Conversations with Anne

by Anne Bogart

From one remarkable mind to another, Conversations with Anne documents the series of intimate interviews that theater director Anne Bogart has conducted—before live audiences—with major artists and cultural thinkers at her West Side studio over half a decade. In these extraordinary conversations, Bogart and her guests consider such free-ranging topics as the driving forces in their work, the paths their lives have taken, and their visions for the future of their field. Bogart delves into the daily thoughts of these artists and thinkers whom she most admires—a group that, collectively, has profoundly shaped the arts and artistry in America over the past twenty-five years. Interviewees JoAnne Akalaitis, Lee Breuer, Ben Cameron, Martha Clarke, Oskar Eustis, Zelda Fichandler, Richard Foreman, Andre Gregory, Bill T. Jones, Tony Kushner, Tina Landau, Elizabeth LeCompte, Eduardo Machado, Charles Mee, Joseph V. Melillo, Meredith Monk, Mary Overlie, Peter Sellars, SITI Company, Molly Smith, Elizabeth Streb, Julie Taymor, Robert Woodruff and Paula Vogel. Anne Bogart is artistic director of the SITI Company, which she founded with Japanese director Tadashi Suzuki in 1992. She has received two OBIE Awards, a Bessie Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship, and is a professor at Columbia University, where she runs the Graduate Directing Program.

Genres: Theatre, Nonfiction

360 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 2008

About the author

Anne Bogart is the Artistic Director of SITI Company, which she founded with Japanese director Tadashi Suzuki in 1992. She is a Professor at Columbia University where she runs the Graduate Directing Program. Works with SITI include Café Variations, Trojan Women, American Document, Antigone, Under Construction, Freshwater, Who Do You Think You Are, Radio Macbeth, Hotel Cassiopeia, Death and the Ploughman, La Dispute, Score, bobrauschenbergamerica, Room, War of the Worlds, Cabin Pressure, War of the Worlds: The Radio Play, Alice’s Adventures, Culture of Desire, Bob, Going, Going, Gone, Small Lives/Big Dreams, The Medium, Noel Coward’s Hay Fever and Private Lives, August Strindberg’s Miss Julie, and Charles Mee’s Orestes. She is the author of four books: A Director Prepares, The Viewpoints Book, And Then, You Act and Conversations with Anne.

Reviews

[Kyle · Rating 4 out of 5]

My three-week vacation in Japan was a whirlwind tour of American (mostly New York) theater and the big names who made them worldwide phenomena. Exhausting to keep up with, but lots of valuable insights to pick up here and there. The most daunting news was that I was born too late, more precisely, I was way too young to be able to do anything for my corner of the continent in 1974. But I'd like to think that if I ever met with a couple of the stage veterans (really hope it is a Julie Taymor sometime soon), I now know how to talk to them so that they could help make my virtual stage project a reality.