Elizabeth LeCompte co-founded The Wooster Group with like-minded pioneers in New York in 1975, leading and directing its collaborators as deaths, departures, and new arrivals have changed its composition and emphases over the decades, segueing into a world-wide uncertain present. Kate Valk joined in 1978, the last representative of The Wooster Group’s foundational period, apart from LeCompte herself, who is still a key member of the company. References in this conversation are primarily to works after 2016. LeCompte briefly remarks on the importance of Since I Can Remember – one of the Group’s ongoing works in progress in 2021 – as an archival project that draws on Valk’s memory of how Nayatt School was made during her formative years. Having become, since then, a quintessential Wooster Group performer, Valk extended her artistic skills to stage direction, undertaking, most recently, The B-Side (2017). Both the initiative and idea for the piece came from performer Eric Berryman, who had brought Valk the collection of blues, songs, spirituals, and preachings on the 1965 LP made from the research of scholar folklorist Bruce Chapman. Berryman had been inspired to approach Valk because of her exclusive use of unadulterated historical recordings in Early Shaker Spirituals (2014), her directorial debut. The main work in rehearsal during 2020 and which was still locked down by the Covid-19 pandemic at the time of this conversation is The Mother, a Wooster Group variant of Brecht’s dramatized version of Gorky’s novel, directed by LeCompte. LeCompte discusses the current situation, emphasizing the increased vulnerability of independent artists and small-scale theatre, while giving a glimpse of the disadvantages for such groupings built into the North American system of project funding. The Wooster Group is a salient example of small-scale theatre that, despite continually precarious conditions, which the pandemic has highlighted and exacerbated, has achieved its creative goals and has defined its place in the exploratory avant-garde flourishing vigorously in the 1960s and 1970s. This particular avant-garde, LeCompte believes, has seen various important developments over the years but might well now be counting its last days. The conversation here presented was recorded on 31 October 2020, transcribed by Kunsang Kelden, and edited by Maria Shevtsova, Editor of New Theatre Quarterly.

中文翻译：

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Covid 对话 3：Elizabeth LeCompte 和 Kate Valk

Elizabeth LeCompte 于 1975 年在纽约与志同道合的先驱者共同创立了伍斯特集团，领导和指导其合作者，因为几十年来死亡、离开和新来者已经改变了其构成和重点，进入了一个世界范围内不确定的现状. Kate Valk 于 1978 年加入，是 The Wooster Group 创立时期的最后一位代表，除了 LeCompte 本人，她仍然是公司的重要成员。本次对话中的参考文献主要是 2016 年之后的作品。LeCompte 简要评论了自从我记得——集团在 2021 年正在进行的工作之一——作为一个档案项目，借鉴了 Valk 的记忆纳亚特学校是在她的成长时期制作的。从那时起，瓦尔克成为伍斯特集团的典型表演者，将她的艺术技巧扩展到舞台指导，最近，B面（2017）。该作品的创意和创意均来自表演者 Eric Berryman，他为 Valk 带来了由学者民俗学家布鲁斯·查普曼 (Bruce Chapman) 研究制作的 1965 年 LP 上的布鲁斯、歌曲、灵歌和布道的合集。贝里曼受到启发与瓦尔克接触，因为她独家使用纯正的历史录音早期的Shaker Spirits（2014），她的导演处女作。2020 年排练中的主要工作，在这次谈话时仍被 Covid-19 大流行锁定是母亲，布莱希特的高尔基小说戏剧化版本的伍斯特集团变体，由勒孔特执导。LeCompte 讨论了当前的情况，强调了独立艺术家和小型剧院日益增加的脆弱性，同时瞥见了北美项目资助系统中内置的此类团体的缺点。伍斯特集团是小型剧院的一个突出例子，尽管条件不断不稳定，大流行突出和加剧了这种情况，但它实现了其创作目标，并在 1960 年代和 1970 年代蓬勃发展的探索性前卫艺术中确定了自己的位置. LeCompte 认为，这种特殊的前卫艺术多年来已经看到了各种重要的发展，但现在很可能正算上它的最后几天。此处介绍的对话记录于 2020 年 10 月 31 日，新剧院季刊。