Our first Process in Performance conversation featuring Ellen Lauren: October 17, 2011

RSVP now for Process in Performance vol. 5:
A conversation with Taylor Mac

Monday March 5th

7:30pm

NYTW's 4th Street Theater

83 E. 4th Street

New York, NY 10003

RSVP to: westratenick@gmail.com

Process in Performance Vol. I.

A Conversation with Ellen Lauren

Monday, October 17^th 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)

Process in Performance is an interview series started by Nick Westrate with the help of Linda Chapman and Jim Nicola in 2011. It is a series of conversations with luminary performers of various non-traditional and experimental theater backgrounds.  We hope to create a broader aesthetic and practical dialogue between performers in order to deepen our understanding of each others' work and to expand the possibilities of our own. Process in Performance is a part of New York Theatre Workshop's Larson Lab Series.  It could not function without the incredibly hard work of the entire artistic staff of NYTW.