ABSTRACT
DI R E C T O R A N N E B O G A RT O F T E N ascribes the start of her theatrecareer to a transformative moment when, as a teenager, she saw Adrian Hall’s 1968 production of Macbeth during his tenure as Artistic Director at Trinity Rep in Providence, Rhode Island. Though she says she did not understand what was happening, she was nonetheless drawn into the event through the actors’ energy and focus, and the carefully crafted staging of the work. She realised that ‘theatre is not about understanding what’s going on. It’s about meeting something you don’t know.’ (Bogart 2001c: 2) She has developed that simple idea throughout her varied career, creating work that reclaims theatre as an arena for action in which audiences are communally engaged, rather than consuming a product that is presented to them.
