Erika Latta

Erika Latta was raised in Sunriver, Oregon, in the woods with no running water in a log cabin and Geodesic Dome until the age of seven. During her formative years she was taught painting and drawing by her father and mother, both visual artists. She left the woods of Oregon, via hitchhiking, trains, and greyhound buses, with her mother to Bellingham, Washington and eventually ended up on the Lummi Indian Reservation in Washington where she was raised until the age of seventeen. While attending Ferndale High School she was a member of the Mount Baker Dance Company for eight years and on the track and volleyball team at Ferndale High School. She was initially accepted to the University of Washington in Volleyball but quickly moved to the art, dance and theater department. While at the University of Washington she studied dance, installation art, photography and theater. She began focusing on acting, specifically the Suzuki Method of Acting where she traveled to Toga-Mura, Japan, on scholarship to further her training. While in Toga-Mura, she met the theater director Anne Bogart (SITI Company) who was presenting her productions of the Medium during the Toga-Mura Summer festival. After meeting Anne Bogart and viewing her training, a combination of Viewpoints and the Suzuki Method of Acting, she discovered Anne Bogart was teaching at the graduate program at Columbia University. She decided to fly to New York to audition for the graduate program at Columbia University and was accepted into the graduate acting program. She dropped her double degree in visual arts and received her BFA in theater from the University of Washington and moved to New York. During her training at Columbia University she worked with Anne Bogart, Robert Woodruff, Andrei Serban and in the summer months with Robert Wilson (at the Watermill Center). She interned with the Wooster Group at the performing garage and performed in the site-specific Obie winning production of Chuck Mee's, Trojan Woman: a Love Story directed by Tina Landau. She graduated with a MFA in Acting at Columbia University. While at Columbia University she formed her multidisciplinary not-for profit theater company, WaxFactory in New York with Doris Mirescu, Dion Doulis and Ivan Talijancic. She is the Artistic Director along with Ivan Talijancic. (waxfactory.org) She has performed, directed and written international collaborations with WaxFactory in New York, Latin America and in Europe. Venues include the ICA/Institute of Contemporary Art (London, UK), The Gulbenkian Museum (Lisbon, Portugal), SommerSzene (Salzburg, Austria), OLTRE90 (Milan, Italy), FIT/ Festival Internacional de Teatro (Caracas, Venezuela), MESS (Sarajevo, Bosnia), the Exodos Festival and Cankarjev Dom Center For The Performing Arts (Ljubljana, Slovenia), SummerSzene in Salzburg, Austria, Zürcher Theaterspektakel in Zurich, and La Batie festival in Geneva, Switzerland. In New York she has acted at La Mama E.T.C, Performance Space 122, Abrons Art Center, New York Theater Workshop, Lincoln Center's Clark Studio, Soho Rep, Old American Can Factory, En Garde Arts, Raw Space, Ohio Theater, The Culture Project, the Act French Festival and the McKittrick Hotel. She has written and directed, as well as designed sound for, several theater productions for Begat Theater in France and WaxFactory in New York, which have received numerous grants, residences and fellowships both in New York and Europe. Her notable productions with Begat theater's La Disparition, Hidden Stories, La Demeurées, Le Jardin Aveugle based on the novel by Janet Frame (Scented Gardens for The Blind) and WaxFactory's Delirium 27. She has received numerous residencies in Europe in the performing arts, most notable at the Bogliasco Foundation / Liguria Center for the Arts and Humanities in Bogliasco, Italy and the Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart, Germany. She has worked on several films for WaxFactory including acting in the feature length film 416 Minutes, directed by Ivan Talijancic. She was last seen as the Keanu Reeves character "Scott" in hand2mouth's Time, A Fair Hustler based on Gus Van Sant's "My Own Private Idaho" at Artist Reparatory in Portland, Oregon and in Punchdrunk's hit show, Sleep No More in New York. As well as being an actor and director she is a published photographer. She shot stills for Captain Fantastic by Matt Ross with Viggo Mortensen and Bottled Up by Enid Zentelis with Melissa Leo, Marin Ireland and Josh Hamilton. She is in post-production with WaxFactory's film 416 Minutes and in the production of Pull Yourself Together inspired by Anton Chekhov's the Seagull. Her production of La Disparition is touring in Europe (begat.org). She is a member of the writers union SACD in France and an occasional contributor to Movie Maker Magazine. She lives and works in Brooklyn, NY with her daughter and partner.