David Kilpatrick
Foreman Gets Political
By David KilpatrickSince last year, when King Cowboy Rufus Rules the Universe was announced as the title for Richard Foreman’s 2004 production, rumors flew that he was going to— at long last— give us a "political" play.
Back to the Source: Great Jones’s Seven at La MaMa
By David KilpatrickThe heady days of radical experimentation that gave birth to the Off-Off-Broadway scene, when the East Village was a magnet for a counter-culture that still had a sense of revolutionary verve, haunt our performance spaces—a challenge to those of us too young to have been there, a bittersweet memory to those who were.
Poor Imitations
By David KilpatrickImitation may be the most sincere form of flattery, but with the Wooster Group’s latest, Poor Theater, one can’t help but question its sincerity. Which is, of course, exactly the point. Legendary director Jerzy Grotowsky coined the term “poor theater” to describe the performative approach developed with the Polish Laboratory Theater.
In Conversation
Lumberjack Alchemy: Richard Foreman
By David KilpatrickJust as the first servings of this year’s mental stew were being offered at the Ontological-Hysteric Theatre, word spread that The Gods Are Pounding My Head! (AKA Lumberjack Messiah) might well be a last supper at the table of legendary writer-director-designer Richard Foreman.
Same Difference: On Caryl Churchill’s A Number
By David KilpatrickCaryl Churchill’s penchant for innovation and experimentation has earned her a secure place among anyone’s list of most important contemporary dramatists
In Conversation
Ritual Expressionism, Fulya Peker in conversation with David Kilpatrick
To say that Fulya Peker is an active theatrical artist is a gross understatement, made abundantly clear as one tries to track her down as she shifts from theater to theater, working on Richard Foreman’s Wake Up Mr. Sleepy! Your Unconscious Mind is Dead!, the Wooster Group’s Hamlet, and her own New York directorial debut, Requiem Aeternam Deo, a meditation on Friedrich Nietzsche’s seminal modernist text, Thus Spoke Zarathustra (using the new Graham Parkes translation as source material).
Pillow-in-Yer-Face
By David KilpatrickWARNING: This review discusses details that some might feel reveal too much.
Ubu Goes Patamusical
By David Kilpatrick“Merdre!” The audience at the premiere of Alfred Jarry’s Ubu roi wouldn’t let the performance get beyond its scatological opening word before a riot broke loose, making December 20, 1896 (the night the play premiered at the Théâtre de l’Oeuvre in Paris) the birth date of the theatrical avant-garde.
Houses of Faustus (The Devil’s in the Details)
By David KilpatrickIt’s tempting to declare a Faustian zeitgeist. With two productions from two of New York’s most interesting experimental theater companies dealing with the infamous scholar-magician (an historical figure contemporary with Luther), one can’t help but wonder if there is something about the present moment that sends us to the mirror.
In Conversation
Myth and La MaMa: Ellen Stewart
By David KilpatrickSince founding La MaMa in 1961, Ellen Stewart has been far and away the most prolific (and arguably most influential) producer of experimental theater in New York and throughout the world.
In Conversation
The Wooster Group’s Ari Fliakosi Poor Theater in SoHo?
By David KilpatrickWith their latest work-in-progress, Poor Theater: A Series of Simulacra, The Wooster Group take on or, as they say, “channel” the work of two visionaries of contemporary experimental performance: director of the Polish Theatre Laboratory and author of Towards a Poor Theatre, the late Jerzy Grotowski, and choreographer William Forsythe, currently of the Ballett Frankfurt.
The Pathological Passion of Dario D’Ambrosi
By David KilpatrickDario D’Ambrosi has been a fixture of the off-off Broadway scene since he first appeared at La MaMa almost twenty-five years ago.
