Infinite Coast is the name encompassing performer/director Alexis Macnab's original work - devoted to creating visually innovative and emotionally exquisite new theater. Trained at The Piven Theater Workshop in Evanston, IL, Macnab studied the improvisational Theater Games techniques of Viola Spolin and Byrne & Joyce Piven. She began directing professionally in Chicago when she mounted her original dance-theater show Night Fractal at the Performance Loft in 2003. While in Chicago, Macnab assisted Joyce Piven’s direction of David Mamet’s Speed-the-Plow and Jessica Thebus’ direction of Maria Irene Fornes’ Abingdon Square both at The Piven Theater. Macnab also worked with Redmoon Theater in Chicago and was invited to create an original piece for The River Project, a site-specific event presented along the banks of the Chicago River.
In 2003, Macnab moved to New York City and began working with many different visual and movement-theater companies and artists including Laboratory Theater, MayDance, Timothy Braun, imnotlost, and Tom Lee. She became a member of the resident acting company at the The Flea Theater called the Bats, and performed in a number of productions including Peter Handke’s subversive classic Offending the Audience directed by Jim Simpson. The Flea presented a staged-reading of her adaptation of the Joyce Carol Oates novel Foxfire in 2007.
She presented an original mime-theater piece, Letter from Rubbish Isalnd, at the First Annual Clown Theater Festival at The Brick Theater in Brooklyn. Macnab directed and starred in Timothy Braun’s Trigger Happy Jack at the American Living Room Festival 2007 at HERE Arts Center. She presented a work-in-progress showing of her new adaptation of Henry James’ classic The Portrait of a Lady, titled Ralph & Isabel at Dixon Place in November 2008. Macnab, and Kate Brehm of imnotllost, recieved a six-week space residency in early 2009 by performing arts organization CHASHAMA to produce Dark Space, an immersive puppet/visual theater piece directed by Macnab and designed by Brehm.
With visceral, visual metaphor, and potent narrative, the work of Infinite Coast makes imaginative, empathic theater designed to feed the human heart.
