Richard Foreman’s Work as a Sledgehammer

Many of the great downtown and avant garde creators who had contact with Richard Foreman went on to make their own work, sometimes in collaboration with or confrontation with his image. Foreman’s complex, often baffling, always overwhelming art called out the best in both the artists who saw it and the critics who wrote about it. Join us for a conversation with those critics and artists who know Foreman’s work from the inside out—and form his living archive.

Panelists

Ben Brantley has been a theater critic for the New York Times, a movie critic for Elle and a fashion critic for Women's Wear Daily.

Kara Feely is a writer, director, and designer for experimental theater and interdisciplinary performance and co-director of Object Collection.

Travis Just is co-director of Object Collection and a composer whose music often uses text, objects, and gesture in addition to instruments, voice and electronics.

Jennifer Krasinski is a writer and cultural critic who contributes to url?u=https-3A__www.4columns.org_archive_krasinski-2Djennifer&d=DwMFaQ&c=slrrB7dE8n7gBJbeO0g-IQ&r=OJAHM61rt4cVthxqZmbq5uIk3stohNoTMN2qgfQblLI&m=I-7P_IELnjI47dpSvfbqARmtc-q0c1I2oGZJPaZSzg2W91qZ0Fmu1WRXtG_kmDPb&s=2E10G_l1obShNvl0CBjsRNhsz7f1nhlszC52XR23n60&e=,">span>, url?u=https-3A__www.bookforum.com_contributor_jennifer-2Dkrasinski&d=DwMFaQ&c=slrrB7dE8n7gBJbeO0g-IQ&r=OJAHM61rt4cVthxqZmbq5uIk3stohNoTMN2qgfQblLI&m=I-7P_IELnjI47dpSvfbqARmtc-q0c1I2oGZJPaZSzg2W91qZ0Fmu1WRXtG_kmDPb&s=a4BwC-VcrSYriNEBpQYtf8Dsx20s8TnRPmjBF86x_Qc&e=,">span>, the New York Review of Books, the url?u=https-3A__www.newyorker.com_books_second-2Dread_agota-2Dkristof-2Dand-2Dthe-2Duses-2Dof-2Dilliteracy&d=DwMFaQ&c=slrrB7dE8n7gBJbeO0g-IQ&r=OJAHM61rt4cVthxqZmbq5uIk3stohNoTMN2qgfQblLI&m=I-7P_IELnjI47dpSvfbqARmtc-q0c1I2oGZJPaZSzg2W91qZ0Fmu1WRXtG_kmDPb&s=4YqpuGq4sZ4D4GDBWLrOUp4X01nDrtM4qSNRoHT9OYs&e=">span> (url?u=https-3A__www.newyorker.com_goings-2Don-2Dabout-2Dtown_art&d=DwMFaQ&c=slrrB7dE8n7gBJbeO0g-IQ&r=OJAHM61rt4cVthxqZmbq5uIk3stohNoTMN2qgfQblLI&m=I-7P_IELnjI47dpSvfbqARmtc-q0c1I2oGZJPaZSzg2W91qZ0Fmu1WRXtG_kmDPb&s=I4mrSyo8TSKGgjnE6Wv0EEyHxs6d_vQt0JQciQUA_LA&e=),">span>), and other publications.

Elizabeth LeCompte is a theater artist who directs The Wooster Group, one of America’s foremost experimental theater companies.

Tom Sellar, a writer, curator, and editor, is Editor of Theater magazine and Professor in the Practice of Dramaturgy and Dramatic Criticism at Yale University.

Helen Shaw is the theatre critic for the New Yorker. She has also written about theatre for New York Magazine, Time Out New York, 4Columns, the Village Voice, and Art Forum.

Kate Valk joined the Wooster Group in 1979 as an assistant to Elizabeth LeCompte and has since worked on scripts and costumes as well as performing in and directing work with the Group.

This discussion is presented as part of Richard Foreman Wants You to Wake Up--a semester-long celebration of the ongoing impact of Richard Foreman and the Ontological-Hysteric Theatre – with events across campus, starting in September.

NYU's "Archives Onstage," an interdisciplinary, cross-campus series, aims to activate the NYU Division of Libraries’ significant performing arts-related archival holdings in relation to contemporary art and scholarship on campus. Using panels, talks, performance and more, the series situates these archives as integral to the past, present, and future lives of the university and its neighboring downtown artistic communities.

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