I only worked on one of Richard Foreman’s plays, the original staging of Symphony of Rats, and didn’t do much; but some close friends worked on other plays in those years, so I was fortunate to be around a few other productions. The vibe — and there really isn’t a better way to describe the feel of a theater around a play — was the best: warm, open, enticing, and something else I could never quite put my finger on. It wasn’t absurd, or ridiculous, or even comical really, but it was something in that neighborhood. Like someone a few doors down was cooking something delicious and those were the main spices, but there was one more…
The NYT’s obit is a mixed bag, something they cobbled together at the last minute:
Early in his career, he was identifiable by his matching dark hair, eyebrows and walrus-style mustache.
— what, unlike those other downtown directors who were identifiable because their bodily hair was mismatched like Mr. or Mrs. Potatohead? And it also reveals how long the Gray Lady’s been working the corner of Condescending and Clueless:
When ‘Elephant Steps’ came to Hunter College in Manhattan two years later [in 1972], the chief classical music critic of The Times, Harold C. Schonberg, found it “all very chic,” but he also confessed, “I don’t know what the hell was going on.”
But — credit where it’s due — the obit’s close is divine:
In a 2013 essay in The Forward, Joshua Furst compared the power of Mr. Foreman’s work to the Jewish tradition of davening: “If you let the rhythm of his rocking enter you, he’ll remind you what it feels like to be ecstatic, what it is to be hysterical, what it means to circle the meaningless void that is the wellspring of all meaning.”
ADD 1: On Facebook, John Matturi captures some of this really well:
In those early days at least, you walked into a first rehearsal of a Foreman play to find a script and a bare skeleton of a set. Then over several months of four nights of week sessions Richard would layer and shift around every element of the performance — set decoration, costumes, lighting, sound and music, along with the words, gestures, and movements of the rag-tag group of mostly young artists, musicians, filmmakers, as well as actors who made up his found object (not to mention inexpensive) cast. (The influence of these, many of whom became lifetime friends, has in itself been immeasurable…) Slowly, the perfomance took shape of a sort, but not any ordinary sort, after which came another period of night by night rehearsals, now with rare changes, that provided the shows their characteristic rhythms and tightness. At the end of the three plays I performed in, followed by the decades of subsequent yearly shows, these rhythms became deeply ingrained in me, and the layering process became a basis of my own the practice of my own work. When, while doing research (I think on Harry Smith) at the Anthology Film Archives library, Kate Manheim and P. Adams Sitney approached me about being in a play. I couldn’t imagine the impact that my decision would have on what I would later do and even who I would be. Richard’s work, like, say, the music of Monk, got deeply under your skin. And stayed there.
ADD 2: The Wooster Group, which recently restaged Symphony of Rats, has a great video from the 1988 production — all of 45 seconds long — featuring Ron Vawter (an actor I loved) and, in the background, Jeff Webster (an old friend I miss). Ron died of AIDS in the mid-’90s, and I’ve never passed up — and never will — a chance to sing his praise.
ADD 3: Tony Torn notes that PennSound has a serious archive of videos of Foreman’s plays, including two views of the complete Symphony of Rats (Camera 1, Camera 2) . Seeing it after all these years is completely mind-bending.