Wooster Group
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Wooster Group
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.Wooster Group"Production History since 1975" The ensemble is directed by Elizabeth LeCompte and has launched the careers of many actors, including founding member Willem Dafoe. The Group's home is the Performing Garage at 33 Wooster Street between Grand and Broome Streets in the SoHo neighborhood of Manhattan. As of 2014, the company consists of 16 members. In addition, there are 29 "Associates". The Wooster Group is a not-for-profit theater company that relies on grants and donations from supporters. It has received multiple grants from the Carnegie Corporation. The Wooster Group are characterized by their extremely experimen ...
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New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the List of United States cities by population density, most densely populated major city in the United States, and is more than twice as populous as second-place Los Angeles. New York City lies at the southern tip of New York (state), New York State, and constitutes the geographical and demographic center of both the Northeast megalopolis and the New York metropolitan area, the largest metropolitan area in the world by urban area, urban landmass. With over 20.1 million people in its metropolitan statistical area and 23.5 million in its combined statistical area as of 2020, New York is one of the world's most populous Megacity, megacities, and over 58 million people live within of the city. New York City is a global city, global Culture of New ...
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Bertolt Brecht
Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht (10 February 1898 – 14 August 1956), known professionally as Bertolt Brecht, was a German theatre practitioner, playwright, and poet. Coming of age during the Weimar Republic, he had his first successes as a playwright in Munich and moved to Berlin in 1924, where he wrote ''The Threepenny Opera'' with Kurt Weill and began a life-long collaboration with the composer Hanns Eisler. Immersed in Marxist thought during this period, he wrote didactic ''Lehrstücke'' and became a leading theoretician of epic theatre (which he later preferred to call "dialectical theatre") and the . During the Nazi Germany period, Brecht fled his home country, first to Scandinavia, and during World War II to the United States, where he was surveilled by the FBI. After the war he was subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities Committee. Returning to East Berlin after the war, he established the theatre company Berliner Ensemble with his wife and long-time collaborator ...
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Harper's Magazine
''Harper's Magazine'' is a monthly magazine of literature, politics, culture, finance, and the arts. Launched in New York City in June 1850, it is the oldest continuously published monthly magazine in the U.S. (''Scientific American'' is older, but it did not become monthly until 1921). ''Harper's Magazine'' has won 22 National Magazine Awards. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the magazine published works of authors such as Herman Melville, Woodrow Wilson, and Winston Churchill. Willie Morris's resignation as editor in 1971 was considered a major event, and many other employees of the magazine resigned with him. The magazine has developed into the 21st century, adding several blogs. ''Harper's'' has been the subject of several controversies. History ''Harper's Magazine'' began as ''Harper's New Monthly Magazine'' in New York City in June 1850, by publisher Harper & Brothers. The company also founded the magazines ''Harper's Weekly'' and ''Harper's Bazaar'', and grew to become Ha ...
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National Endowment For The Arts
The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government by an act of the U.S. Congress, signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson on September 29, 1965 (20 U.S.C. 951). It is a sub-agency of the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities, along with the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities, and the Institute of Museum and Library Services. The NEA has its offices in Washington, D.C. It was awarded Tony Honors for Excellence in Theatre in 1995, as well as the Special Tony Award in 2016. In 1985, the NEA won an honorary Oscar from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for its work with the American Film Institute in the identification, acquisition, restoration and preservation of historic films. In 2016 and again in 2 ...
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Bessie Award
The New York Dance and Performance Awards, also known as the Bessie Awards, are awarded annually for exceptional achievement by independent dance artists presenting their work in New York City. The broad categories of the awards are: choreography, performance, music composition and visual design. The Bessie Awards were established in 1983. History and description The Bessie Awards were established in 1983 by Dance Theater Workshop and named in honor of Bessie Schonberg, an influential mid-20th-century teacher of modern dance and former head of the dance department at Sarah Lawrence College. The awards honor exceptional choreography, performance, music composition and visual design in dance and allied art forms. Nominees and award winners are chosen by the Bessie Selection Committee, which consists of dancers, dance presenters, producers, choreographers, journalists, critics and academics. Since 2010, the awards have been overseen by an independent steering committee in partnershi ...
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Obie Award
The Obie Awards or Off-Broadway Theater Awards are annual awards originally given by ''The Village Voice'' newspaper to theatre artists and groups in New York City. In September 2014, the awards were jointly presented and administered with the American Theatre Wing. As the Tony Awards cover Broadway productions, the Obie Awards cover off-Broadway and off-off-Broadway productions. Background The Obie Awards were initiated by Edwin (Ed) Fancher, publisher of ''The Village Voice,'' who handled the financing and business side of the project. They were first given in 1956 under the direction of theater critic Jerry Tallmer. Initially, only off-Broadway productions were eligible; in 1964, off-off-Broadway productions were made eligible. The first Obie Awards ceremony was held at Helen Gee's cafe.Aletti, Vince"Helen Gee 1919–2004" ''Village Voice'' (New York City), 12 October 2004, accessed on 21 November 2013 With the exception of the Lifetime Achievement and Best New American Pl ...
