Matt Chapman is a performer, director, and teacher of physical theatre and clown. He is the Co-Founder and Co-Artistic Director of Brooklyn’s Under the Table, collaborating on each of the company’s 13 works produced since its founding in 2001. Matt works on the Faculty at American Conservatory Theatre, and at Stanford University, where he teaches Movement for Actors, Clown, and Mask in the Department of Theatre and Performance Studies.
He spent several years on the Faculty at Dell’Arte International School of Physical Theatre in Blue Lake, CA, and currently continues his work with the school as Director of Admissions and as Guest Faculty during the Clown block.
Matt is a little greyer now than when this photo was taken, even though he doesn’t think it was that long ago, but maybe it was. He used to think it was weird when teachers used old photos, but now he gets it, because it’s like once every 8 years that somebody takes a decent photo. And even updating a bio is a major accomplishment.
Matt has taught Clown at Marymount Manhattan College and Manhattanville College in New York, and has taught workshops and classes at such places as the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Actor’s Theatre of Louisville, NYU, Vassar, Sarah Lawrence, Towson, the University of Iowa, Iowa State, James Madison University, University of North Dakota, Minot State, NYC’s People’s Improv Theatre, the New York International Fringe Festival, foolsFURY (SF), and the Brooklyn Arts eXchange.
He works abroad regularly as well; his workshops, directing, and performances have included South Africa, Denmark, Colombia, the Netherlands, Canada, Mexico, and England. Matt has held several Clown intensives in collaboration with Suzanne Bakker in Amsterdam, and traveled three times to Mexico City to teach at UNAM’s Festival Nacional de Teatro Universitario.
He has collaborated with NYC’s Eavesdrop; Durban, South Africa’s African Dream Circus; Sweden’s Cirkus Cirkor; Denmark’s Filuren and Jomfru Ane Teatret; Blue Lake’s Dell’Arte Company; Philadelphia’s Hotel Obligado; and Arcata, CA’s Pequeño Teatro DanceTheatre. Matt works with Clowns Without Borders, writes music for and plays guitar in the Oakland punk band The Big Forgive, and is a graduate of Dell’Arte International and the University of Kansas. He was a Round 9 recipient of Theatre Communications Group’s New Generations Future Leaders program.
He currently lives in Oakland with his family.
