OCTOBER 2005

		Nelson Rodrigues: The pornographic angel comes to NYC by Sarah J. Townsend When it comes to the hoary claim that mass culture has sounded the death knell of theater, there are few better counter-examples than Nelson Rodrigues, the most renowned Brazilian playwright of the 20th century. Credited with having inaugurated theatrical modernism in Brazil, Rodrigues was also a popular newspaper columnist, the author of schlocky romance novels and the creator of the first telenovela, or soap opera.

		Poor Imitations by David Kilpatrick Imitation may be the most sincere form of flattery, but with the Wooster Group’s latest, Poor Theater, one can’t help but question its sincerity. Which is, of course, exactly the point. Legendary director Jerzy Grotowski coined the term “poor theater” to describe the performative approach developed with the Polish Laboratory Theater. His hieratic methodology – in which not just the stage but also the actor’s psyche is stripped bare – is surely antithetical to the hi-tech hijinks of the Wooster Group. Nor is the performance group—whose casts often feature financially flush stars like (founder) Willem Dafoe, or (associates) Steve Buscemi and Frances McDormand—any more a place for “starving artists” than the street for which it is named.

		Poor Imitations by David Kilpatrick Imitation may be the most sincere form of flattery, but with the Wooster Group’s latest, Poor Theater, one can’t help but question its sincerity. Which is, of course, exactly the point. Legendary director Jerzy Grotowski coined the term “poor theater” to describe the performative approach developed with the Polish Laboratory Theater. His hieratic methodology – in which not just the stage but also the actor’s psyche is stripped bare – is surely antithetical to the hi-tech hijinks of the Wooster Group. Nor is the performance group—whose casts often feature financially flush stars like (founder) Willem Dafoe, or (associates) Steve Buscemi and Frances McDormand—any more a place for “starving artists” than the street for which it is named.

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