|
More Fire! Productions was a women's theatre collective active in New York City from 1980 to 1988. It was founded by Robin Epstein and Dorothy Cantwell and based in the East Village section of lower Manhattan, New York City. More Fire! Productions created and produced eight full-length plays between 1980 and 1988, becoming known as "one of the city's leading women's theatre groups" for its contributions to the downtown, experimental theatre and women's and lesbian theatre scenes of the 1980s.〔Jennifer Dunning, "What's Doing in Town and Out," ''New York Times'', 24 May 1985: C22.〕 Epstein and Cantwell co-wrote, produced, and performed in the company's first three plays: ''As the Burger Broils'' (1980), ''The Exorcism of Cheryl'' (1981), and ''Junk Love'' (1981), which had numerous runs and became a neighborhood cult classic, "the longest running show on Avenue A."〔Sarah Schulman, "E. Village Alternative to Therapy: ''Junk Love'' and ''Exorcism''," ''Womanews'' (February 1982). See also Stephen Holden, "Avant-Garde Antics for the Adventurous," ''New York Times'', 5 September 1986: C5.〕 Epstein then wrote and produced ''The Godmother'' (1983). Novelist and writer Sarah Schulman joined the company in 1983 and collaborated on the writing and performing of three later plays: ''Art Failures'' (1983), ''Whining and Dining'' (1984), and ''Epstein on the Beach'' (1985). The final play, ''Beyond Bedlam'' (1987), was written and produced by Epstein, who was the only person involved in all More Fire! plays. ==Early history== Along with Epstein and Cantwell, another founding member of More Fire! was Stephanie Doba, who collaborated on and performed in six More Fire! plays. In the mid-1970s Doba was working at The Kosciuszko Foundation, a Polish-American non-profit organization having its headquarters in New York City. She was asked by Polish theatre director Jerzy Grotowski to help facilitate the participation of Americans in the "Tree of People," a new project of his Polish Laboratory Theatre. Grotowski's work at that time embodied a search for authentic expression through improvisation and interaction among participants, rather than performance for audiences.〔Ron Grimes, "The Theatre of Sources," ''The Drama Review'' 25, no. 3 (1981): 67; Daniel E. Cashman, "Grotowski: His Twentieth Anniversary," ''Theatre Journal'' 31, no. 4 (1979): 460-66; Robert Findlay, "Grotowski's 'Cultural Explorations Bordering on Art, Especially Theatre,'" ''Theatre Journal'' 32, no. 3 (1980): 349-56.〕 Cantwell and Doba met as participants in the Tree of People project in Wroclaw, Poland, in the winter of 1979.〔Charles Tarzian, "Performance Space P.S. 122," ''The Drama Review'' 29, no. 1 (1985): 86.〕 Grotowski's focus on improvisatory expression matched and nurtured a strong interest in movement improvisation in the downtown community of the East Village in the late 1970s. Open Movement, the weekly participatory event held at Performance Space 122 (also known as P.S. 122), became a regular meeting ground for New York and European dancers, actors and other artists, a number of whom had taken part in Grotowski's projects. Cantwell, Doba and Epstein were all regular participants in Open Movement.〔 Cantwell and Doba began collaborating with Epstein, who was then primarily a painter, to create an avant-garde, experimental theatre style.〔Susan Mernit, "Robin Epstein: From Painter to Playwright," ''New Women's Times Feminist Review'' (November/December 1984): 7.〕 Another founding member was Marianne Willtorp, now a member of the Swedish Film Institute (Svenska Filminstitutet). Willtorp collaborated on and performed in ''The Exorcism of Cheryl'', ''Junk Love'', and ''The Godmother''. Willtorp's 1981 documentary film "More Fire!" explores the making of the collective's first original experimental play, ''As the Burger Broils'', which used the movement and physicality of restaurant work to create theatre. The film shows the company's improvisational use of restaurant movement and language, and its real-life context in Epstein and Cantwell's lives as busy East Village artists and actresses who earned their livings as waitresses. As co-founders of More Fire! Productions, Epstein and Cantwell shared a joint vision and aesthetic. Cantwell's writing and acting abilities were crucial to the company's early success. Her primary interest was in creating a passionate, funny, excessive style of acting, using characters and situations drawn with broad strokes and shameless exaggeration. Cantwell's ability to improvise and understanding of theatre inspired and shaped Epstein's own theatrical vision, which also developed out of her work as a painter, interest in popular film, and background as a working-class Jewish New Yorker.〔 More Fire! used the superficial appearance of autobiography––particularly Epstein's––as a framework for the satirical exploration of a variety of themes and genres, including the confessional style of some East Village performance art. The company's style developed through collaborative improvising and writing, with lesbians and straight women working together to create and sustain an avant-garde, alternative theatre company. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「More Fire! Productions」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|