After studying theater at Brown and Yale, Richard Foreman (1937 – 2025) settled in Soho during its early art years. Scoffing at Broadway theater, he found a handful of productions that inspired him—notably at The Living Theater—but felt greater kinship with Jonas Mekas’ The Film-Makers’ Cinemateque. Foreman created the Ontological-Hysteric Theater in 1968, and its productions of Foreman’s gnomic plays resembled no other—non-narrative, rooted in the process of the mind, deliberately alienating in its presentation of harsh noise, complex sets, and non-lifelike acting. Richard Foreman has won three Obie Awards and written more than fifty plays.
About The Downtown Performance Series
NYU Skirball and Artifacts have teamed up to produce NYU Skirball Presents Downtown Performance, a series spotlighting the directors, performers, and artists who shaped the movements loosely defined as “Downtown.”
Inspired by the cultural history rooted in NYU Skirball’s neighboring blocks, the Downtown Performance series captures in-depth interviews with living legends of performance. The first instalment, available to stream January 9, 2025, features groundbreaking directors Richard Foreman and JoAnne Akalaitis, with John Vaccaro and Richard Schechner following later this year. For more on NYU Skirball, please visit their website.
