Time Out New York / Issue 662 : Jun 4-10, 2008
Pictures of an exhibitionist
Edward Albee shapes a portrait of sculptor friend Louise Nevelson in Occupant.
By David Cote
In 1980, playwright Edward Albee was at a low point in his career, while sculptor Louise Nevelson (1899-1988) was at the height of hers. The famed creator of monochromatic found-art assemblages was preparing for a major retrospective at the Whitney Museum, and Albee-her fan and acquaintance for more than a decade-was to write the catalog introduction. Albee decided to play reporter. “I got one of those early tape recorders and went down to her place,” the writer recalls, sipping coffee in his spacious Tribeca loft. “And I told her, ‘This is a tape recorder; I’m going to record a few things.’ She never touched it, but she did this [Passes his hands over this reporter's digital device] and said, ‘Fascinating. Fascinating.’ So I recorded an hour. Got home, and it was blank.” He pauses, then chuckles dryly. “She was a witch.”
Clearly, the sorceress cast a mighty spell, since Albee was compelled to memorialize her decades later; Occupant, the playwright’s 2002 homage, premieres at the Signature Theatre Company this month. The work was initially slated to open there six years ago, starring Anne Bancroft, but the performer became ill early in previews and the run was cancelled. The new production features Mercedes Ruehl as the artist and Larry Bryggman as, simply, Man.
The latter character is a fond but prying interlocutor who grills Nevelson on her life, her art and her remarkable transformation from Leah Berliawsky, a Ukrainian-Jewish immigrant to Maine who re-created herself as an iconic figure of postwar American Abstract Expressionism. “The play’s ultimately about how-if we’re lucky-we discover who we are meant to be,” says Signature head James Houghton. “I think that yearning to discover oneself is something we long for in this chaotic world right now.”
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