LARRY KORNFELD INTERVIEW with Steve Bottoms, 9.95 - Judson ...

-- from song to song in one play: we had a Protestant hymn and a Spanish tango, andan operatic duet -- it was highly eclectic. So people would say "that's his style", thiseclectic style. Because we were trying to discover each moment anew, it meant thatwe were trying to create almost new synthetic structures out of all different kinds ofelements -- collage. If that's a style ... People said we were all avant-garde, I don'tthink we were avant-garde, we were right with the time ...LK: We all knew that to the rest of the world we were avant-garde, but when youwere doing the work you weren't being avant-garde, you were doing what you coulddo! The way you saw things, the way you do things ... I think there are people who arefakes, who are trying to make themselves avant-garde: they don't last. There's muchmore of that now, I think ... We didn't think we were trendy, other people would try tofind out what the new trends were. People would come up to us from the newspapersand say 'What's the newest thing?', I'd say 'I don't know'. I'm not trying to shy awayfrom your question, but it's a great existential fact: we were doing what we knew howto do.LK: In the moment. And of course at that time the moment here and now wasphilosophically very important, so we were involved in the here and now. The LivingTheatre's great guru was Paul Goodman, who was the co-author of the great textbookof gestalt therapy ...SJB: And you took those ideas with you, you didn't have a difference of opinion onthose things ...LK: I came to them with those ideas. We thought alike. I'll tell you something aboutthe time: modernism was enthroned, we knew nothing about anything calledpostmodernism, and there were a whole bunch of artists doing these fantasticexpressions, abstract expressions ... The friends at the Cedar Tavern, all of us, therewere Motherwell, Kline, etcetera etcetera etcetera. They were people who you talkedto, who came to see your shows, who did sets for you, you'd go to their galleries ...SJB: A lot critics see that as a big break - that going from abstract expressionismpop, you go from the modernist to the postmodernist. ..toLK: I don't really want to get into postmodernism, because it's stone soup. Irrelevant.The point is that the so-called pop and op artists were THERE. Each one was doinghis own work. Lamont Young would sit there at a party and play the same four chords

on the piano for hours and drive us all crazy ... John Cage and Merce Cunningham hada studio over the Living Theatre on the third floor ... We built the theatre becauseMerce said he would rent that top floor.! would go up there sometimes and watchMerce rehearsing. . . Everybody had their own style, everybody looked at whateverybody did and we worked together. As a period, the people in it were notconcerned about each other's style. My impression of it is that we did what we did.Some people had very formal printed documents -- Richard Foreman certainly didwhen he came up, because Richard thinks a lot about ... part of his thing is what he'sthinking about. (When I did a production of a Foreman play, it was nothing like whathe did ...) But we were playing around with things. I didn't say I had to do thissomething or that something, but what would it be like if I did this ... You can seewhere postmodernism theory gets a lot of its roots, because our productions -- not justmine but other people's and other theatres' too -- we were convinced, we knew thateach person in that audience would see their own thing. We knew that the finaladditive quality to a production was the audience .... The best things that happenedOff-Off-Broadway, and certainly in my plays, the best things were those thatsurprised everybody, and to this day when I'm directing, my most constant directionto actors is 'Surprise me. Surprise yourselves.' ... Go too far! That comes out of myroots in the theatre, the arts of this time. To go too far. .. people used to say, thebourgeois, constantly used to say, constantly: 'You're doing this just to frighten me,you're doing this just to annoy me, you're doing this just to disgust me'. And I wouldalways give them the same answer: 'Who are you? I'm not bothered with you. Ifyou're disgusted by it, that's your problem. I'm not!' There were things I was disgustedwith that people laughed at and liked!SJB: What about this high/low camp distinction ...? Irene Fornes describes Judson asproducing high camp plays, in the sense of a sort of Noel Coward-ish, archsophistication. Like in What Happened, or. ..LK: That was a show of mine. That was the first Stein musical that we did. We usedfive dancers, four actors and a musician. And a piano. There was this famous momentwhen we moved that piano right across the stage while Al carried on playing it. Now,Irene could see that as Noel Coward ... that's what the old-timers might think and Icould understand that. There was nothing like that for me when I did it. Those thingsjust came about spontaneously in rehearsal, and then they were interpreted asmeaning all these different things in performance ...LK: You know, the artists were involved in changing the liturgy of the church too.They were invited to make changes. It was a very radical church. I loved Judsonbecause it was so free and so open and the space was divine, we could carve outwonderful shows there. We started off in the choirloft and did quite a number of playsup there -- it was very nice working up there, a 99 seat theatre. And then we moveddownstairs, did plays in the corner, or using the whole stage, we had plays in everypossible configuration of space ...

The church's mission was very spiritual. I mean you have to go into a whole thingwith liberation theology, which is involved here ... my wife is a minister, you know ...of the left! And I met her because she went to seminary with Al Carmines ... and theJudson position about the arts, and its support of the arts, came out of its theologicalstance. Liberation theology's support ofmarginalised .... and artists are marginalised inAmerica! You wouldn't know that in New York, but if you go outside of New York. ..So at that time, Judson church was revising its liturgy. They were Baptists, AmericanBaptists or Congregationalists at Judson [7], and they created a two year study group -and put me on it! along with one or two other artists - and talked about the liturgy,what it meant. There were some wild liturgical sessions all of a sudden in the church.Aileen Pasloff did a very famous one where she danced during the liturgy, and hadoranges and threw them out to the audience, and people went wild. The idea of havinga liturgist do their own piece ofwork. ..LK: Well if Michaelangelo can draw cartoons on the ceiling of the church, you canpour paint over yourself! So your question was, was this theological, and the answeris yes! Now the artists were never required to do anything religious there, but if theywanted to, if you liked to, then fine!LK: Well it ended up with them taking the cross down, taking the pews out, puttingnormal chairs in. It meant breaking away ... the minister did not wear the black robeanymore ... what they tried to do, and this is a very common thing now, was to takethe veil off. They were secularising the church. Harvey Cox was a member of theJudson church, a very famous theologian ... one of the people who talked about theDeath of God, in the Nietzschean sense, and wrote a book called The Secular City . Avery influential man... The theology of the place was absolutely clear in the fact thatwe were able to do a play like Dracula: Sabbat. And a whole bunch of nuns came tosee that, and thought it was very religious, very beautiful. See what the piece is is acomplete black mass, complete. But instead of telling the story of Jesus or the Devil,it tells the story of Our Lord Dracula, and uses the elements of the Stoker novel to tellthe little vignettes that form the story. But it really came from the black mass.LK: Hell no. If we had problems from the outside, the church stuck up for us. Therewere times when they were going to close the church, almost. They were marvellous.We couldn't have had a better place. I mean Howard Moody would say 'I don'tunderstand this, I don't understand what's going on ... go to it!' ... Dracula Sabbatwas one of my favourite shows. I loved it. And that was a staggeringly importantpiece, I think. Staggering, its influence on New York, oh yes, I think. When it wasdone at Judson it was particularly effective. In some ways it was more beautiful and

