Nature Theater of Oklahoma is an OBIE award-winning New York art and performance enterprise under the direction of Pavol Liska and Kelly Copper. With each new project, we attempt to set an impossible challenge for ourselves, the audience, and our collaborators — working from inside the codes and confines of established genres and exploding them. No two projects are formally the same, but the work is always full of humor, earnestness, rigor, and the audience plays an essential role – whether as spectators or – just as often – as participants in the work. Using readymade material, found space, gifted properties, cosmic accident, extreme formal manipulation and plain hard work – Nature Theater of Oklahoma makes art to affect a shift in the perception of everyday reality that extends beyond the site of performance and into the world in which we live.
Pursuit of Happiness was created by an American duo that, after nineteen years of collaborating and performing worldwide, became widely known for their epic series Life and Times. Pavol Liška and Kelly Copper, an OBIE Award-winning creative duo, have collaborated with numerous producers and cultural institutions and performed at major festivals worldwide. The Nature Theater of Oklahoma, based in New York, is a renowned name in international theatre, creating experimental yet accessible and unpretentious works. Blending theatre, dance and contemporary performance, Pursuit of Happiness offers En–Knap Group’s versatile dancers a platform for their individual talents and for the distinctive physical and theatrical language of Nature Theater of Oklahoma.