Interview with Margaret Chase
Interviewed by Rae Maxwell-Ross (RMR) | January 2022
Captions by Akari Komura
More About Margaret Chase
Artist Bio
Margaret Chase began doing political street theatre as a teenager, and has worked in the theatre and the nonprofit sector as an artist and fundraiser all her life. She’s a writer, director, actor, and poet, with a BFA in Theatre from Boston University. In 2018 she co-curated “Artists Undeterred,” featuring two exhibitions at the Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art and the Pride Center of SI that showcased cutting-edge art and performances by more than 75 disabled artists from the US and abroad, supported by a DCA Art Fund grant from Staten Island Arts. For that project, she was awarded a grant from NY Humanities. “Pendulum,” her 2-woman play about mind games in the age of terror, was produced for Manhattan Repertory Theatre’s spring short play competition. She has long been engaged with issues of civil rights, women’s rights, and later, disability rights, after being diagnosed years ago with progressive bilateral hearing loss. She relies upon a cochlear implant and a hearing aid, and likes being bionic. She is working on her 4th play, "Resurrecting Lady Dada: 3 Voices for Now," about female artists of the Dada movement.
Artist Statement
I am captivated by the human impulse toward transcendence, and how that quest affects behavior. I love the rogue’s gallery of humanity, and am drawn to understand what drives people to give themselves over to a vision. I dwell in and explore the intersections of art and disability. Imagining and portraying women’s lives compels me. Environments that push the individual to break through, from strange dystopias to sumptuous dreamscapes, intrigue me. I am curious about transgressors. History and its ghosts interest me. The willingness to be vulnerable and to take risks in performance attracts me, and unexpected theatrical combinations in physicality, voice, characterization, and interaction. All forms of art are living languages, and catalysts to expand the vocabulary of the imagination.
