Mabou Mines
Encyclopedia
Mabou Mines is an avant-garde
theatre
company founded in 1970 and based in New York City
.
, Lee Breuer
, Philip Glass
, Ruth Maleczech
, and David Warrilow, developed The Red Horse Animation, the group's first original performance piece. Since then Mabou Mines has produced scores of plays, collaborated with well-known writers, musicians, visual artists, and filmmakers, garnered heaps of critical praise and awards, and performed around the globe, cementing its reputation as an innovative force in the theater world.
Lee Breuer and Ruth Maleczech met studying theater at UCLA in the late 1950s. Around 1960, the couple hitchhiked to San Francisco to participate in the city's active theater scene. Working at the San Francisco Actor's Workshop and the San Francisco Mime Troupe they met Bill Raymond, and at the San Francisco Tape Music Center they met JoAnne Akalaitis. In 1964 Akalaitis moved to New York City but left for Paris soon after with composer (and future husband) Philip Glass. The following year Breuer and Maleczech left San Francisco for Europe. The two couples met again while traveling in Greece and returned to Paris. With actor David Warrilow, they began work staging Samuel Beckett's Play, which premiered at the American Cultural Center in 1967. It was also in Paris that the group first met actor Frederick Neumann. In 1969, back in New York with Glass, Akalaitis wrote the others in Paris to suggest they form a theater group in New York.
Influenced especially by Jerzy Grotowski's teaching and Beckett's work, Mabou Mines went on to produce experimental theater pieces like Breuer's Red Horse Animationpieces that resulted from intense collaboration and improvisation, and incorporated elements of visual art, dance, mime, puppetry, and music. Arc Welding Piece (1972), for example, featured an artist using an arc welder to make cuts in a large piece of metal, while actors expressed various states of emotion, their faces enlarged by magnifying lenses. In 1974, Fred Neumann joined the group to work on Breuer's second "Animation," The B. Beaver Animation. Bill Raymond
joined shortly thereafter.
In its early years, Mabou Mines moved easily between the art world and the theater, often performing in galleries as well as on stage. But the company's work with Beckett's plays firmly situated the group within a theatrical context. After an early residency at La Mama Experimental Theatre Club in New York, the company began performing at Joseph Papp's New York Shakespeare Festival Public Theater, and other venues in New York and elsewhere.
From the beginning, creative roles were fluid and collaboration was key, but Lee Breuer served as the company's primary director. In 1975 however, Akalaitis directed Cascando and opened the door for other members to take on new roles, for the company to expand, and for multiple projects to come together simultaneously. Akalaitis went on to direct Dressed Like an Egg (1977) and Southern Exposure (1979), and wrote and directed Dead End Kids (1980. Neumann directed Mercier and Camier (1979). Maleczech directed Vanishing Pictures (1980). Other performers that worked with Mabou Mines included L.B. Dallas, Linda Hartinian, Ellen McElduff, Greg Mehrten, Terry O'Reilly, and B-St. John Schofield.
The company steadily expanded its repertoire and continued its tradition of collaboration, working with notable performers, artists, and composers such as Bob Telson, John Zorn, Pauline Oliveros, and David Byrne. Mabou Mines has adapted works by Shakespeare (Lear, 1990), Franz Xaver Kroetz (Through the Leaves, 1984; Help Wanted, 1986), Philip K. Dick ( Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said
, 1985), and Bertolt Brecht (In the Jungle of Cities, 1991). The company has also toured extensively in the United States and abroad.
Mabou Mines remains committed to its ideal of diffuse artistic control. "All decisions, artistic and administrative, large and small, are made by the company members, and each member functions variously as producer, designer, actor, writer, or director for the other. Additionally all participate as members of the Board of Directors."
As the company stated in a 1990 press kit, "The artistic purpose of Mabou Mines has been and remains the creation of new theatre pieces from original texts and the theatrical use of existing texts staged from a specific point of view. Each member is encouraged to pursue his or her artistic vision by initiating and collaborating on a wide range of projects of varying styles, developing them from initial concept to final performance. This process is intense and often lengthy. While the director of a Mabou Mines work is responsible for its concept and its basic structure, the ultimate production reflects the concerns and the artistic input of all its collaborators."
In 2005, it was among 406 New York City
arts and social service institutions to receive part of a $20 million grant from the Carnegie Corporation, which was made possible through a donation by New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg
.
Avant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
theatre
Theatre
Theatre is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music or dance...
company founded in 1970 and based in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
.
History
Mabou Mines is a collaborative, avant-garde theater company based in New York City. Founded in 1970, the company took its name from an old mining town in northern Nova Scotia, near where founding members JoAnne AkalaitisJoAnne Akalaitis
JoAnne Akalaitis is an American theatre director and a writer and the winner of five Obie Awards for direction and founder of the critically acclaimed Mabou Mines in New York, from which she resigned after twenty years in June 1990.Akalaitis was pre-med and studied philosophy in college...
