Tadashi Suzuki and Anne Bogart at Symposium on the Suzuki Method with SITI Company

The Saratoga International Theater Institute (also known as SITI) was an ensemble-based

theater company 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 communicat ...

based in

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

and

Saratoga Springs, New York Saratoga Springs is a Administrative divisions of New York#City, city in Saratoga County, New York, United States. The population was 28,491 at the United States Census 2020, 2020 census. The name reflects the presence of mineral springs in the ...

. SITI was founded in 1992 by American director

Anne Bogart Anne Bogart (born September 25, 1951) is an American theatre and opera director. She is currently one of the artistic directors of SITI Company, which she founded with Japanese director Tadashi Suzuki in 1992. She is a professor at Columbia Uni ...

and Japanese director

Tadashi Suzuki is a Japanese avant-garde theatre director, writer, and philosopher. He is the founder and director of the Suzuki Company of Toga (SCOT), and organizer of Japan’s first international theatre festival (Toga Festival). With American director ...

on the campus of Skidmore College to redefine and revitalize contemporary

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 ...

in the United States. The institute's inaugural productions began in September 1992 with two

Euripides Euripides () was a Greek tragedy, tragedian of classical Athens. Along with Aeschylus and Sophocles, he is one of the three ancient Greek tragedians for whom any plays have survived in full. Some ancient scholars attributed ninety-five plays to ...

plays: ''Dionysus'' and ''Orestes''. Funding initially came from the Japan-United States Friendship Commission, Arts International and All Nippon Airlines, according to then-executive producing director Stephen Nisbet. Originally envisioned as a summer institute in

, SITI has expanded to encompass a year-round program based in

, with a summer season in Saratoga. The company believed that contemporary American theater must incorporate artists from around the world and learn from a cross-cultural exchange of

dance Dance is an The arts, art form, consisting of sequences of body movements with aesthetic and often Symbol, symbolic value, either improvised or purposefully selected. Dance can be categorized and described by its choreography, by its repertoir ...

music Music is the arrangement of sound to create some combination of Musical form, form, harmony, melody, rhythm, or otherwise Musical expression, expressive content. Music is generally agreed to be a cultural universal that is present in all hum ...

art Art is a diverse range of cultural activity centered around ''works'' utilizing creative or imaginative talents, which are expected to evoke a worthwhile experience, generally through an expression of emotional power, conceptual ideas, tec ...

, and performance experiences. SITI is noted for combining the

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 ...

process of

with the Suzuki Method of Actor Training of

. Both techniques are alternatives to the

Stanislavski Konstantin Sergeyevich Stanislavski ( rus, Константин Сергеевич Станиславский, p=kənstɐnʲˈtʲin sʲɪrˈɡʲejɪvʲɪtɕ stənʲɪˈslafskʲɪj, links=yes; ; 7 August 1938) was a seminal Russian and Sovie ...

-based Method training which has dominated American stage and screen for generations. Over their history, the company produced more than forty shows. In October 2020, SITI announced they would stop producing shows in 2022, although classes would continue. Its final performances were of ''A Christmas Carol'' at Bard College.

References

External links

SITI Company
Postmodern theatre Theatre companies in New York (state) Defunct theatre companies in New York City {{US-theat-stub