polished when we revived it at Theatre for the New City, the original theatre atWestbeth, beautiful theatre, big hall. But when it was done at Judson, on the altar... Imean people wrote about it, saying I thought I was going to be struck with lightning,the blasphemy, or the beauty. I loved that piece, that production. Also very verydaring.LK: I don't know, I just think it got to a lot of people. I know a lot of the people whowere IN the play said it changed their lives. That was a horrifyingly beautiful piece,and people giggled like mad because of nervousness ...LK: One of my favourites was an absolute flop, and bored everybody. I loved it. Itwas a piece called Play One - no! - a piece called Pour Madeleine Renault. And itwas a short piece, about forty minutes long, and it had music by Telemann [7], it hadsets by this painter Ralph Humphrey, who did big things like this on stage. It hadAileen Pasloff, the dancer, and the words were by Wallace Stevens and EmilyDickinson. And the whole thing was about gestural [7], and I wanted to take thatgesture and play it abstractly against the music, against the paintings and dancers andactors. And it was a very private piece, wonderful, I loved it. And people said it wasnice, but it wasn't startling and funny or tragic, it was very cool, and I was known as ahot director: what happened on stage was very 'hot', things had heat. They still do.But I loved that piece.LK: Oh I think so. I've seen things on Broadway and I've said 'Oh my God that's soand-so'swork, that's mine, or something. Now I don't think they copied it, but thatkind of freedom, it happened because so many of the important directors werechoreographers who were very influenced by Balanchine, and er. .. especially byBalanchine, this great free-er of the space of the stage. I still go and see Balanchineballets and I'm wiped out by what he does in formal terms on stage, building thescene: he's a great theatre director.SJB: What about Tom O'Horgan7 There was this great commercial breakthrough withHair ...LK: I couldn't have done Hair. There was a time when Gerry Ragni and ... when theywere thinking of me doing it, and I said no. Because I saw it at the Cheetah, and itwas not my cup of tea, I knew it. It needed a different hand, and Tom gave it abeautiful hand.

LK: Yeah. I was always very fond of his work. I don't know how he felt - (we werealways friendly) - but I never felt any competition with him, I never felt competitivewith Bill [?], a great director who went out to SF. I've always felt angry andcompetitive with BAD directors who make it, though! Or supposedly importantdirectors ... I'm never jealous of good work, or envious of it, I get angry when badwork gets all kinds of opportunities or rewards. And then finally I'd just listen to whatJulian would say: Stop whining. You see I went through a period of my life when Iwas terribly envious of painters or writers because their work went into a library oronto a wall, and mine disappears. Or film-makers. And after a while I thought wellthat's just temporary. I mean immortality only lasts about a hundred years, twohundred years, but it was a struggle to get that philosophical about it.When a playcloses I have great sadness ...LK: I've been talking about it for thirty years and it bores me. For me camp is a kindof high style of sarcasm, and a kind of satire that has always existed, and has sort ofbeen practised more extensively and more excitingly by outcasts, by social outcasts.In this case in America, a lot of the cross-dressers, the gay world, there's a kind ofcamp that is private, just a kind of humour, biting, sarcastic, witty; there's a kind ofofficial camp, with gay pride day, when they all come steaming out all dressed up;there is the kind of camp theatre which is about travesty ... Every time you're funny orsarcastic doesn't mean you're campy. Every time you're campy doesn't mean you'rebeing funny or sarcastic either, you're just exaggerating ... I think Susan, Susan Sontaghelped to define things, camp, but actually the first use of the word camp was HarryKoutoukas, I think. I remember when his one or two page hand-printed,mimeographed article on camp came out in the early days of the Living Theatre, itwas very funny ... Harry's a true, true, true camp, Harry's also a wonderful poet, awild, Dada playwright, exceptionally gifted ... and with a lot of pain in his life. Harry'swonderful. He's also very difficult.Speaking of laughter, I'd have to call HarryKoutoukas up and say 'Harry, you can come to the opening tonight, but this is aserious one. If you laugh, I'll kill you!' ... "Harry do whatever you like" ... "Harrydon't come in drag tonight" ... 'Oh OK.' Harry used to like to come to openings in a bigblack moustache and a gold lamZ dress ...But then there's someone like Jeff Weiss -- he's one of the greatest actors inAmerica ... He was my Doctor Faustus, he did things at La Mama: the best things everdone at La Mama were by Jeff, what was it called? How to Pay the Rent? [That's Howthe Rent Gets Paid.] A whole series of plays at La Mama, written and directed andperformed by Jeff Weiss ... one of the greatest things ... he's still performing ... He's agreat great actor, a very difficult, very eccentric, very beautiuful person - I meanphysically very handsome ... Sublime. And he did a lot of work at La Mama, he

worked for me, he had his own theatre for a while ... But he's truly, truly non-camp,experimental... One of his great plays has about 25 characters in it, he plays all thegirls and all the boys, absolutely straight and at a furious pace. A great actor, and hewrites wonderful plays ... Do not overlook Jeff Weiss.LK: Well of course, there were certain plays I knew were campy. Gorilla Queen wascamp.Promenade I never thought of as campy, in fact I thought it might be -- when Ithought about Promenade at all, I would think in terms of Restoration theatre. It has avery high style, an elegance ... the production itself was physically very elegant, bothat Judson, which was done by young artists, and at the Promenade Theatre, theBroadway production, which was done by Willa Kemp [?] and Ruben Terrara Junior[?], who are two great theatre artists, and Jules Fisher did the lights. They were bothequally beautiful productions: they were elegant in movement, in space, in the flow,the characterisations were highly stylised, the songs were both delivered out andintensely to each other, they were well acted and yet performed ... I think that theJudson style, to go back to that question of a while ago, I was looking through someof the old reviews for a book I'm writing, and after a while I noticed that there werequite a few critics that by the end of the 60s were beginning to say that the Judson'style', or Larry Kornfeld's 'manner', or the Judson 'spirit' .... and I remember onereview said something about how somehow or other I, Kornfeld, was able to get theJudsonites (he used that term, I think), by hook or by crook, to perform and sing andmove in a very 'bewitching' way. Now I wasn't bewitching, they were bewitching,they were released, open, they were freed on the stage, they were not stuck by rules,they were inventing new things on the stage ... So the style became one of being open,being surprising and open, and after a while they began to say that Judson performersare as good as anybody else. My most satisfying review I ever got in my life wasfrom Richard Gilman, and he said that I directed Gertrude Stein the way the MoscowArt Theatre did Chekhov. Something like that. That I was tuned to her, and Al wastoo, in that same way that the M.A.T. was tuned to Chekhov. And I feel I was tunedin to other writers too, like Irene, and other people. The style was always for me tofind out what the author really, really wanted, and then to find an original way to dothat that would satisfy the author. That was important: that it surprised me, andsurprised the author, and we'd both say, it's right. Want an example? A play byRobertNichols, The Wax Engine. There was a scene in that that said, 'She sits at the table,and suddenly the green light hits her, and she doesn't say anything.' This is thecharacter of Jean Harlow, the movie star: the play was full of histroic figures, beforeit became such a thing to do. A beautiful play. And I felt, well the green light, that'stacky. What did he mean by that? He meant that something special happens, andsilence is heard. I had an idea and I tried it: I said don't sit, stand there, and just freezeat that point. Become a statue, which is what he meant. And then I had the character

