THE WOOSTER GROUP: SYMPHONY OF RATS
January 7-11, 14-18, 21-25, 2025
Tuesdays-Fridays at 7:30 pm; Saturdays at 3:00 pm and 7:30 pm
Running time: approximately 75 minutes
The Performing Garage, 33 Wooster Street
Directed by Elizabeth LeCompte and Kate Valk, Symphony of Rats is a new work bringing together two leading American avant garde theater artists: The Wooster Group and Richard Foreman. The show is about a President of the United States who undergoes a series of strange encounters of a phantasmagorical kind. It opened with a sold-out run at The Performing Garage in spring 2024, when The New York Times called it “A delightful love letter from one giant of experimental theater to another,” and the The New Yorker described it as “The Wooster Group in full flood . . . full of laughter and a radiating sense of pleasure.” During Symphony of Rats’ recent run in Los Angeles, The Los Angeles Times said it will “delight and derange the theatrical senses.”
Tickets, starting at $35, available from www.woostergroup.org / (212) 966-9796
The first production of Symphony of Rats was staged in 1988 at The Performing Garage, with Richard Foreman directing. The Wooster Group has made an entirely new piece by transposing Foreman’s text into verse and setting it to a “captivating” (Los Angeles Times) multi-layered sound and video score. In their re-imagining of Symphony of Rats, now set in a sort of hybrid spaceship-museum, The Wooster Group assesses the evolution of technology in relation to what it means to be human.
Symphony of Rats is performed by Niall Cunningham, Jim Fletcher, Ari Fliakos, Andrew Maillet, Michaela Murphy, and Guillermo Resto. The production design is by LeCompte. Sound design and original music are by Eric Sluyter, with songs featuring music by Suzzy Roche. Video design is by Yudam Hyung Seok Jeon with Maillet; the lighting design is by Jennifer Tipton and Evan Anderson; and the costumes are by Antonia Belt. The full ensemble includes: Matthew Dipple (dramaturg), Tavish Miller (technical director), Aaron Amodt (production manager), Clay Hapaz (archivist), Monika Wunderer (general manager), and Cynthia Hedstrom (producer).