Tag: Ontological-Hysteric Theater

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General

Two Avant-Gardists Join Forces

The collaboration between John Zorn and Richard Foreman is profiled.

Two guys meet on a corner in Manhattan’s East Village. First guy says to the second: “Why don’t you write me an opera?” Second guy shrugs and says “OK.”

“It was that simple,” said director Richard Foreman of the spark that led to “Astronome: A Night at the Opera,” his collaborative work with composer John Zorn that runs through April 5 at Mr. Foreman’s Ontological-Hysteric Theater. Seated beside him in Mr. Foreman’s book-lined loft, a week before the premiere, Mr. Zorn smiled. “I love that story,” he said, “because it’s at the heart of downtown, as far as I’m concerned. Things happen by chance all the time, between friends.”

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Performances Reviews

John Zorn Scores Richard Foreman’s Astronome

A review of this show is available.

Richard Foreman has a stimulus package for those who’ve missed the Ontological-Hysteric Theater‘s sensory overload the last few years. The director-playwright-designer founded his pioneering theater in 1968, mounting total-environment stagings of his own mind-plays. But in 2006, he embarked on the Bridge Project, a series of smaller video-performance hybrids exploring—among other things—the deadening of the Western mind. His new piece, Astronome, is a bit of a break from that experiment—it doesn’t use film, but it’s not formally a Foreman play either. The subtitle calls it “A Night at the Opera,” and the composer is none other than genius noisemaker John Zorn.

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