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The Talking Band
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| Formation | 1974 |
|---|---|
| Type | Off-off-Broadway company |
| Purpose | Experimental theatre |
| Location |
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| Affiliations | Resident company of the La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club |
The Talking Band is an American off-off-Broadway theater company specializing in experimental theatre, based in New York City.
The company consists of three core artists: artistic director Paul Zimet; actor, writer and composer Ellen Maddow; and actor and director Tina Shepard. The Talking Band has collaborated with Taylor Mac, Louise Smith, and Marcus Gardley.
History
The group was founded in 1974 by Ellen Maddow, Tina Shepard and Paul Zimet. It started at The Open Theatre, where Maddow, Shepard and Zimet worked as core company members. Director, actor and writer Joseph Chaikin founded the Open Theatre. After Chaikin disbanded The Open Theatre in 1973, Maddow, Shepard and Zimet founded a new theatre company, The Talking Band.[1]
The group is a resident company at La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club,[2] where it has produced and performed many of its plays. The group's first production at La MaMa was Pedro Paramo in 1979.
It has also performed at Performance Space 122, Theatre for the New City, Dance Theater Workshop and Dixon Place. The group has also performed internationally, including The Roundhouse in London, England; The American Center in Paris, France; The Music Gallery in Toronto, Canada; The Kovcheg Theater in Moscow, Russia; Teatro La Batuta in Santiago, Chile; and the National Theatre Bucharest in Bucharest, Romania.[3]
Productions
The company has performed at La MaMa, PS 122, Theater for the New City, Dance Theater Workshop, The Ohio Theatre, The Flea Theater, and HERE Arts Center. Approximately 50 original productions have toured throughout the United States and internationally. Notable productions include Shimmer and Herringbone, Existentialism, The Following Evening, Lemon Girls or Art for the Artless, Marcellus Shale, The Walk Across America for Mother Earth, Bitterroot, Painted Snake in a Painted Chair, Hot Lunch Apostles, Black Milk Quartet, and The Three Lives of Lucie Cabrol.
The Talking Band incorporates poetry, dialog, and multi-media elements, alongside music and choreographed movement. Its first production was The Kalevala, which is based on the Kalevala, a 19th-century work of Karelian and Finnish epic poetry compiled by Elias Lönnrot,[4] featuring music by Elizabeth Swados.
Notable productions include:[5]
- The Kalevala (1975)
- Worksong (1977)
- Pedro Paramo (1979)
- Hot Lunch Apostles (1983)
- Betty and the Blenders (1987)
- The Three Lives of Lucie Cabrol (1987)
- No Plays No Poetry (1988)
- Party Time (1996)
- Black Milk Quartet (1998)
- Bitterroot (2001)
- Star Messengers (2000)
- Painted Snake in a Painted Chair (2003)
- Delicious Rivers (2006, co-written with mathematician Marjorie Senechal)[6]
- Panic! Euphoria! Blackout (2010), Imminence (2008)
- The Walk Across America for Mother Earth (2011)
Company members
The founding members of the company are Ellen Maddow, Tina Shepard, and Paul Zimet.
Ellen Maddow
Maddow has written, composed, and performed most of the group's works. She has written plays including Panic! Euphoria! Blackout, Flip Side, Delicious Rivers, and Painted Snake in a Painted Chair. She performed in Existentialismcreated and directed by Anne Bogart at La Mama, and The Following Evening written and directed by Abigail Browde and Michael Silverstone at PAC-NYC.
Tina Shepard
Shepard is an actor and teacher at New York University. She has worked with several other companies and artists, including Chaikin, Anne Bogart, Target Margin and Buran Theatre. Shows she has contributed to include The Serpent, Terminal, Nightwalk, Electra, The Seagull, Tourists and Refugees and Trespassing. Shepard has taught acting, directing, voice and movement at Princeton University, Williams College, Smith College and NYU's Experimental Theatre Wing. In 2025 Tina was awarded an OBIE Life Time Achievement Award.
Paul Zimet
Zimet is a writer, director and actor, and serves as the group's artistic director. He has directed over thirty-five works for the company, including New Islands Archipelago, Imminence, Belize, The Parrot and Star Messengers. He received an Obie Award for directing Painted Snake in a Painted Chair, Existentialismdirected by Anne Bogart, and The Following Evening.
Creative process
Talking Band has collaborated with artists from multiple fields, including composers Elizabeth Swados, Peter Gordon and "Blue" Gene Tyranny; designers Julie Taymor, Theodora Skipitares, Ralph Lee, Janie Geiser,Nic Ularu, Kiki Smith, Lenore Doxsee, Olivera Gajic, Mary Ellen Stebbins, and Anna Kiraly; choreographers Fay Driscoll, Abigail Browde, Sean Donovan, and Flannery Gregg, writers and performance artist Taylor Mac and David Cale; directors Anne Bogart, Ken Rus Schmoll, and Michael Silvertone; and magician Peter Samelson.
In 1996, Talking Band created the Performance Lab, providing a structure for their collaborative development process. The Lab is an ongoing program central to the company’s mission: a creative space where the company convenes to learn alongside established peers and like-minded emerging artists, and to explore questions of theatrical style and technique in an environment free of the deadline pressures of formal production. The Lab responds to the company's need for longer, more collaborative creative processes required for genuinely experimental multidisciplinary work.
Awards
Collectively, the company and its founders have received 18 Obie Awards, including Life Time Achievement Awards for Paul Zimet, Ellen Maddow, and Tina Shepard.[7]
See also
References
- ↑ Russell, Donn. (1996). Avant Guardian: 1965–1990 – A Theater Foundation Director's 25 Years Off Broadway. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: Dorrance Publishing Co. OCLC 39192810.
- ↑ La MaMa Staff & Board. La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club.
- ↑ Talking Band Timeline. The Talking Band.
- ↑ Asplund, Anneli; Mettom, Sirkka-Liisa (October 2000). "Kalevala: The Finnish National Epic". Retrieved August 15, 2010.
- ↑ Talking Band Production List. The Talking Band.
- ↑ Midgette, Anne (January 24, 2006), "Theatre Review, Delicious Rivers: A Post Office With Attitude", The New York Times
- ↑ "24". Obie Awards. Retrieved 2026-08-01.
Further reading
- Avant-Guardian by Donn Russell. Dorrance Publishing Co. Inc 1996. Talking Band is on pp.313–321.
- The Taylor Mac Book: Ritual, Realness and Radical Performance ed. by David Román and Sean F. Edgecomb. Eessay by Paul Zimet, The Walk Across American for Mother Earth, pp. 206–218
- Let’s Just Do It! Patrick Denney, Culture Bot, April 27, 2026
- Gillespie, Benjamin. "The Long View: Talking Band Turns Fifty." ''PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art''. Vol. 46, no. 3, September 2024.
- London, Todd. "A Lover's Guide to American Playwrights: Ellen Maddow and Paul Zimet." ''HowlRound Commons'', May 16, 2024.
- Maddow, Ellen; Zimet, Paul; and Lizzie Olesker. "Room for Bigger Things." ''The Brooklyn Rail," March 2017.
- Rachel Kranz, The Brooklyn Rail, "Talking Band's Hot Lunch Apostles Serves Up Religion, Raunch, and Desperation," March 2012.
- Laura Collins-Hughes, the New York Times, “Whose Last Show is it Anyway,” Feb. 1, 2024.
- Laura Collins-Hughes, the New York Times, “The Experiment Must Go On: The Talking Band Prepares a 40th-Anniversary Production,” Jan. 15, 2015.