Saint Genet is an artists’ collective around the young director, writer and producer Derrick Ryan Claude Mitchell. Here, just as in his former company Implied Violence, he creates provocative, genre bending and surrealist performances in a variety of places, like buildings that have been abandoned or are due to be demolished, alleys, roofs or places out in the countryside, but also in prestigious museums like the Guggenheim and in theatres. Saint Genet makes not only large-scale operatic pieces but also intimate performances, visual art installations and pure movement art-sometimes all at the same time. During a residence at the Robert Wilson Watermill Centre, Mitchell developed the first of his Dorothy K programs, which was presented at the Dutch-financed New Island Festival in New York in 2009.

Mitchell and his companies have won various prizes, including the Stranger Genius Award in 2008 and the Otto Ritter Award in 2016. In 2013 he made his international breakthrough with a large multidisciplinary work that he produced on commission from the Luminato Festival in Toronto and the Donaufestival in Krems, Austria: Paradisiacal Rights. During the premiere of this production at the On the Boards festival in Seattle, Mitchell organised a series of satellites shows around the main play, including a recreation of a performance from 1971 by Christopher Burden, SHOOT. In 2015 Mitchell was given the opportunity to develop a series of plays and performances over three years for the Donaufestival in Krems. Promised Ends: The Slow Arrow of Sorrow and Madness, of which the Wiener Festwochen is producer and the Holland Festival co-producer, will complete this trilogy.