Life

He began writing and directing for the stage in 1985. He emerged on to the downtown dance

Dance

Dance is an art form that generally refers to movement of the body, usually rhythmic and to music, used as a form of expression, social interaction or presented in a spiritual or performance setting....

/performance scene with four consecutive seasons at Dance Theater Workshop

Dance Theater Workshop

Dance Theater Workshop, colloquially known as DTW, is a New York City performance space and service organization for dance companies. Located as 219 West 19th Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, DTW was founded in 1965 by Jeff Duncan, Art Bauman and...

 plus performances at Movement Research, The Poetry Project, and Performance Space 122

Performance Space 122

Performance Space 122, generally known as P.S. 122, is a not-for-profit arts organization and one of the longest standing venues dedicated to contemporary performance art in New York City. Founded in 1979 in the abandoned Public School 122 building at 150 First Avenue at East 9th Street in the East...

. By 1990 Gordon was recognized in the inaugural round of the NEA’s “New Forms” initiative – funding for artists whose work defied clear classification. He then began touring to venues including the Baltimore Museum of Art

Baltimore Museum of Art

The Baltimore Museum of Art in Baltimore, Maryland, United States, was founded in 1914. Built in the Roman Temple style, the Museum is home to an internationally renowned collection of 19th-century, modern, and contemporary art. Founded in 1914 with a single painting, the BMA today has 90,000 works...

 (MD) and Dance Place

Dance Place

Dance Place is an arts organization in the Brookland neighborhood of Northeast Washington, D.C.. "The heart and home of Washington Dance," Dance Place aims to "transform lives through performing arts and creative education programs that inspire personal growth, professional success, physical...

 (DC). In 1991, Gordon entered a multi-project relationship with Soho Rep (NY) that encompassed five productions and workshops. In 1992, Gordon began a collaboration with his father, David Gordon

David Gordon

David Gordon is an American author and trainer and early contributor to the development of Neuro-Linguistic Programming.Gordon has helped create and shape the field of NLP since some decades yet. Gordon's main areas of contribution have been the use of therapeutic metaphors, inspired by his work...

, on The Family Business; the work went on to be performed at Serious Fun! at Lincoln Center, DTW, New York Theater Workshop (all NY) and the Mark Taper Forum

Mark Taper Forum

The Mark Taper Forum is a 739 seat thrust stage at the Los Angeles Music Center built by Welton Becket and Associates on the Bunker Hill section of downtown Los Angeles...

 (CA). Also in 1992, Gordon became Co-Director of the Pick Up Performance Company

Pick Up Performance Company

The Pick Up Performance Company is a not-for-profit theatrical producing organization founded in 1971 and incorporated in 1978. Its mission is to support the artistic work of choreographer-director-writer David Gordon and playwright Ain Gordon...

 (founded by his father in 1971 and incorporated in 1978).

In 1994, Gordon won his first Obie Award

Obie Award

The Obie Awards or Off-Broadway Theater Awards are annual awards given by The Village Voice newspaper to theatre artists and groups in New York City...

 as one of the creators of The Family Business. In 1996, Gordon won his second Obie Award for his play Wally's Ghost. In 1998, Gordon was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship

Guggenheim Fellowship

Guggenheim Fellowships are American grants that have been awarded annually since 1925 by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts." Each year, the foundation makes...

 in Playwriting. It was here that Gordon gained recognition for his abiding subject; marginalized/forgotten history and the invisible players who inhabit that space. Gordon developed a particular blend of historical fact/imagined truth and complete fiction that continues to dominate his work. The next few years were spent collaborating with David Gordon on two projects—one for American Music Theater Festival (PA) and American Repertory Theater (MA), the other for American Conservatory Theater

American Conservatory Theater

American Conservatory Theater is a large non-profit theater company in San Francisco, California, that offers both classical and contemporary theater productions. A.C.T. was founded in 1965 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in conjunction with the Pittsburgh Playhouse and Carnegie Tech by theatre and...

 (CA) and the Taper – plus a solo commission from the Taper, another from the Lincoln Center Institute

Lincoln Center Institute

Lincoln Center Institute for the Arts in Education, established in 1975 and located in New York City, is the educational arm of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts.- Facilities :*Clark Studio Theater*Samuels Teaching Studio...

 and a new play workshopped at The Public Theater and Soho Rep (both NY). In 2001, Gordon returned to his roots in the NY downtown scene with several productions at HERE Arts Center

HERE Arts Center

HERE Arts Center is a New York City based off-off broadway presenting house, founded in 1993, with two stages specializing in hybrid performance, dance, theater, multi-media and puppetry. From 1993-2009, HERE supported over 12,000 artists and served approximately 950,000 audience members...

, DTW, and PS122 including Art Life & Show-Biz; A Non-Fiction Play, which will be published by Palgrave Macmillan

Palgrave Macmillan

Palgrave Macmillan is an international academic and trade publishing company, headquartered in Basingstoke, Hampshire, England, United Kingdom and with offices in New York, Melbourne, Sydney, Hong Kong, Delhi, Johannesburg. It was created in 2000 when St...

 in the upcoming “Dramaturgy of the Real.”

Gordon continues to write theater that straddles the traditions of playwriting and performance art blending fact and fiction toward a theatrical truth. Since 2005, his work has been awarded both the Multi-Arts Production Fund (MAP) Grant and the Arts Presenters Ensemble Theatre Collaborations Program grant funded by the Doris Duke Charitable Trust with productions at the Krannert Center (IL), VSA North Fourth Arts Center (NM), 651 ARTS (NY), LexArts (KY), and DiverseWorks (TX), etc. In 2007, Gordon won his third Obie Award for his performance in the Off-Broadway production of Spalding Gray: Stories Left To Tell, and he continues to tour the work to venues including UCLA Live, TBA Festival at the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art

Portland Institute for Contemporary Art

The Portland Institute for Contemporary Art in Portland, Oregon, United States was founded in 1996 by Kristy Edmunds, formerly the Director of the Portland Art Museum's "Art on the Edge" program...

 (OR), The ICA Boston (Elliot Norton Award nom), the Walker Art Center

Walker Art Center

The Walker Art Center is a contemporary art center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The Walker is considered one of the nation's "big five" museums for modern art along with the Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum and the Hirshhorn...

 (MN), and Painted Bride Art Center (PA), etc. In 2008/9 Gordon collaborated with Choreographer Bebe Miller

Bebe Miller

Bebe Miller is an American choreographer, dancer and director.-Biography:Daughter of an elementary school teacher and a ship steward, Bebe Miller was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1950. She was raised in a public housing project in the Red Hook Nieghborhood...

 on Necessary Beauty, a multi-disciplinary evening-length work co-commissioned by the Wexner Center (OH), DTW, and Myrna Loy Center/Helena Presents (MT). He was commissioned by the VSA North Fourth Arts Center, rooted in Native American history, and developed a new two-person play, and one woman play, as a Core Writer of the Playwrights' Center in Minneapolis.

Works

• A Disaster Begins, HERE Arts Center Mainstage, NY, 09 Oct 2009
• Private Ghosts - Public Stories, Cornerstone Theater Company, 2002
• Punch and Judy Get Divorced
• Wally's Ghost, Soho Rep, New York