Avant-garde playwright Richard Foreman, 87, died in New York on Jan. 4. Foreman was drawn into New York’s experimental theater and film world, and he founded the Ontological-Hysteric Theater in 1968. His work was strongly influenced by Gertrude Stein (oh lordy). Foreman himself wrote that “The writing tending towards a more receptive, open, passive receiving of 'what wants to be written' and the staging tending towards more active organization of the 'arrived' elements of the writing – finding ways to make the writing inhabit a constructed environment." (I acted in several avant-garde shows in Baltimore, including Jack or the Submission, and not even the director was able to tell us what the hell was going on). In addition to several operas, films, and books, he wrote such plays as Rhoda in Potatoland, Dream Tantras for Western Massachusetts, Madness and Tranquility (My Head Was a Sledgehammer), Miss Universal Happiness, Permanent Brain Damage, and King Cowboy Rufus Rules the Universe. Foreman also directed—at theaters worldwide—more classic works: The Threepenny Opera, The Golem, Die Fledermaus, Fall of the House of Usher, Woyzeck, and Don Juan.
Related Posts
