He materializes upstage wearing dark skirts, some sort of plastic tube stuffed in his mouth, his hair tied in a spiky pony-tail, a plastic duck in a birdcage hugged to his chest. The classic Chordettes oldie Mr. Sandman is playing, and in a flash we're once again transported to Foremanland, a singular dimension of feverish theatrical provocation, devoid of conventional narrative but rich with humor and deliciously inspired tableaux. more ›

If you're going through the hassle of living in overpriced New York City and not bothering to check out Richard Foreman's annual phantasmagoria, you're really missing out. Stepping into the little theater at St. Mark's Church every February is like taking a mental vacation to another dimension. And this year's Gothic baroque extravaganza is more dynamic than the past few years, in which Foreman experimented with film and a more subdued stagecraft. For now at least, he's dropped the film and picked up avant-garde composer John Zorn, who's composed a feral, heavy metal score for the show, with occasional bursts of Tasmanian Devil vocalization. more ›

For the past four decades, Richard Foreman has challenged and fascinated audiences with a deeply idiosyncratic aesthetic incorporating traces of vaudeville, Jungian philosophy, slapstick, surrealism and myriad other disparate sources to create what he calls the Ontological-Hysteric theater. His newest “theatrical machine”, called Deep Trance Behavior in Potatoland, is the third in a series of works that heavily emphasize video projection, this time shot on location in Japan. more ›

The most exciting story in New York theater this year had nothing to do with the Broadway stagehands' strike, it was the vibrant growth of what used to be called “experimental theater”, a movement that can now really only loosely be defined by what it’s not: non-naturalistic and not made for TV, with an emphasis on bold physicality, collaboration and, sometimes, multimedia. more ›

The Debate Society is a taut little theater triad comprised of director Oliver Butler and wizardly actors Paul Thureen and Hannah Bos. Their 2006 production, The Snow Hen, took a Norwegian folk tale about an abandoned girl and wove it into a charmingly dark tapestry of melancholy and mystique. Now they’re back at the Ontological Theater (Richard Foreman’s regular digs) with The Eaten Heart, an enchanting mood-play very loosely inspired by Giovanni Boccaccio’s 14th Century tome The Decameron, which packs in 100 stories told over the course of ten days by ten people killing time during the Black Plague. more ›

The former home of the 3 Legged Dog theater company was destroyed during 9/11, but the scrappy group hustled funds and emerged as downtown’s first real triumph of the reconstruction. Their sleek, futuristic new “Art and Technology Center” (theirs for the low, low price of $4.8 million bones) is just down the street from the World Trade Center maw. And they now have two much-buzzed about shows running in tandem: Losing Something, which uses a dazzling new technology called Eyeliner to create 3-dimensional holographic images of actors, and The Curse of the Mystic Renaldo The, a zany late-night rock n’ roll vaudeville extravaganza that plays on Fridays and Saturdays. more ›

Richard Foreman will turn 70 this summer, a milestone proudly announced in the program for Wake Up Mr. Sleepy! Your Unconscious Mind Is Dead! His massive body of work now spans roughly 40 years and 45 productions with his Ontological-Hysteric Theater, not to mention a handful of films and What to Wear, last year’s operatic collaboration with composer Michael Gordon in L.A. more ›

EVENT: Housing works is opening their new store in Brooklyn today. With great events and thrifty finds and a way to support the HIV-positive homeless community, it's nice to see the store is expanding. more ›

MUSIC: Tonight is the first night (of four) that Lou Reed will perform Berlin at St Ann's Warehouse. Expect a "theatrically realized concert version of Reed’s stylized rock paean to life outside the circle, the orchestrations filled with the lyrics of the broken hearted and willfully disabled...the drifting tormented addicts of love formalizing their own downfalls in the outskirts of the divided city." more ›

Blogs aren’t just for socially-awkward shut-ins anymore and we’ve got proof: many successful, outgoing theater types maintain weblogs. While they don't get as much glory (or contempt) as their influential music-blog counterparts, they do have their dignity. And there's sometimes drama! more ›

Young Jean Lee, Playwright/Director more ›