The Talking Band

The group was founded in 1974 by Maddow and Shepard and Zimet, along with Sybille Hayn, Mark Samuels, Margo Lee Sherman, Charles Stanley and Arthur Strimling. It has its roots in the work of The Open Theatre, where company members Maddow and Shepard and Zimet worked as core company members. The Open Theatre had been founded by director, actor and writer Joseph Chaikin, and after Chaikin disbanded The Open Theatre in 1973, Maddow, Shepard and Zimet joined with the other Talking Band founding members to start the new company. Along with starting The Talking Band, Zimet, Maddow and Shepard continued to perform with Chaikin as part of his new company The Winter Project.[1]

Its first production, The Kalevala – based on the Kalevala, a 19th-century work of epic poetry compiled by Elias Lönnrot from Finnish and Karelian oral folklore and Finnish mythology[2] – featured music by Elizabeth Swados, and used minimal staging. The piece centred on the use of actor voices and the rhythms and melodies of the language. It received critical praise from The Village Voice, which said, "it is as if the almost formal sense of using the breath opens the performers to the depths of an innerness that is sometimes like Alice in its sense of wonder and sometimes like Dante in its terribleness".[3]

Its productions evolved over the years, incorporating poetry, dialog, and multi-media elements, alongside music and choreographed movement. The group's pieces have focused on a wide range of subjects, from the travails of a housewife, to Christianity and nuclear disarmament.

Critics have described the productions as creative and innovative, and American Theatre referred to it as "...one of the most exceptional but unsung theatre companies in the country".[4]

Notable productions include:[5]

In 2006 four playwrights wrote a serial play, The Necklace, based on themes and structures that they would develop over a year's time. Ellen Maddow, in an interview in The Brooklyn Rail, says of the experience: "I’ve worked in collaborative theatre all my life but to work collaboratively with other playwrights is something unusual. It’s a kind of tug and pull of four different peoples minds and ways of thinking. And the ways you are pushed in a certain direction by someone else’s aesthetic is very interesting."[7]

Founding members Maddow, Shepard and Zimet remain as core company members.

The group uses a collaborative creative process that incorporates the approaches and aesthetics of artists in a variety of media and arts fields. Throughout its history, it has collaborated with influential artists from a range of backgrounds, including composers Swados, Peter Gordon and "Blue" Gene Tyranny; designers Julie Taymor, Theodora Skipitares, Janie Geiser, Nic Ularu, Carol Mullins, Kiki Smith, and Anna Kiraly; writer and performance artist Taylor Mac; and magician Peter Samelson.

The group is a resident company at La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club[8] – an off-Broadway theatre located on East 4th Street in the East Village of New York City's Manhattan borough – where it has produced and performed many of its plays. The group's first production at La MaMa was Pedro Paramo in 1979.

It has also performed at many of New York City's leading off-off Broadway theater venues, including HERE, Performance Space 122, 3LD Art & Technology Center, Theatre for the New City, The Ohio Theater, Dance Theater Workshop and Dixon Place.

The group has also performed extensively internationally, including The Roundhouse in London, England; The American Center in Paris, France; The Music Gallery in Toronto, Ontario, Canada; the Kovcheg Theater in Moscow, Russia; the Teatro La Batuta in Santiago, Chile; and the National Theatre Bucharest in Bucharest, Romania.[9]

• Culture of New York City

• talkingband.org, The Talking Band's official website