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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 January 2009
In the following interview, JoAnne Akalaitis discusses her experiences as an actress and director with the Mabou Mines company; her artistic encounters with Beckett, Brecht, and Genet; her thoughts about the relationship between art and politics; and her belief in the connection between the physical and the emotional in performance. Deborah Saivetz is a director and performer who teaches in the Department of Visual and Performing Arts at the Newark Campus of Rutgers University, New Jersey. She assisted JoAnne Akalaitis on her production of John Ford's Jacobean tragedy Tis Pity She's aWhore at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago, and performed in Akalaitis's workshop production of The Mormon Project at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in New Smyrna Beach, Florida. She had several opportunities to talk at length with Akalaitis during the months that they worked together.
1. Ryszard Cieslak was a member of Grotowski's Polish Laboratory Theatre until it ceased touring in 1980, and is best remembered for his performance in The Constant Prince and Apocalypsis cum Figuris. His obituary appeared in the New York Times on 16 June 1990.
2. Conklin designed the sets and Collins designed the lights for the Goodman Theatre production of Tis Pity She's a Whore.
3. Toward the end of the rehearsal period, Akalaitis scheduled a number of ‘speed-throughs’ during which the entire company of actors would sit on the floor in a circle and rapidly, with a tremendous amount of energy and concentration, speak the text of the play.
4. Ethyl Eichelberger, a leading actor with Charles Ludlam's Ridiculous Theatre Company, had been diag-nosed with, and was suffering the effects of, the AIDS virus when he committed suicide during the summer of 1990.