Elizabeth LeCompte

Brace Up!

Ken Kobland, Elizabeth LeCompte

Anna Köhler, Ari Fliakos

The Wooster Group's production of Anton Chekhov's Three Sisters, translated by Paul Schmidt and directed by Elizabeth LeCompte, with performances from Kate Valk, Peyton Smith, Scott Shepherd, Ari Fliakos, Anna Kohler, Beatrice Roth, Ron Vawter, and Willem Dafoe. This presentation of the 2003 production of BRACE UP!, designed by Ken Kobland and LeCompte, incorporates close-up recordings of the performers simultaneously with continuous wide-angle footage.

House/Lights

Elizabeth LeCompte

Kate Valk, Suzzy Roche

The OBIE-winning collision of Gertrude Stein's Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights with Joseph Mawra's B-movie classic, Olga's House of Shame.

To You, The Birdie! (Phedre)

Elizabeth LeCompte

The Wooster Group's Obie-winning production of Racine's Phedre

Rhyme 'Em to Death

Elizabeth LeCompte

Steve Ausbury, Willem Dafoe

Rhyme 'Em To Death reconstructs the trial from Victor Hugo's Hunchback of Notre Dame from a new perspective, that of a minor character - the goat. The trial of the goat, a postscript in the Hugo novel, has been extended and enlivened with actual transcripts of 15th-century trials in which animals were persecuted as witches.

White Homeland Commando

Elizabeth LeCompte

Ron Vawter, Kate Valk

White Homeland Commando takes the familiar terrain of network action drama and tilts the playing field. Reminiscent of today's popular reality-based cop shows, White Homeland Commando offers a straightforward story: four members of a special police unit investigate and infiltrate a New York-based white supremacist organization. But that is where the commonplace ends. The teleplay is shot and edited in a highly textured visual style, the colors are subdued yet somehow garish, and the sound is deliberately just out of sync with the speaker's lips. Occasional static combines with jumps in the plot — the editing is reminiscent of a television viewer flipping channels.

Hamlet

Elizabeth LeCompte

Скотт Шепард, Ari Fliakos

In The Wooster Group’s HAMLET, Shakespeare’s classic tragedy is re-imagined by mixing and repurposing Richard Burton’s 1964 Broadway production, directed by John Gielgud. The Burton production was recorded in live performance from 17 camera angles and edited into a film that was shown as a special event for only two days in nearly 1,000 movie houses across the U.S. The idea of bringing a live theater experience to thousands of simultaneous viewers in different cities was trumpeted as a new form called “Theatrofilm,” made possible through “the miracle of Electronovision.” The Wooster Group attempts to reverse the process, reconstructing a hypothetical theater piece from the fragmentary evidence of the edited film. We channel the ghost of the legendary 1964 performance, descending into a kind of madness, intentionally replacing our own spirit with the spirit of another.

Rumstick Road

Ken Kobland, Elizabeth LeCompte

Spalding Gray, Ron Vawter

A video reconstruction of the 1977 Wooster Group production Rumstick Road, an experimental theater performance created by Spalding Gray and Elizabeth LeCompte after the suicide of Gray's mother. Archival recordings are combined with photographs, slides, and other materials to recreate the original production.