Billing + About the Artists

• Billing

  Director | Lin Hixson

  Dramaturg and Writer | Matthew Goulish

  Costumes and Textiles | Essi Kausalainen

  Producer and Manager | Sarah Skaggs

  Technical Director | Christine Shallenberg

  Performers and Co-devisers | Alex Bradley Cohen, Elise Cowin, Isaac Cresswell, Kenya Kao Ra Zen Fulton, Matthew Goulish, Essi Kausalainen, Tim Kinsella, Jenny Polus, and Corey Smith

  Non-performing Co-deviser | Bryan Saner

  Music/Sound | Composed and performed by Tim Kinsella & Jenny Polus

• About the Artist

  Lin Hixson, director, and Matthew Goulish, dramaturg, formed Every house has a door in 2008 to convene diverse, intergenerational, project-specific teams of specialists, including emerging as well as internationally recognized artists. Drawn to historically or critically neglected subjects, Every house has a door creates performance works and performance-related projects in many media. Based in Chicago, the company presents work for local, national, and international audiences. Longstanding leaders in Chicago’s performance community, Hixson and Goulish have mentored generations of young artists through the performance department at School of the Art Institute of Chicago and their former collective, Goat Island, which toured works internationally from the mid 1980s to 2007.

  Essi Kausalainen’s works operate through performance, textile, text, audio, and video. Collaborating with plants and fungi, artists, musicians, plant biologists, and children, Kausalainen’s work approaches the body as an open-ended process made in, and shaped by, complex relations with other beings, situations, and environments. Her work has been exhibited and performed in venues such as Kiasma, HAM, Inkonst (Malmö, Sweden), Somerset House Studios in London, Bildmuseet (Umeå, Sweden), and Moderna Museet Malmö.

  Alex Bradley Cohen lives and works in Chicago, Illinois. Recent exhibitions include Scenes from the Collection, the Jewish Museum, New York; Love & Anarchy, Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina; Friends & Lovers, FLAG Art Foundation, New York; See/Think/Shape, Nicelle Beauchene Gallery, New York; State of the Art 2020, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas; and Triple: Alex Bradley Cohen, Louis Fratino, and Tschabalala Self, University Art Museum at the University of Albany, New York. Other exhibitions have been held at SULK, Chicago, Illinois; the Luggage Store, San Francisco, California; Mana Contemporary, Chicago, Illinois; Carrie Secrist Gallery, Chicago, Illinois; the Studio Museum of Harlem, New York, New York; the Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois; Elmhurst Art Museum, Illinois; Socrates Sculpture Park, Long Island City, New York; and the Craft and Folk Art Museum, Los Angeles, California, among others. Cohen received his MFA from Northwestern University in 2020 and is an alumnus of the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture. His work can be found in the public collections of the Jewish Museum, New York; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas; and the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University.

  Elise Cowin is an independent dancer and choreographer. Her work has been supported by Individual Artist Program grants from Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and residencies through High Concept Labs, the Bridge/IN>TIME Performance Festival, Links Hall (Chicago, Illinois) and Centro Teatrale di Ricerca (Venice, Italy). She has shown work locally at Defibrillator Gallery, Mana Contemporary, High Concept Labs, the Studebaker Theatre, the Arts Club, Links Hall, and Watershed Art & Ecology. Cowin first worked with Every house has a door in 2017 and has since performed with them at the New Performance Biennale in Turku, Finland, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry at the University of Chicago, the Arts Club of Chicago, and in other contexts. A few current and past collaborators include Josh Hoglund, Joanna Furnans, and Julia Pello. She and Pello premiered a film in competition at FIDMarseille International Film Festival in June. Dance Magazine named Cowin one of “25 to Watch” in 2017. She holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is full-time faculty in Dance and Humanities at Harold Washington, one of the City Colleges of Chicago.

  Isaac Cresswell was born in France and has lived in Chicago for the past 10 years. Isaac is in 6th grade, speaks three languages, and is a keen learner of all that life can offer. Isaac has been performing yearly with Every house has a door since 2020 and has thoroughly enjoyed working with Lin and Matthew, as well as every member of the company.