, Lee Breuer
Lee Breuer
Lee Breuer is an American academic, educator, film maker, poet, lyricist, writer and stage director.-Work with Mabou Mines:Lee Breuer is a founding artistic director of Mabou Mines Theater Company in New York City, which he began in 1970 with colleagues Philip Glass, Ruth Maleczech, JoAnne...
, Philip Glass
Philip Glass
Philip Glass is an American composer. He is considered to be one of the most influential composers of the late 20th century and is widely acknowledged as a composer who has brought art music to the public .His music is often described as minimalist, along with...
, Ruth Maleczech
Ruth Maleczech
Ruth Maleczech is an American avant-garde stage actress, whose most notable role may have been as King Lear, portrayed as an imperious Southern matriarch...
, and David Warrilow, developed The Red Horse Animation, the group's first original performance piece. Since then Mabou Mines has produced scores of plays, collaborated with well-known writers, musicians, visual artists, and filmmakers, garnered heaps of critical praise and awards, and performed around the globe, cementing its reputation as an innovative force in the theater world.
Lee Breuer and Ruth Maleczech met studying theater at UCLA in the late 1950s. Around 1960, the couple hitchhiked to San Francisco to participate in the city's active theater scene. Working at the San Francisco Actor's Workshop and the San Francisco Mime Troupe they met Bill Raymond, and at the San Francisco Tape Music Center they met JoAnne Akalaitis. In 1964 Akalaitis moved to New York City but left for Paris soon after with composer (and future husband) Philip Glass. The following year Breuer and Maleczech left San Francisco for Europe. The two couples met again while traveling in Greece and returned to Paris. With actor David Warrilow, they began work staging Samuel Beckett's Play, which premiered at the American Cultural Center in 1967. It was also in Paris that the group first met actor Frederick Neumann. In 1969, back in New York with Glass, Akalaitis wrote the others in Paris to suggest they form a theater group in New York.
Influenced especially by Jerzy Grotowski's teaching and Beckett's work, Mabou Mines went on to produce experimental theater pieces like Breuer's Red Horse Animationpieces that resulted from intense collaboration and improvisation, and incorporated elements of visual art, dance, mime, puppetry, and music. Arc Welding Piece (1972), for example, featured an artist using an arc welder to make cuts in a large piece of metal, while actors expressed various states of emotion, their faces enlarged by magnifying lenses. In 1974, Fred Neumann joined the group to work on Breuer's second "Animation," The B. Beaver Animation. Bill Raymond
Bill Raymond
Bill Raymond is an actor who has appeared in film, television and theatre since the 1960s.-Life and career:He featured in the second and fifth seasons of the HBO drama The Wire as "The Greek", the mysterious head of an international criminal organization. Other TV appearances include Miami Vice,...
joined shortly thereafter.
In its early years, Mabou Mines moved easily between the art world and the theater, often performing in galleries as well as on stage. But the company's work with Beckett's plays firmly situated the group within a theatrical context. After an early residency at La Mama Experimental Theatre Club in New York, the company began performing at Joseph Papp's New York Shakespeare Festival Public Theater, and other venues in New York and elsewhere.
From the beginning, creative roles were fluid and collaboration was key, but Lee Breuer served as the company's primary director. In 1975 however, Akalaitis directed Cascando and opened the door for other members to take on new roles, for the company to expand, and for multiple projects to come together simultaneously. Akalaitis went on to direct Dressed Like an Egg (1977) and Southern Exposure (1979), and wrote and directed Dead End Kids (1980. Neumann directed Mercier and Camier (1979). Maleczech directed Vanishing Pictures (1980). Other performers that worked with Mabou Mines included L.B. Dallas, Linda Hartinian, Ellen McElduff, Greg Mehrten, Terry O'Reilly, and B-St. John Schofield.
The company steadily expanded its repertoire and continued its tradition of collaboration, working with notable performers, artists, and composers such as Bob Telson, John Zorn, Pauline Oliveros, and David Byrne. Mabou Mines has adapted works by Shakespeare (Lear, 1990), Franz Xaver Kroetz (Through the Leaves, 1984; Help Wanted, 1986), Philip K. Dick ( Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said
Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said
Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said is a 1974 science fiction novel by Philip K. Dick about a genetically enhanced pop singer and television star who loses his identity overnight. The story is set in a futuristic dystopia, where America has become a police state after a Second Civil War. The novel...
, 1985), and Bertolt Brecht (In the Jungle of Cities, 1991). The company has also toured extensively in the United States and abroad.
Mabou Mines remains committed to its ideal of diffuse artistic control. "All decisions, artistic and administrative, large and small, are made by the company members, and each member functions variously as producer, designer, actor, writer, or director for the other. Additionally all participate as members of the Board of Directors."
As the company stated in a 1990 press kit, "The artistic purpose of Mabou Mines has been and remains the creation of new theatre pieces from original texts and the theatrical use of existing texts staged from a specific point of view. Each member is encouraged to pursue his or her artistic vision by initiating and collaborating on a wide range of projects of varying styles, developing them from initial concept to final performance. This process is intense and often lengthy. While the director of a Mabou Mines work is responsible for its concept and its basic structure, the ultimate production reflects the concerns and the artistic input of all its collaborators."
