Martha Clarke is a choreographer, director, creator, producer, dancer, and animal lover.  She began her career as a dancer becoming a co-founder of Pilobolus Dance Theatre.  She then became a director and choreographer adding language to her multi-dimensional productions which she originated and designed in all aspects.  Her work is inspired by art, the written word, Scandinavian movies.  Not writing music herself, she engaged composer Richard Peaslee.  She worked with playwrights like Charles L. Mee who wrote the script for their VIENNA: LUSTHAUS in 1985, and again in 2004 on BELLE EPOQUE.  Clarke collaborated with playwrights Alfred Urhy on ANGEL REAPERS in 2011, George Trow onELIZABETH DEAD in 1980, Christopher Hampton on ALICE’S ADVENTURES UNDERGROUND in 1995..  Clarke went on to direct opera: The Magic Flute and Cosi fan tutte for Glimmerglass Opera, Tan Dun’s Marco Polo for the Munich Biennale, and Gluck’s Orfeo and Euridice  for the English National Opera.  Clarke also created the  full length ballet L’altra meta del cielo  for La Scala in Milan, Italy.  Other productions in New York include: CROWS NEST TRIO (1979) which toured internationally, ELIZABETH DEAD (1980), A METAMORPHOSIS IN MINIATURE(1982), THE GARDEN OF EARTHLY DELIGHT (1984), THE HUNGER ARTIST (1987), MIRACOLO D’AMORE (1989), ENDANGERED SPECIES (1990), AN UNCERTAIN HOUR (1995), VERS LA FLAME (1999), A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM (2004), BELLE EPOQUE (2004), KAOS (2006), CHERI (2013), THE THREEPENNY OPERA (2014), ANGEL REAPERS (2016), GOD’S FOOL (2022), BUGHOUSE (2026).  Among her many awards, Clarke has received the MacArthur Genius Grant (1990), a Drama Desk Award, many Obies including in 1982, METAMORPHOSIS IN MINIATURE and in 1986, VIENNA LUSTHOUSE, two Joe Callaway Choreography Awards - the only person to have received two -(2009 and 2014), a Dance Magazine Award, (2013), a Samuel H. Scripps/American Dance Festival Award for Lifetime Achievement (2010), and a Dramatists Guild Flora Roberts Award (2019), two Lucille Lortel Awards (2016) for ANGEL REAPERS, the first Tony Randall Foundation Award, and two grants from the Guggenheim Foundation.  She has also received fifteen grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and in 2007 the NEA gave her a grant for the remounting of an American Masterwork, THE GARDEN OF EARTHLY DELIGHTS which was also filmed by the BBC.  She is the subject of the PBS filmMartha Clarke: Light and Dark.

Martha Clarke began her career as an artist and dancer.  Focusing on dance she studied at Juilliard with Louis Horst before joining the Anna Sokolow Dance Company.  Her following studies with Anthony Tudor at Juilliard solidified her style in storytelling with the emotional gesture.  At Dartmouth, as wife of the artist-in-residence, with a three-year old, she met dancer Alison Becker Chase and with five men, Moses Pendleton, Jonathan Wolken, Robby Barnett and Lee Harris (who left in 1875), and Michael Tracy, they co-founded Pilobolus (named for a mushroom), a dance company still in performance.  Clarke went on to create solo works inspired by visual arts, literature, and Italian movies.  Now collaborating with actors she incorporated text and explored the actors’ performance/experience while exploring space, depth, and light on their figures.  Clarke’s artistic relationship with producer Lyn Austin provided funding as well as artistic challenges when Austin commissioned work.  Not a composer herself, Clarke collaborated with composers, like Richard Peaslee, but otherwise is involved in all aspects of designing the original pieces she has created and is directing.  Her visual spectacles have been seen at The Public Theater, Lincoln Center Theater, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York Theatre Workshop, the Signature Theater Company, the Kennedy Center, and La MaMa E.T.C.  Clarke has choreographed for the Nederlands Dans Theater, the Joffrey Ballet, American Ballet Theatre, Rambert Dance Company, The Martha Graham Company, London’s Royal Opera House, the Theatre de la Ville in Paris, and The Spoleto Fesitval in Italy.   Her collaborations working with many playwrights include: Tina Howe (CHERI), Fanny Howe (GOD’S FOOL), Richard Greenberg (THE HUNGER ARTIST) and Sebastian Barry (HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSON).  After a particularly scathing review of one of her works, for several years she focused on directing operas for such companies as Glimmerglass Opera, the Canadian Opera Company, Tan Dun at the Munich Biennale, the New York City Opera (MARCO POLO and ORFEO AND EURYDICE as a co-production), the English National Opera, and the National Theatre UK: Glyndebourne.  She recently created, BUGHOUSE, based on the Outsider Artist Henry Darger.  The text, by Beth Henley, is from the writings of Henry Darger who was played by the actor John Kelly, performed at The Vineyard Theatre in its 2026 season.