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Scott Shepherd (actor)
Scott Shepherd is an American film, theater and television actor, best known for his appearances in the films ''Side Effects'' (2013), '' Bridge of Spies'' (2015), ''Jason Bourne'' (2016) and '' El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie'' (2019), as well as the series ''The Young Pope''. Career Shepherd began his acting career in theater. He has appeared in several productions of The Wooster Group and is also known for his work as narrator in the play ''Gatz'' by Elevator Repair Service. In 2014, Shepherd appeared in the comedy film ''And So It Goes'' as Luke, along with Michael Douglas, Diane Keaton, and Sterling Jerins. Rob Reiner directed the film, which was released on July 25, 2014. In 2015, Shepherd played a supporting role of a CIA operative named Hoffman in the Cold War-era spy film '' Bridge of Spies'' opposite Tom Hanks and Mark Rylance. The film was directed by Steven Spielberg, which released on October 16, 2015 by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures. Shepherd also playe ...
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Irfan Brkovic
Irfan Brković is a Bosnian interdisciplinary artist based in New York. He is a Member of The Wooster Group. Career In the early 2000s Irfan founded audio visual collective Fa11out. After receiving his degree from Academy of Drama in Bosnia he traveled Europe filming and performing live shows. His practice spans a broad range of disciplines including video art, generative art, interactive design with focus on live performance. In his shows he uses modified printers, copy fax machines, video mixers, game consoles and interactive audiovisual softwares. He performed in Europe and United States and released music for drum and bass labels from United Kingdom. He moved to New York and filmed documentary The Healing Power of Jazz for The New Yorker with premieres at Cineteca National Mexico, Warsaw Film Festival, Vilnius International Film Festival and Kasseler Dokfest. His work ''Three Deaths'' (2020) was premiered at Sundance Film Festival. Since 2019 Irfan become memb ...
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Ron Vawter
Ron Vawter (December 9, 1948 – April 16, 1994) 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. Life and career Vawter was born in Latham, New York, to Matilda (Buttoni) and Elton Lee Vawter. As a founding member of The Wooster Group, directed by Elizabeth LeCompte at the Performing Garage in downtown New York, Vawter originated roles in ''Rumstick Road, Nayatt School, Point Judith (an epilog), Route 1 & 9, Hula, L.S.D. (...Just the High Points...), Frank Dell's The Temptation of Saint Antony, North Atlantic, ''and'' Brace Up!''. He appeared on video in ''Fish Story'', and in the Group's video pieces ''White Homeland Commando ''and'' Flaubert Dreams of Travel but the Illness of His Mother Prevents It''. Vawter was a member of The Performance Group, from which The Wooster Group emerged in 1980. With The Performance Group, ...
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Kate Valk
Kate Valk (born March 6, 1957) 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. In 2003 she was awarded a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award,, and in 2006, the ''New York Times'' published an article featuring Valk. Early life Kate Valk was born on March 7, 1956 in Spokane, Washington. Her mother was a nurse, while her father was a jack-of-all-trades; he worked, at various times, at a cement company, a post office, a remodeling company, and on real estate ventures. They moved consistently during her childhood, including to Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Maryland. This lower-middle-class childhood did not give her much exposure to the arts. At age 16, she worked part-time at Shepherd Pratt, a nursing home. She attended Towson State in Baltimore, Maryland for two years before moving to New ...
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Spalding Gray
Spalding Gray (June 5, 1941 – January 11, 2004) was an American actor, novelist, playwright, screenwriter and performance artist. He is best known for the autobiographical monologues that he wrote and performed for the theater in the 1980s and 1990s, as well as for his film adaptations of these works, beginning in 1987. He wrote and starred in several, working with different directors. Theater critics John Willis and Ben Hodges called Gray's monologues "trenchant, personal narratives delivered on sparse, unadorned sets with a dry, WASP, quiet mania." Gray achieved renown for his monologue '' Swimming to Cambodia'', which he adapted as a 1987 film in which he starred; it was directed by Jonathan Demme. Other of his monologues that he adapted for film were ''Monster in a Box'' (1991), directed by Nick Broomfield, and ''Gray's Anatomy'' (1996), directed by Steven Soderbergh. Gray killed himself by jumping into New York City harbor on January 11, 2004, aged 62, after struggling w ...
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Jim Clayburgh
Jim Clayburgh (born 23 May 1949) is a scenic designer. He was a founding member of The Wooster Group and served as the group's resident designer from 1975 to 1994. He currently lives in Brussels, Belgium, where he founded the company JOJI INC with choreographer and dancer , and continues to design for theatre, film, dance and opera both in the USA and in Europe. Life and career Jim Clayburgh is the brother of actress Jill Clayburgh (1944–2010). With partner Johanne Saunier, he has two sons. Clayburgh holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Claremont McKenna College, majoring in design at Pomona College, and a Master of Fine Arts degree in Theatre Design from New York University School Of The Arts. In the USA he has taught masterclasses at MIT, New York Tisch School of the Arts, University of California Santa Cruz, University of Michigan, Hollins University, Simons Rock College of Art. In Europe, he has taught aSt Luc's Ecole Supérieur des Artsand the International School of Bru ...
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