The Haunting Legacy of the Performing Garage
The unassuming brick structure at 33 Wooster Street has long been rumored to be a haunted space, and it’s easy to see why. This building serves as the home of the Performing Garage, which has been the creative sanctuary for nearly half a century of the legendary experimental theater collective known as The Wooster Group.
Over the years, performers who have graced its intimate stage have achieved iconic status, resonating profoundly within the discerning circles of downtown Manhattan and beyond. Figures like Ron Vawter and Kate Valk have captivated audiences, while others such as Willem Dafoe and Spalding Gray have extended their influence into mainstream recognition. Within the confines of the Garage’s small yet immensely vibrant space, these artists have engaged in a myriad of expressions — from acting and dancing to self-exploration, set construction, and even the dismantling of their own creations. They have shared their lives openly, recording and videotaping one another in a relentless pursuit of artistic truth.
The productions themselves, typically guided by the ever-elusive artistic director Elizabeth LeCompte, have always exuded an otherworldly quality. The Wooster Group’s work is characterized by its ability to bend, blend, and shatter traditional genres and media, creating a unique tapestry that blurs the lines between high art and popular culture, memory and reality, and the living and the spectral. Classic playwrights such as Chekhov, Racine, Eugene O’Neill, and Gertrude Stein have been resurrected, their voices intertwined with the tumultuous landscape of contemporary life, resulting in astonishing performances that have captivated audiences for fifty years.
When I first ventured into the vibrant theater scene of New York in the late 1970s, the productions at the Performing Garage were the talk of the town — the shows that the trendiest experimental theater enthusiasts eagerly raved about, whispered secrets of, and sometimes claimed to have experienced even when they hadn’t. The echoes of those performances still linger in my mind, particularly the haunting memories of Valk and Dafoe channeling the essence of O’Neill in “The Hairy Ape”, or Valk’s mesmerizing portrayal of a cold, unearthly femme fatale in “House/Lights”, where she fragmented into multiple simulcast identities.
In its latest offering, “Nayatt School Redux”, the group has turned its reflective gaze inward, revisiting a play that first graced the stage at the Garage in 1978. This ambitious revival, which has garnered a completely sold-out run through Saturday, is described by its creators as a kind of séance, a powerful invocation of the past as they explore the evolution of their craft and the haunting legacy of their artistic journey.
