Enjoy this special stand alone episode with Anne Bogart. This is a recorded in-person conversation held in London with the Young Vic and SDCF in January 2025 that is now in podcast form. Anne discusses working in the theatre as a director including delving into her directing practices both as artist and teacher as well as her work through co-founding SITI Company. This conversation picks up after some introductions in the room and encapsulates the interview portion of the event.

Bio:

Anne Bogart is a theatre and opera director. She was the 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 and is the author of six books: “A Director Prepares,” “The Viewpoints Book,” “And Then, You Act,” “Conversations with Anne,” “What’s the Story” and, most recently, “The Art of Resonance.” She is the recipient of an Obie Lifetime Achievement Award, a Doris Duke Artist Grant, a USA Fellowship, a Rockefeller Fellowship, and a Guggenheim Fellowship as well as four Honorary Doctorate degrees, from Bard College, the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, Cornish School of the Arts and Skidmore Colleges.

Recent theater works include Existentialism (La Mama and Talking Band), Eastland (Trinity Theater, Dublin), The Beautiful Lady (La Mama), and Composition as Explanation (Court Theater, Chicago). With SITI, recent productions include A Christmas Carol, Falling and Loving, The Bacchae, The Theater is a Blank Page, Persians, Steel Hammer, A Rite, Café Variations, Trojan Women, American Document, Antigone, Freshwater Under Construction; Who Do You Think You Are; Radio Macbeth; Hotel Cassiopeia; Death and the Ploughman; La Dispute; Score; bobrauschenbergamerica; Room; War of the Worlds; Cabin Pressure; The Radio Play; Alice’s Adventures; Culture of Desire; Bob; Going, Going, Gone; Small Lives/Big Dreams; The Medium; Noel Coward’s Hay Fever and Private Lives; August Strindberg’s Miss Julie; and Charles Mee’s Orestes. Operas include Bartok’s Bluebeard’s Castle (Boston Lyric Opera), Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde(the National theater of Croatia), Ruder’s The Handmaid’s Tale (Boston Lyric Opera), Verdi’s Macbeth(Glimmerglass), Bellini’s Norma (Washington National Opera and Los Angeles Opera), I Capuleti e i Montecchi (Glimmerglass), Bizet’s Carmen (Glimmerglass), three operas by Deborah Drattell, Nicholas and Alexandra (Los Angeles Opera), Marina: A Captive Spirit (American Opera Projects), and Lilith (New York City Opera) and Brecht/Weill’s Seven Deadly Sins (New York City Opera).

We are excited to bring you this new episode in our podcast series, The Art of Collaboration with Anne Kauffman and dots. This series focuses on directors and choreographers in conversation with some of their collaborators. This series explores the ins and outs of these processes, both finer details as well as overarching ideas about what goes into a productive collaboration on a show. In this episode you will hear an in-depth and transparent conversation with Anne and Dotes focused on the collaboration between directors and designers as well as navigating the industry as a collective.

Bios:

dots (Scenic Designer) is a design collective creating environments for theater, film, commercials, and immersive experiences. Hailing from Colombia, South Africa, and Japan, we are Santiago Orjuela-Laverde, Andrew Moerdyk, and Kimie Nishikawa. As collaborators, we believe that the whole is greater than the sum of its individual parts. Recent highlights include the Broadway productions of Oh, Mary! ; Romeo + Juliet, An Enemy of the People (Tony Award Nomination for Best Scenic Design of a Play); Appropriate (Tony Award, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Award nominations for Outstanding Scenic Design); The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window; and The Big Gay Jamboree ; Recent awards include a 2024 Obie Award for Sustained Achievement in Design, 2023 and 2024 Henry Hewes Design Award, recipient of 2025 USA Fellowship Award . designbydots.com.

Anne Kauffman (Director)’s credits include the New York Philharmonic, BAM, Ars Nova, NYTW, Roundabout Theatre Company, Encores! Off-Center, Women’s Project, Playwrights Horizons, MCC, The Public, P73 Productions, New Georges, Vineyard Theatre, LCT3, Yale Rep, Steppenwolf, Goodman Theatre, La Jolla Playhouse, Z Space, American Conservatory Theater, and Berkeley Rep. She is a Resident Director at Roundabout Theatre, Artistic Associate and Founding Member of The Civilians, a Clubbed Thumb Affiliated Artist and co-creator of the CT Directing Fellowship, a New Georges Affiliated Artist, an SDC Executive Board Member, Vice President and Trustee of SDCF 2020-2023, and Artistic Director of City Center’s Encores! Off-Center 2017-2020. Her awards include a 2024 Tony nomination for Best Director for Mary Jane, a 2023 Tony nomination for Best Revival for The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window, three Obies, the Joan and Joseph Cullman Award for Exceptional Creativity from Lincoln Center, the Alan Schneider Director Award, a Lucille Lortel Award, a Drama League Award, and the Joe A. Callaway. She is co-creator of the Cast Album Project with Jeanine Tesori.

dots headshot by Kimie "Kimi-ye" Nishikawa

Anne Kauffman's headshot by Tess Mayer