ORPHEAN CIRCUS

KEN ROHT

Producing Artistic Director, Orphean Circus

Writer - Director/Choreographer - Performer

(photo by Jim Hickcox)

It's just another vision from the gleefully twisted world of Ken Roht,
a choreographer-director-writer-performer and all-around theatrical auteur who matter-of-factly calls
his work "avant-garde song and dance--you know, whimsical, surrealist music theater,"
as if we all know what he's talking about.

LA Times, Feature Article

To call the prolific director/writer/choreographer/performer Ken Roht
a theatrical savant implies he knows not what he does—
that he's an idiot savant to boot. He might be the first to agree.
LA Stage Magazine, Feature Article

Roht's vision is part dream - part nightmare - a sliver of fantasy and some social commentary
wrapped with a huge blanket of imagination and creativity. By the end of the 55 minutes,
you feel that you fell through Alice's rabbit hole,
and the images you saw are you, looking back at yourself.
Entertainment Today

(photo by Kristin Richardson)

Bio...

Ken Roht is a Los Angeles-based artist, most recently co-directing and choreographing
The Behavior of Broadus for Burglers of Hamm and Sacred Fools Theater Company, co-produced by Center Theater Group.
Other recent CTG collaborations include a commission for his musical theater adaptation of The Nutcracker;
and he is currently a member of the 2014/2015 CTG Writers Workshop.

As a filmmaker, Ken's film Perfect Cowboy was chosen to close the first weekend of Los Angeles Outfest, screening at the Directors Guild of America. The festival celebrated Ken as one of their top five directors to follow, "5 in Focus".
Ken first film, The Bloody Indulgent, is a raunchy vampire musical starring a Backstreet Boy, Kevin Richardson.

Ken adapted, directed and choreographed Queenie Pie, Duke Ellington's only opera, for Chicago Opera Theater and Long Beach Opera. Ken also directed two one-act operas for LBO,
as well as the highly successful production of the Czech opera, The Good Soldier Schweik.

Ken is the creator and director of the yearly holiday musicals, for Evidence Room and Bootleg Theaters,
co-sponsored by the 99c Only Stores. Seven original musicals in eight years.

Ken directed and choreographed an evening of Offenbach one-acts for Bard Summerscape in New York.
His one-act opera Last Resort opened REDCAT's first New Works Festival.

Ken is a recipient of a 2010 COLA grant from the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, for the creation of a one-act opera in response to Prop 8, performed at Grand Performances at California Plaza. He was the recipient of the 2003 Audrey Skirball Kenis $45,000 TIME Grant, awarded to only five others in the country. Ken has also been granted and/or commissioned by Rockefeller Foundation, Durfee Foundation, Dance Theater Workshop, California Arts Council, and Bootleg Theater.

Ken choreographs for other directors, notably at the New York City Opera, New York Philharmonic, La Jolla Playhouse, Yale Rep, Oregon Shakespeare Festival (for seven consecutive years), Getty Villa (PEACE by Culture Clash, 2009), Mark Taper Forum, Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Cornerstone, Reza Abdoh’s Dar-a-Luz (seven years), South Coast Rep, Gale Gates et al,
Ohio's Great Lakes Theater Festival and Lookingglass in Chicago.