Richard Foreman

Richard Foreman (born in New York on 10 June 1937) is an American playwright and avant-garde theater pioneer; he is the founder of the Ontological-Hysteric Theater.

Life

He graduated from Brown University (B.A. 1959), and received an MFA in Playwriting from Yale Drama School in 1962. In 1993, Brown presented him with an honorary doctorate. His dramatic works are driven by misunderstanding instead of the more traditional conflict. He describes his works as a "Theatre of Coincidence". The goal of his performances is a "Disorientation Massage", in contrast to Aristotle's goal of catharsis.

As of January 12th, 2006, Richard Foreman has written, directed and designed fifty-seven of his own plays both in New York City and abroad. Five of his plays have received Obie Awards for Best Play of the Year-—and he has received five other Obies for directing and for "sustained achievement". He has received the annual Literature Award from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, a "Lifetime Achievement in the Theater" award from the National Endowment for the Arts, the PEN American Center Master American Dramatist Award, a MacArthur Fellowship, and in 2004 was elected officer of the Order of Arts and Letters of France. His archives and work materials have recently been acquired by the Bobst Library at New York University (NYU).

His work has been primarily done at the Ontological-Hysteric Theater in New York, though he has gained acclaim as director for such productions as Bertolt Brecht's "The Threepenny Opera" at Lincoln Center and the premiere of Suzan-Lori Parks's "Venus" at the Public Theater.

In 2004, Foreman established the Bridge Project with Sophie Haviland to promote international art exchange between countries around the world through workshops, symposiums, theater productions, visual art, performance and multimedia events. Starting with Zomboid (2006) Foreman's Ontological-Hysteric productions have incorporated the projection of video footage generated through Bridge workshops as a kind of "film-score" that the live performance is conducted in a relation to.

Foreman's plays have been co-produced by The New York Shakespeare Festival, La Mama Theatre, The Wooster Group, the Festival d'Autumn in Paris and the Vienna Festival. He has collaborated (as librettist and stage director) with composer Stanley Silverman on 8 music theater pieces produced by The Music Theater Group & The New York City Opera. He wrote and directed the feature film, "Strong Medicine". He has also directed and designed many classical productions with major theaters around the world including, "The Threepenny Opera", "The Golem" and plays by Václav Havel, Botho Strauss, and Suzan-Lori Parks for The New York Shakespeare Festival, "Die Fledermaus" at the Paris Opera, "Don Giovanni" at the Opera de Lille, Philip Glass's "Fall of the House of Usher" at the American Repertory Theater and The Maggio Musicale in Florence, "Woyzeck" at Hartford Stage Company, Molière's "Don Juan" at the Guthrie Theater and The New York Shakespeare Festival, Kathy Acker's "Birth of the Poet" at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and the RO theater in Rotterdam, Gertrude Stein's "Dr. Faustus Lights the Lights" at the Autumn Festivals in Berlin and Paris.

Seven collections of his plays have already been published, and books studying his work have been published in New York, Paris, Berlin and Tokyo.

Prizes and awards

2004 Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters of France

2001
PEN/Laura Pels Master American Playwright Award

1995-2000 MacArthur Fellowship

1996 Edwin Booth Award for Theatrical Achievement

1992 & 1995 NEA Playwriting Fellowship

1992 American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters Award in Literature

1990 NEA Distinguished Artist Fellowship for Lifetime Achievement in Theater

1990 Ford Foundation play development grant for "Eddie Goes to Poetry City"

1974 Rockefeller Foundation Playwrights Grant

1972 Guggenheim for Playwriting

9 Village Voice "OBIEs", (including 3 for Best play, and one for Lifetime Achievement)

References

External links

* [http://www.ontological.com Ontological-Hysteric Theater]
* [http://www.bridgefilm.com The Bridge Project]
* [http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/foreman Foreman's EPC author page]
* [http://www.lacan.com/perfume/foreman.htm More Hysteria Please! A conversation with Josefina Ayerza] Lacanian Ink 12
* [http://www.ubu.com/film/foreman.html UBU: "Strong Medicine" stream]
* [http://www.vdb.org/smackn.acgi$artistdetail?FOREMANR Richard Foreman] in the Video Data Bank