Overview
The Wooster Group on Screen
Sundays, Feb 3, 10 & 17 • 2:00pm
Admission per screening: $10 Regular/ $8 YBCA members students, seniors, teachers
FREE for YBCA:You
In conjunction with The Wooster Group/New York City Players performances of Early Plays on Feb 14–16 in the YBCA Forum, we present this three-part program of rare TWG films. Presented chronologically, this series offers a unique opportunity to look at three decades of performance by this always radical, always groundbreaking, and profoundly influential performance group led by director Elizabeth LeCompte. Sincere thanks to Clay Hapaz, archivist for The Wooster Group.
Events
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Rumstick RoadFeb 3, 2013 2:00pm
Screening RoomA work-in-progress reconstruction of the groundbreaking 1977 production. Rumstick Road was an attempt to understand Spalding Gray’s mother’s suicide using audio-taped conversations, family letters, dance, slides, and the writings of Mary Baker Eddy (the founder of Christian Science). The project aims to recreate that lost performance through archival materials such as Super 8 film, video footage, still photographs, and audio recordings. (1977, 75 min, digital)
“A brilliant and engrossing work; one whose abstraction and complexity are at the service of genuine emotion.” — The New York Times -
House/LightsFeb 10, 2013 2:00pm
Screening RoomA complete performance of the 1999 Obie-winning collision of Gertrude Stein's Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights with Joseph Mawra's B-movie classic, Olga's House of Shame. (1999, 75 min, digital)
“...Bedazzling...there's nothing else like it around; it turns disorientation into a primary sensual pleasure, even as it raises terrifying thoughts about the deeply mixed blessings of technological progress.” — The New York Times -
To You, The Birdie! (Phèdre)Feb 17, 2013 2:00pm
Screening RoomThe Wooster Group’s 2002 Obie-winning production of Paul Schmidt’s version of Racine’s Phèdre, set in a mobile modernist landscape of sliding Plexiglas panels, omnipresent monitors, hidden cameras, and badminton. (2002, 75 min, digital)
“This blend of ironic seriousness, heightened theatricality and multimedia ballet has developed into one of the sharpest of theatrical instruments…an ideal scalpel for Racine’s surgical exploration into lust.” — Village Voice
“An astonishing invention and completely, utterly nuts. If it weren’t so nuts, it wouldn’t be so astonishing.” — New York Observer
From YBCA Curator Joel Shepard on Tumblr:
YBCA's programs are made possible in part by:
Abundance Foundation
Adobe
Koret Foundation
National Endowment for the Arts
Lam Research
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts is grateful to the City of San Francisco for its ongoing support.
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