Susan Tenney

Director-Choreographer Susan Tenney has forged a unique fusion of interdisciplinary work – combining dance, theater, and spoken text. Her repertoire, in addition, contains a great many pure dance pieces ranging from the lyric to the elegiac, from pop culture to the austerely classic.

Susan's current project Something Sudden 5wept Ov3r Me, her 10th in a series of text-dance collaborations with her brother, playwright Steven Mark Tenney, will be premiered at the Planet Connections Festival in June. They have gathered together an exceptionally talented cast of actors and dancers, who weave together in innovative ways to tell the story of a highly evolved alien civilization trying to connect with humans to save planet Earth. By turns touching, beautiful, and humorous, it is a unique theater experience — and a fun way to kick off the summer.

Steven Mark Tenney is the author of many plays, one-acts, librettos, and what he now calls “night-gluons” — text-dance fusions, His works have been performed at many venues in New York City and regionally. The cast includes a winner of Outstanding Actor in a Planet Connections Comedy, an actress featured on Gossip Girl, a veteran of Broadway, off-Broadway, and regional theater, a Principal Dancer from the National Ballet of Peru, a Company Dancer from American Repertory Ballet, and a dancer with the Metropolitan Opera.

Although Planet Connections is enormously supportive in its mounting of new works, there are many production expenses that must be independently financed. Contributions are much appreciated and all will go directly to defraying production costs. Please consider making a donation.

You can also check out our web page at Planet Connections. That page lists performance dates, times, and venue, gives more information about the show itself, includes press from earlier productions, and provides a link for purchasing tickets. We hope to see you at the show!

Susan's past works have been produced by the Williamstown Theatre Festival, Edinburgh International Theatre Festival, Tanglewood, Princeton University, Rider University,  and in New York by Jean Erdman and her Theater of the Open Eye, and venues that include the Dia Center for the Arts, Spoke the Hub, Theater for the New City, Ethnic Folk Arts Center, and the Limelight as Susan Tenney and Company. In 2011 she produced excerpts from her “Je Me Souviens…I Remember…” at the Florence Gould Hall, an evening length multigenerational work that is currently in development. She has also worked in Off-Broadway, and regional theaters including McCarter Theatre, and the Cincinnati Playhouse, and staged several Broadway benefits and cabarets.
She has received 5 commissions from the Princeton Coalition for Peace Action, and one commission from The Princeton Arts Council.
Most recently she was a Directing participant at La Mama's International Directing Symposium, in Umbria Italy.

She is a member of the Society for Stage Directors and Choreographers.

Find out more at planetconnections.org/something-sudden-5wept-0v3r-me/

Donate to Susan Tenney