Richard Foreman (born Edward L. Friedman; June 10, 1937 – January 4, 2025) was an American avant-garde playwright and the founder of the Ontological-Hysteric Theater.
"[4] At Scarsdale High School (SHS), from which he graduated in 1955,[6] Foreman was heavily involved in the theater department.
[6][5] A 2018 documentary produced by the Lower East Side Biography Project[7] outlined Foreman's early motivations for pursuing work in the theater.
[9] At Yale, Foreman studied under John Gassner, the drama critic and former literary manager at The Theatre Guild.
[10] Richard Foreman moved to New York City directly after graduating from Yale School of Drama and worked as a manager of apartment complexes.
[11] Foreman finally inserted himself into the avant-garde scene when police interrupted a screening and seized a copy of the 1963 film, Flaming Creatures, and charged Jonas Mekas, Ken Jacobs, and Florence Karpf for violating New York's obscenity laws.
Foreman began working for Mekas and Maciunas, overseeing their movie theater, Film-Maker's Cinematheque at 80 Wooster Street.
Foreman also became heavily involved in the development of Maciunas' Fluxhouse Cooperatives, which consisted of converted SoHo lofts designed to be living and working spaces for artists.
"[13] A number of scholars have called attention to the parallels between the theories of Gertrude Stein and Richard Foreman's theatrical aesthetics.
"[14] "Entity writing" is free from any notion of remembering, relationships, or narratives, and it expresses what Stein called the "continuous present."
"[15] Davy notes that like Stein, Foreman tends to avoid "'emotional traps' or the intentional manipulation of an audiences emotional responses by eliminating the 'lifelike' qualities of drama (clearly developing situation involving imaginary people in imaginary places), thereby creating a world into which the spectator has great difficulty projecting himself.
Foreman mounted his first production with Ontological-Hysteric Theatre in 1968 at the Film-Maker's Cinematheque on Wooster Street, where he worked under the Fluxus leader George Maciunas.
[14] Ontological-Hysteric Theatre balances a primitive and minimal art style with extremely complex and theatrical themes.
Kirby uses the elements of setting, picturization, speech, written material, control, movement and dances, sound, objects, relation to film, structure, content, and effect to analyze Foreman's theatrical vocabulary.
[17] Among his observations, Kirby notes that although "Sophia" is a play without a plot, it produces its own kind of structure of "thematic webs of visual and verbal ideas and references.
According to their website, "the OHT was a starting point for many artists making their mark in New York City and internationally including David Herskovitz, Artistic Director of Target Margin Theater, Damon Keily Artistic Director of American Theater in Chicago, Radiohole, Elevator Repair Service, Pavol Liska, NTUSA, as well as Richard Maxwell, Sophie Haviland, Bob Cucuzza, DJ Mendel, Ken Nintzle and Young Jean Lee.
He has also directed and designed many classical productions with major theaters around the world including, The Threepenny Opera, The Golem[18] and plays by Václav 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, Molière's Don Juan at the Guthrie 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 Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights at the Autumn Festivals in Berlin and Paris.
[19] Since 2014, British director Patrick Kennedy has staged a number of Foreman works including a 2019 season of 3 plays at New Wimbledon Theatre.
[3] Foreman died from complications of pneumonia at Mount Sinai West Hospital in New York City.