Nayatt School Redux
The Wooster Group has been on the front lines of postmodern, tech-forward, intensely detailed avant-garde performance in America for 50 years, and much of its recent output has a somewhat haunted quality. This latest piece revisits a 1978 piece by original members Elizabeth LeCompte and Spalding Gray, Nayatt School, which was Gray's first foray into the monologue format that would later bring him worldwide fame. Fellow Wooster founder Kate Valk shares archival video of Gray and reflects on the original production; she then joins other performers in re-creating scenes from it, including portions of T.S. Eliot's The Cocktail Party (an LP of which figures into Gray's monologue). Wooster deity LeCompte designs and directs the production, in which troupe regulars Volk, Ari Fliakos, Andrew Maillet, Michaela Murphy and Omar Zubair are augmented by guest artists Suzzy Roche, Scott Shepherd and Maura Tierney.