Process in Performance Vol. I.
A Conversation with Ellen Lauren
Monday, October 17th 2011
Nick Westrate: Hi, so this is our first in the series that we’re now
calling Process in Performance. We’re gonna do these interviews once a month
with some of the great artists that we have in the theater working today, the
first of whom is Ellen Lauren. (applause)
So, just a quick note about the project and how and why we’re doing it and
what’s going on: It started off, I have to say thanks to Jim Nicola and Linda
Chapman who weren’t able to be with us tonight, who run this brilliant theater.
And I came to them with an idea, and Linda helped me develop it, about how we expand
the way we as actors talk to each other about the work. And it was spawned out
of—I went to Juilliard, and I got a very specific kind of training there that
was very much based on what I think a lot of acting training in America is
based on, which is Naturalism and Stanislavski. And then I ended up seeing some
crazy-ass theater, the SITI company included, the Wooster Group included, and
my head kind of exploded and I thought this is not theater- these are not
plays- this can’t happen. And I had a slight breakdown, and a very good friend
walked me through it. And a few of you in this room have probably have walked
through that with me. And I ended up realizing that that’s actually my favorite
kind of work: what we call avant-garde work, or semi-avant-garde work, or
non-traditional work. So all these conversations are kind of going to be
about—not kind of, definitely going to be about—the traditional ways of working
in the theater versus what is considered the avant-garde. So that’s where I
came up with it.
Ellen Lauren: Is that what we’re talking about? I’m so screwed. (big laughs)
