Exploring the Avant-Garde. Peter Sellars

Your Playlist:

Description

Director Peter Sellars says it's fine with him if people hate his controversial theatrical work, and many have taken him up on the offer. Sellars has been director of the Boston Shakespeare Company and the American National Theatre at the Kennedy Center. He's been called bullheaded, sophomoric, and weird; he's also been called a genius, brilliant, exciting, and innovative. He set a Mozart opera in New York's Trump Tower and Shakespeare in a swimming pool, and he even conceived an opera about Richard Nixon's trip to China. But there's a method in all this madness. Theater should be hard, he says. It should shake you up and speak truth to power. Love it or hate it, says Sellars, at least it means you're thinking. In this program with Bill Moyers, Sellars discusses his controversial career and views on the role of theater in society.