During his time working with the Berliner Ensemble, Carl Weber observed firsthand Brecht’s techniques as he called out directions to his actors from the 10th row. Weber, groundbreaking theatre director, actor, scholar, and pedagogue, gave a series of interviews during his final years with a group of faculty, postdoctoral fellows, and graduate students at Stanford University, reflecting on the artistic processes of the Berliner Ensemble and its legacy.

Intermittently from 1977 to 1993, Maud Robart and Jerzy Grotowski worked together through the Polish director’s various post-theatre phases. Archival research reveals a rare professional collaboration that went beyond the relationship Grotowski had with other students. Robart and Grotowski created a reciprocal relationship that allowed them to be simultaneously student and teacher to one another. Exchanging singing and dancing with acting techniques, they crafted a unique performance training.

Ann Carlson’s Picture Jasper Ridge was a performance hike in nature: spectators walked through tableaux vivants based on archival photographs. Carlson’s investigation of the apparatuses of archive, performance, natural preserve, and photography fostered meditative thinking about the phenomenology of performance that unfolded through the experience of performing still.