RICHARD FOREMAN

Born June 10 1937, N.Y.C.

Brown University BA, (Magna Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa) l959, Yale Drama School, MFA (Playwriting) l962. Honorary Doctorate Brown University 1993.

Founder & Artistic Director, Ontological-Hysteric Theater. (1968-current)

Richard Foreman has written, directed and designed over fifty of his own plays both in New York City and abroad.  Five of his plays have received "OBIE" awards as best play of the year—and he has received five other "OBIE'S" for directing and for 'sustained achievement'.  He has received the annual Literature award from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, a "Lifetime Achievement in the Theater" award from the National Endowment for the Arts, the PEN Club Master American Dramatist Award, a MacArthur "Genius" Fellowship, and in 2004 was elected officer of the Order of Arts and Letters of France.  His archives and work materials have recently been acquired by the Bobst Library at NYU.

Foreman is the founder and artistic director of the non-profit Ontological-Hysteric Theater (1968-present).  Since the early seventies his work and company have been funded by the NEA, NYSCA, as well as many other foundations and private individuals.  In the early 1980s a branch of the theater was established in Paris and funded by the French government.  The theater is currently located in the historic St. Mark's Church-in-the-Bowery in New York City's East Village neighborhood, and serves as a home to Foreman's annual productions as well as to other local and international artists.

Foreman's plays have been co-produced by such organizations as The New York Shakespeare Festival, La Mama, The Wooster Group and the Festival d'Autumn in Paris and the Vienna Festival. He has collaborated (as librettist and stage director) with composer Stanley Silverman on 8 music theater pieces produced by The Music Theater Group & The New York City Opera.  He wrote and directed the feature film, Strong Medicine.  He has also directed and designed many classical productions with major theaters around the world including, Three Penny Opera, The Golem and plays by Havel, Botho Strauss, and Suzan-Lori Parks for The New York Shakespeare Festival, Die Fledermaus at the Paris opera, Don Giovanni at the Opera de Lille, Philip Glass's Fall of the House of Usher at the American Repertory Theater and The Maggio Musicale in Florence, Woyzeck at Hartford Stage Company, Don Juan at the Gutherie Theater and The New York Shakespeare Festival, Kathy Acker's Birth of the Poet at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and the RO theater in Rotterdam, Gertrude Stein's Dr. Faustus Lights the Lights at the Autumn Festivals in Berlin and Paris.

Seven collections of his plays have already been published, and books studying his work have been published in New York, Paris, Berlin and Tokyo.

Paradise Hotel and Other Plays. Overlook Press, 2001

No-Body (A Novel). Overlook Press, 1996

My Head Was a Sledgehammer: Six Plays. Overlook Press, 1995

Unbalancing Acts: Foundations for a Theatre. Pantheon Press, 1992

Love & Science: Selected Music-Theatre Texts. TCG Publishers, 1991

Reverberation Machines: The Later Plays and Essays. Station Hill Press, 1985

Richard Foreman: Plays and Manifestos. New York University Press, 1976

Die Buhne als sezene Denkens. (book on Foreman).
Karkus Wessendorf. Alexander Verlag, Berlin, 1998

Richard Foreman (PAF Books Art + Performance).
Edited by Gerald Rabkin. Johns Hpkins Press, 1999

ABCDery of Richard Foreman.
Anne Berevolitch. Editions du Sud,Paris, 1999

Richard Foreman and the Ontological-Hysteric Theatre.
Kate Davy. UMI Research Press, 1981

Tradizione E Ricerca. (Chapter on Foreman).
Franco Quadri. Einuadi Torino, 1982

The Director's Voice: Twenty-One Interviews. (Chapter on Foreman).
TCG Publishers, 1988

In Their Own Words: Contemporary American Playwrights. (Chapter on Foreman).
TCG Publishers, 1988

Directors in Rehearsal: A Hidden World. (Chapter on Foreman).
Susan Cole. Routledge, 1992

The Other American Drama. (Chapter on Foreman).
Marc Robinson. Cambridge University Press, 1994

Theater at the Margins: Text and the Post-Structured Stage. (Chapter on Foreman).
Erik MacDonald. University of Michigan Press, 1993

Postmodernism and Performance. (Chapter on Foreman).
Nick Kaye. Macmillian, 1994

Prizes and Awards

2004
Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters of France 

2001
PEN/Laura Pels Master American Playwright Award

1995-2000
MacArthur Fellowship

1996
Edwin Booth Award for Theatrical Achievement

1992 & 1995
NEA Playwriting Fellowship

1992
American Accademy and Institute of Arts and Letters Award in Literature

1990
NEA Distinguished Artist Fellowship for Lifetime Achievement in Theater

1990
Ford Foundation play development grant for "Eddie Goes to Poetry City"

1974
Rockerfeller Foundation Playwrights Grant

1972
Guggenheim for Playwriting

9 Village Voice "OBIEs", (including 3 for Best play, and one for Lifetime Achievement