of the truck driver, who's the chorus in this piece, he just walked on stage and pickedher up, and she had to remain rigid, a statue, while he tucked her under his arm andcarried her off stage. She disappeared, she became silent, she went into a coma with agreen light?: what did that mean? I interpreted that to another, to a movement: Bobliked it very much. The audience liked it. I liked it. We weren't quite sure what itmeant, but it was right. The play had all kinds of meanings ... So I always tried to -and I still do - if I'm doing a Tennessee Williams play: what did he really mean there?How am I going to justify this, make it work? Things will happen on stage, and they'llbe right.SJB: Ross Wetzsteon wrote a review of Peace which said that Judson was best at the"language plays" by "feminine writers" because these allowed you and Al morefreedom of interpretation and staging.LK: That's because of the plays we were doing. We were doing word plays, poeticplays: it was the Judson Poets' Theatre, we were doing that kind of play. When Iturned my hand elsewhere to do other plays, I would do other things. I mean in thoseearly 60s I also went to Minneapolis to do Terrence McNally's Thngs That Go Bumpin the NIght - that was wordy, but it was still a play play. You see you do something,you're creating a new style, and then the critics say well that's the limitation. That'swhat you're doing! Now it's quite true that these so-called word plays had a certainsimilarity, a certain freedom, a certain openness. What he wasn't aware of was that aplay like the Nichols play, that I've just described, had a lot of stage directions, it wasvery clear what was happening there: we didn't invent those, but we made choices ofhow to do those.SJB: But his point is that the Judson approach seemed to fit better with plays thatdidn't restrict directorial freedom with stage directions or...LK: He's wrong. He's wrong. I mean, all I can say is that he's wrong. I've doneShakespeare - I've interpreted the hell out of it! You see I think there's an importantpoint here that you bring up. What the Living Theatre really did, what Julian showedme and others, and it came from his study of Brecht and Pirandello, and also theinfluence of Merce Cunningham - on space (and Balanchine also) - was that the stagewas not just a place where people make speeches, and where the director's job is tomake those things realistic. Now I've nothing against Wetzsteon, he's given usenormous support, but like almost all the critics ... they were still coming out of aliterary theatre, and the most important thing that happened in the late 50s and early60s was that we crashed out of the literary theatre, and in order to do so we madeexcessive - it now seems excessive - attacks upon the wishes of the author. It turnsout that what we were doing was freeing the stage for the author. You go back andyou look at - if you could - the staging of South Pacific on Broadway, you would dieof boredom. I remember that, I saw it. You go to see a Broadway musical now, ascrappy as it may be, that stage is alive with movement. The use of the stage, the useof the dynamics, the depth, perception: we did that. Julian did that on that tiny stage.Blocking was not 'What does the actor feel?' - so he has to sit down. Blocking became

'What is beautiful and what is right?' - psychologically and visually. What's the strongpoint on the stage? Not centre downstage: the strong point is wherever you make itstrong. So I think, when one looks back at the critics, then and now, of that period,they are both delighting in the release from literary theatre, and trying to say well,we're only successful when we break away from literary theatre. Now as a matter offact, over thirty years, I've become a good technician. I can break out of formats, I canalso adhere, with strict care, to familiar forms, and yet find ways to make thatexciting. I have learned how to make two characters sit down, and not move for fiveminutes: that's hard to do. The chair has to be at a certain angle, the light has to bedone in such a way ... So I think people weren't quite aware of what an attack upon thetechniques of the stage we were doing. Since we had no money, and didn't want it,since we were philosophically and politically very radical and didn't want to be doing'capitalist plays', so called, we had to do without. So what could we do? Lights,movement, and of course the scripts ... When we did Home Movies the staging for thatwas Brechtian. You didn't know it, but it was. I modelled it after Brecht. Somethingthat Brecht would never have written. I've always known a lot about theatre, I read anenormous amount, and so did Charles Ludlam, we refer. .. I'm very referential. Irefer. .. I was just looking at notes the other day to a production of {?}, I was lookingat my notes, and for the first act I had a whole series of quotes from Ovid andShakespeare. I said the first act is Ovid and Shakespeare. The second act, Rilke. I hadquotes. The audience never knew that: nobody knew it, but there were thosereferences to me. And we were always doing that, the whole bunch of us, we wouldrefer to other things, that the audience didn't know about. Now you can manouevrethat into some kind of postmodernist theory, which it might be, but what I was doingwas trying to really -- not jump out of this universe, but find roots AND jump out ofthis universe.LK: No. I discovered that I was doing it. After a while. I would say this whole piecehas to end like a Schubert song. And I knew what that meant. The particular song Imeant. And all it meant, was that for me, my exploration of the new, was alwaysmoving forward to outer space, holding onto as much of the past that was importanttome.SJB: Do you think it's fair to say that there was a shift, during the later 1960s, Off-Off-Broadway, from an emphasis on the writer to an emphasis on the auteur-director?LK: I don't think that happened all that much in the GOB theatre. I think where itreally happened was in the commercial theatre. Or it happened in the extremes, theBob Wilson type, where you have a theatre that is not really' literary, it is a puretheatre of visions. You know I think the real truth is that in the late 50s, early 60s,

young playwrights, poets, who had a vision of a different kind of theatre, broughttheir pieces to places like ours, and we helped put it up. And I truly believe thatpeople like Irene and Rosalyn Drexler, and many others, felt that there was acollaboration. It doesn't mean that all these people weren't very strong men andwomen with very strong egoes, and thought of themselves very much as writers. Sothat we mounted the pieces and added things to them, and as they became more andmore successful they began more and more wanting to have their way, and of coursethey did. And we wanted more and more to help them become their way. As thosedirectors like Torn and myself, like Jacques Levy and a few others - Joe Chaikin - aswe became more and more practised and better, we got stronger and stronger... I thinkwhat eventually happened in about ten or fifteen was that they became reallyseparated out as directors and writers, and people like Irene said the hell with this, Ican direct my own pieces. And Edward Albee for instance has always felt he needsheavy control of directors. So the answer to what you asked is that, yes you're right ina way, but on the other hand it's not so, because as we all grew up, and becamestronger and stronger in our work, we got better and better at it, and wanted to havemore control.LK: Well he broke away from the Ridiculous theatre too. The real genius of thatwhole group was Charles Ludlam. I got to do Gorilla Queen because it was supposedto be done at the Ridiculous, but then Ron Tavel brought it over to us, and said doyou want to do this? Now I didn't know how the hell I was going to do it, but it wasvery good.SJB: Were there ever real tensions between writers and directors? I heard thatRochelle Owens hated O'Horgan's version of Futz ...LK: Do you know the stories about Rochelle Owens? She did a wonderful play aboutEskimoes called The String Game. And I didn't intrude on it. I did the stage directionsand it ended up very funny and very successful, about a bunch of Eskimoes and anItalian priest and a Nazi. Wonderful play, very funny. And that was very successfuland I did her second play called Istanboul, and that was with Florence Tarlow, whowon an Obie for that role ... And it was very wonderful, wild, Crystal Field played apart in it... And then we were planning her third play, which was Futz! And I wasgetting ready to cast it, and I called up an actor and said would you be interested inplaying the lead in Rochelle's new play, and he said I am! We're going into rehearsalwith it. And I said what are you talking about? (I'm blocking his name totally) And hesaid I'm doing it at La Mama. I said I'm doing it at Judson! And what I found out wasthat Ellen said to - she didn't STEAL the play - Ellen asked Rochelle for a play,Rochelle gave her Futz!, and of course Ellen said we'll do it here, and I'll take it toEurope. So Rochelle who is, always was, and remains, as far as I know, anopportunistic bitch, but a wonderful writer, gave her that play without ever telling me.I was furious, Al was furious, and we just closed down the production. Now ithappens that Torn did a marvellous job, gorgeoous production ... Mine would have

