Interviewer: So where are we?
Elizabeth: Right now?
Interviewer: Yeah, where are we right now?
Elizabeth: At the preforming garage, 33 Wooster Steet, New York City
Interviewer: And what is this place?
Elizabeth: This place is our home, This place is our studio,
this place is our theater, this place is our office.
Interviewer: And who is we?
Elizabeth: The company, The Wooster Group
Interviewer: And what is the Wooster Group?
Elizabeth: It's an ensemble theatre.
Interviewer: And what do you do?
Elizabeth: Why'd you have to get to the hard one's so fast?
What do I do?
I move around, in a space and arrange it in a way that's pleasing to moi and I move
furniture, I move stage furniture and people around and I listen to them talk.
I think I'm a director, [laughs] I think I'm a director, but I'm not sure.
[Phone rings]
I'll get it.
[Laughter]
Hello?
[Distant chattering]
[Calm music]
Interviewer: Now why did you pick Vieux Carré?
Elizabeth: Because, uh, one of our performers got a shepherd, caught me saying
something about, um, Tennessee Williams being our greatest playwright, or at least
discussing the possibility that he was better than O'Neal, and so Scott,
in his imitable way said that, 'well, why aren't you doing Tennessee Williams?'
Not--it didn't feel like a regular Tennessee Williams play, the dark side of it
was cut by this other weird thing that I didn't know what it was,
but some kind of a, some kind of a farcical thing.
I though, oh the blending of those two things that earlier Tennessee Williams the
kind of dark and, uh, lyrical voice next to this kind of rock, a satirical one.
I thought was good for us.
Interviewer: Do you start with a visual image?
Elizabeth: Yes, I do.
I started, but it was a visual image that was from the play before,
which is Hamlet.
Because all of them for me, they're like tales that go through my mind
and the visual is my mind.
So the visuals not necessarily a literal picture of-- you know, like
in naturalistic theatre.
It's an amalgamation of sort of architectural things that, that feel like
my visual landscape, my personal visual landscape.
And then I have to bring the text to it and my visual landscape towards the text.
[Slow music]
[Outro tune]