The Long View: Talking Band Turns Fifty

The year 2024 marked the fiftieth anniversary season of New York-based theatre company Talking Band. Founded in 1974, the company has created over fifty new works of theatre since its inception. Made up of founding members Paul Zimet (the company’s artistic director), Ellen Maddow, and Tina Shepard, these artists met while working in Joseph Chaikin’s Open Theatre and formed Talking Band in the year after Chaikin disbanded his own company. Together, they write, perform, choreograph, compose, and direct original pieces, often collaborating with other artists in the process, including Taylor Mac, Anne Bogart, and 600 Highwaymen to name only the most recent examples.

This year, the company staged three full-scale productions to mark its anniversary: The Following Evening, a collaboration with 600 Highwaymen’s Abigail Browde and Michael Silverstone performed at the new 500-million-dollar Perelman Performing Arts Center (PAC) at the World Trade Center in January; Existentialism, directed by Anne Bogart at La MaMa’s Ellen Stewart Theatre in February and March; and Shimmer and Herringbone presented in association with Mabou Mines at 122CC in May. Zimet and Maddow both appeared in The Following Evening and Existentialism; Maddow also appeared in Shimmer and Herringbone alongside Shepard, with Zimet co-writing and directing the production. Staging three different shows in the span of four months is a remarkable feat for any theatre company, but at the ages of 82 (Zimet), 76 (Maddow), and 83 (Shepard), this milestone seems particularly important to reflect upon in the present moment.

We are living in a time Robert N. Butler has identified as the “longevity revolution,” where due to medical advancements people are living longer lives on average than ever before. According to the U.S. Census of 2020, 1 in 6 people are 65 and over (16.8% of the population); this portion of the population also grew nearly five times faster than the total population over the 100 years from 1920 to 2020. These numbers point to the need for further attention on the role of aging in our culture and in the criticism and scholarship of contemporary theatre. This topic that has long been of interest to me as a scholar who engages with the work of veteran artists to consider how performance is unconsciously informed by assumptions about later life and aging. In her book Aged by Culture (2004), Margaret Morganroth Gullette identified how we often think of the life course, artistic or otherwise, through a “peak-and-decline” ideology. She argues that after “middle age”—a category which is also contested, but generally associated in the U.S. with the early-to-mid sixties when citizens are eligible for Social Security retirement benefits—one is falsely considered past the period of creative vitality, slowly declining into old age. In short, we are aged by culture as much as (if not more than) our biology.

I have found that exploring the work of older artists and companies like Talking Band, who continue to push the boundaries of experimental performance into their seventies and eighties, exposes a possible alternative to this ageist ideology by providing more nuanced views of the artists’ later period and considering how age features explicitly in the work. Edward Said, drawing on the work of Theodor Adorno, referred to this type of aesthetic as “late style,” but perhaps ironically aesthetic lateness has rarely been considered alongside aging. Studies of late style often ignore age completely, preferring to engage with aesthetic patterns visible nearing the end of the artist’s life (i.e., concision, paradox, fracture, etc.) regardless of age (i.e., Beethoven was in his fifties when composing his late works, dying at fifty-six, an age we would consider still relatively young today). More nuanced studies of the role of aging in theatre relating to embodiment, representation, casting, memory, illness, aesthetics, intergenerationality, autobiography, legacy, and care (to name only a few areas of interest) are necessary to bring a “long view” of an artist’s or company’s life into full perspective. When it comes to avant-garde work especially, more attention should be paid to work by older artists who continue to create and expand their aesthetic practice into their seventies, eighties, and nineties, exposing the false binary of youth/age that informs cultural expectations of theatre-making (where the new is often associated with the “young”).

In my own work, I have focused extensively on Split Britches founders Peggy Shaw (80) and Lois Weaver (74), who have evolved their creative practice in their “late” period through both solo and collaborative performances, with five decades of performance history being evoked whenever they take the stage. Additionally, their later work has drawn directly upon their own aging process, highlighting embodied experience and a shifting sense of self over time. In the 2012-13 Ruff (directed by Weaver), which inspired my PhD dissertation on Split Britches at The Graduate Center (CUNY), Shaw reflects on a life interrupted as a theatre-maker and performer, exposing the impact of her stroke as she incorporates (rather than tries to conceal) the inevitable slips of her memory into the actual dramaturgy of the production. (I edited Ruff for publication in PAJ 119).

One of my earliest influences in pursuing a focus on aging in experimental theatre was the special section of PAJ 46 (1994) entitled “Ages of the Avant Garde.” This issue invited contributions of avant-garde artists over fifty (at the time), including Meredith Monk, Richard Foreman, Carolee Schneemann, Maria Irene Fornes, Rachel Rosenthal, Yvonne Rainer, Dick Higgins, Judith Malina, Herbert Blau, and Allan Kaprow, among others. Fornes’s comments were especially significant for me. She observes, “I feel that in my writing every time I write I’m inventing something. And I don’t think you can ever feel that you’re aging when every day your work is something that is new to you.” This reinforces the notion that youth is not a determiner for innovation, and that we should accept that an artist continues to advance her identity and sense of self throughout the life course. The experience of seeing the work of the past in the present is one of the many delights in seeing an older artist perform: a depth of experience is visible on the skin, altered ways of moving, and in worldviews condition by more time past than ahead.