een very different from Torn's, but I think it would've been good too because it's agood play. That was Rochelle. I didn't talk to her for years ....SJB pushes issue about whether writers resented at all what was done with theirplays:LK: We had big fights and rages and then we made up. Don't quote me calling her abitch. She is one, but. .. Everyone has their Rochelle Owens story. I mean she's fromanother planet. Well she pays her social now.It was that or be a bourgeoishousewife ...LK: I worked very well with him. Oh no, I had heavy trouble with Al after he nearlydied of a cerebral aneurysm, and after that... I didn't realise that he was still sick, andwasn't in full control. Something happened, about a play with a theatre that we weregoing to do, and he just fucked up. We've made up since, we're good friends againnow, always have been really. He was best man at my wedding, he's my daughter'sgodfather, we had this great partnership together for years ... But Al has people whoare very loyal to him, and he also has people who really hate him. Irene for one,Madeleine Kahn being another, the actress.SJB: At what stage did you leave Judson? When you founded Theatre for the NewCity?LK: That was 71, 72, I'm not quite sure. I left Judson because it was over. I found outyears later that I was actually manipulated out, that it was a political thing within thechurch ... The movement itself was over, the Judson Poets' Theatre was more andmore becoming, in the seventies, AI's oratorios, which were very popular. And hewanted to direct them, and I never felt that Al was much of a director, because Aldirects a play by sitting and looking at the script, the printed word, he'd never look atthe stage, and he'd say 'Larry why isn't it interesting?' and I'd say because you're notlooking! (We were so close I could say those kind of things) And ... I wanted my owntheatre. Fully my own theatre, not the Judson Poets' Theatre. And a year after I builtit, raised the money and built it, I left. Because I was not happy with some of thepeople I had brought on... And it was for me a very critical point in my life. Instead offighting for a change, I did leave New York for about two years. I carne back again, Ihad to corne back. But I went very much into regional theatre, and kept corning backand doing occasional shows at Judson and elsewhere.

LK: The theatre was originally formed by me, Theo Barnes, Crystal and George. [heasks for the tape to be turned off: explains story of falling out with Crystal Field "offthe record"]LK: But also in the early '70s I felt very much also that the church was changing, andneeded those oratorios that Al was doing. The things that Al was doing, startingaround 69/70, used soloists, actors, and huge choruses, the whole church was in thechorus. It became a new thing at the Judson, very exciting. And I directed one ofthem, but not at Judson. A Look at the Fifties was brought to Washington, to ArenaStage, and Al asked me to direct it there, wanted me to shape it a different way. Aftera while I think the real problem was - and this goes back to the earlier question youwere asking about the writers too - Al did not want me to have the strong control, hewanted ultimate control, and I think that was natural for a lot of the playwrights too ...And I think I'm surprising myself now, thinking about this .... because I think that thestronger I got as a director, the more necessary it was for me to work with anonymousactors in the company, and newer playwrights, because those playwrights helped meget born, I helped them get born, we helped each other. And I think all of us wantedto be independent of the movement. It happens ... people want to be together, and thenas they get more sophisticated, pieces break off... And the world was changing, theaudience was changing, and we were heading into the seventies ...[ye gods?] I workedall those places, the regional theatres, and by 1980 I started teaching - and directingtoo - and finding a whole new way of working with younger actors. Now the actors Iwork with in the Conservatory are in fact better trained people, for the most part, thanat Judson. But very few of them are the quite high[ something?]ly wonderfulcharacters that we had at the Judson. But after a while I got tired of depending a lotupon the charisma of a performer, and I wanted to see them doing more acting. Andthey did -- at the Judson -- we would force them into doing things a new waysometimes. But as I taught more, I got more used to actors per se, I used to not beinterested in acting, I used to want to own the audience [??], but as I got more used toactors, I learned how to handle actors better,and now I do truly enjoy working withclassical plays as well as Gertrude Stein. I want very much next year to do Danton 'sDeath.LK: When I'm being an auteur-director. Depending on the production. If I'm doingStein, of course I'm an auteur-director. If I'm doing Eugene Q'Neill, no! I've done oneArthur Miller play, I said oh God I'm doing Arthur Miller, he's awful! And Ithoroughly enjoyed it. The Price. I enjoyed doing it -- to discover how exciting ... howwell he writes from the inside. The inside of Arthur Miller is so... so true, although onthe surface it seems like gunk.

LK: No that's not true, I don't think so. I think that's not quite accurate. When you say'the church' there was never - there was Al Carmines, there was Howard Moody, therewas the board ... What happened was that they were getting involved in other things,and that the artists, who were supported so wonderfully by the church for a decade,were finally getting out and doing things. Yvonne Rainer was out making a career,Lucinda Childs was making a career, I mean all those people were making careers inthe arts. Meredith Monk was out doing her own thing. I remember a Harry Koutoukasplay with Meredith Monk playing a flower, with a score by AI, it was so funny ...SJB: Can you say more about the Judson shows that moved "uptown", off-Broadway?Did that happen with a lot of the shows?LK: Not a lot. When you think of all the stuff we did, it was amazing how manymoved. But it was even more amazing how many didn't. Some of which should. Butenough did to make it significant. The same thing happened with Theatre Genesis.LK: Well when you say Off-Off I mean who's that? When you look back on it now itseems to have been an entity, sure ...LK: I think you have to ask why did Joe Cino kill himself? It's a crucial time. Whathappened, not just to Joe ...? Drugs OK, but why did Joe die? What was happening,what was falling apart in that world? I think that's part of it. I don't know the answer, Ijust think that there's some truth there ... [...] I mean the night I met my wife the firstthing we did was we went out to Caffe Cino. Joe was a marvellous character, and hegave absolute freedom to be ... but I think something happened when he died. Whenwas it?LK: Well we were still going strong in '68, '69, but something happened there thatstarted ... Things were still going on, Cino lasted at least another 7 or 8 years [actuallyonly one more year], La Mama is still going on ... I think we all of us still go onbecause a certain kind of flashy status was not our main goal, somehow the work wasthe important thing... We're talking about endings here. I don't think there areendings. I think there are transformations.

