OK Radio

Nature Theater of Oklahoma talks with Lenore Manderson, writer, researcher and medical anthropologist at Monash University in Australia about our mutual fascination with the human body. Join us as we discuss the body in practice and in performance, as signifier of vulnerability, power, visibility, ability, disability – and difference.

Nature Theater of Oklahoma talks with Australian arts advocate, festival director, and world-renowned singer and performance artist Robyn Archer about building a life for herself in the theater – what about the resistance she’s faced along the way? How do we continually track that resistance and disturbance in our lives and work (and curatorial choices) in order to avoid complacency?

Nature Theater of Oklahoma talks with Erica Meyer, an Episcopal priest at the Church of the Good Shepherd in New York City about how she came to her calling as a religious leader. How does she lead a community of people toward wholeness and sanctification? Where does her belief come from and what does she do with her own doubt and grief? What does any of this have to do with theater, you might ask? (Really, go ahead and ask!)

Nature Theater of Oklahoma talks with artists Christer Lundhal & Martina Seitl about shared practice and crossed disciplines. How do we open up new possibilities in perception, and create room for ambiguity and playful slippage in roles, in context, and in life. Do we have to go all the way to the moon – or Mars even – just to get a change in perspective?

Nature Theater of Oklahoma talks with Swedish choreographer and filmmaker Gunilla Heilborn about levels of commitment. Do we always need to push it 200%? What about we just try 80% and call it a day? Join us as we examine our minimalist and maximalist tendencies and trace the influence of these habits and preferences on our work.

Nature Theater of Oklahoma talks with Swedish playwright and director Mattias Andersson of Backa Teater in Göteborg about local and global art. What does it mean to have a theater and to make work in the city where you grew up, to be in dialogue with a city of intimates? How do we make the personal public – or is it vice versa?

Nature Theater of Oklahoma talks with writer, editor, and theater thinker Tom Sellar about surrender and control – physical, mental, and structural. Join us as we clear the air – talking about artists and critics, and the whole interdependency and strangeness around that relationship. We rely on critics to write about the work, but what do we care about really? Do we want intelligent writing or just positive gush? Do critics appreciate that they are just seeing one performance and it all may be going horribly wrong? All this and even more thoughts about social practice, multi-media, durational performance, art brut, and political theater.

Nature Theater of Oklahoma talks with theater-maker Aaron Landsman about our mutual time together growing up in NY theater in the 1990s. We examine how and why we are still here – still doing this. Join us as we talk with Aaron, too, about his new work, City Council Meeting, and probe the intersection of faith, life, art and committed “social practice".

Nature Theater of Oklahoma talks again with New York avant-garde legend Richard Foreman about sardines, and (reluctantly) also about theater. We discuss his new play, Old-Fashioned Prostitutes, which opens next week at The Public Theater, and also his critically-acclaimed film Once Every Day, which was recently screened at the Berlin Film Festival and at Anthology Film Archives in New York.

Nature Theater of Oklahoma talks with David Garland, composer and creator of the music program Spinning on Air on WNYC in New York City – about host and guest, yin and yang, creative and receptive, intent and effect. David also plays two of his own musical compositions, made with some very unconventional instruments, live for us in the closet.