costume. He has been performing, exhibiting and curating in the Bay Area since 1994. Seth performed with Harupin–Ha, and Ink Boat from 1994-1999. Since 2000 he has been creating visuals, performing and touring with Keith Hennessy and the contemporary circus company, Circo Zero in the US and Europe. In 2008 Seth created the acclaimed solo show Blackbird: A Queer Vocal History (work in progress), about the lives of seven queer performers from the 1930’s to the present who found innovative musical ways to counter the severe social and political repression of their eras. Blackbird will have a world-premier in June 2010. See www.eyezen.org for more details.

Keith Hennessy is one of the most prolific and widely presented of Bay Area dance and performance artists. Working simultaneously in the fields of contemporary dance, circus and performance art, Keith is also active in public ritual, arts organizing & curating, and political street action. He is a co-founder of 848 Community Space/CounterPULSE and is a PhD candidate in performance studies at UC Davis. In 2009, Circo Zero’s Sol niger won two Isadora Duncan Dance Awards, and Keith was awarded residencies at The MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, and Djerassi.