Historical Note
Mabou Mines is a collaborative, avant-garde theater company based in New York City. Founded in 1970, the company took its name from an old mining town in northern Nova Scotia, near where founding members JoAnne Akalaitis, Lee Breuer, Philip Glass, Ruth Maleczech, and David Warrilow, developed The Red Horse Animation, the group's first original performance piece. Since then Mabou Mines has produced scores of plays, collaborated with well-known writers, musicians, visual artists, and filmmakers, garnered heaps of critical praise and awards, and performed around the globe, cementing its reputation as an innovative force in the theater world. The company's official website is maboumines.org.
Lee Breuer and Ruth Maleczech met studying theater at UCLA in the late 1950s. Around 1960, the couple hitchhiked to San Francisco to participate in the city's active theater scene. Working at the San Francisco Actor's Workshop and the San Francisco Mime Troupe they met Bill Raymond, and at the San Francisco Tape Music Center they met JoAnne Akalaitis. In 1964 Akalaitis moved to New York City but left for Paris soon after with composer (and future husband) Philip Glass. The following year Breuer and Maleczech left San Francisco for Europe. The two couples met up while traveling in Greece, went back to Paris, and with actor David Warrilow, began to work on staging Samuel Beckett's Play. It premiered at the American Cultural Center in 1967. It was also in Paris that the group first met actor Frederick Neumann. In 1969, back in New York with Glass, Akalaitis wrote the others in Paris suggesting they form a theater group in New York.
"Mabou Mines came together as a group to create formal works that would explore language and acting. They had a strong desire to collectively exercise complete artistic control over the work."1 Influenced especially by Jerzy Grotowski's teaching and Beckett's work, Mabou Mines went on to produce experimental theater pieces like Breuer's Red Horse Animationpieces that resulted from intense collaboration and improvisation, and incorporated elements of visual art, dance, mime, puppetry, and music. Arc Welding Piece (1972), for example, featured an artist using an arc welder to make cuts in a large piece of metal, while actors expressed various states of emotion, their faces enlarged by magnifying lenses. In 1974, Fred Neumann joined the group to work on Breuer's second "Animation," The B. Beaver Animation. Bill Raymond joined shortly thereafter.
In its early years, Mabou Mines moved easily between the art world and the theater, often performing in galleries as well as stages. But its work with Beckett's writing firmly situated the group within a theatrical context. "Mabou Mines has produced eight pieces by Samuel Beckett [Cascando, Come and Go, Company, Imagination Dead Imagine, The Lost Ones, Mercier and Camier, Play, Worstward Ho], six of which have been world premieres of texts not originally written for the theatre. These productions have led to Mabou Mines being considered one of the foremost interpreters of Beckett's work."2 After an early residency at La Mama Experimental Theatre Club in New York, the company began performing at Joseph Papp's New York Shakespeare Festival Public Theater, and other venues in New York and elsewhere.
From the beginning, creative roles were fluid and collaboration was key, but Lee Breuer served as the company's primary director. In 1975 however, Akalaitis directed Cascando and opened the door for other members to take on new roles, for the company to expand, and for multiple projects to come together simultaneously. Akalaitis went on to direct Dressed Like an Egg (1977) and Southern Exposure (1979), and wrote and directed Dead End Kids (1980); Neumann directed Mercier and Camier (1979); Maleczech directed Vanishing Pictures (1980). Other performers worked with Mabou Mines, including L.B. Dallas, Linda Hartinian, Ellen McElduff, Greg Mehrten, Terry O'Reilly, and B-St. John Schofield.
The company steadily expanded its repertoire and continued its tradition of collaboration, working with talented performers and artists, including composers Bob Telson, John Zorn, Pauline Oliveros, and David Byrne. Mabou Mines has adapted works by Shakespeare (Lear, 1990), Franz Xaver Kroetz (Through the Leaves, 1984; Help Wanted, 1986), Philip K. Dick (Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said, 1985), and Bertolt Brecht (In the Jungle of Cities, 1991). The company has toured extensively in the United States and abroad.
Mabou Mines has remained committed to its ideal of complete artistic control. "All decisions, artistic and administrative, large and small, are made by the company members, and each member functions variously as producer, designer, actor, writer, or director for the other. Additionally all participate as members of the Board of Directors."3
As the company stated in a 1990 press kit, "The artistic purpose of Mabou Mines has been and remains the creation of new theatre pieces from original texts and the theatrical use of existing texts staged from a specific point of view. Each member is encouraged to pursue his or her artistic vision by initiating and collaborating on a wide range of projects of varying styles, developing them from initial concept to final performance. This process is intense and often lengthy. While the director of a Mabou Mines work is responsible for its concept and its basic structure, the ultimate production reflects the concerns and the artistic input of all its collaborators."4
References:
