Close

Login

Close

Register

Close

Lost Password

In Print: The State of New York City’s theatrical avant-garde…

Yesterday the Village Voice published a piece by Tom Sellar titled “The City’s Best (And Not So Best) Progressive Theater”. Its one of the only “end of the year/decade” piece to focus on progressive/experimental/avant-garde work and companies. In it he poses…

Ten years into the 21st century, it seems a fitting time to look at the state of New York City’s theatrical avant-garde. How has it evolved over the past decade? Who’s doing the most inventive work, and who’s coming up short? What exactly constitutes a vanguard these days, and where is it heading?

Picture 64

Big Art Group, Radio Hole, Nature Theater of Oklahoma, Thomas Bradshaw, Young Jean Lee, Richard Maxwell, Les Freres Corbusier, Cynthia Hopkins, Elevator Repair Service, Witness Relocation, The TEAM, Taylor Mac, Sibyl Kempson, Improv Everywhere, and Mike Iveson are discussed among others.

Ultimately, there are degrees of “avant-garde”: Not many artists today call for, say, burning down museums and libraries in the name of new technology, as the Italian Futurists did a hundred years ago. Nor do we hear many downtown voices calling for a new order, or even for an end to a disastrous war—as theatermakers here did in the 1960s. In 21st-century New York, aspirations look milder and more careerist: Experimental stage artists want creative outlets and a responsive public. Understandably, they also seek good publicity and financial relief. But in the next era—now under way—there’s an appetite and opportunity for enlarging the theatrical experience in New York. If anyone can seize the day, it may be Big Art Group, Nature Theater, and anyone else with the intellectual muscle to build up the vanguard.

Read the full article here

Share This Post

Caden Manson is a director, media artist, and teacher. He is co-founder of the media ensemble bigartgroup.com and network, blog, and publisher, contemporaryperformance.com. He has co-created, directed, video- and set designed 18 Big Art Group productions. Manson has shown video installations in Austria, Germany, NYC, and Portland; performed PAIN KILLER in Berlin, Singapore and Vietnam; Taught in Berlin, Rome, Paris, Montreal, NYC, and Bern; the ensemble has been co-produced by the Vienna Festival, Festival d’Automne a Paris, Hebbel Am Ufer, Rome’s La Vie de Festival, PS122, and Wexner Center for The Arts. Caden is a 2001 Foundation For Contemporary Art Fellow, is a 2002 Pew Fellow and a 2011 MacDowell Fellow. Writing has been published in PAJ, Theater Magazine, and Theater der Zeit. Caden is currently an associate professor and graduate directing option coordinator of The John Wells Directing Program at Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Drama.

Related Articles