ERIC TRULES - Artist/Educator
ERIC TRULES - Artist/Educator
ERIC TRULES is a native of New York City and has been in the performing arts for 40 years. He began as a modern dancer and choreographer with Shirley Mordine and The Dance Troupe in residence at Columbia College, Chicago, and then co-founded Mo Ming, the nationally renowned Dance-Theater in Chicago. Eric was one of the first federally funded CETA grant recipients in America for his dance work, which also received support from the Illinois Arts Council and the NEA. He then returned to NYC and founded and directed its Resident Clown Troupe, The Cumeezi Bozo Ensemble, a company which was funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, appeared at Lincoln Center and Town Hall, and toured Holland, Switzerland, and France. Trules created the concept and program of "Free Public Laughs" which brought the performing arts to alternative, under-served and ethnically diverse communities throughout the metropolitan area. He ran for Mayor of NYC as clown candidate, Gino Cumeezi, against Ed Koch in 1977 and finished 5th out of 4 candidates. The Cumeezi website address is: http://www.cumeezi.com/
After studying with Lee Strasberg & Nicholas Ray and working Off-Broadway in New York, Eric came to Los Angeles in 1983, acting at the Mark Taper Forum, and in television and in films (See separate resume). He is perhaps best known however, for his Solo Performance work. In 1988 he wrote his own one man show, DOWN...BUT NOT OUT, which he performed at both the Wallenboyd Theater and at Theater/Theatre in LA, and then went on to present it at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival where he was “shortlisted” by London's Independent newspaper for its first annual Theater Award. Next Eric wrote and performed W(HOLES), another theatrical collection of monologues and dialogues - on the theme of Illness and Healing, also at Theater/Theatre in Hollywood, followed by IT'S THE DAY AFTER VALENTINE'S DAY in 1995, which he presented at the Hudson Guild in LA and again at the Edinburgh Fringe. In 2002-2003, Eric was an original member of the long-running theatrical anthology of monologues in Los Angeles called “Cock Tales”.
As a writer and performance poet Eric has been featured at Beyond Baroque and in the LA Poetry Festival, and he has had his work published in national anthologies and in The Los Angeles Times. He has also read his work on KCRW and KPFK radio and hosted "Theater Closeup" on KPFK. He has been editor and co-publisher of Euphonia, A Los Angeles Journal for Men, and is an Allen Ginsberg Poetry Award Winner.
As a theatrical director Eric studied directing with Lee Strasberg and Jose Quintero. He has directed theater at many of the best houses in Los Angeles including AMERICA'S FINEST by Burke Byrnes at the Wallenboyd and Back Alley Theaters in LA, as well as in San Francisco and Edinburgh, Scotland. He also directed THE SLATER BROTHERS at the Powerhouse and Olio Theaters, and the Drama-Logue and LA Weekly award winning comedies WARHIT and MORE WARHIT at the Beverly Hills Playhouse.
Professor Trules is currently a full time Senior Lecturer at USC's School of Theater and has been a faculty member since 1986, as well as an Adjunct Assistant Professor in USC’s School of Cinema-Television. In addition, he has been a Creative Writing Instructor for CSSSA at Cal Arts and a member of the Performing Arts faculty at UCLA Extension. In 1999, Trules won USC’s prestigious national Phi Kappa Phi “Faculty Recognition Award”, one of only 4 faculty members campus-wide, and in 2002 Eric was a Fulbright Scholar in Malaysia for 8 months. In 2004, he gave the prestigious, campus-wide “What Matters to Me and Why” lecture.
