Hometown: Downtown NYC
Education: BA Brown University, MFA Columbia University
Favorite Credits: Last year’s Oscar Wilde/Ernest Hemingway mashup The Importance of Being Ernest Hemingway was a beautiful mess years in the making. I also recently assisted Peter Brook on his most recent production The Valley of Astonishment — a truly lifechanging experience that took me all the way to Paris.
Why theater?: While other children were taken to church or temple, I was taken to the MoMA to see my grandfather’s paintings. So art, family and religion have always been deeply connected for me. I think this must have been what drew me to the theater — a place where a community of artists can come together, channeling the energy of performers and audience alike into something resembling transcendence.
Tell us about All That Dies And Rises:All That Dies And Rises draws heavily on traditions of physical theater training — Grotowski and Russian biomechanics, among others — and on text from a wide variety of dramatic, poetic and academic sources (Fanny Howe, Anne Carson, Charles Bukowski, etc.), building compositions based on death and resurrection with an extremely tight ensemble. The result is a dream collage: part play, part ballet, part choir and part pantomime.
What kind of theater speaks to you? What or who inspires you as an artist?: I feel that theater is a combination of the absolutely fake and the absolutely true, and I’m fascinated by the tension between the two. Dance tends to speak more directly to this than straight theater. Consider a choreographed dance: a group of people moving in unison is ludicrously artificial, but the physical exertion necessary to achieve it is undeniably real. On the other end of the spectrum, I’m attracted to extremely rich, dense texts, and most of my work thus far has lived in that sphere (Sarah Kane, Oscar Wilde, Shakespeare, Goethe). Our current piece is an attempt to bring these two energies together — to sing with our bodies and move written words through space.
If you could work with anyone you’ve yet to work with, who would it be?: I recently got to direct the incomparable Kathryn Hunter for three glorious hours, and nothing has been the same since. I would love to work with her on a full production.
What show have you recommended to your friends?: Suzan-Lori Parks’ Father Comes Home from the Wars (Parts 1, 2 & 3) at the Public. Vast, bold, open and devastating.
Who would play you in a movie about yourself and what would it be called?: I would be played by a young Gene Wilder in "The Golden Asshole".
What’s your biggest guilty pleasure?: I find text kerning obsessively wonderful.
What’s up next?: Working with a team of playwrights to reconstitute Richard Wharfinger’s long-lost Jacobean opus The Courier’s Tragedy.
For more on All that Dies and Risies, visit M-34.org. For more on James, visit james-rutherford.com