Theater Direction
The Irish playwright on grief, adaptation, and the possibilities of form.
By casting actors to perform as herself, Bocanegra considers “the nature of presentation itself.” Lili Taylor stars in her Farmhouse/Whorehouse at BAM’s Next Wave Festival this December.
Body swapping, infinite loops, and ’70s conspiracy thrillers haunt the dynamic performances of a movie-loving artist and the actors he works with.
“I asked my students for the image of the essence of tenderness. One girl brought in a small, silver plate with a bunch of grapes neatly laid out on it. When I noticed she had stripped the skin off the grapes, I got goose bumps.”
”I am not a human being up there, true, and I am not a woman. I’m consciousness.”
“I’m somewhere between Bresson, Godard, and the NBA.”
David Levine and Alexandre Singh discuss the playwriting process, stage excretions, and traversing the art-theater divide.
Federico León’s recent Las multitudes was staged last year in Argentina. For Richard Maxwell, the playwright-director’s production is a “brokenhearted humanity tale.” A heroic one, at that, with 120 actors.
Federico León’s recent Las multitudes was staged last year in Argentina. For Richard Maxwell, the playwright-director’s production is a “brokenhearted humanity tale.” A heroic one, at that, with 120 actors.
David Greenspan’s plays are at once grotesque and beautiful; they pontificate on meta-theater and self-consciousness, while remaining familiar and intimate.
Belgian director and playwright Jan Lauwers of Needcompany in discussion with fellow dramatist Elizabeth LeCompte of The Wooster Group on the parallel lives of their respective companies and the upcoming performance of The Deer House at BAM.
Listen to a BOMB podcast of actress April Yvette Thompson and Pulitzer Prize-winner Lynn Nottage, whose new play, By the Way, Meet Vera Stark just premiered at Second Stage.
“That question is not about the character that’s written on the page there. That question is about you. There’s a kind of compulsion when you’re acting to make it believable, to make it credible. That’s not my concern. That’s going to happen. Whatever happens will be real. It will be real in some fashion.”
“It’s all risk! Living a life is basically about you entering one situation after another that you may or may not want to enter. Everything has stakes, everything has meaning, everything has consequences.” Philip Seymour Hoffman
“I worked at Shepherd-Pratt mental hospital, and I liked to take my name tag off and maybe be confused for one of the patients.”
Ben Katchor is a recorder of vanished and vanishing places, a poet of the vast metropolis of New York. He notices, crucially, what others walk by, fail to see and generally disregard—a man living in the mosaic while seeing its details.
On a beautiful day in October, Cornelius Eady and I sat in a Sixth Avenue diner to talk about writing, art, politics, theatrical collaboration, and yes, the events of September 11.
Martin Sherman’s Bent played on Broadway in 1979. Since then, the playwright had been living in London. In 1998, with A Madhouse in Goa and the film version of Bent, Sherman returned to the States with a vengeance.