OK Radio

Nature Theater of Oklahoma talks to Annemie Vanackere, the new director of the Hebbel am Ufer in Berlin, about the relative merits and certain pitfalls of too much leadership. Also too much dependency. How can artists develop and maintain a share of agency in the work, as well as a healthy balance of power in our relationships with grantors, curators, and producers?

Nature Theater of Oklahoma talks to playwright/director Tina Satter of the New York company Half Straddle about sports, rigor, training, discipline and commitment. Also up for consideration: should experimental theater be looking more ambitiously at stadiums and mass audience? Do revolutions really happen in small rooms?

Nature Theater of Oklahoma talks to Bruce Gladwin, director of Back to Back Theatre, based in Geelong, Australia, about ability, disability, inability, responsibility – obstacles – and audience. (And also, while we’re at it – let’s talk about being “special” and the many pitfalls of that label.)

Nature Theater of Oklahoma talks to writer, composer and performer Cynthia Hopkins about her trip to the Arctic Circle and what she discovered there – also about meditation, crisis, climate change, the future, the primordial past, artistic genius, ecstatic experience, the unseen world, the divine, prayer – and the cosmos. And Cynthia sings to us a few songs in the closet, too.

Nature Theater of Oklahoma talks to designer, director and performer Jim Findlay about his work both within and without Collapsable Giraffe. Join us as we delve into the deep love and attachment (and nostalgia) we feel for feral work and feral spaces, William Boroughs, Artaud, Werner Schroeter, centaurs, androids, prehistoric plant life, and the ultimate post-human future of the planet when machines take over!

Nature Theater of Oklahoma talks with Gavin Quinn, director of Dublin-based Pan Pan Theatre company, about empathy and the physical presence of actors. When you remove the actor from performance (as they do in All That Fall) -- what possibilities does that lack of an obvious physical and emotional center open up for an audience? (Plus: we experiment for the first time with podcasting in the dark!)

Nature Theater of Oklahoma meets with choreographer/dancer/performance artist Miguel Gutierrez , who braves athsma and kittens, to explore with us the nature of stunt, risk, and personal necessity in the work. Also, honestly – how complicated is our relationship to audience? And to museums, for that matter. (Hello, MoMA!)

Nature Theater of Oklahoma talks with John Collins, director of Elevator Repair Service in New York, about sleepless nights, Supreme Court oral arguments, gun control, the Newtown school shootings, benevolent dictatorships, emancipation, risk, responsibility, reason, and other things that have absolutely nothing to do with theater… or do they?

Nature Theater of Oklahoma talks to Gideon Lester, Director of Theater Programs and Professor of Theater at Bard College, also one of the curators of the Crossing the Line Festival in New York, about becoming brave and strategies for inscribing that bravery into our cultural institutions and universities. How should we train and cultivate a courageous new generation of artistic leaders? (Or: Where are all our new young failures going to come from – and why do we need them more than ever?)

Nature Theater of Oklahoma talks to actor/director Paul Lazar of Big Dance Theater about navigating a tremendously diverse body of work. Paul has worked in everything from the Wooster Group’s Brace Up to Hollywood gangster flics, from Korean monster movies to modern dance (he’s currently working with Mikhail Baryshnikov on a new piece). And he now hosts his own radio show “Talk to Paulie” on BBOX Radio in New York – a show on which we are, also, simultaneously HIS guests. (A radio show within a radio show!)