Maura Tierney and More to Star in U.S. Premiere of NAYATT SCHOOL REDUX

The Wooster Group will present the U.S. premiere of Nayatt School Redux at the The Performing Garage in New York City, starting March 8, 2025. The piece will feature performances by Ari Fliakos, Andrew Maillet, Michaela Murphy, Suzzy Roche, Scott Shepherd, Maura Tierney, Kate Valk, and Omar Zubair. Elizabeth LeCompte will direct and design the production.
 
Nayatt School Redux reanimates Nayatt School, an original 1978 Wooster Group Production composed by LeCompte and Spalding Gray. Nayatt School Redux opens with a monologue from longtime Wooster Group member Kate Valk. She reveals newly-restored archival video recordings of Gray’s opening monologue from the original production. In it, Gray described his beginnings in the theater and played LPs from his record collection, including an LP of T.S. Eliot’s The Cocktail Party. Valk tells her own stories of how she came to work with The Wooster Group in the late 1970s. Then Valk and the Group’s current company channel scenes from the original production, including the climactic sequences of The Cocktail Party.

The original Nayatt School was Gray’s first foray into the monologue form, launching his influential career as an autobiographical monologist. Along with Gray, the original production featured performances by Ron Vawter, Libby Howes, Joan Jonas, and four children. In Nayatt School Redux, The Wooster Group’s current company is joined by eminent artistic associates Suzzy Roche, Scott Shepherd, and Maura Tierney (in her third production with the Group).

In Nayatt School Redux, director LeCompte again displays her mastery of what the New York Times calls “ravishing, meticulous marriages of live and recorded performance.” The ensemble for the March performances includes: Eric Sluyter and Omar Zubair (sound design & original music); David Sexton (lighting design); Ken Kobland (original video and 16mm Nayatt School film); Yudam Hyung Seok Jeon and Andrew Maillet (additional video); Tavish Miller (technical director); Aaron Amodt (production manager); Monika Wunderer (general manager); and Cynthia Hedstrom (producer). The piece is presented with permission of the T.S. Eliot Estate.

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