Bogart’s Back in Boston

by Christine Bernard

Tomorrow, Friday January 27, Emerson will once again open its doors to the famous director, Anne Bogart. Bogart will be in town for the weekend, holding auditions for Café Variations that she will be directing in the Spring. Auditions for Emerson’s Performing Arts students will be held on January 27 and 28. She will also be meeting with members of the production and management teams of Café Variations.

Anne Bogart is an American theatre director who earned a Bachelor of Arts from Barnard College in 1974, followed by a Master of Arts from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts in 1977. In addition, she served as Artistic Director of the Trinity Repertory Company for its 1989-90 season. She is now a Professor at Columbia University where she heads the Graduate Directing Program.

Bogart won two Best Director Obie Awards, one for No Plays No Poetry But Philosophical Reflections Practical Instructions Provocative Opinions and Pointers From a Noted Critic and Playwright (1988) and the other for Baltimore Waltz (1990). This year marks the 20th anniversary of SITI Company, the theater company she founded in 1992 with Tadashi Suzuki, the creator of the Suzuki Method of Actor Training, a technique used by SITI along with Viewpoints, created by choreographer Mary Overlie but later developed by Anne Bogart and Tina Landau. Bogart currently serves as the Artistic Director of the company. Though the company has always emphasized international cultural exchange and collaboration, this year it plans on embracing the creation of a “shared leadership model,” that promotes a stronger collaboration among members of the company.

Anne Bogart was last at Emerson last November during the weekend of Veterans Day. The Emerson community had the chance to attend a forum she hosted at the Paramount Center.

We are excited to have her come this weekend and look forward to her residency during the rehearsal process, which will begin in March. Café Variations, a co-production between Emerson Stage, ArtsEmerson, and SITI, will perform April 13-22 in the Cutler-Majestic Theatre. Break a leg to all of the students who will be auditioning this weekend!

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Christine Bernard is a junior BS Marketing Communication major at Emerson College.