Anthony Barilla is a musician, writer, and performance artist based in Houston, Texas. He makes interdisciplinary works, often involving his travels in Kosovo, the Caucasus, Africa, and Europe. He has written music for theaters around the U.S. and regularly creates compositions for national radio program THIS AMERICAN LIFE. He writes and performs with Dutch singer Merel van Dijk, and is engaged in a twenty-year long interdisciplinary collaboration called WHOLE WIDE WATER with artist Lindsay Kayser. In 2012, his first monologue—a multi-disciplinary work called APOCALYPSE TOWN—premiered in Houston. The following year he created an atlas and walking tour in collaboration with the residents of a Dutch village. In 2016 he presented a new monologue—DISPUTED TERRITORIES—in a series of small, intimate salons in Houston. He was recently commissioned to work on a new musical with playwright Mickle Maher, and in 2017 was named “Best Sound Designer” by the Houston Press.
Anthony Barilla has been awarded residencies at the MacDowell Colony and the Brown Foundation Fellows Program at the Dora Maar House. His work has been supported by the Swiss Cultural Programme in the Western Balkans, the MAP Fund, and others. In Houston he spent a decade working with Infernal Bridegroom Productions, a theater company widely respected for its challenging ensemble work, where he collaborated with artists like Lisa D’Amour, Suzan-Lori Parks, and Daniel Johnston, among many others. During his tenure as IBP’s artistic director, the theater won substantial critical praise, including being named “Best Experimental Theater” (Houston Chronicle, 2004) and “Best Original Show, Production, and Performance Space” (Houston Press, 2005). He regularly tours Europe with a rock band that he joined in Kosovo.