THE WOOSTER GROUP
About The Group -
The Wooster Group is an ensemble of artists who collaborate on the development and production of theater and media pieces. Since the early 1970s, The Wooster Group has played a pivotal role in bringing technically sophisticated and evocative uses of sound, film, and video into the realm of contemporary theater.
Under the direction of Elizabeth LeCompte and in collaboration with its associates and staff, The Group has created and performed all of its theater pieces at their home base, The Performing Garage, in the Soho district of New York City. The Group's award-winning repertory has toured widely in the US and Europe, as well as to Asia, Australia, Canada, and South America.
The Wooster Group Members -
The Group's founding members are:
Jim Clayburgh
Willem Dafoe
Spalding Gray
Elizabeth LeCompte
Peyton Smith
Kate Valk
Ron Vawter (1948-1994)
A Quote About Their Work -
The Wooster Group is speaking the language that the theatre will speak fifteen to twenty years from now. I'm talking about the vocabulary of stage language, of what a set looks like, how lighting behaves, how sound works, how video works, how all of those things go into creating a total work of art. The notion that a piece is made of all those various elements is very important, and in the Group's work is the first time that I've seen all of those elements combined in a really sophisticated way to create this Gesamtkunstwerk* where the text is as important as the video image is as important as the sound, and nothing has dominance although the words are very powerful. They are inventing the only vocabulary that can deal with the material of the last twenty years once we understand its strangeness.
Peter Sellars, The Director's Voice
*translates: total work of art
Last update: January, 2003