Description

EAI presented a special evening devoted to the work of radical art and theater collective Squat Theatre, whose performances in the late 1970s and early 1980s questioned role playing, the act of spectatorship, and the boundaries between art and life, the fictive and the real. The screening at EAI was presented in collaboration with the Whitney Museum of American Art, where an installation by Squat Theatre is included in the exhibition Rituals of Rented Island: Object Theater, Loft Performance, and the New Psychodrama--Manhattan, 1970-1980, organized by Jay Sanders, the museum's Curator and Curator of Performance (on view Oct. 31, 2013 - Feb. 2, 2014).

The evening features a screening of the extraordinary two-part video Mr. Dead and Mrs. Free (1981, 83 min). Capturing one of Squat Theatre's key theatrical productions, Mr. Dead and Mrs. Free included video documentation of their live show of the same name as well as a film by the collective (originally played at the beginning of the show) that provides an astonishing glimpse of New York's downtown underground in the early '80s. Afterwards, Eva Buchmuller and Anna Koos from Squat Theatre joined Jay Sanders and EAI's Rebecca Cleman to discuss the collective's legendary history and iconoclastic approach to theater.