The Emperor Jones is a 1920 tragic play by American dramatist Eugene O'Neill that tells the tale of Brutus Jones, a resourceful, self-assured African American and a former Pullman porter, who kills another black man in a dice game, is jailed, and later escapes to a small, backward Caribbean island where he sets himself up as emperor. The play recounts his story in flashbacks as Brutus makes his way through the jungle in an attempt to escape former subjects who have rebelled against him.
The Bacchae is an ancient Greek tragedy, written by the Athenian playwright Euripides during his final years in Macedonia, at the court of Archelaus I of Macedon. It premiered posthumously at the Theatre of Dionysus in 405 BC as part of a tetralogy that also included Iphigeneia at Aulis and Alcmaeon in Corinth, and which Euripides' son or nephew is assumed to have directed. It won first prize in the City Dionysia festival competition.
The Wooster Group is a New York City-based experimental theater company known for creating numerous original dramatic works. It gradually emerged from Richard Schechner's The Performance Group (1967–1980) during the period from 1975 to 1980, and took its name in 1980; the independent productions of 1975–1980 are retroactively attributed to the Group.
Experimental theatre, inspired largely by Wagner's concept of Gesamtkunstwerk, began in Western theatre in the late 19th century with Alfred Jarry and his Ubu plays as a rejection of both the age in particular and, in general, the dominant ways of writing and producing plays. The term has shifted over time as the mainstream theatre world has adopted many forms that were once considered radical.
Richard Foreman is an American avant-garde playwright and the founder of the Ontological-Hysteric Theater.
The Kitchen is a non-profit, multi-disciplinary performance venue and art space located at 512 West 19th Street, between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. It was founded in Greenwich Village in 1971 by Steina and Woody Vasulka, who were frustrated at the lack of an outlet for video art. The space takes its name from the original location, the kitchen of the Mercer Arts Center which was the only available place for the artists to screen their video pieces. Although first intended as a location for the exhibition of video art, The Kitchen soon expanded its mission to include other forms of art and performance. In 1974, The Kitchen relocated to a building at the corner of Wooster and Broome Streets in SoHo, and incorporated as a not-for-profit arts organization. In 1987 it moved to its current location.
Elizabeth LeCompte is an American director of experimental theater, dance, and media. A founding member of The Wooster Group, she has directed that ensemble since its emergence in the late 1970s.
The Flea Theater, founded in 1996, is a theater in the TriBeCa section of New York City. It presents primarily new American theater and provides a venue for film stars to act on a very small (74-seat) stage, as well as a smaller black box theater for experimental and new works. The theater was founded by Jim Simpson, Mac Wellman, and Kyle Chepulis. The Flea earned early acclaim for original productions of post-9-11 play The Guys and political works by A. R. Gurney. According to the New York Times, “Since its inception in 1996, The Flea has presented over 100 plays and numerous dance and live music performances. Under Artistic Director Jim Simpson and Producing Director Carol Ostrow, The Flea is one of New York’s leading off-off-Broadway companies."
Richard Schechner is University Professor Emeritus at the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University, and editor of TDR: The Drama Review.
Ron Vawter was an American actor and a founding member of the experimental theater company The Wooster Group. Vawter performed in most of the group's works until his death from a heart attack in 1994 at the age of 45.
Kate Valk is a founding member of The Wooster Group, a collective of artists who make new work for the theater. Kate Valk began her work with the group in 1979 while she was a student at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts.
The Performance Group (TPG) was an experimental theater troupe that Richard Schechner founded in 1967 in New York City. TPG's home base was the Performing Garage in the SoHo district of Lower Manhattan. After 1975, tensions led to Schechner's resignation in 1980. The troupe reinvented itself as The Wooster Group under the leadership of director and theatre artist Elizabeth LeCompte.
Mac Wellman, born John McDowell Wellman on March 7, 1945 in Cleveland, Ohio, is an American playwright, author, and poet. He is best known for his experimental work in the theater which rebels against theatrical conventions, often abandoning such traditional elements as plot and character altogether. In 1990, he received an Obie Award for Best New American Play. In 1991, he received another Obie Award for Sincerity Forever. He has received a Lila Wallace-Readers' Digest Writers Award, and the 2003 Obie Award for Lifetime Achievement, as well as the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists award (2003).
New York City Players is a not-for-profit New York City-based experimental theatre company founded in 1999 by playwright and director Richard Maxwell to present his work. The company has produced approximately 30 new plays in New York and has toured in over 20 countries. Among their notable productions are Ode to the Man Who Kneels and People Without History, the latter at the Performing Garage in SoHo, Manhattan. The company's works have also been presented at Performance Space New York, The Kitchen, and Soho Rep in New York, and in Paris, Brussels, Dublin, London, and Germany.
Brooks Barry McNamara (1937–2009) was an American theater historian, professor, and editor of The Drama Review.
"Speculations: An Essay on the Theater" is a treatise by experimental playwright Mac Wellman. It was published with the collection of plays entitled The Difficulty of Crossing a Field. It is also available, with additional material not included in the book, on Wellman's website.
Dionysus in 69 was a theatrical production by the Performance Group (TPG), a New York-based experimental theater group. Dionysus in 69 was directed and conceived by TPG's founder and long-time artistic director Richard Schechner. The stage play was an adaptation of Euripides' The Bacchae. Dionysus in 69 is an example of Richard Schechner's practice of site-specific theater as described in his 1973 book Environmental Theater, utilizing space and the audience in such ways as to bring them in close contact with each other. Dionysus in 69 challenged notions of the orthodox theater by deconstructing Euripides' text, interpolating text and action devised by the performers, and involving the spectators in an active and sensory artistic experience. Brian de Palma, Bruce Joel Rubin, and Robert Fiore made a film of Dionysus. The film merges the final two performances of the play, from June and July 1969.
Ted Stamm (1944–1984) was an American painter.
Wooster Street is a street in SoHo and Greenwich Village in Manhattan, which runs south to north from Canal Street to Washington Square. It is a prime location for on-location filming and photo shoots due to its relatively low traffic, and the flagstone sidewalks and cobblestone street give it an old gritty feel. It is depicted as a night-time rainy street on the cover of the issue of The New Yorker dated February 8, 2021.
Remi Barclay Messenger, aka Remi Barclay & Remi Barclay Bosseau (b.1946) was a founding member of three prominent professional theatre companies in the New York City area – The Performance Group (l967–70), with Richard Schechner, Whole Theatre (1971–1990) and Voices of Earth (1988–2000), the latter two with Olympia Dukakis as a co-director. Her theatre work included years of acting, directing and teaching as well as creating workshops for a wide spectrum of institutions, schools and universities.