I have worked to bring these perspectives to light in a field that has ignored (and often denied) age as a worthwhile category to analyze in comparison to other facets of identity such as gender, sexuality, race, and ability, which have all become major subfields in the discipline. And yet, aging intersects with all of these other identity categories. Since theatre is a live art, it is an ideal place to explore the impact of the aging body/self, especially in autobiographical performance. (Notably, Bonnie Marranca’s essay “A Cosmography of Herself: The Autobiology of Rachel Rosenthal” (1994) in Rachel Rosenthal, ed. Moira Roth (1997) explores her concept of “autobiology” in the aging themes of the artist, then in her mid-sixties.) My own scholarly writing on aging up to now will culminate with the publication of Late Stage: Theatrical Perspectives on Age and Aging next year, which I co-edited with Cindy Rosenthal and Elinor Fuchs, whose late career was focused on bringing age and aging to the fore of theatre studies through the lens of Brecht and Ibsen before her death in May.

Looking at the fiftieth season of Talking Band provides an example of how the aging avant-garde continues to make important new work that is often cross-generational as they engage with and influence younger artists. In their fiftieth season, they presented their own “long view” of the world in semi-autobiographical works with the conscious exploration of aging as a theme. In each performance, there is a purposefully slow and contemplative sense of time, heightened by choreography, music, and poetic text. Their characters are often extensions of the artists, blurring the lines between fiction and reality—a hallmark of the post-1960s avant-garde.

In The Following Evening, Existentialism, and Shimmer and Herringbone, Zimet and Maddow collaborated with outside artists to create each piece while swapping various artistic hats for each one. They appeared as performers in The Following Evening, with 600 Highwaymen conceiving of and directing the production. But Zimet and Maddow’s personal stories as a married theatre couple are featured heavily through personal anecdotes on their creative process, personal struggles as artists, and direct reference to their work with Chaikin. They also appear as themselves in Existentialism, primarily conceived by director Anne Bogart, though once again they collaborated in the staging process and inspired the relationship central to the story (in the script, the characters are defined only as “He” and “She”). For Shimmer and Herringbone, Zimet and Maddow co-wrote the script, with Zimet directing and Maddow (as well as Shepard) performing with the ensemble of Ebony Davis, James Tigger! Ferguson, Lizzie Olesker, Louise Smith, and Jack Wetherall (most of the cast also performed in Talking Band’s 2022 production of Lemon Girls or Art for the Artless at La MaMa).

In each of these productions, Talking Band’s bodies feature centrally and carry the gravitas of fifty years on stage while also incorporating their own memories and experiences. Each of the three pieces is distinctly about mortality and the meaning of an artist’s (later) life. Both age and aging are central themes too, not only because Maddow and Zimet have visibly aged, but because the concept for each production foregrounds longevity and time at its core, and a reflective tone pushes audiences to consider the need for creative endurance through struggle and pain. This is perhaps most obvious in The Following Evening, the first of the three productions staged this year, where Zimet and Maddow’s physical presence was contrasted with those of 600 Highwaymen’s Abigail Browde and Michael Silverstone, nearly half their age, making the production explicitly intergenerational. Staged in a generic loft apartment set-up with a simple lamp, table, and chairs, the set remained very minimalistic to allow space for the choreographed movement central to the piece. In the performance, both companies admitted the difficulty of making work in a precarious world post-Covid, where artist resources have been reduced and the cost of living has skyrocketed.

Moving beside one another in careful choreographic unison, the show presents the two couples as foils for one another living at the same time, but also decades apart in age. The “characters” are simply heightened versions of the actors themselves, and each artist refers to his or her own lived experience and work in the theatre as they document the theatre-making process as performance. For example, Zimet and Maddow discuss difficulties they now face being older that they did not consider as younger artists. Browde and Silverstone detail the complications of managing as artists, such as getting an insurance policy or dealing with artistic differences. The energy needed to create is constant, as is the necessity of finding funding and resources to survive with a family and a home, not to mention the toll it can take on personal relationships. Zimet asks at the top of the show, “Does this all sound romantic? I really hope it doesn’t!” One exchange between Zimet and Silverstone explicitly considers the different places they are at in their lives, especially as 600 Highwaymen publicly deliberate leaving the theatre.

All photos by Maria Baranova.

