His Head was a Sledgehammer

The term “iconoclast” gets thrown around all too much, but in the case of Richard Foreman (1937-2025) there is hardly a more appropriate synonym to describe him. An unparalleled writer and director who ranks among the premier theater artists of the twentieth century, Foreman was also a local legend whose electrifying work greatly shaped the artistic landscape of downtown New York. The founder and director of the Ontological-Hysteric Theater company, Foreman staged eighty-plus astounding plays in a career that spanned over forty-five years, and most of them were presented here in the neighborhood. Foreman’s brazen avant-garde aesthetic was deeply rooted in his early involvement with Jonas Mekas and the 1960s underground film movement. His very first play, Angelface, was performed in 1968 at Mekas’s Film-Makers’ Cinematheque, one of the organizations that preceded Anthology.

This retrospective both memorializes Foreman, who passed away in January, and celebrates the publication of No Title, his posthumous new book just published by The Further Reading Library. Organized in roughly chronological order, the series includes Foreman’s own films and videos alongside an array of performance documentation, documentaries, and portraits. Foreman retired from the theater in 2013 to focus on filmmaking, and the series includes his final digital videos, many of which have never been publicly screened. In addition to this sweeping survey, we are presenting a sidebar program featuring a handful of Foreman’s most cherished films. Some are the movies that inspired him early on, and others are works that he talked about on a regular basis.

[Unfortunately, we are unable to include Foreman’s 35mm feature film STRONG MEDICINE (1981) in the series as all the known prints are unavailable at the moment due to a future preservation project.]

SCREENING SCHEDULE

RICHARD FOREMAN, PGM 1: THE EARLY PLAYS
May 21 at 7:00 PM

RICHARD FOREMAN, PGM 2: SOPHIA: THE CLIFFS
May 22 at 7:00 PM

RICHARD FOREMAN, PGM 3: PAIN(T) AND VERTICAL MOBILITY
May 23 at 7:00 PM

RICHARD FOREMAN, PGM 4: TWO REDISCOVERIES
May 24 at 6:00 PM

RICHARD FOREMAN, PGM 5: SHORT FILM AND VIDEO WORKS OF THE 1970s
May 24 at 8:30 PM

RICHARD FOREMAN, PGM 6: SHORT FILMS AND VIDEOS OF THE 1980s
May 25 at 6:00 PM

RICHARD FOREMAN, PGM 7: ONCE EVERY DAY
May 25 at 8:00 PM

RICHARD FOREMAN, PGM 8: NOW YOU SEE IT NOW YOU DON’T
May 26 at 6:45 PM

RICHARD FOREMAN, PGM 9: MAD LOVE
May 26 at 8:45 PM

RICHARD FOREMAN, PGM 10: LATE DIGITAL WORKS
May 27 at 6:30 PM

RICHARD FOREMAN, PGM 11: ASTRONOME
May 27 at 8:30 PM

RICHARD FOREMAN, PGM 12: MY NAME IS RAINER THOMPSON AND I’VE LOST IT COMPLETELY
May 28 at 6:30 PM

RICHARD FOREMAN, PGM 13: MARIE LOSIER + SHAUN IRONS/LAUREN PETTY
May 28 at 8:45 PM

IMAGE CREDITS

Event Image – Thomas Jay Ryan, Jan Leslie Harding, Henry Stram, in Richard Foreman’s “My Head was a Sledgehammer” Photo copyright by Paula Court / Courtesy of NYU and Richard Foreman

Artist Image – Richard Foreman, 2009 By Dave Pape.