Elevator Repair Service

Last updated

Elevator Repair Service (ERS) is a New York-based theater ensemble founded by director John Collins and a group of actors in 1991. [1]

Contents

ERS has performed in various New York City venues including The Public Theater, New York Theatre Workshop, Performance Space 122, The Performing Garage, HERE Arts Center, The Ontological at St. Mark's Church, The Flea Theater, The Kitchen, and Soho Rep. It has also performed elsewhere in the United States, and in Europe, Australia, and Asia. [1] [2]

Theatre critic Ben Brantley, writing in The New York Times , called its production Gatz starring Scott Shepherd "The most remarkable achievement in theater not only of this year but also of this decade." [3]

In 2008, the ensemble was awarded a grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award. ERS has also received numerous awards including an OBIE Award for Sustained Excellence; The Foundation for Contemporary Arts Theater Grant; the Theatre Communications Group’s Peter Zeisler Memorial Award for Outstanding Achievement; Eliot Norton Awards for Outstanding Visiting Production, Outstanding Actor, and Outstanding Director; and a Lucille Lortel Award for Alternative Theatrical Experience and Best Director. Artistic Director John Collins received 2011 US Artists Donnelley and Guggenheim Fellowships. Individual ERS ensemble members have received OBIEs for Sustained Excellence in Performance, Lighting Design, and Sound Design.

During its first 15 years, the company worked "with found texts or improvised, anything that wasn't literature" as director John Collins pointed out in an interview. [2] These pieces included Language Instruction (1994), inspired by Andy Kaufman and "How To Speak Dutch" LP's; Cab Legs (1997), referencing Tennessee Williams; and Total Fictional Lie (1998), which drew on documentary films as its source material. On composing these early pieces, former ERS co-director Steve Bodow said, "We like words or movement or sounds that go through a process of several translations. Sometimes it’s literal, from one language to another, sometimes it’s more metaphorical, from one medium to another." [4]

This has changed with the play Gatz, premiered in 2006, the first of a trilogy (although initially not planned as such) of plays based on American novels from the mid to late 1920s. The trilogy consists of the plays Gatz, The Sound and the Fury (April Seventh, 1928), and The Select (The Sun Also Rises) . ERS has adapted these three plays in different ways. For the first play, Gatz, based on the novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (first published 1925), ERS performed every word of the book in a production that lasted over six hours. The second play is based on The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner (first published 1929), and ERS staged a single chapter. For the third play, based on The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway (first published 1927), ERS created an edited version of the story using Hemingway's dialogue and some of his prose. [2]

In 2013, ERS was developing two new works for the stage: Arguendo, a staging of the 1991 Supreme Court case Barnes v. Glen Theatre, Inc., slated to premiere at The Public Theater in September 2013, and Fondly, Collette Richland, with preview performances at the Walker Art Center.

Works

Shows from source: [5] For show marked *, also refer to source: [6]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ann Reinking</span> American actress, dancer, and choreographer (1949–2020)

Ann Reinking was an American dancer, actress, choreographer, and singer. She worked predominantly in musical theater, starring in Broadway productions such as Coco (1969), Over Here! (1974), Goodtime Charley (1975), Chicago (1977), Dancin' (1978), and Sweet Charity (1986).

Walter Bobbie is an American theatre director, choreographer, and occasional actor and dancer. Bobbie has directed both musicals and plays on Broadway and Off-Broadway, and was the Artistic Director of the New York City Center Encores! concert series. He directed the long-running Broadway revival of the musical Chicago. His most well-known acting role was Nicely-Nicely Johnson in the 1992 Broadway revival of Guys and Dolls.

John Collins is an American experimental theatre director and designer. He is the founder and artistic director of Elevator Repair Service (ERS) and has directed or co-directed all of its productions since 1991. Most notable among his work with ERS is Gatz, a verbatim performance of the entire text of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby.

Romance is a play by David Mamet. It premiered Off-Broadway in 2005 and also ran in London.

Nicky Silver is an American playwright. Formerly of Philadelphia, he resides in London. Many of his plays have been produced off-Broadway, and also at the Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company in Washington, D.C.

Steve Bodow is an American television writer and producer. Most recently he was Executive Producer and showrunner of Netflix's Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj. From 2015 to early 2019 he was Executive Producer/co-showrunner of The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, following his 13 years at The Daily Show with Jon Stewart as an Executive Producer, Head Writer and staff writer. In his time at TDS, Bodow won 14 Emmys and two Peabody Awards.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Skirball Center for the Performing Arts</span>

The Jack H. Skirball Center for the Performing Arts, generally known as NYU Skirball, is an 850-seat theater at 566 LaGuardia Place in Manhattan, New York, owned by New York University. It was named after philanthropist Jack H. Skirball. The theatre was completed in October 2003 and cost approximately $40 million. The architect was Kevin Roche, John Dinkeloo and Associates. The institution typically presents two seasons of curated public performances, talks, and events per year.

Third is the last play written by Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Wendy Wasserstein, which premiered Off-Broadway in 2005. The play involves a female professor and her interactions with a student.

