The Wooster Group

So those are like two very specific examples.

Again, I would lift up the Wooster Group's work, of which I saw everything I could between now and I still continue to try to do so today.

Elevator Repair Service.

And I got to assist John Collins, the director of Elevator Repair Service, on...

I love Richard Foreman.

I came up in the Wooster Group.

I love that.

But I thought to be worth my salt, I have to write A Long Day's Journey into Night.

Yeah.

And our closest peer, and I know we're getting off track of why and how we decided to take the gallery in this direction, but our closest peer was Jeffrey Deitch, and up the street was the Wooster Group and the Drawing Center.

So we had these interesting dynamics of connections to contemporary artists-

Yes

... through Jeffrey Deitch, but then also a long history of experimental practices with the Wooster Group and lower Manhattan's tradition that we're building off of as well from our knowledge through Charles and Fritz, but also through our father Stan Vanderbeek's-

Yes

... post-war existence in SoHo and the Lower East Side.

Patti Smith.

I remember going to see a theater production at the Wooster Group and sitting next to Willem Dafoe.

And again, I was 18 in this little, tiny little theater.

And there's only like 20 people in the audience.

And so I said, "I'm gonna intern with Richard Foreman in New York," 'cause I had been to see a bunch of his shows.

And I went to all that stuff, you know, the Wooster Group, and loved that stuff.

And, uh, so Richard said, "Sure." And so, um, uh, I sat with Richard Foreman and, you know, watched him assemble a play, which was like, "What is this?"

Yes, I remember seeing Richard Foreman's work in, in the 1980s and '90s, and I-

Really, no.

It, we really were coming out of a lineage of artists who were working with media and live performance and streaming, and we were obsessed with many groups like the Wooster Group, like Big Art Group, like a bunch of these, these ensembles that really generated work together and also incorporated media.

So I feel like also at times, like, like that moment in time gets overemphasized sometimes of, "Oh, it was like this explosion of a certain kind of thing." Which we made our own version of it, but it was like coming out of...

So when I see the Dorian Gray or I see a lot of the Jamie Lloyd work, which I actually adore a lot of the Jamie Lloyd work, it's like to, to me that's also part of the very long lineage of, of theater that many people have contributed to creating, and that we were like meme-ing.

Previous Burning Coal productions include The Rainmaker, Starbuck, Moonlight, Fred, Blue, Adagio, and The Cherry Orchard, Yepikhodov.

Other favorite local productions include All My Sons, Jim Baylis, The Worcester Group's Diary of Anne Frank, Willem Dafoe, Amadeus, Salieri, Vogue Men's Fashions, John, and Thug, Dr.

Sweet, at Honest Pint.

LGPTC, Leviathan, Urban Garden, and Raleigh Ensemble Players.