In the following interview, JoAnne Akalaitis discusses her experiences as an actress and director with the Mabou Mines company; her artistic encounters with Beckett, Brecht, and Genet; her thoughts about the relationship between art and politics; and her belief in the connection between the physical and the emotional in performance. Deborah Saivetz is a director and performer who teaches in the Department of Visual and Performing Arts at the Newark Campus of Rutgers University, New Jersey. She assisted JoAnne Akalaitis on her production of John Ford's Jacobean tragedy Tis Pity She's aWhore at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago, and performed in Akalaitis's workshop production of The Mormon Project at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in New Smyrna Beach, Florida. She had several opportunities to talk at length with Akalaitis during the months that they worked together.