Remaking American Theater: Charles Mee, Anne Bogart and the SITI Company

by Scott T. Cummings

• ISBN13: 9780521818209
• ISBN10: 0521818206
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-09-04
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

An account of contemporary theater practice in its most collaborative and dynamic form, this is the first book-length study of two of the most important American theater artists at the start of the twenty-first century. For twenty-five years, Mee and Bogart have pursued independent but sympathetic visions of theater rooted in the avant-garde of the 1960s, guided by a view of art and culture as a perpetual process of 'remaking'. Since 1992, the SITI Company has pioneered the unique combination of three training practices (Viewpoints, Suzuki, and Composition) as the basis for collective creations that layer language, gesture, and image in a complex and often stunning fashion. This study provides both a general introduction to Mee's unorthodox playwriting, Bogart's innovative directing, and the ensemble work of the SITI Company and an in-depth case study of their work together on bobrauschenbergamerica, a piece inspired by the art of Robert Rauschenberg.

Table of Contents

List of illustrations	xiii
Acknowledgments	xvii
A note to the reader	xx
Introduction: of hiccups and fireflies	1	(10)
Part I A playwright, a director, and a company	11	(148)
Mee: from accidental historian to citizen playwright	13	(22)
Bogart: engendering space, or building a nest	35	(25)
Mee: putting on the Greeks	60	(26)
SITI: from Toga to ``New Toga'' and beyond	86	(22)
SITI: the trainings (Suzuki, Viewpoints, Composition)	108	(24)
Two metadramas: Bogart's Cabin Pressure and Mee's Full Circle	132	(27)
Part II The making of bobrauschenbergamerica	159	(116)
Preliminaries: facing Rauschenberg, making lists, collecting stuff	161	(22)
Summer 2000: messing around in Saratoga Springs	183	(15)
Fall 2000: getting ready in New York	198	(21)
Winter 2001: rehearsing in Louisville	219	(18)
Spring 2001: the play in performance	237	(24)
bobrauschenbergamerica forever	261	(14)
Appendix A. bobrauschenbergamerica: personnel and performance History	275	(2)
Appendix B. SITI Company: production history	277	(6)
Appendix C. Charles L. Mee: plays and productions	283	(8)
Appendix D. Postscript: an email from Betty Bernhard	291	(2)
Notes	293	(21)
Index	314