borrowing words

Richard Foreman is a writer, director, designer and the founder of Ontological-Hysteric Theater in NYC. He has written and produced over fifty of his own plays, in the US and in other countries.

You can read much more about this interesting writer and his work here.

He is a very prolific writer. Every day he writes around a half to three pages of dialogue. It is random and is generally not connected from day to day. He periodically (meaning every few months) reads through what he is written and gathers bits that catch his attention. When he gets enough bits that feel like they could be a play, he starts constructing a script.

He saves this writing in his online notebooks, which are there for anyone to peruse. And not only to look through, but to pick out parts which spark a writer's, director's, actor's, dancer's, or anyone's interest. Foreman writes:

I here make available my notebooks for the last fifteen years or so in the hopes directors/writers will make use of the material as I do. Choosing, arrangning, re-arranging, inventing situations into which the dialogue can be dropped, and ending up with a theatrical poerformance.

This material if offered freely. I ask no royalty. Because of the unique way I generate plays-- this may mean I myself will still be using from this pool of material in the future. I invite you to do so also.

The only thing I ask is that if you make use of this material in performance
a) you simply notify me, so I can know if this material is stimulating anyone.
b) any material used for production or publication displays in program or title page-- relatively prominantly-- the statement that the text involved is re-arranged material taken from the notebooks of Richard Foreman.

So, with that in mind, after the video is a small sample I have collected to pass on to you, from his notebook, SEEDS. Take from it what you will and write / paint / draw / dance / create! using whatever pieces of this peak your interest. If what I have selected leaves you flat, click here to go to his online notebooks and find another piece which suits you better.

The following video is an interview with Richard Foreman, where he discusses his creative process.

SEEDS (what is this-- this thinking)

I want a world in which the central seed

Is the

Being-a-human-being

That isn't biology or psychology or a life story

but

Openness

To a certain

noise

You offer me one more way to be in this world

World then to be manipulated

'experienced" put together

language manipulates, copies

tries things out

GIVE ME A DRINK

No

GIVE ME--

Situation=accept frame of situation, promotes it

OR

Re-frames it?

NO

Shatter frame

With NOW

Rather than past and future

Struggle to be inside lifelike-life

Old, dialogue goes forward in serpentine line

Now, from a little explosion (seed) thrown out and come back in loop to re-constitute-- wipe out?

What is it

This being-a-human being-ness

(Beehive and many hopes, revolves)

how man relates

to that center hive

with holes

that present, emptiness

(Not psychology, sociology, narrative

but something inside one

that is not

of one!