1. Unknown author, unpublished manuscript. A history of Mabou Mines through 1989.
2. Mabou Mines, company history included in press kit, 1990.
3. Mabou Mines website, maboumines.org.
4. Mabou Mines, company history included in press kit, 1990.
Chronology of Productions:
| 1970 | The Red Horse Animation |
| 1971 | Come and Go |
| Play | |
| 1972 | Arc Welding |
| Music for Voices | |
| 1973 | Send/Receive/Send |
| 1974 | Mabou Mines Performs Samuel Beckett |
| 1975 | Cascando |
| The B. Beaver Animation | |
| 1976 | The Saint and the Football Player |
| 1977 | Dressed Like An Egg |
| 1978 | Shaggy Dog Animation |
| 1979 | Mercier and Camier |
| Southern Exposure | |
| 1980 | A Prelude to a Death in Venice |
| Dead End Kids | |
| Easy Daisy (for radio) | |
| Sister Suzie Cinema | |
| Vanishing Pictures | |
| 1981 | Wrong Guys |
| 1982 | The Keeper Radio Series |
| 1983 | Cold Harbor |
| Company | |
| Hajj | |
| The Joey Schmerda Story (for radio) | |
| The Josy Schmerda | |
| 1984 | Imagination Dead Imagine |
| Pretty Boy | |
| Through the Leaves | |
| 1985 | Flow My Tears the Policeman Said |
| It's A Man's World | |
| Starcock | |
| The Interview Series (for radio) | |
| 1986 | CEO |
| Dead End Kids (Film Version) | |
| Help Wanted | |
| The Kafka Parables (for radio) | |
| Worstward Ho | |
| 1987 | Sueños |
| 1988 | The Gospel at Colonus |
| 1990 | B. Beaver Animation (reconstruction) |
| Mabou Mines Lear | |
| The Miller Series (for radio) | |
| 1991 | In the Jungle of Cities |
| The Quantum | |
| 1992 | The MahabharANTa, and Selected Stories from the Insectiad |
| 1993 | The Bribe |
| 1994 | Mother |
| Reel To Real | |
| 1995 | An Epidog |
| 1996 | Peter and Wendy |
| Pootanah Moksha | |
| Red Horse Animation (reconstruction) | |
| 1997 | Happy Days |
| 1999 | Belén-A Book of Hours |
| 2000 | Animal Magnetism |
| 2001 | Ecco Porco |
| 2003 | Cara Lucia |
| Mabou Mines DollHouse | |
| 2005 | Red Beads |
| Summa Dramatica | |
| 2007 | Song For New York: What Women Do While Men Sit Knitting |
Scope and Content Note
The Mabou Mines Archive contains an extremely diverse array of materials that comprehensively document the first 25 years of Mabou Mines, the New York City-based avant-garde theater company. The collection includes materials that document the innovative methods used by Mabou Mines to create unique theatrical adaptations from existing, often classical texts. Mabou Mines' adaptations conceive of the original work from new and re-imagined points of view. Collaboration is another key element of Mabou Mines' artistic vision. All decisions, artistic and administrative, large and small, are made by the company members, and each member functions variously as producer, designer, actor, writer, or director. Additionally, all participate as members of the Board of Directors. Materials in the archive reflect this intensely collaborative environment.
The collection contains a wealth of production materials which document all aspects of the theatrical production experience. It also includes invaluable administrative records that reflect how the organization sustained, promoted, and financially supported its mission. Also included are scripts, programs, photographic documentation, production books and touring files, and extensive video documentation of most productions. As one of the leading interpreters of the literary works of Samuel Beckett, the collection also contains correspondence between Beckett and Ruth Maleczech and Lee Breuer.
Known for their innovative incorporation of technology in theatrical productions, the Mabou Mines Archive contains extensive film, video, and audio production elements and supporting documentation.
The collection will be of interest to researchers working in the areas of avant-garde performance, performance art, experimental theatre, New York theater history and artistic collaborations. The collection will also be of interest to those examining the contemporary intersection between experimental theater, mime, music, poetry and the visual arts.
Numerous oversize items found at the end of each of the series include design plots, posters, oversize printed matter and other promotional materials housed in boxes and map cases.
Following is a list of the series which have been processed to date:
SERIES I: Correspondence
Subseries A: Correspondence with Individuals
Subseries B: Correspondence about Specific Productions
SERIES II: Programs
Subseries A: Mabou Mines productions
Subseries B: Related productions
SERIES III: Production Files
Subseries A: Mabou Mines productions
Subseries B: Mabou Mines artist-in-residence productions
Subseries C: Related productions
SERIES IV: Photographs
Subseries A: Mabou Mines productions
Subseries B: Company and miscellaneous photographs
SERIES V: Slides
Subseries A: Documentary Slides
Subseries B: Production Elements
SERIES VI: Scripts
SERIES VII: Production Books
SERIES VIII: Touring Files
SERIES IX: Video Recordings
Subseries A: Video Recordings - Access Copies
Subseries B: Video Recordings - Originals
SERIES X: Press
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Related Material at Fales Library and Special Collections
The Judson Memorial Church Archive, 1838-1995
Wendy Perron's "Concepts in Performance," In The Soho Weekly News, 1976-1978
The Mark Hall Amitin and World of Culture for the Performing Arts, Inc. Archive
The Richard Foreman Papers
Separated Material
One copy of the comic book adaptation of Red Horse Animation was removed and catalogued individually in the Fales Library's Downtown Print and Periodicals Collection. This item has been cataloged in Bobcat, NYU's online catalog.
Return to topRestrictions
Access Restrictions
Open to researchers without restrictions. Appointments are necessary to consult archive and manuscript materials.
Use Restrictions
Collection use is subject to all copyright laws. Permission to publish materials must be obtained in writing from the Director of Fales Library and Special Collections. For more information, contact
Fales Library and Special Collections
Elmer Holmes Bobst Library
70 Washington Square South
New York, NY 10012
Phone: (212) 998-2596
Fax: (212) 995-3835
Email: fales.library@nyu.edu
URL: http://www.nyu.edu/library/bobst/research/fales/cdfa.htm
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Administrative Information
Provenance
The Mabou Mines Archive, was purchased from the company in 2003, and transferred to the Fales Library.
Preferred Citation
Published citations should take the following form:
Identification of item, date (if known); Mabou Mines Archive; MSS 133; box number; folder number; Fales Library and Special Collections, New York University.
Container List
[The following section contains a detailed listing of the materials in the collection.]