FOUNDER BIOS:

IVAN TALIJANCIC is a director and cultural producer working at the intersection of theater, film, dance, performance, music, installation art and new media, in New York City and around the globe. Born in the former Yugoslavia and raised in Italy before immigrating to the United States, Ivan completed his university studies with a BA in Theatre (cum laude) at the University of California, San Diego and an MFA in Directing at Columbia University’s School of the Arts in New York City on a Kathryn Bache Miller Scholarship, and has assisted Robert Wilson and Julie Taymor as part of his graduate internship program. Immediately upon completion of his studies, Ivan co-founded WaxFactory, for which he has created and produced over 20 performance, installation and film/video works to date, presented on four continents. Alongside his work with the company, Ivan has maintained a dynamic career path as an educator, producer, journalist as well as a freelance director in non-profit and commercial realm.

Amongst his WaxFactory projects, he directed LULU, QUARTET, and a site specific installation/the performance LADYFROMTHESEA, staged in thirteen interconnected indoor and outdoor locations (Old American Can Factory, Brooklyn) and praised by Ballet-Tanz International’s 2001 Worldwide Critics Survey (Berlin, Germany) as one of the “most innovative productions of the year”. Ivan also directed Sarah Kane's CLEANSED at Exodos Festival, and ...SHE SAID based on the work of Marguerite Duras, which premiered in co-production with Cankarjev dom center for the performing arts (Ljubljana, Slovenia,) and was subsequently presented at the ICA/Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, Act French festival in New York and FIT/International Theatre Festival (Caracas, Venezuela.)

Ivan has taught extensively in the United States and abroad at Columbia University’s Barnard College, NYU Tisch School of the Arts / Playwrights Horizons Theatre School’s Devised Theatre Program, CUNY / City University of New York, Princeton University, Brown University (Providence, RI), Towson University (Baltimore, MD), CDU/Center for Drama Art (Zagreb, Croatia), the Gulbenkian Foundation (Lisbon, Portugal), Fundateneo (Caracas, Venezuela), and elsewhere. He has co-created the MINDFLOCK method, which he has been co-teaching with the esteemed choreographer Alexandra Beller.

He is an alumnus of the inaugural Lincoln Center Theater Directors Lab, a Usual Suspect at the New York Theatre Workshop, and has been awarded numerous residencies and fellowships including yearlong artist-in-residence awards at BAX / Brooklyn Arts Exchange (1999/2000) and HERE Arts Center (2001/2002) in New York City and a 2004/2005 Performing Arts fellowship at the Akademie Schloss Solitude (Stuttgart, Germany,) where he developed 39 FRAMES, a simulated-reality durational event inspired by the mind and work of Alfred Hitchcock, which had its world premiere at the SommerSzene festival in Salzburg, Austria in 2006.

Directing highlights include: W.A., an immersive site-specific event commissioned by San Francisco based Too Far Independent Media, which has toured to over 50 cities in Europe, United States, Canada and Australia in 2006 and 2007; X: A VIDEO-OPERA, created in collaboration with the composer Katharina Rosenberger, which premiered at the Zürcher Theaterspektakel in Zurich and at La Batie festival in Geneva (Switzerland,) garnering him further praise in the Worldwide Critics Survey in 2007 as “the most important multidisciplinary collaboration of the year.” MALFI, an adaptation of Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi in collaboration with Simona Semenic premiered at Mladinsko Theatre in Ljubljana, Slovenia. And blind.ness, an original project he staged for WaxFactory, premiered at the Performance Space 122 in New York before touring to Slovenia in co-production with Cankarjev Dom.

Over the past several years, Ivan has been working on his first feature film, titled 416 MINUTES. An early, short version of the film was curated by Diane Pernet into the 2011 ASVOFF film festival at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, France. 416 MINUTES is currently in post-production.

Ivan was a 2013-2016 performing arts fellow at the Hermitage Artist Retreat in Florida, 2016-2018 Theatre panelist for NYSCA / New York State Council on the Arts, and a recent Bogliasco Foundation fellow at the Liguria Study Center for the Arts and Humanities (Genova, Italy), the Emily Harvey Foundation (Venice, Italy) and the Marble House Project (Dorset, Vermont, USA.)

Most recently, Ivan directed LULU XX, WaxFactory's 20th anniversary production co-created with the company's co-founder Erika Latta, which premiered at the Connelly Theater in NYC in September 2019, and is currently being planned for international touring.

Ivan recently became the Founder and the Artistic Director of Contemporary Performance Practices, an international summer training program based in Croatia, and currently serves of the faculty of Carnegie Mellon University School of Drama as a Special Visiting Professor at the John Wells Directing Program.

