Theater News

Frances McDormand and Kate Valk to Host Online Wooster Group Discussion Series

”Fran & Kate’s Drama Club” will premiere later this month.

Frances McDormand in the 2010 Wooster Group production of North Atlantic
Frances McDormand in the 2010 Wooster Group production of North Atlantic
(© Paula Court)

Frances McDormand and Kate Valk will launch the new Zoom series Fran & Kate's Drama Club, which will explore the past, present, and future of the storied Wooster Group.

Fran & Kate's Drama Club is the brainchild of two-time Oscar winner McDormand and created as a way to support the Performing Garage, which has been the Wooster Group's home since its founding in 1975. All proceeds will go toward maintaining the space and making it Covid compliant for when live performances return.

The first edition, airing live on January 28 at 8pm ET, will include a conversation between McDormand and Wooster Group founding member/leading performer Valk, as well as a screening of Juliet Lashinsky's The Archivist, a series of short films that mine the company's archives, told through the imagination of Wooster Group archivist Clay Hapaz.

The Wooster Group is also at work on a series of new productions, developed through Covid compliant in-person rehearsals that have taken place since August 2020. Those productions include Brecht's The Mother, which is still currently scheduled to premiere at the Vienna Festival this June; a followup to Eric Berryman's The B-Side; as well as an audio production of Daniel Paul Schreber's Memoirs of My Nervous Illness, which will feature McDormand, Maura Tierney, and Ari Fliakos. The company will also stream its archival films of past productions The Town Hall Affair and Since I Can Remember.

Click here for more information and tickets.