2024 Gail Appel Lecture: Anne Bogart

About the speaker 

Anne Bogart is a theatre and opera director and former co-artistic director of SITI Company, which she founded with Japanese director Tadashi Suzuki in 1992. She is a professor at Columbia University, where she runs the Graduate Directing Program. Recent productions include Existentialism; Eastland; Composition as Explanation; and Beautiful Lady. Later works with SITI include Radio Christmas Carol, Falling & Loving; The Bacchae, Chess Match No. 5; Lost in the Stars; The Theatre is a Blank Page; Persians; Steel Hammer; A Rite; Café Variations; Trojan Women (After Euripides); and American Document. Recent operas include Bartok’s Bluebeard’s Castle, Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde, Ruders’ The Handmaid’s Tale, Handel’s Alcina, Dvorak’s Dimitrij, Verdi’s Macbeth, Bellini’s Norma, and Bizet’s Carmen. She is the recipient of the Gordon Davidson Award for Lifetime Achievement; a Lenfest Distinguished Faculty Award; an Obie Lifetime Achievement Award; a Guggenheim Fellowship; and four honorary doctorates, among many other awards. She is the author of six books: A Director Prepares; The Viewpoints Book; And Then, You Act; Conversations with Anne; What’s the Story; and The Art of Resonance.  

About this event 

What Are We Doing? 

By Anne Bogart 

What distinguishes the theatre from all other art forms is that the subject matter of the theatre is always social systems. Each play asks: How are we getting along within the context of our families and within our communities?  How are we getting along as a society? How might we get along better? Even, within the theatre itself, both during a rehearsal as well as during a performance, the question arises: How are we engaging with one another in this very room?  

A society is a group that thinks things through together. That feels together. We are currently experiencing significant social, cultural and political changes within our communities, in the workplace, as well as on a global scale. How do we in the theatre adjust to these paradigmatic changes?  

Gail Appel Lecture Series 

The Gail Appel Lecture Series in Literature and Fine Arts was established in 2002 to highlight literature and the fine arts on campus and expose University of Saskatchewan students, faculty and the broader community to some of the world’s most distinguished and influential artists. This lecture series is made possible thanks to a generous donation by Gail Appel (BA’66) and her husband, Mark. 

Info: [email protected]  

Host or Publisher College of Arts and Science, University of Saskatchewan