600 Highwaymen’s dissatisfaction with the theatre is recalled throughout the piece, while Talking Band seems resolved as they are so much further along in their careers. Their movements act as callbacks to previous works as each artist reflects directly upon his or her past performances and life experiences. For example, a bike accident Zimet had turns into a commentary on the shifting face of the East Village:

In contrast to Browde and Silverstone, who are much more exacting with their dance movements in their younger bodies, Zimet and Maddow’s older bodies exude a profound elegance, their movements imbued with a lifetime of experience and even grace, each step a testament to resilience and inner beauty while also highlighting the limitations to their agility at this later stage in life. There is a tender clumsiness in its rhythms as well, where the occasional falter reveals a charming vulnerability, making the dance all the more poignant and human, albeit not tragic.

The Following Evening presented a meditative longing for more time, more resources, more legacy, and more life. Its themes dovetail with those of Existentialism, a performance about two aging companion writers contemplating the meaning of life in advanced age. Director Anne Bogart drew inspiration from Zimet and Maddow’s own lives in creating the show, presenting an existential riff that echoes the relationship between French philosophers Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. The script is largely a collage of their writings strung together in one long non-sequential mediation. Notably, Existentialism was Bogart’s second collaboration with Talking Band: the first was in 1988 on No Plays, No Poetry, for which Bogart won an Obie for directing.

The set featured two houses side by side, represented only by transparent triangular structures with a lamp, coat rack, and writing desk in each. In the foreground are two catwalks flanked by a small garden box downstage that Maddow’s character returns to water over and over again (until she inevitably runs out of water). The houses sit on platforms in the center of the hollowed-out, cavernous space of the Ellen Stewart Theatre, bathed in white and blue light. The actors’ movements, often morphing into dance, are very simplistic and repetitive, sometimes interacting, sometimes not, as the seasons pass and the couple change from short sleeves to winter coats to signify the passing of time. Their bodies are central to these movements too, and at times seem vulnerable, carrying the weight of a century and a half combined. The focus of the performance is mainly on daily routines of shopping, eating and drinking, tidying, and writing, all while contemplating the meaning of life and the passing of time. Maddow’s character states (in de Beauvoir’s words from her book The Coming of Age) “I am an aging woman. Almost an old woman. Why am I no longer one of them? How could this have happened to me?”

These are the thoughts on life old age coming through in words akin to those of Sartre, acknowledging the necessity (and sometimes hell) of human relationships that keep us motivated to continue living. Characters in their later years often embody the essence of existential themes, confronting the inevitability of death and the apparent absurdity of life. This stage of life brings forth a heightened awareness of time’s relentless march, leading to recollections on the past, present, and elusive nature of purpose. Ultimately, old age serves as a mirror for life in this production, challenging both its performers and audiences to confront the existential truths that define the human spirit.

The final production of the Talking Band season, Shimmer and Herringbone, draws its name from the vintage clothing store where the fictional production takes place. This is a comedy of errors that occurs through the chance encounters of several old friends, lovers, and strangers as they try on new clothes to attempt to understand their shifting sense of identity and disconnection with the world (and their physical bodies) as they have aged. Zimet directed the production while Maddow performed and composed the score for this hybrid music-theatre piece, performed by a string trio that remains visible on stage. Commissioned with costume designer Olivera Gajic, the costumes nearly steal the show with every type of style, print, and material imaginable, from leather jackets, to faux fur coats, to feather headdresses.

Maddow performs as the shop’s saleswoman Rhonda who tries (and often fails) to find suitable alternatives to the characters’ lackluster wardrobes. The patrons—including Melanie (in her 80s, played by Tina Shepard); Colin (in his 70s, played by Jack Wetherall); Lilly (in her 50s, played by Lizzie Olesker); Grace (in her 50s, played by Louise Smith); and Gus (in his 50s, played by James Tigger! Ferguson)—come and go, having conversations that seem more philosophical and existential than about clothing, echoing the themes of The Following Evening and Existentialism. Shepard’s performance was particularly memorable in her comic timing, contrasted with a sincerity that can only accompany artists of a certain age. During the performance, it becomes clear that each of the older characters are sensing a defamiliarization within themselves as they are aging (contrasted by the views of the younger character in the play in her 20s named Bree, played by Ebony Davis)—what Elinor Fuchs called “estragement” (without the “n”) in her own theatrical age theory. Occasionally dipping into the surreal and absurd, at its center, the performance is about the importance of connection and finding new ways forward despite being bombarded by the past and the incessant nagging of an unsure future.

Seeing The Following Evening this past January sparked my curiosity as a scholar focused on aging and experimental performance, inspiring me to follow Talking Band closely throughout this anniversary year. It was thrilling to experience and rediscover a cutting-edge company creating new work in the late stages of their careers—and at an almost unfathomable pace. These are artists still working in their prime, not past it, bucking society’s ageist standards as they present a long view of both the world and of the avant-garde theatre. Each of the productions purposefully play with the limitations of the artists’ age, but also celebrate the visibility of time on their bodies and the wisdom and gravitas they bring to the stage.