Rubén Polendo is the founding artistic director of the interdisciplinary arts company, Theater Mitu. Driven by a commitment to innovation, he and his company work towards expanding the definition of theater through methodical experimentation with its form. Using art-making as a mode of research and inquiry, he works with Theater Mitu to share knowledge, spark dialogue, and strengthen community through cultivating radical ways of reimagining our world. His practice investigates trans-global performance; anti-disciplinary collaborative models; contemporary mythology; and investigations of the ritual and the sacred.

Utopian Hotline, Rubén’s Café Royal Cultural Foundation’s sponsored project is conceived as a multi-platform experience, a composition of three parts: an in-person theatrical production, an interactive digital artwork, and an original album with a central theme, NASA’s Voyager 1 & 2 spacecrafts, launched in 1977, to study the outer solar system and bring a message to other intelligent life in the universe.

The unique format, specifically designed for flexible engagement amidst a public health crisis, offers three pathways for audiences to explore the question of how we imagine a more perfect future? Directed by Rubén Polendo, Utopian Hotline is scheduled for production at MITU580 in Gowanus Brooklyn in September 2021.

Aboard NASA’s Voyager 1 & 2 spacecrafts is an artifact intended to communicate, beyond space and time, the story of our human existence: the golden record. After 43 years and over 13 billion miles, the golden record is the farthest human-made object from our planet. A planet whose future, both environmentally and socio-politically, is in jeopardy. If we were to send another message across the vast distances of space and time, what would it be? And how do we imagine the future in which this relic would be received? Theater Mitu is collecting answers to these questions during interviews with NASA astronauts, scientists, and children, to create our newest interview-based work, Utopian Hotline. Recorded and preserved as relics, their responses will draw a direct line from individuals who are currently building our future and those that are set to inherit it. Theater Mitu has partnered with The SETI Institute, ASU’s Interplanetary Initiative, and Brooklyn Independent Middle School to collect a vast archive of responses to be used in the creation of the piece.

Ruben Polendo has directed, curated and/or written much of Theater Mitu’s work, which has premiered in theaters Internationally and in the United States. Internationally, these include:  The Cairo Opera House (Egypt), Teatro DUOC (Chile), Od Nowa (Poland), MESS Festival (Bosnia & Herzegovina), Mansion (Lebanon), Centro Cultural Paso Del Norte (Mexico), Black Box (Mongolia), Visthar (India), Patravadi Arts Center (Thailand), Manarat al Saadiyat (UAE) and The NYUAD Arts Center (UAE).  In the United States, these include: New York Theater Workshop (New York City, NY), Brooklyn Academy of Music (Brooklyn, NY) Mass MoCA (North Adams, MA), Contemporary Arts Center New Orleans (New Orleans, LA), Los Angeles Theater Center (Los Angeles, CA), Ignite Arts/CaraMia (Dallas, TX), and Z Space (San Francisco, CA).  Additionally, in the United States, Polendo’s work has been seen at Baruch Performing Arts Center, CSV, The Public, INTAR, Blue Light, Lincoln Center, A.C.T., McCarter, The Perseverance, NAATCO, Mark Taper, Alliance, ETC and South Coast Rep. Polendo has an MFA in directing from the UCLA School of Theater, an M.A. in non-Western theater from Lancaster University in the U.K., and a B.S. in Biochemistry from Trinity University in Texas.  Currently he is Chair of Undergraduate Drama at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.  Based in Brooklyn, NY, he continues to create, develop and present work in the US and Internationally.

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