Richard Foreman: No Title

Cryptic, lyrical and philosophical words from a paragon of experimental New York theater, juxtaposed with the haunting maquettes he created for his plays

An avant-garde comrade of Jonas Mekas, George Maciunas, Jack Smith and others, Richard Foreman (born 1937) was at the forefront of downtown New York’s experimental theater scene of the 1960s. He wrote and directed more than 80 verbally and visually singular productions with his Ontological-Hysteric Theater company in a career that spanned 45 years. Foreman’s visually arresting plays made heavy use of static tableaux, frantic choreography, projected text and Foreman himself sitting in front of the stage operating the lights and sound. While Foreman has published many of his scripts, No Title is a text unlike anything preceding it. Handwritten on a series of note cards, these aphoristic declarations and philosophical asides hover between being a stream-of-consciousness dialogue and a message sent from another world. Foreman’s wonderfully elliptical words are counterposed with photographs of the mystifying diorama-like maquettes that he created while staging a number of his plays.