Anne Bogart's Blog, page 2

The Usefulness of Doubt

“As a writer I exist in a constant state of doubt, and this is not the impediment to my art, it’s the precondition of it.” -Stacy D’Erasmo As a young director, I watched actors improvise for hours on end without stopping them. I was apprehensive about interrupting, and thus stepping upon what seemed to me… more

Still Under Construction

About five years ago, the members of SITI Company began to ask a difficult question: are we an institution or are we a company? What is the future of SITI?  Should it continue indefinitely under new leadership and with new members, or are we a group of like-minded theater artists who assembled in 1993 and… more

Composition as Explanation

Everything is the same and everything is different. - Gertrude Stein

The Spider’s Stratagem

Experience is a kind of huge spider-web of the finest silken threads suspended in the chamber of consciousness and catching every air-borne particle in its tissue. -Henry James Growing up, reading provided me both an escape from tensions with my family and school and a refuge from what felt to be the unescapable definitions of… more

I, Too, Am Ebenezer

This month SITI Company is in rehearsals for a brand-new production of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.  The look of surprise on peoples’ faces when I say that our next production is A Radio Christmas Carol is inevitable.  Some raise their eyebrows.  Others laugh. 

Secret Messages in Service of Hope

In September of 1970, at the age of 19, I traveled to Athens, Greece to spend a year studying archeology, Greek history, ancient Greek theater, and modern Greek language. At the time, Greece was ruled by an oppressive junta that had taken power in 1967 supposedly to quell demonstrations and riots of leftist radicals. What followed were seven years of limited freedom that led to a society full of fear and oppression. Political opponents mysteriously disappeared, were murdered, or banished to remote islands in the Aegean Sea. Torture during imprisonment was common. Due to the repressive government, I had been warned not to go to Greece, but I went anyway. It turned out to be an extraordinary year full of insight into Greek history and culture, many new friendships, and plenty of adventure.

Anti-Racism Accountability Blog Fall 2021

I hope that this message finds you staying safe and well as you move into the Fall. I want to take a moment to update you on the work SITI has done to become a more consciously anti-racist organization over the last year. This letter is the first in a series that we will issue every… more

Theatre 2.0

mood to break my year-and-a-half live theater fast, even though it was to be outside and safely distanced.  I simply did not feel ready.

Technology

In 1993, very early on in SITI Company’s 30-year history, I proposed a project that would ask the question “Who are we becoming in light of the emerging technologies?”  The result became SITI Company’s very first devised work, entitled The Medium.  We premiered the play at the International Arts Festival in Toga, Japan and then performed in Saratoga Springs and later at New York Theater Workshop in New York City, City Theater in Pittsburgh, the Wexner Center in Columbus, the Walker in Minneapolis, and in many other cities including Louisville, San Francisco, and Dublin. This coming 2022 season, as part of our thirtieth anniversary celebration, we are reviving The Medium. We will start out in January 2022 at City Theater in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and then tour the production to other venues over the course of the year. 

To Zoom or Not to Zoom?

Over the past fifteen months, SITI Company’s brilliant administrative leadership found the necessary funds to allow SITI Company actors and designers to engage in what we call Work/Space, which are rehearsals and workshops conducted on Zoom.