Courtesy of SITI Archive.

What distinguishes the theatre from all other art forms is that the subject matter of the theatre is always social systems. Each play asks: How are we getting along within the context of our families and within our communities? How are we getting along as a society? How might we get along better? Even, within the theatre itself, both during a rehearsal as well as during a performance, the question arises, how are we engaging with one another in this very room?

A society is a group that thinks things through together. That feels together. We are currently experiencing significant social, cultural, and political changes within our communities, in the workplace, as well as on a global scale. How do we in the theatre adjust to these paradigmatic changes?

Anne Bogart is a theatre and opera director and a Professor at Columbia University where she runs the Graduate Directing Program. She is the author of six books: A Director Prepares; The Viewpoints Book; And Then, You Act; Conversations with Anne, What’s the Story and The Art of Resonance. Works with SITI include Radio Christmas Carol, Falling & Loving; The Bacchae, Chess Match No. 5; Lost in the Stars; The Theater is a Blank Page; Persians; Steel Hammer; A Rite; Café Variations; Trojan Women (After Euripides); American Document; Antigone; Under Construction; Freshwater; Who Do You Think You Are; Radio Macbeth; Hotel Cassiopeia; Death and the Ploughman; La Dispute; Score; bobrauschenbergamerica; Room; War of the Worlds–the Radio Play; Cabin Pressure; Alice’s Adventures; Culture of Desire; Bob; Going, Going, Gone; Small Lives/Big Dreams; The Medium; Hay Fever; Private Lives; Miss Julie; and Orestes. Recent operas include Bartok’s Bluebeard’s Castle, Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde, Ruders’ The Handmaid’s Tale, Handel’s Alcina, Dvorak’s Dimitrij Verdi’s Macbeth, Bellini’s Norma and Bizet’s Carmen.