Edward Albee's At Home at the Zoo is a play by Edward Albee which adds a first act to his 1959 play The Zoo Story. This first act, also called Homelife, revolves around the marriage of Peter and Ann and ends with Peter leaving to go read a book in Central Park.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Coco Fusco</span> Cuban-American artist, writer, and curator

Coco Fusco is a Cuban-American interdisciplinary artist, writer, and curator whose work has been exhibited and published internationally. Fusco's work explores gender, identity, race, and power through performance, video, interactive installations, and critical writing.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Cromer</span> American actor and director

David Cromer is an American theatre director, and stage, film, and TV actor. He has received recognition for his work on Broadway, Off-Broadway, and in his native Chicago. Cromer has won or been nominated for numerous awards, including winning the Lucille Lortel Award and Obie Award for his direction of Our Town. He was nominated for the Drama Desk Award and the Outer Critics Circle Award for his direction of The Adding Machine. In 2018, Cromer won the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical for The Band's Visit.

Peter Taub was the director of performance programs at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago and is now an independent freelance curator. Taub served as the head of the MCA’s performing arts program since its conception in 1996 until his departure in 2016.

<i>Tribes</i> (play) Play by Nina Raine

Tribes is a play by English playwright Nina Raine that had its world premiere in 2010 at London's Royal Court Theatre and its North American premiere Off-Broadway at the Barrow Street Theatre in 2012. The play won the 2012 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Play.

<i>Once</i> (musical) 2011 musical

Once is a musical based on the 2007 film of the same name by John Carney. Like the film, music and lyrics were by Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová, including the Academy Award-winning "Falling Slowly". The book for the musical was written by Enda Walsh. The musical premiered at the New York Theatre Workshop in 2011, before transferring to Broadway in 2012. The production received eleven 2012 Tony Award nominations, and won eight including Best Musical, Best Actor and Best Book. The musical also won the 2012 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Musical and the 2013 Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album. It has since spawned a London production, with a North American Tour which started on 1 October 2013. In the musical, the cast also serves as the orchestra. A minimalist set is used, including a bar in center stage with chairs lining stage left and right. Exiting cast members simply step to the side of the stage and sit down. They serve as the orchestra from these chairs. The bar is used before the show and at intermission as a working bar for theater patrons.

The Trip to Bountiful is a play by American playwright Horton Foote. The play premiered March 1, 1953, on NBC-TV, before being produced on the Broadway stage from November 3, 1953, to December 5, 1953.

<i>The Select (The Sun Also Rises)</i>

The Select (The Sun Also Rises) is a stage adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's 1926 novel The Sun Also Rises by Elevator Repair Service theater ensemble. It has been performed in several venues. It premiered at the 2010 Edinburgh Festival Fringe. The Off-Broadway production, which ran from September 11 – October 23, 2011 at the New York Theatre Workshop (NYTW), earned awards for its sound design. The show directed by John Collins and produced by Ariana Smart Truman and Lindsay Hockaday received the Lucille Lortel Award for being outstanding.

The Incubator Arts Project was an Off-Off-Broadway theater located above St. Mark's Church-in-the-Bowery in the East Village of Manhattan, New York City.

<i>The Inheritance</i> (play) 2018 play by Matthew Lopez

The Inheritance is a play by Matthew López that is inspired by the 1910 novel Howards End by E. M. Forster. The play premiered in London at the Young Vic in March 2018, before transferring to Broadway in November 2019.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mint Theater Company</span>

Mint Theater Company was founded in 1992 in New York City. Their mission is to find, produce, and advocate for "worthwhile plays from the past that have been lost or forgotten". They have been instrumental in restoring the theatrical legacy of several playwrights notably; Teresa Deevy, Rachel Crothers, and Miles Malleson. As well as producing less produced or forgotten works by noted playwrights such as A. A. Milne, Lillian Hellman, and J. M. Barrie. They have also produced frequently ignored theatrical works by noted authors such as Ernest Hemingway, D. H. Lawrence, and Leo Tolstoy.

Domesticated is a 2013 comic-drama play from Bruce Norris. The play follows politician Bill Pulvar and his wife Judy as they navigate a sex scandal.

References

  1. 1 2 Elevator Repair Service: Bio Archived 2007-11-01 at the Wayback Machine on the group's official site, Accessed 22 September 2007.
  2. 1 2 3 The Independent: Interview with John Collins Archived 2010-08-17 at the Wayback Machine on a blog site of the British newspaper The Independent, accessed 19 August 2010.
  3. ↑ Brantley, Ben (16 December 2010). "Hath Not a Year Highlights? Even This One?". The New York Times. Retrieved 24 April 2013.
  4. ↑ Fusco, Coco. "Elevator Repair Service", BOMB Magazine , Spring 1999, accessed 20 July 2011.
  5. ↑ Elevator Repair Service: Shows Archived 2007-11-01 at the Wayback Machine on the group's official site, accessed 19 August 2010.
  6. ↑ Edinburgh International Festival: The Sun Also Rises (The Select), accessed 19 August 2010.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.