Theater (Off Broadway)

The theater director Anne Bogart first made a splash with the radical student productions she put on while teaching at New York University in the early 1980s. Her “South Pacific” (1984), for example, was conceived as the show that veterans in a mental institution performed as part of their therapy. Legend has it that the Rodgers and Hammerstein estate snuffed out the production, but Bogart clarified that it simply denied an extension. “It’s more dramatic to say they shut us down,” she said, chuckling.Under Bogart’s leadership, the New York City-based Saratoga International Theater Institute (SITI) Company, formed by a group of artists in 1992, spent three decades exploring experimental outposts in both original creations like “Bob,” “The Medium” and “Hotel Cassiopeia” and re-imaginings of classics, often by ancient Greek playwrights.The group’s emphasis was on rigorous actor training and the performers’ physicality. Bogart’s approach involves “decentering emotion and re-centering the body,” said Jay Wegman, the director of N.Y.U. Skirball, which presented SITI’s “Radio Macbeth” last month. “I love how metaphorical her work is. It becomes an event, and there’s almost a mystical feeling because everything comes together so tightly in her stagings.”Now, SITI is ending its producing activities. “It came down to whether we are an institution — in which case you get a younger, more diverse company and a young artistic director — or a group of people,” Bogart, 71, said. “After a great deal of quite emotional discussion, we decided that we’re a group of people. I think that the legacy is more how we offer a model for future young companies: a collaborative ensemble whose focus is not on real estate but on the plays they do.”Bogart, center, with Kelly Maurer as Andy Warhol in a 1990s production of “Culture of Desire.” Dolly Faibyshev for The New York TimesBogart is not entirely retiring. She will remain a professor in Columbia University’s directing program, whose alumni include Rachel Chavkin, Jay Scheib, Diane Paulus and Jeffrey L. Page, until 2026. She will also continue to direct on a freelance basis.Although SITI is presenting “A Christmas Carol” at Bard College (spearheaded by the co-director Darron L West) from Dec. 16-18, this felt like a good time to look back, especially since the company’s digital archives are going live on its website on Nov. 15, and a book, “SITI Company: This Is Not a Handbook,” is due soon via Yonkers International Press. Bogart spoke in a video chat from London shortly after the latest (and last) SITI gala. The event prefaced a revival of the company’s production of “War of the Worlds” and turned into a heartfelt tribute to the director. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.What were some of the fundamental things that you all agreed on when starting SITI?The actors met at a diner and asked each other: “What does it mean to be a SITI Company member?” Every year they renewed that question, and they always had the same answer: We train together. It’s the cement that’s kept us going over time. Not only do they train together and learn together, but they teach that training, which makes sure they have a paycheck year-round. My own proposal to them was that I had all these theatrical essays I wanted to create. We didn’t expect it to last as long as it did, but I did need a group of people who would work together over time and solve problems together.How did you manage your freelance activities with SITI?I do a lot of opera outside. I always felt that was the least stressful for SITI Company: If I’m going to do opera, nobody can complain, because they can’t sing like opera singers. I still have a big appetite for all those things. That hasn’t changed.Where did you find inspiration when you started out?I came to New York in 1974, at the end of the Judson Church era, and I was very influenced by dance. It was also the explosion of theater companies like the Performance Group, which later became the Wooster Group, André Gregory’s Manhattan Project, Joe Chaikin’s Open Theater, and with the crazy work of Richard Foreman and the big wild things of Bob Wilson. I was also completely in love with German theater — particularly Peter Stein, Klaus Michael Grüber, Luc Bondy — and I stole from them a lot.Bogart with her wife, Rena Chelouche Fogel, in October at the Laurie Beechman Theater.Dolly Faibyshev for The New York TimesIs that why you temporarily moved to Europe in the early 1980s?I decided I hated Americans and I was going to be German. But what I discovered is that I’m actually very American: I have an American sense of humor, an American sense of structure. And I’m really interested in American history — a lot of my work since then has been about Americans like Orson Welles, Bob Rauschenberg, Joseph Cornell.What are some of the big theatrical trends you’ve seen coming and going over the past decades?I was part of the generation who just admired directors. I used to follow Bob Wilson and Lee Breuer on the street! Then I noticed that people weren’t naming directors, they were naming companies, like Complicité, for example. That lasted for about a decade. Now the revolution is happening in playwriting, where extraordinary new voices are challenging the old forms. “An Octoroon” — that’s a radical play. So it’s gone from director to company to playwright.How have theater directors themselves changed?I’m surprised by how little they are interested in the regional theater. We have these theater factories around the country that used to be where everybody wanted to go, and it’s not so attractive right now. What is attractive are the art centers, and SITI Company has lived in the realm of the art centers, like the Krannert, the Walker, the Hancher, U.C.L.A. Directors like Rachel Chavkin or Diane Paulus are also looking at commercial models in new ways. When I was younger Broadway was not of interest to me, but the young directors are intrigued.What do you make of theater in the Covid era?We’re in a very interesting moment. The wonderful Scottish philosopher William MacAskill has a theory that every time there’s a cataclysmic event, there’s a period of plasticity in which change happens, and then soon afterwards we clamp down into a new accepted way of being. I think we’re in that moment of plasticity. What comes out on the other side? You or I can’t know.Whose work do you like these days?I got really interested in the work of Stan Lai, a Taiwanese director who’s rethinking the way audiences and plays function. I’m always interested in what Ivo van Hove is thinking about. I have a hate/love relationship with [Romeo] Castellucci: I cannot stand his work most of the time, but I have to deal with it. I guess what I’m looking for is somebody throwing down the gauntlet.“I got really interested in the work of Stan Lai, a Taiwanese director who’s rethinking the way audiences and plays function,” Bogart said.Dolly Faibyshev for The New York TimesDo you think there’s been a renewed interest in the relationship between audiences and theater, especially since Covid?I think that’s what the frontier is right now. My friend [and one of SITI’s artistic directors] Leon Ingulsrud went to the theater the other day. I asked how it was and he said, “Not so good — the actors never said hello to the audience.” I thought that was really interesting. The acknowledgment of that relationship, or how an audience interfaces, is the prize, I think.But how do you do that? Wouldn’t it be distracting?“Bob” [1998] starts with him literally saying hi — there’s a moment of interface, where everybody comes together. In Ivo van Hove’s “More Stately Mansions” [1997] the actors came out onstage, bowed to each other and to the audience, then Joan MacIntosh started speaking at top speed the first monologue of that O’Neill play. I started hearing the thump of people leaving the seats. They just couldn’t stand it. But in a way, that’s also like saying hi. At first I thought, “Damn him, I could never do that — I’m an American, I’m about populist art.”OK, but in all honesty, you’re not really thought of as a populist director.Deep down, yes, it’s in me. It’s how I was brought up. At the beginning of SITI Company we were kind of, “[expletive] the audience.” I don’t feel that at all anymore. I feel that the point of being there is the audience — it’s all about the audience. More