SJB: Michael Smith said somewhere that Cino's death was the end of a writer's era,and the Open Theatre's demise in 1973 marked the end of another era ...LK: And Judson, my leaving and ... Well, I think it's very natural. Michael's tryingvery much to make sense of it, historically, which is good. Michael's been awonderful support. The Village Voice was very important. Jerry Tallmer, the originalcritic in 1961, was a big help... and the critics after that, Michael Smith, RossWetzsteon, Michael Feingold, Erika Munk, they've all been helpful: the Voice wasvery strong. Now the Living Theatre's great helper was Brooks Atkinson. BrooksAtkinson gave a great review to [?]... and he would come, and he would review it,and say I didn't understand this one, but other things he said you must go see this, thisis important. He was not the greatest critic, but he was open-hearted man. They'd bein financial trouble and he'd call and say can I be of any help? And he'd write anarticle ...SJB: Was Off-Off essentially the four major venues? Cino, Judson, La Mama,Genesis.LK: Those were the four main places, but there were lots of little things, groups ofpeople who were around. But certainly they were the four places that wereconsistent.And the Open Theatre later. And of course now, the OOB 'movement'might seem very large, but they seem to be doing plays hoping to get to B'way ...SJB: What are your main recollections of the Big 4? You've mentioned the LivingTheatre as being like a jewel box, and you've described Judson. What about theothers?LK: They were simply stages ... The atmosphere at La Mama was always heady,depending on whether it was a storefront theatre, or finally her 4th Street theatre,there's was always a very particular, wonderful, Ellen Stewart quality about thoseplaces. Her little bell would ring ...LK: Yes. In a slightly different accent each time. I think as far as real atmosphere ...the LT had the most consciously created atmosphere, aesthetic, locality ... Judsoncertainly had ... Have you been inside? It's kind of wrecked now, a lot of the stainedglass windows are out being repaired ... The answer to your question of whatatmosphere I remember the most - the only answer to that - was audience excitementat all of the theatres ... Of course I was always at Judson; I didn't go much to otherplaces because I was always working. But there was an incredible excitement, withaudiences waiting outside for doors to open, waiting at the ticket line to get theirticket, the conversation along the hallway before the doors to the theatre opened, theexcitement waiting to get in, people trying to get on the waiting list, people fighting

over tickets ... the excitement in the theatre before the play began, the action, thereception, the arguments, it was very very ... It wasn't just artists working in isolationin the avant-garde to an audience that didn't understand. We had an audience, ittended to be the audience of the artists in the Village and the cognoscenti in theliterary world ... And then by the end of the 60s it became an in-thing, I think, as withthe Warhol period, that's when we began to be very publicised. But in the first fiveyears - well I'll talk about Judson - the first five years of Judson, if you'd gone alongyou would have spotted a whole slue of important people on opening night. I wasalways very excited by that, I was never nervous about audiences, I was excited bythem coming in, except for one person. When I knew that this person was coming tosee the show, I was a nervous wreck, I couldn't watch the show, and that was MerceCunningham. It mattered to me terribly what Merce thought, I respected him somuch ... He also is a great moral figure, the integrity and the power of his vision, he'svery important. ..LK: It didn't kill it, it was just different. The trendy people came and also the oldpeople came ... Now there was a real club feeling at the Cino. The stage was veryvery tiny, but you could still go there and see Bernadette Peters in Dames at Sea. Andthe stage was like, half of this room [medium size living room], and they were on thisstage and three girls, four girls would be tapping away.LK: No it wasn't more informal, it was just a different shape. You sat around, it wasclose, it was a much smaller audience, it was more intimate. It also had a differentquality, Joe Cino ... the work that was done there was very 'in-your-face'. And atJudson it wasn't so much in your face as to your face. It's a matter of space, a matterof size, volume of people in the theatre, volume of the space around you.LK: A small theatre. Theatre quality. I felt that Theatre Genesis was a theatre, in thatbuilding which was a church. There was not so much that sense of the church aroundyou.They were in a smaller space -- not actually the church sanctuary itself. Judsonnever had a smaller theatre.

LK: Remy Charlip's work. Almost any play that Remy did was wonderful. RemyCharlip writes children's books, was a wonderful dancer in the Merce Cunninghamcompany, and was one of the directors at Judson. Almost every show he did waswonderful. he was a dancer, choreographer, director... in fact we worked together acouple of times, he would do choreography for me. We never got along too well, wewould fight, but I loved his work. ..LK: William Shakespeare. (ho ho) Irene certainly, Rosalyn, Joel Oppenheimer,George Dennison very much so, Paul Goodman, Terrence McNally. Gertrude Stein ofcourse. Rochelle Owens, Ronald Tavel, Charles Ludlam, they were all wonderful. Imean some were better than others, some wrote better plays, but they were veryexciting to deal with .... You see one of the basic out-front rules, not rules, one oftheout-front, basic items of the agenda at Judson was: It Doesn't Have to Be a Hit. EllenStewart had the same thing. We did enough plays ... there was one year I did sevenplays in one year, and that's half of the full programme - there were probably another5 or 6 done at Judson that year, and you couldn't expect each one to be perfect, oreven very good. But Al was looking for things that were: let's do it! It may not work,but let's do it! And some of the things when they came in, I mean Home Movies wasall over the place! And Al and I, and Rosalyn, the three of us got together and made itwonderful. Without ever making it traditional. We didn't say well this is what theyteach in Yale Drama school, we always said 'what's in this that needs to come out?'And we were delighted if it was something totally new and totally different. ... Oneof the things that helped, I think, looking back, was that I had a very strong classicalpart of me, I love all kinds of music, especially classical music ... I have that in me tobe - as Gertrude Stein said 'I had it in me' - to be expanding my past, the world's past.So that if I was doing a play of Rosalyn's, like Home Movies, I immediatelyconnected to the feeling of, quote, the carnival quality of it. It also reminded me ofthe Brecht style, so I started blending in... The actual technique of the piece, as I saidbefore, became - it had a white curtain, the musical comedy has [...? ..] but this wasmuch more Brechtian, although I did not follow the rules of Brecht. So that I thinkthat what I brought to the Off-Off-Broadway movement was a sense of freedom, butalso a structural sense. I enjoyed taking things that were absolutely structureless,never taming them, in fact letting them be as wild as possible, but in the actualtechnical work, movement sets lights, there was an element of real craft to it. Andpeople always said that about Judson, especially my pieces or Remy's pieces orJacques' pieces, those of us who felt the same, that the piece was well crafted. Andyet very often one of the wonderful things about Cino was that they were nevercrafted at all, they were filled with a wonderful sense of ... although of courseLanford Wilson's pieces that were done there were beautifully crafted ... And I thinkthat I bridged that. I still do. That's why the Becks jokingly called me the sane one,because I could be wild in a way, but there'd be a formal element in my work, that

