Theatre: The Wooster Group Presents ‘Early Shaker Spirituals’

THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Michael Paulson

Crew and cast members of “Early Shaker Spirituals”

NEW YORK---For three decades, the album sat on a shelf. Over the years, Ms. LeCompte, a founding member of the Wooster Group, an avant-garde theater collective, would occasionally listen to the album, “Early Shaker Spirituals,” for reasons she can’t quite explain, other than that she liked it. Now the Wooster Group is taking the album out for a serious spin....— is staging “Early Shaker Spirituals.” “This is not historical or religious or anthropological,” she added. “But there’s a love for the aesthetic and the dedication to the spiritual aspect of work, which is something that we find in our own house here. I love imagining that we sing these songs and make up these simple dances as an expression of what we do. It lifts my life up in the theater.” [link]