“We Still Have to Dance and Sing” An Interview with Richard Foreman Richard Schechner Richard Foreman is an incessant author and highly focused director. Since 1992, at St. Mark’s Church on 2nd Avenue in Manhattan, Foreman has directed 11 of his own plays. The most recent, Maria del Bosco, opened on 27 December 2001. Over the years, with his Ontological-Hysteric Theatre, founded in 1968, Foreman has directed more than 50 of his own plays—and there are more plays still unproduced. Foreman also has frequently directed the works of others. Among my favorite Foreman productions are Brecht’s Threepenny Opera at Lin- coln Center in 1976, Moliere’s Don Juan at the Guthrie Theatre in 1982, and Suzan-Lori Parks’s Venus at the Public Theatre in New York in 1996. Foreman has often been in the pages of TDR, starting with his “Ontologic-Hysteric Man- ifesto II” in 1974 (18:3, T63) up to the program notes for Pearls for Pigs in 1998 (42:2, T158). Foreman’s plays have been collected in a number of books, from Plays and Manifestos (New York University Press, 1976) to the most recent, Par- adise Hotel and Other Plays (Overlook Press, 2001). SCHECHNER: I want to focus on post–September 11th. Your play, Now That Communism Is Dead My Life Feels Empty [2001], was to some degree about en- tering a new historic era. But now [November 2001] it appears that the U.S. government, either by intention or accident, has found a way to continue the Cold War under different auspices. Once again we are immersed in an unending, anxiety-raising situation that allows the Defense Department to expand its opera- tions, strangle civil liberties, and so on and so forth. In this light, I’m interested in your reaction to this and how it will, or not, affect your work. FOREMAN: I’m prepared to answer your question because already three other places have said, “We’re gonna ask you about what happened on September 11th—so think up a response.” I agree with you that, though the event itself was horrible and tragic, of course we’re culpable. [Laughs] “Why do all these people hate us so much?” The Drama Review 46, 2 (T174), Summer 2002. Copyright ᭧ 2002 New York University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 110 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/105420402320980532 by guest on 25 September 2021 Richard Foreman 111 1. Juliana Francis in the ti- tle role of Maria del Bosco by Richard Foreman (2001). (Photo by Paula Court) SCHECHNER: Right. FOREMAN: It’s not just because they’re evil people, even though some of them may be fanatics; if you met one of them in a nightclub, you might think, “What’s wrong with that guy?” But obviously, we caused the situation to a large extent. Could we avoid causing the situation? Probably not. You know, the history of the world is: as empires grow they get corrupt and exploit other people. It’s all in the normal course of things. When September 11th happened, I was very shocked with myself for the first 24 hours because I noticed that I was feeling, “God damn it, let’s bomb them off the earth.” [Laughs] Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/105420402320980532 by guest on 25 September 2021 112 Richard Schechner SCHECHNER: [Laughing too] If they didn’t already live in Afghanistan. FOREMAN: Yeah.And then next, the shock of wondering, “Well,isn’t anybody saying anything in opposition to the government?” So using the good old Internet within a few hours I found some alternative voices. I sort of regained my sanity and my balance. What I realized this morning is that it isn’t the end of history. So Now That Communism Is Dead My Life Feels Empty in a sense was wrong. In that play I bought into the idea that history was over—there was late-capitalistic global domination of the world, and that was that. But at this moment, when we have just started bombing, I’m very suspicious about the United States’ ability to function efficiently and know what the hell it’s doing. The Gulf War was a total charade because, thank God, the situation was such that we could act like Su- permen. I doubt that it will be the same this time. I imagine we might get stuck in the same kind of morass as we were in Vietnam. I also imagine that [Osama] Bin Laden, as many commentators now are already saying, is very happy about what’s happening. He will gain many adherents in the Arab world. What’s gonna happen if they topple all those nice governments that are beholden to us that the people hate? [Laughs] Then we have no more oil. But shock of shocks, suppose the United States succeeds in doing what it wants to do? SCHECHNER: Right. FOREMAN: Who knows? SCHECHNER: OK, Bin Laden’s happy, but what about the generals in the Pentagon? Are they happy too? FOREMAN: Oh, of course. Can anybody doubt that? SCHECHNER: This gives them a raison d’etre. FOREMAN: Sure, of course. Obviously this is going to strengthen the hand of all those people who are the worst in America. On the other hand, if you are in power, what the hell are you gonna do? You can’t do anything. SCHECHNER: A moment ago you were saying, “that’s the way empires are, this is the way it happens.” That’s not very Brechtian; more like the inevitability of history. Let me spin this out a little. Where I live I have a clear view of the Trade Towers. I heard a thud and rushed out to my terrace and saw it all live, firsthand, the second plane crashing, the south tower crumbling, then the north, the smoke and fire, World Trade Center Five imploding. Throughout it all, I kept checking the news on television—kind of ratifying what I was seeing and also giving me a more global picture—the Pentagon, the plane in Pennsylvania, the airlifting of Bush to keep him out of harm’s way... Throughout all of this I was conscious of being a spectator at a “historical moment,” a watershed, an event that was really changing things. It was live theatre of a very particular kind. It reminded me of so many Godzilla-type movies, terrified people running down the streets just barely ahead of catastrophe; others crushed in the onrushing ho- locaust. At the same time I knew that this was no movie, that people were really dying right in front of my eyes and that more would die in the American response, the revenge. But that didn’t stop me from thrilling in the drama of the moment. I felt personally safe, I wasn’t running, I didn’t think I knew anyone who was trapped... I was “free” to be a spectator. Very ugly, but that’s the way it was. FOREMAN: Right. SCHECHNER: Very soon I felt humiliated for being so captured by the media. But I am not the only prisoner of the media. Long before the fires were under Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/105420402320980532 by guest on 25 September 2021 Richard Foreman 113 control, the networks had titled events, packaging history as known spectacular narratives. “America Under Attack” soon morphed into “America’s New War,” “America Fights Back,” and “America Strikes Back.” Right out of Star Wars.If they don’t get Bin Laden, or if some other representative of the “dark side” succeeds him, we are in for “Return of the Jihad.” After all, we paid for and trained these guys—the terrorism and the war are to a large degree an American production. FOREMAN: Well, first of all, I think I do believe in destiny. Rather than Brecht’s point of view, I take [Herbert] Marcuse’s, which is that what we artists are in- volved with is trying to keep alive and sustain an alternative reality. At this point, there isn’t much hope that an alternative reality will come to fruition. September 11th happened in the context of something that’s been going on with me for the last year. About a year ago, I was asked to go to Holland to work at Ritsaert ten Cate’s new school, Des Artes. He said he wanted me to come and talk on the subject of the month, which was money. [Laughs] I thought, “My God, what the hell do I know about the artist’s relation to money, about all the implications of the global economy, cor- porate takeovers, and so forth.” So, I spent a month really immersing myself in everything that I could read about where the economy is going, about different pro and con visionaries, about the implications of the Internet, what it was doing to human consciousness as well as how it was restructuring life. And I felt very adrift. My feeling that I just don’t know if I approve or disapprove intensified. Now, you can’t approve or disapprove of history. What I mean is that I’m still not convinced that the Internet and globalization are producing something new and interesting; that they are not controlled by a mediocre mentality. Why oughtn’t we lament the passing of the grand masters of the European tradition? Obviously, my commitment for most of my life has been to try and take the next step implied by these grand masters.