In 2005, it was among 406 New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
arts and social service institutions to receive part of a $20 million grant from the Carnegie Corporation, which was made possible through a donation by New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg
Michael Bloomberg
Michael Rubens Bloomberg is the current Mayor of New York City. With a net worth of $19.5 billion in 2011, he is also the 12th-richest person in the United States...
.
Production history
- Song For New York: What Women Do While Men Sit Knitting (2007)
- Summa Dramatica (2005)
- Red Beads (2005)
- Mabou Mines DollHouse (2003)
- Cara Lucia (2003)
- Ecco Porco (2001)
- Animal Magnetism (2000)
- Belén-A Book of Hours (1999)
- Happy DaysHappy DaysHappy Days is an American television sitcom that originally aired from January 15, 1974, to September 24, 1984, on ABC. Created by Garry Marshall, the series presents an idealized vision of life in mid-1950s to mid-1960s America....
(1996) - Red Horse Animation (reconstruction) (1996)
- Pootanah Moksha (1996)
- Peter and WendyPeter and WendyPeter and Wendy, published in 1911, is the novelisation by J. M. Barrie of his most famous play Peter Pan; or, the Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up...
(1996) - An Epidog (1995)
- Reel To Real (1994)
- Mother (1994)
- The Bribe (1993)
- The MahabharANTa, and Selected Stories from the Insectiad (1992)
- The Quantum (1991)
- In the Jungle of CitiesIn The Jungle of CitiesIn The Jungle of Cities is a play by the German modernist playwright Bertolt Brecht. Written between 1921 and 1924, it received its first theatrical production under the title In the Jungle at the Residenztheater in Munich, opening on 9 May 1923. This production was directed by Erich Engel, with...
(1991) - The Miller Series (for radio) (1990)
- Mabou Mines Lear (1990)
- B. Beaver Animation (reconstruction) (1990)
- The Gospel at ColonusThe Gospel at ColonusThe Gospel at Colonus is a gospel version of Sophocles's tragedy, Oedipus at Colonus. The show was created in New York City in 1985 by the experimental-theatre director Lee Breuer, one of the founders of the seminal American avant-garde theatre company Mabou Mines, and composer Bob Telson. The...
(1988) - Sueños (1987)
- Worstward HoWorstward HoWorstward Ho is a prose piece by Samuel Beckett the title of which is a parody of Charles Kingsley's Westward Ho!. Written in English in 1983, it is the penultimate novella by Beckett....
(1986) - The Kafka Parables (for radio) (1986)
- Help Wanted (1986)
- CEO (1986)
- The Interview Series (for radio) (1985)
- Starcock (1985)
- It's a Man's World (1985)
- Flow My Tears, The Policeman SaidFlow My Tears, The Policeman SaidFlow My Tears, The Policeman Said is a 1974 science fiction novel by Philip K. Dick about a genetically enhanced pop singer and television star who loses his identity overnight. The story is set in a futuristic dystopia, where America has become a police state after a Second Civil War. The novel...
(1985) - Through the Leaves (1984)
- Pretty Boy (1984)
- Imagination Dead ImagineImagination Dead ImagineImagination Dead Imagine is a short prose text by Samuel Beckett first published in French in Les Lettres nouvelles in 1965. Its first English publication was a translation in The Sunday Times in 1965 followed by a trade edition by Beckett's London-based publisher, Calder and Boyars, later that...
(1984) - The Joey Schmerda Story (for radio) (1983)
- Hajj (1983)
- Company (1983)
- Cold Harbor (1983)
- The Keeper Radio Series (1982)
- Wrong Guys (1981)
- Vanishing Pictures (1980)
- Sister Suzie Cinema (1980)
- Easy Daisy (for radio) (1980)
- A Prelude to a Death in Venice (1980)
- Southern Exposure (1979)
- Mercier and CamierMercier and CamierMercier and Camier is a novel by Samuel Beckett.Written immediately before his celebrated 'trilogy' of Molloy, Malone Dies and The Unnamable, Mercier et Camier was Beckett's first attempt at extended prose fiction in French...
(1979) - Shaggy Dog Animation (1978)
- Dressed Like An Egg (1977)
- The Saint and the Football Player (1976)
- The B. Beaver Animation (1975)
- CascandoCascandoCascando is a radio play by Samuel Beckett. It was written in French in December 1961, subtitled Invention radiophonique pour musique et voix, with music by the Franco-Romanian composer Marcel Mihalovici. It was first broadcast on France Culture on 13 October 1963 with Roger Blin and Jean Martin...
(1975) - Mabou Mines Performs Samuel BeckettSamuel BeckettSamuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.Beckett is widely regarded as among the most...
(1974) - Send/Receive/Send (1973)
- Music for Voices (1972)
- Arc WeldingArc weldingArc welding is a type of welding that uses a welding power supply to create an electric arc between an electrode and the base material to melt the metals at the welding point. They can use either direct or alternating current, and consumable or non-consumable electrodes...
(1972) - Play (1971)
- Come and Go (1971)
- The Red Horse Animation (1970)