maybe nobody recognised, but it was there. And I think that's true of everything I'vedone.LK: Well look, the regional theatres are non-commercial ventures, and they have tosucceed. It's an attitude, an aesthetic attitude, which was a gift given to us by Judsonchurch. The Becks really needed to have some kind of success to keep the theatregoing, even if it was a success de scandale. And of course they ended a period thenstarted a whole new period, but if you build a theatre that pays salaries and thingsthen you have to have some kind of success, in order to pay them. At the high point ofJudson, the church was sort of advancing, over the whole season, would advanceabout $10,000 for all the productions, and we would collect in nickels, dimes andquarters about ten thousand over the year, sometimes more sometimes less. As far asI'm aware, during the main part of the Judson Poets' Theatre it sort of balanced out,and then at the end they started getting little grants here and there. So to makemoney ... I never had any money, but I was there ... that was just the way it was ... Itwas something that moved me very much, and Al was very insistent upon it. One ofthe greatest things he did as minister in charge of the arts was that he really hadallowed himself to fail. And it came to a point where he would try to fail. He'd saywe're gonna do something so personal, and so beautiful that -- OK let it fail! Now ifyou really go into it when that happens, if you really let it fail, usually you're likely tohave a big hit! Every once in a while when you really try to be successful, let's saywith Rosalyn Drexler's wonderful play The Line of Least Existence, we really werehoping to be successful with that. There was even an Off-Broadway producer in at thebeginning hoping he could move it. And that was a big mistake. We realised - all ofus realised - that we had our hopes up wanting to ... and we lost it.SJB: So there was this kind of tension between a certain 'inspired amateurism' and aneye on the professional stage ...?LK: That word was used a lot and I always resented it. I'll tell you why, because wewere verbal in our attacks upon, quotes, professionalism. So they perceived that wewere in quotes amateurs. But the finest compliment I ever got was from PaulGoodman. I did a play of his in Hoboken, in a loft, and he came from NY to see it, theBecks came to see it. This was when I was really wanting to do my own work and notassist. And after the pieces were done, these two plays of Paul Goodman, Paul put hisarm on my shoulder and said 'Larry - it wasn't professional, it wasn't amateur, it wasartistic'. And that statement I repeated again and again ... my goal is to be artistic.Whether it's professional or non-professional, amateur or non-amateur, that reallydoesn't matter: I know I'm skilful, to an extraordinary degree, so obviously I'm aprofessional, but when I'm teaching people who are going out into the profession,saying oh I must have professional skills Professionalism now is a matter of whatshoes you wear, whether they're Guccis or You get what I'm talking about?

SJB: Yes. But was there a tension, then, between the right to fail, and a sense ofpressure to succeed, and I'm talking not just about Judson but the movement ingeneral, if there was such a thing as a movement..LK: I think as time went on it grew. And you would have secret hopes, or not suchsecret hopes, and you had to relax, you had to give that up, you had to practice allkinds of meditation to get rid of that kind of ego. Because you knew it affected yourwork. And after a while it became quite clear: you know, in Everyman, Everymansays to death, 'Thou comest when I least expect it.' And death comes in that way, butalso success comes, when you least expect it. And I think that's true of everything,professional and amateur, Off-Broadway and on-Broadway, you hope you can buildthings up ... but essentially art has to do with the release of yourself into the work, andthen it comes. Of course we all know that the history is that some of the greatest,most successful works of art ... we know that La Traviata was laughed at, so wasCarmen ....SJB: Do you think OOB has had a big influence on what has happened in the theatresince?LK: I don't want to slough off your question, but deep in me I'm not interested ininfluences. You see A doesn't influence B, A and B are both influenced by somethingsimilar, we don't know what it is. A may copy B, or be sllpported by B, or vice versa,but. .. I know I look back on some of my work in retrospect and realise that clearly Ihad seen such and such a thing, but at the time I wasn't conscious of it, I didn't knowwhat the influence was. I've never been a critic, I'm not good at it. So I'm notinterested in who influences who, I'm more interested in the work getting out. Nowwhen I'm listening to music, I'm very aware - when I'm listening to Benjamin Britten- of the incredibly subtle and beautiful influence of both Shostakovich and Mahler.But that's not important. I'm not a musician ... Shostakovich was a friend of, wasbefriended by Britten, and was certainly very much in awe of Mahler, but was heinfluenced by them? No. But you can see there where they were and what they did inhis... Britten, when he does atonal passages, does that mean he's influenced bySchoenberg or Berg or Weber? Not really. He just used some of that vocabulary.LK: It's a funny thing. I don't know how many directors think of themselves as artists.I think young directors now do, but in my generation I think most directors werepeople who worked with artists, and who helped the artwork. They were organisers.But I felt always that I was an artist.SJB: Is that an "influence"? Directors now thinking of themselves as artists in ownright?

LK: And then that goes too far. Or does it? I don't know? I think that Peter Sellars'Cosi Fan Tufte - I can see how people would think that was absolutely aberrrant,doing that in a diner. Well I saw it, and I thought it was certainly not what Mozartmeant, but oh it was fascinating! There were moments in that that were so brilliant, soexciting! So, Mozart's very strong, he can outlive any of us, so why can't we tryoutsome of those things? And there are other things that you shouldn't touch. I mean atthis point I would not change a thing if I were doing Beckett. It's ridiculous, it'sgilding the lily (to use a clichZ): Beckett should be done as he wrote it, as it wasmeant. When I see people doing Beckett with barbed wire around it I say come on, goaway! That's not what it's about! That's not where he is!SJB: Well as we were saying, some writers lend themselves to free interp. better thanothers.LK: What, in general? Well when it wasn't stupendously exciting, it was just bad.People were not trained. And that was very important that that happened at that time.It revitalised the theatre, not having that professional tonality. Because the giftedamateur brought something new to the theatre. A person like Florence Tarlow neverstudied acting ... You've seen pictures of her, you've seen the Promenade pcitures?She was Miss Cake. And she was a librarian! And she was wonderful, she broughtthings to roles and performances, to Saint Mary of Egypt, to Miss Cake, toStrindberg, this breast in the [,.? ..] show ... People would come to see FlorenceTarlow! She was an amateur, she was also very smart! She brought things that werewonderful.LK: No, I'm not being negative at all about this. You asked me what the acting waslike. By professional standards it was pretty poor. And under the hands of somedirectors, with good scripts, those productions could be wonderful. And sometimesthere would be wonderful actors who would come in to work. I mean Al Pacinoauditioned for Judson when he was a kid! (We didn't accept him: I mean I had seenhim perform, and I thought he would just destroy the place, he was too strong! I wasreally wrong: what it amounted to when I look back was that I was terrified of him, Ididn't know if I could handle him. And I don't know whether I could have: I couldnow, I think. But. .. he was just seventeen years old!) So, amateurism, you know theold clichZ, people say it comes from 'a lover of, and these people loved it! But therewere B'way productions, and there still are, where I simply can't bear to be in thetheatre, because the acting is not exciting, it's not original, it's not personal, it's noteven good. It's just bad, the people up there have no idea what they're doing, becausenobody asked them for anything interesting. I don't mind seeing people with rustytechniques or no techniques as long as their souls are out there, and that's what

