As a stage designer, sound designer, co-director and dramaturge, since 1992 he has collaborated with theater artist, writer and performer Penny Arcade on dozens of shows including Sisi Sings The Blues – a commission for the Vienna Festival, Love, Sex and Sanity, Rebellion Cabaret, New York Values, Bad Reputation, True Stories and Bitch! Dyke! Faghag! Whore!, their internationally acclaimed sex and censorship show; and Longing Lasts Longer. Together they have produced political-theatrical-humanist spectacles in over 30 cities around the world with Steve designing the playground for anarchist provocateur Penny Arcade to run free and deliver her message of love, authenticity, tolerance and freedom-to-the-people. Currently they are developing two new shows, Old Queen and Aftermath.
With over 25 years experience Steve’s independent video production company brings creative passion, intelligent design and solid management to projects of all sizes. As a writer, editor, director and director of photography, Steve can work solo or put together a team with some of New York’s best DP’s and sound crew. He has created story-based socially aware and visually sophisticated documentaries, promotional videos, performance videos and event documentations for a variety of non-profit clients, schools and universities including: Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, The Children’s Defense Fund, The Olga Lengyel Institute for Holocaust Studies and Human Rights, PBS Channel 13, Angel Orensanz Foundation, American Institute of Architects, Kulturzeit ZDF Germany, City University of New York Graduate Center, The New School University, The Children’s Aid Society, Penny Arcade Productions, Idaho Public Television and Syracuse University.
With Penny Arcade, he is co-founder of the Lower East Side Biography Project, a video oral history documentary project and archive that works to ensure that future generations have access to the mad souls of invention that built this New York City neighborhood’s reputation as an incubator for authenticity, rebellion and iconoclasm. The Lower East Side Biography Project streams it’s biographies live every Monday at 11pm EST on Time Warner Channel One http://www.mnn.org/live/1-community-channel or watch in Manhattan on TW 34, RCN 82 or FIOS 33.
Steve’s video work has screened at many festivals and is in the collection of libraries and museums: University of Florida – Harn Museum of Art, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Walker Arts Center – Minneapolis, Virginia Commonwealth University, New York Public Library, Free Speech T.V., Independent Focus, Ch. 13 PBS, Idaho PBS, New York Film Festival, Black Int’l Cinema Festival, Video Drive-In – Chicago, Drexel University Television – Philadelphia, OUTFEST Film Festival – LA, New York University, Anthology Film Archives, Millennium Film Workshop, Pioneer Theatre, Chashama Film Festival – New York, The New School, Hampshire College, Santa Fe State College, Portland State University, Garage Center for Contemporary Culture – Moscow, City University of New York Graduate Center.
He is a co-recipient (with Peter Norrman) of an Aurora Independent Film and Video Award. He has received a NYSCA grant for The Lower East Side Biography Project and a Bogliasco Fellowship to develop The Money Machine, a film animation and multi-media performance piece that presents a debate about the omnipresent culture of “free market” capitalism.