As a filmmaker Eric trained at NYU and UCLA Film Schools, studying with Nicholas Ray among others. He is a National Poetry Film & Video Festival award winner, and a Western States Regional Media Arts Fellow for his feature-length documentary film, THE POET AND THE CON, an autobiographical film about the relationship between himself and his uncle, a convicted felon and a career criminal. The film was completed in 1999, favorably reviewed and featured in the Los Angeles Times, and had a successful theatrical run at several of the Laemmle Theaters in Los Angeles. It has played extensively at both domestic and international film festivals. http://www.poetandcon.com/
Eric has worked as Director of Development for Patrick Wells & Associates, producer of the feature films, YOUNGBLOOD and I LOVE YOU TO DEATH. He has directed music videos, industrials, documentaries, and short narrative features. As a screenwriter he has completed several original screenplays, sold one to HBO which was produced and broadcast on Cinemax, and has adapted crime fiction writer Jim Thompson's novel, KING BLOOD, into a feature length screenplay.
As a theatrical producer Eric has presented theater, dance, and live performance in Chicago, New York, and LA, also for the last 40 years. As founder and Artistic Director of the SPOKEN WORD FESTIVAL (SWF), a non-profit, multi-cultural arts organization which produces and presents multi-disciplinary performance work to the inner-city, underserved LA community, Eric has produced 4 seasonal arts festivals in Los Angeles since 1990. After working with Peter Sellars in the 1990 Los Angeles Festival, he produced SANTA MONICA FESTIVAL '91, bringing together groups such as the San Francisco Mime Troupe, Latins Anonymous, and Cold Tofu for a two day multi-cultural celebration of the performing arts for the City of Santa Monica. Receiving funding from the NEA, the California Arts Council, the LA Cultural Affairs Department, and the California Community Foundation, Eric produced WORD/LA, AN ORAL RESPONSE TO THE RODNEY KING VIOLENCE in 1992, a 5 site, City-wide program in response to 1992's civil unrest, which was documented and broadcast on KCET, Los Angeles' PBS affiliate, and SOLO/LA in 1995 at CBS Radford Studios in Studio City.
Since 2000, Trules has been posting “travelogues, rants, and reports” from around the world on his travel website, e-travels with e. trules: http://www.etravelswithetrules.com/ The site also posts travel speaking engagements and current tours that Trules is leading at the time. In addition Trules has been doing speaking engagements as a motivational speaker on subjects such as leadership, creativity, self expression, thinking and living outside the box, group and team building, finding one’s own voice and passion, and taking the road less traveled.
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The LA Times has said about Eric's work: "Trules is an original. He turns his vivid writing into dark/comic lacerations building to the cosmic. His work reverberates with grit."
And the Edinburgh Scotsman: "Trules is an accomplished writer; he has both a feel for contemporary idiom and a poetic imagination that echoes the great American playwrights."
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GRANTS, AWARDS, LECTURES, and CONFERENCES:
1975,76: CETA Grant, Chicago, IL
1975-77: Illinois Arts Council grants
1979, 81, & 82: NEA Arts Exposure grant
1980: NEA Expansion Arts grant
1981 & 82: NEA Theater Program grants
1983: NEA Special Constituencies (Deaf, Senior, & Handicapped)
1980-82: New York State Council on the Arts
1991: Brody Grant from the California Community Foundation
1991: Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department (LACAD) grant for WORD/LA
1991-95: California Arts Council grants
1991: NEA Inter-Arts grant for the MCSWF: "New Projects"
1991: California Council on the Humanities "Challenge Match" grant
1992: National Poetry Film and Video Festival Award Winner
1992: Western States Regional Media Arts Fellowship
1992: Allen Ginsberg Poetry Award Winner
1994: LACAD grant for SOLO/LA
1994: LA County Music and Performing Arts Commission grant
1995: Pioneer Fund grant for THE POET AND THE CON
1996: Edwin & Catherine Davis Grant for THE POET AND THE CON
1999: USC Phi Kappa Phi "Faculty Recognition Award"
2002: Fulbright Scholar to Malaysia
2004: USC Distinguished Lecture Series, “What Matters to Me and Why”
2005: 12th International Conference on Learning, Granada Spain: “Personal Voice Storytelling Bridges the Global Divide, Changing the World One Story at a Time”
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