FoolsFURY Theater is an ensemble
theater
Theatre or theater is a collaborative form of performing art that uses live performers, usually actors to present experiences of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place, often a stage. The performers may communi ...
company based in
San Francisco
San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...
.
Founded in 1998 by Artistic Director Ben Yalom, the company presents reworked
Shakespeare
William Shakespeare ( 23 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's natio ...
and classical texts as well as new works by experimental contemporary playwrights. In 2020 Deborah Eliezer took over as artistic director. In 2021 FoolsFURY announced that it was closing down.
History
"Foolsfury Theater" specialized in physical theater techniques such as
Viewpoints
Viewpoints is a movement-based pedagogical and artistic practice that provides a framework for creating and analyzing performance by exploring spatial relationships, shape, time, emotion, movement mechanics, and the materiality of the actor's body ...
,
Suzuki
is a Japanese multinational mobility manufacturer headquartered in Hamamatsu, Shizuoka Prefecture, Shizuoka. It manufactures automobiles, motorcycles, all-terrain vehicles (ATVs), outboard motor, outboard marine engines, wheelchairs and a va ...
, and
Grotowski
Jerzy Marian Grotowski (; 11 August 1933 – 14 January 1999) was a Polish theatre director and theorist whose innovative approaches to acting, training and theatrical production have significantly influenced theatre today. He is considered one o ...
-based methods.
[San Francisco Bay Guardian Goldie Winner - Theater: foolsFURY. http://www.sfbg.com/2007/11/07/goldie-winner-theater-foolsfury] They also were a training center for these theater techniques
and ran a youth program, Swivel Arts.
The ensemble hosted a biennial festival of experimental theater called the "Fury Factory."
The factory brought together ensemble companies from all around the country and different parts of the world. Past companies include
Pig Iron
Pig iron, also known as crude iron, is an intermediate good used by the iron industry in the production of steel. It is developed by smelting iron ore in a blast furnace. Pig iron has a high carbon content, typically 3.8–4.7%, along with si ...
,
Banana Bag & BodiceWitness Relocation Under the Table and
Hand2Mouth.
In 2015, associate artistic, Deborah Eliezer, became co-artistic director with Ben Yalom,
and in 2020 she took over as Artistic Director.
In 2021 it was announced that Foolsfury was to be closed down and the work archived.
Affiliations
The company worked on new shows with playwrights such as
Sheila Callaghan
Sheila Callaghan (born 1973) is a playwright and screenwriter who emerged from the RAT ( Regional Alternative Theatre) movement of the 1990s. She has been profiled by ''American Theater Magazine'', "The Brooklyn Rail", ''Theatermania'', and ''Th ...
Doug Dorst and Fabrice Melquiot and collaborated with theatrical innovators such as
SITI Company
The Saratoga International Theater Institute (also known as SITI) was an ensemble-based theater company based in New York City and Saratoga Springs, New York. SITI was founded in 1992 by American director Anne Bogart and Japanese director Ta ...
,
Mary Overlie
Mary Overlie (January 15, 1946 – June 5, 2020) was an American choreographer, dancer, theater artist, professor, author, and the originator of the Six Viewpoints technique for theater and dance. The Six Viewpoints technique is both a philosophi ...
,
and Corey Fischer.
References
External links
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Theatre companies in San Francisco
Performing groups established in 1998