*photo by Maria Baranova

ERIKA LATTA is originally from the Northwest in Bellingham, Washington. Initially she studied dance, installation art and photography before combining the layer of theater and film. She holds a BFA in Theater at the University of Washington and a MFA in Acting from Columbia University. She has lived and worked in Brooklyn, NY for the last eighteen year where she has created new innovative work in traditional and non-traditional space, creating long lasting International collaborations in Eastern Europe, France, Italy and Germany, among others.
She is the artistic co-director and co-founder of WaxFactory in New York City. With the company, she works as an actor, director, writer, and educator.
As an actor she has been seen at international venues and festivals such as the ICA/Institute of Contemporary Art (London, UK), The Gulbenkian Museum (Lisbon, Portugal), SommerSzene (Salzburg, Austria), OLTRE90 (Milan, Italy), FIT/ Festival Internacional de Teatro (Caracas, Venezuela), MESS (Sarajevo, Bosnia), the Exodos Festival and Cankarjev Dom Center For The Performing Arts (Ljubljana, Slovenia), and SummerSzene in Salzburg, Austria among others in the following shows: LULU (one woman performance), STORY OF RATS based on the work of George Bataille, MOLIERE'S MONSTER based on the work of Moliere, Heiner Müller's QUARTET, Ibsen's LADY FROM THE SEA, Sarah Kane’s CLEANSED, ...SHE SAID, 39 FRAMES – The Hitchcock Project, BLIND.NESS and PULL YOURSELF TOGETHER! She was the lead actor in the film sections for X, a video-opera created in collaboration with the composer Katharina Rosenberger, which premiered at the Zürcher Theaterspektakel in Zurich and went on to perform at La Batie festival in Geneva, Switzerland and a lead in WaxFactory's upcoming feature length film 416 MINUTES by Ivan Talijancic.
In New York she has acted at La Mama E.T.C, HERE, P.S 122 (Performance Space 122), New York Theater Workshop, Lincoln Center’s Clark Studio, Soho Rep, Old American Can Factory, En Garde Arts, Raw Space, Ohio Theater, The Culture Project, and the Act French Festival, the Invisible Dog and 3LD Art + Technology, among others. She has been a participant at Robert Wilson’s international summer program (4 years) at the Watermill Center as an actor and photographer. Also at Watermill Center she has worked with French director Victor Gautier Martin in GENOA 01.

Erika is a Member and Associate Director of the trans-media company Begat Theater of Marseille, France. For the company she co-conceived, directed /co-directed, designed sound and co-wrote, LA DISPARITION, HIDDEN STORIES; LES DEMEURÉES and LE JARDIN AVEUGLE. The productions have toured in international festivals in France, Germany, Croatia, Spain, Holland, Czech Republic, Sardinia, Korea and Australia. She recently completed Begat’s commissioned sound walk by the MUCEM (Museum of Civilizations in the Mediterranean) titled La Traversée, in Marseille, France. She is a member of the Society of Authors (SACD) in France. Many of the productions of Begat Theater have been awarded numerous grants, co-productions and partnerships, as well as the generous support from FACE (French American Fund for Contemporary Theater).

She has worked in New York as a director for AUTO GRAPHIC NOVEL by Johnny Klein at the Flea Theater, TALES FROM BORDER TOWN by Eric Dean Scott at the New York Underground Zero Festival and at PS 122 (New York) which won “Best Production”, HIDDEN STORIES as part of the mars2bklyn festival and DELIRIUM 27 at Abrons Art Center.

She was awarded a six-month residency in performing arts at the Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart, Germany. While at Solitude she wrote DELIRIUM 27. DELIRIUM 27 performed in January of 2008 at the Stara Elektrarna in Ljubljana, Slovenia with an international cast from Croatia, Slovenia, Sweden, Italy and the United States and premiered at Abrons Art Center in New Yok as part of the WaxFactory retrospective in 2010.

In cinema she has worked with Stacie Passon in CONCUSSION (Sundance Film Festival), Matt Creed in LILY (Tribeca Film Festival), Alex Rodriguez (editor of Y Tu Mamma También + Academy Nominated editor of Children of Men), Mike Jones and in television for MTV and PBS among others, as well as appearing in many of WaxFactory's original films. She recently finished WaxFactory's feature length film 416 MINUTES.

As a writer she continues to be co-author for many of original productions for both WaxFactory and Begat Theater. She has also written freelance articles for Movie Maker Magazine where she has interviewed editors Alex Rodriguez and Matt Chessé. Her poem, ACHE was published in an anthology of 140 artists who contributed to the DICTIONARY OF UNWEILDLY WORDS published by Merz & Solitude in Germany.

She is a published photographer for her work in theater, film and her personal work. She has shot film stills for the Oscar nominated film Captain Fantastic by Matt Ross with Viggo Mortensen and Bottled Up by Enid Zentelis with Melissa Leo, among others.

As an educator she has taught workshops in devised theater for directors and trained actors at Theater &TD (Croatia), Dartington College of Arts (England), The Gulbenkian Museum (Portugal), AFDAS Workshop and Begat Theater (France), Festival Internacional de Teatro (Venezuela), Akademie Schloss Solitude (Germany) and Towson University (Baltimore, MD), and at Shout House, among others.

She has studied and trained in modern dance, Viewpoints with Anne Bogart (SITI Company), the Suzuki Method of acting in Toga- Mura Japan with Robyn Hunt and at Columbia University with Ellen Lauren.

Outside her company in theater, she has worked with Felix Barret and Maxine Doyle of Punchdrunk (Sleep no more), Robert Wilson, Anne Bogart (SITI Company), Robert Woodruff, Victor Gautier Martin, Tina Landau, Chuck Mee, Andrei Serban, Rachel Dickstein (Ripe Time), Jonathan Walters (hand2mouth Theater Co.) and choreographer Guilia Murredu.

She was last seen in Punchdrunk's SLEEP NO MORE at the McKittrick Hotel in New York in the role of Hecate and in the production TIME, A FAIR HUSTLER as Scott Favor (based on Gus Van Sant’s film My Own Private Idaho) by Jonathan Walters of hand2mouth theater company at the Artist Repertory in Portland, Oregon

Upcoming projects include: 416 MINUTES Feature Film release, STRANGE JOY in development, HIDDEN STORIES and LA DISPARITION on tour in Europe.

Erika is currently an Associate Professor of Theater Performance at the School for Contemporary Arts and the Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, BC (Canada.)

*photo by Elizabeth Romanski