Meet the Artist: Jonathan Demme and Annie-B Parson

JONATHAN DEMME (Director) has produced and directed over 29 feature films including Rachel Getting Married, The Manchurian Candidate, Beloved, The Agronomist, The Silence of the Lambs (for which he won an Academy Award and the New York Film Critics Best Director), Philadelphia, Married to the Mob, Something Wild, Swimming to Cambodia, and Melvin and Howard, for which he was named Best Director by the New York Film Critics. Additional pro- ducing credits include Devil in a Blue Dress, Household Saints, That Thing you Do!, Ulee’s Gold, and Adaptation. Demme’s films have been nominated for 20 Academy Awards. The Silence of the Lambs received five Academy Awards in 1991 – for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Screenplay Adaptation. His films have won screenplay Oscars twice, Melvin and Howard (Best Original Screenplay, 1980) and The Silence of the Lambs (Best Screenplay Adaptation, 1991), and two of the Best Actor awards of the 1990s went to Anthony Hopkins (The Silence of the Lambs, 1991) and Tom Hanks (Philadelphia, 1993), with Jodie Foster receiving the Best Actress award (The Silence of the Lambs, 1991) as well.   ANNIE-B PARSON (Co-Director/Choreographer) co-founded the OBIE and “Bessie” Award-winning Big Dance Theater in 1991, and has created over 20 works that have toured internationally. Big Dance has received commissions from such esteemed venues as The Walker Art Center, Le Theatre National Chaillot in Paris, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, The Japan Society, and Les Subsistances in Lyon, France. Next up for Big Dance will be Alan Smithee Directed this Play which will premiere at Les Subsistances in March 2014. Outside her work with BDT, Parson most recently choreographed David Bryne’s HERE LIES LOVE at the Public Theater. She also choreographed two of Mr. Byrne’s world tours (2008 and 2012), and will work with St. Vincent on her upcoming tour. Parson received a Guggenheim Fellowship (2007), New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Awards (2002 and 2010), the first Jacobs Pillow Award, and two Lucille Lortel Award nominations (2011, 2012). Since 1993 she has been an instructor of choreography at New York University’s Experimental Theater Wing.