happened with the best of Off-Off-Broadway.on that stage, and that was so exciting.People could be dangling by one threadLK: Oh, personally, when I was with the Living Theatre, we were what you calledpacifist anarchists, whatever that meant. I knew then, I don't know now ... Was therepolitical theatre? Sure, Macbird was political... In the broader sense, see I had to gothrough a whole thing about this because I wanted to be political, I wanteddesperately to be political, and do a piece that was a political piece ... and the storywas that it was political if you talked about politics ... or if you took a stand on anissue ... and I guess what most of us realised, either at the time or later, was that whatwe were doing was in itself political. The action was political. The action of beinginvolved in a theatre that is, in its very bones, is critical... or ecstatic ... about aspectsof our life today. Even if it's from an aesthetic point of view. If it is facing the issuesof life now, and not just running them through the mill over and over again, then it'spolitical. It's nice when a piece comes out, everybody recognises, 'Man! You took astand!' Most of the time artwork like that is preaching to the convinced. It's nice,because they're very supportive of that point of view. But for an art form to be trulypolitical, I mean to be truly original or truly breaking through ... I mean Gertrude Steinwas a very apolitical person (in fact she was probably a fascist) .... but her actions inthe world, her art was always political in the way it changed perception. Jacques Tati!Did those marvellous pieces, he was political in the sense that you can't look at theworld the same way. I think one of the most political movies is Wild Strawberries,Bergman [?] piece, an intimate little story about old age ... and you come out of thetheatre and you can't see the world the same way! I mean anything that... Rilke is thefamous example, Rilke in the Apollo sonnet, says it changed: it changed, if you see it,you can't be the same, you've gotta be changed, and that is political!LK: Well everybody interprets that different ways. For Oscar Wilde it was a politicalrallying cry! It was the way he confronted the whole world! .,. What do you think ofthe term health for health's sake? It's nice to be healthy. In order to be healthy youhave to eat well, you have to do all those things, you also have to have good genesand a lot of luck. Art for art's sake ... ? I think the term art for art's sake is a pejorativephrase that the world uses in order to put down things they don't understand. Or,works that they feel are too private. And there have been some artists who havebrought up the banner of art for art's sake meaning that they pay attention only totheir work. But you know, you can be the most fierce political activist if you'rewriting a poem - really writing a poem - or a play or a piece of music. When you'redoing that, the art is what you're doing, the subject matter... I think it's a term thatartists should not worry about. Because when you're doing your art, you're doing yourart; when you're taking a shit you're taking a shit.

SIB: OK. I'd like to ask you some more about Promenade, if I may, because I'mworking on an article about it, specifically. Irene sees it as an intrinsically "light"show, and yet it seems to me to have these quite dark undertones, right?LK: This goes back to what you were saying about camp, about style: underneathevery style, from whatever period in history, underneath it is a profound seriousness.You see that's what I discovered with Noel Coward also, that there's a profoundseriousness, the seriousness of the avoidance of feeling, the avoidance of pain: thatexpresses a deep pain underneath. I find that in Coward. I would never, if I weredirecting Noel Coward, try to bring that out, because you'd be spoiling it, becausebasically he's witty. But Moliere has that... all the great Restoration plays have thatprofound truth under them that all great comedy does ... I think Hamlet is a hilariousplay, very funny.LK: We wrote more songs. First of all we got Madeleine Kahn, do you know who sheis? You see her in movies, she's now become a kind of crazy icon, Madeleine Kahnhad one of the great coloratura voices in America when she was young, absolutelyglorious voice! So Al wrote a whole bunch of songs for her. And we had more peoplein the company who could sing, and ... it was a long while after the originalproduction of Promenade ... it was a full-length two-act play when it was uptown.Now Irene subsequently hated a lot of the second act, a lot of the additions that weput in. Her edition of it has, a lot of the stuff that we put in it, in an appendix.LK: Well when we did it uptown we sort of got carried away by the power of thesingers that we had, the glory of the costumes and the sets ... And we went slam bangand it was a wonderful show. If you look up the reviews for that show there wasn't acritic in New York who didn't think it was just fabulous. The only reason for itclosing was that the producers got greedy and raised the prices and removed theaudience that would enjoy the play. It could have run for years!SIB: Why did Irene not like it then? Was it because of the way the mainstream criticsemphasised the song and dance angle at the expense of the play? I mean one of themsays he has no idea at all what play's about but that it's great fun as a musical...LK: If I were Irene I would have been galled by that also. As a director I got a bitgalled about them not talking about the production more. But the music was quiteglorious! Al is a marvellous composer. .. and Irene didn't like that, ultimately. Nowthe original production was smaller, it was ... more beautiful. The production uptownwas fascinating, accessible, wonderful. But the one at Judson had a scale to it, it had amuch more inventive set, which was hand-painted by people ... So what happened:that was the one Judson production that really went to town, it had a huge budget forits day! Most of our shows, all the other shows that we moved were done for pennies!

So they really retained the quality ... Promenade was expanded! And I think it wasquite wonderful. But it did lose some of the focus of the original. It did, I'll admit that.LK: At Judson it was a play with a lot of music. When it went uptown it became amusical. And Irene wrote lyric after lyric for it too, and we were all involved in it,Irene didn't have to fight, we were all very excited about it. And when we looked at it,certainly when Irene looked at it afterwards, we realised that the focus ... it gotrefocussed, it was obviously a musical. If it had remained downtown and beenexploded, it wouldn't have been such a musical. By moving it uptown, and having theprice of the tickets go up, it might have been reviewed for the music! You see AI'smusic is very seductive. Extremely harmonic. And .... the record of Promenade is notas good as it could be. Madeleine refused to be on it. She left the show, went to LosAngeles, and when they recorded it, the record company wanted to bring her back butshe didn't want to, she was happy to get out, for personal reasons.SJB: Did you apply a Brechtian approach to Promenade as you did with HomeMovies?LK: No, I did not apply a Brechtian approach [in Home Movies]. It was anundercurrent in me, of some of the formalisms of Brecht. And that's it. It did not looklike Brecht in any way.LK: At Judson when I did it - I have to separate the two productions here - it had todo with the set. The set was a flat back, and every time you changed the set,somebody would walk the set like a book, and turn the page, and there'd be anotherset, turn the page, and another set. And it was painted in a sort of cartoonish way. Itwas sort of like ... I don't know if this is after the fact, I may have thought about itthen ... I have a vague memory of wanting to ... a walk through a cartoon world,walking through pages ... I wanted the feeling of Promenade to be that people are inone place, and the world keeps changing around them. And that was much clearer atJudson than it was in the uptown production. It was much more of a musical comedy,it didn't make quite as much sense. So from that point of view, the production uptownwas a pure caprice, and most people who went to see it saw it as such - as a caprice,but with very strong political points made in the lines, in the words. The production atJudson was much more about how the world turns around us. There are those twoyoung men in prison, and then suddenly you're in the ballroom, and then they end upin the park, and all is well with the world, and then something else happens to them.That was clearer there, and when we went uptown it became in a sense more abstract,more decorative. The production uptown was much more decorative, and thereforeIrene's book was more hidden, although it was very strong, it was very much there, itbecame covered. The production at Judson, the book was much stronger, not becauseit was changed, but because it was just more apparent.

