The Talking Band
| Formation | 1974 |
|---|---|
| Type | Off-Off-Broadway theatre company |
| Purpose | Experimental theatre |
| Location |
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| Affiliations | Resident company of the La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club |
| Website | talkingband.org |
The Talking Band is an American Off-Off-Broadway theatre company specializing in experimental theatre, based in New York City, New York.
The group consists of a three-person core group of artists – artistic director Paul Zimet; actor, writer and composer Ellen Maddow; and actor and director Tina Shepard.
It is known for producing original works of theater that combine music, language, and choreographed movement in unconventional ways to create unique audience perspective on a wide range of subject material. Since its founding, the group has produced 46 original plays, and has performed its plays at theater venues around New York City and throughout the world.
The group was founded in 1974 by Maddow and Shepard and Zimet, along with Sybille Hayn, Mark Samuels, Margo Lee Sherman, Charles Stanley and Arthur Strimling. It has its roots in the work of The Open Theatre, where company members Maddow and Shepard and Zimet worked as core company members. The Open Theatre had been founded by director, actor and writer Joseph Chaikin, and after Chaikin disbanded The Open Theatre in 1973, Maddow, Shepard and Zimet joined with the other Talking Band founding members to start the new company. Along with starting The Talking Band, Zimet, Maddow and Shepard continued to perform with Chaikin as part of his new company The Winter Project.
Its first production, The Kalevala – based on the Kalevala, a 19th-century work of epic poetry compiled by Elias Lönnrot from Finnish and Karelian oral folklore and Finnish mythology – featured music by Elizabeth Swados, and used minimal staging. The piece centered on the use of actor voices and the rhythms and melodies of the language. It received critical praise from The Village Voice, which said, "it is as if the almost formal sense of using the breath opens the performers to the depths of an innerness that is sometimes like Alice in its sense of wonder and sometimes like Dante in its terribleness".
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