Affiliated Artists

Affiliated Artists are professional theater makers who have an association with Bates Theater and Dance.  Their relationship with the department is informal, sharing resources, providing mentorship for individual students of merit, and in return when available, making gentle use of our facilities and/or collaborating with our faculty/staff.

Sara Juli has been creating and performing innovative performance work since 2000.  She has been fortunate to tour around the country performing her work in venues such as American Dance Festival, Bates Dance Festival, The Chocolate Factory Theater (NYC), Performance Space 122 (NYC), New York Live Arts (NYC), Dance Complex (Boston), Napa Valley Opera House, Artown Reno, SPACE Gallery (Portland) and more. Internationally she has performed in The Netherlands, Australia, New Zealand, London, Russia and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland. She is a recipient of New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project grant for her solo, Tense Vagina: an actual diagnosis, which is touring to ten cities during the 2018 season. Sara is the Founder/Director of Surala Consulting, a fundraising consultancy helping non-profits and artists build and execute fundraising strategies. She is the Co-Chair of the Bates Dance Festival Advisory Council, and was the 2017 Maine Fellow for the Performing Arts, awarded by the Maine Arts Commission.  www.sarajuli.com and www.suralaconsulting.com

John Farrell

Figures of Speech Theatre tours the world with original works of theater metaphor generated at the intersection of drama and poetry, sculpture and dance. Founded in 1982 by John and Carol Farrell, the company has produced over 20 original works and has collaborated with arts organizations such as Heartwood Theater, the Portland Symphony, Portland Stage Company and the Freeport Shakespeare Festival, and has performed at venues such as the Kennedy Center, Broadway’s New Victory Theater, the Atlanta Puppetry Center, and the Smithsonian Institution. International presenters include theater festivals in Japan, Austria, France, Peru and Bulgaria. Known for its groundbreaking work juxtaposing puppets, actors and other stage media, Figures of Speech is also interested in the performance of literary text: John tours a solo recitation from memory of T.S. Eliot’s poetic masterpiece, Four Quartets. The company’s latest work, a theatrical setting of David Lang’s Pulitzer Prize-winning composition, the little match girl passion, premiered at Bates College in 2016. Coming up he will be in residence at Bates collaborating on the production of Antigonick in Winter of 2022.  www.figures.org