1979 – 1984
The Abreaction Theater was established in 1979 as collaboration between Geoffrey King, a composer in Boston, and me, a visual artist in NY. To produce the theater we established Proleptic Productions, a 501-3-C not-for-profit foundation. I had just finished working as a stage manager for the avant-garde playwright and director, Richard Foreman. The result of my experience with his Ontological-Hysteric Theatre was a script called Disparate Acts.
Through a mutual friend, the script ended up in the hands of Geoffrey King who proceeded to accumulate musical ideas and references as he manipulated the text through recording sessions and at his editing table. The success of Radio Sonata at its premier on May 4, 1979 at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston convinced us both to create a theater focusing upon a unique fusion of acoustic and performance environments.
By November, the Abreaction Theater presented Disparate Acts [At A Distance] in a small loft on Crosby Street in lower Manhattan. Confessions of A Conformist: The Lists followed in 1981 as the theater’s second production. The last work was entitled Beginning Terrain and was staged at Squat Theater in 1983.
Epiphany from the studio