ABSTRACT
In its origins, Richard Foreman’s Ontological-Hysteric Theatre calls on the eclectic mix of influences acting on art and performance in the late 1960s. Under the influences of film-makers such as Jonas Mekas and Jack Smith, the aesthetics and practices of Minimal and Systemic Art, and notions of performance elaborated by the choreographer Yvonne Rainer, Foreman sought in his early writing to systematically invert the ‘good practice’ he had acquired through his training as a playwright at Yale during the 1950s. In doing so, especially through the development of work throughout the 1970s, Foreman rigorously tested the conventional languages of theatre, frequently working with familiar dramatic conventions and signs within a framework and according to strategies which denied them their conventional efficacy. In his writing, Foreman has always drawn explicitly on a wide range of philosophical and critical sources, including aspects of psychoanalysis and contemporary literary theory. His practice includes the Ontological-Hysteric Theatre, musical theatre through his long-time collaboration with the composer Stanley Silverman, as well as the production of plays such as Kathy Acker’s Birth of the Poet (1985) and collaborations with the Wooster Group, including Symphony of Rats (1988). This interview was recorded in New York in April 1990.