  Kenya “Kao Ra Zen” Fulton is a spoken-word poet, rapper, multimedia performance artist, painter, director, and curator born and raised in Chicago, Illinois. For several years, he has performed and organized concerts, parties, film screenings, and art happenings throughout Chicago, notably his annual HIPPY HOLY DAZE art and music holiday celebrations; KULTURE KLASH art film/video showcases; and the A PERFORMANCE HAPPENING series. Kao has performed and exhibited in Germany, rocked open MICs in Guatemala, and was a feature performer during events such as the first annual Afro Utah Festival in 2021, the Chicago Hip-Hop Theater Fest and TEDx Showtime ChiTime events in 2022, and the New Performance Turku Biennale in Finland in 2023. Kao’s creative writing has been published in numerous poetry collections, magazines, and websites. Kao is a member of International Art Group artist collective; the legendary Nacrobats Hip-Hop crew; and was a member of the Firqit Surayah dance troupe. Kao has an Associate of Fine Arts degree from Harold Washington College, a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and is now in the MFA Creative Writing program at Chicago State University. He has released several music videos and is currently working on multiple music-related projects.

  Tim Kinsella makes music with his wife Jenny Pulse for the Kill Rock Stars label. Past projects include the bands Joan of Arc, Owls, and assorted cross-disciplinary stuff and things.

  Jennifer Polus aka “Jenny Pulse” is a musician, producer, performer, and painter based in Chicago. Her solo project reinterprets and pays homage to club, pop, and industrial music of the 1980s and 1990s. For the past seven years she has focused on the collaboration with her husband, Tim Kinsella, an interdisciplinary approach to music considering aesthetics, history, politics, and being people enmeshed in the local and national music scene. Their second record on Kill Rock Stars will be released in early 2025. She is also part of the bluesy avant-garde musical collective “Who is the Witness?” She is a Scorpio.

  Bryan Saner‘s practice includes industrial arts, architectural restoration, sculpture, and performance. He has made his living as a small business owner doing a combination of those disciplines. Saner tries to make long-term commitments to collaborate closely with artists and creative practitioners in developing alternative lifestyles, workplaces, and economic communities. He works both in and outside of existing established systems. The connection between making, building, and performing is central to his creative practice. Each discipline participates in the goals of each other’s without separation. They are socially active practices. We live, learn, create, and congregate in private and public architectural spaces, theoretical institutions, and human bodies. These practices endeavor to advance culture by building, destroying, rebuilding, and refining human spaces, objects, thought, and relationships.

  Corey Smith is a composer, writer, and performer from Chicago, Illinois. Their work has been seen at Steppenwolf Theater, Hyde Park Art Center, the Mattress Factory, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Emil Bach House, the Rotterdam Film Festival, the Chicago International Puppet Festival, and the Bath Fringe Festival. Their work has been featured by Hyperallergic, Architectural Digest, and the Chicago Reader. Smith is an avid collaborator and has worked with artists such as Théâtre de l’Entrouvert, Doreen Chan, and Rough House Puppet Theater Company. They teach at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

  Christine Shallenberg is a teaching artist and mom. Her work ranges in mode from electronic textiles to light and sound installations to participatory choreographies for audiences (and sometimes her child). Her long-time collaboration with Jenn Cooper, JCSpaceRadio, engaged in a casually critical dialogue with frequencies through workshops, performances, and interactive installations. Her work has been seen at Links Hall, High Concept Laboratories, Experimental Sound Studio, Hume Gallery, Tritriangle, and No Nation in Chicago, as well as Movement Research, Galapagos Art Center, Williamsburg Arts Nexus, and Triskelion Arts in New York, New York. She also worked as the Lighting Designer for the Merce Cunningham Dance Company for whom she designed Second Hand, Antic Meet, Nearly 90², and more than 30 unique event performances seen around the world. She continues to design for performance in Chicago with Every house has a door.

  Sarah Skaggs is a performance producer, manager, and assistant director based in Chicago, Illinois. Skaggs has been producing art and cultural events, collaborating with artists, and engaging the structures of arts policy for nearly 20 years. She has worked for Every house has a door since 2015.