ImagineFashion.com Presents "My Personal Visual Landscape - Elizabeth LeCompte" by Spooner & Dugas

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]