SJB: Was there any sense of you applying chance procedures in directing Promenade,as Irene did in its writing?LK: Always in every show. There's always a chance element in what you do. Whenyou think of something else it's chance ... I've done chance plays, when I was with theLiving Theatre we did a play that had a score by John Cage, and you threw dice! TheMarrying Maiden. And it was deliberately changed every night. So that element wasthere: if you got involved with Merce Cunningham, certainly that whole element ofchance was there! And juxtaposition! See what you learned from Merce Cunninghamwas that anything can go with anything. And I add to that: if there's somethingguiding it. And what's guiding Merce's anything-with-anything is that all hischoreography is coming from the same source. . . . I think most of the so-calledcutting edge art, certainly in America, so-called avant-garde art, is very much to dowith juxtaposition of the unexpected. Chance. I think Schoenberg opened that up. Byreally breaking through tonality, showing that there are other ways to combine things.And I think that what chance did, for the theatre and for dance especially, was tobreak up, break apart, the tired formalisms ... You don't have many more plots toinvent. ..SJB: Do you have any thoughts about things I should watch out for in researchingwriting on all this?orLK: When you're writing about something as you are, you have to write about howyou think it comes together, and what people did ... But hIstory isn't always cause andeffect, and I think the theatre of our time finally broke out of linear properties, linearperceptions, and has gone non-linear. Now Stein did that a long time ago. BYchnerdid it almost 200 years ago: he's the father of us all! Look at Danton's Death, it isweird! Look at Strindberg in terms of linear - where the hell those things come from -? - and we did just did more and more with that. As we break away from linear ideas,we find new ways to create, new kinds of lines! You know chaos theory shows that...that there are structures within the non-structures. That inside of nothingness isawareness. I spent a whole year reading Heidegger trying to find out something ... Ifound it out on about the twelfth reading! Read Heidegger that way! It blows yourmind trying to explain it what... read to anyone it's impossible, because he isexplaining beyond what is able to be said, he actually says the unsayable. And that iswhat Wallace Stevens does, he says the unsayable, that's what we're all doing. Whatis every artist doing? Saying what you can't say in ways that you can say it. Andwhen you go back and try to take it apart, analyse it, you may succeed, but youdestroy the event itself. Oh, all you have to do is see the event again and it comesback, but the actual work of criticism or analysis is very rarely constructive, it is infact always destructive, and not in any Derridean sense. So I hope when people writeabout art, they realise it is tender. There's a wonderful line about 'Do not bruise thefruit'. Don't destroy it.

SJB: Irene was saying how you shouldn't force a theory onto things - you should findout what the artists think they're doing, not just invent your own theories.LK: Let the theory emerge. That's what we were doing. We let the play emerge. I dida production of a play at Judson, little three character play by Ken Brown, who wroteThe Brig, and it's a funny little play about [...?...] Crystal was in it, no she was in thesecond production. And we let it emerge. We found it. And it ended up being acharming, funny, kind of moving piece. Ken was in the playwrighting class of theActors' Studio with Harold Clurman, and Clurman said bring the piece in. Webrought it to the studio, presented it [blah blah blah] Clurman said "well that's justwonderful, thankyou Ken thankyou Larry blah blah: now would you please, for theclass, tell us how you went about achieving the goal that you wanted". I said wellHarold actually we never did set out to achieve anything. And he laughed and saidthat's impossible, it was too good to just happen. Ken said, I'm sorry Harold "wedidn't talk about its structure, we explored it and let it happen, let it take its shape".And Harold Clurman got furious, he got just furious, he thought that we were playinga game and being just snotty. And we couldn't tell him that weren't being snotty, wewere being very serious, that we'd worked very carefully on the piece, but not fromthe position of going for something. Now I am also able to very much set a goal for apiece and go for it (but also letting things happen), but in this piece it didn't work thatway. In the Stein pieces I didn't know how they were going to end up.LK: Well I'll tell you a story. Al Carmines and I would be working on the middle ofthe play, and he had just brought a new piece [of music] in. We always worked insequence: he would teach them the songs in the morning, and in the afternoon andevening I would direct. He was writing the songs at night. And we built it like that,everything that we then did would be affected by what we had already done. And inthe middle of the piece I said 'How the hell is this going to end?' And that's what we'dgot to do: we'd discover it. In Circles, Al wrote the last song first, we knew exactlyhow it had to end, but we did not know how we were going to get there. That's theelement of chance I'm talking about. That you have all kinds of ideas when you director write, you may know the ending, you may know the beginning, you may know themiddle, but how are you going to get there? If you really do know you're going tocreate a formula piece. That's why you need to be involved in a theatre that says: youcan fail. Because you can take the chance, without knowing how it's going to workout. As every poet does, as every musician does.SJB: That happened when I staged Promenadereally loved the results, and others hated it.myself last year - and some peopleLK: I always say that: some people are going to love it, some are going to hate it. Ifyou're going to do a play that a LOT of people have to love, in order to buy theexpensive tickets for it, you're going to have to find a form that doesn't conflict. Andif you're very honest with yourself, and say I really need to make some money, and I

want to do this by the formula, and you know you're taking the money for it -- wellsometimes you have to do that, but don't pretend it's art! ... In those days I was alsoa hothead, I was also very arrogant: I'm not now [smile], I was also - people said Iwas to a certain extent sometimes very mean, because I wanted it to happen: IT HADTO HAPPEN! And I always want people to open up and let things happen ... Anotherwonderful thing that I go by in my life - I tell this to students often - is that I wasdoing What Happened, and Joan Baker, after the piece opened, she carne to me andshe said 'I loved working on this piece' (she did, most of the people hated working onit, until after it was over and then they'd realise ...) She said 'I loved working on it -you built a beautiful golden cage around me, which I was free to fly in.' And I kind ofloved that remark - along with some modifications - because I think that's what adirector does: creates these wonderful cages and shapes and boundaries, orextensions!, which ultimately you have around you. You can't create ultimatefreedom, ultimate openness, because then people just disperse like a dance doesoutside, it disappears. You have to create the boundaries, and help structure people'swork, so that they can move with great freedom, anywhere within it. And I feel freeto say to an actor: the character can't go that way, the play can't go that way: findanother way, that'll be a beautiful way. Also I will say to an actor 'you were very goodthere: that's very right, very appropriate, very honest, it moved you: it's boring!Because it's not theatrical.'