Conversations With Anne: Twenty-one Interviews

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 with major artists and cultural thinkers at her West Side studio, for the benefit of live audiences, over the past five years. In these extraordinary conversations, Bogart and her guests discuss 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. With each of the twenty-one dialogues, Bogart delves into the daily thoughts of the 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. Interviews 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, Peter Sellars, Molly Smith, Elizabeth Streb, Julie Taymor, and Paula Vogel. Anne Bogart is the 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. Recent works with SITI include Radio MacBeth , Hotel Cassiopeia , Death and the Ploughman , bobrauscenbergamerica , Room , War of the Worlds , Alice’s Adventures , and Culture of Desire . She is the author of three A Director Prepares , The Viewpoints Book , and And Then, You Act .

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.