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Ohorganism: The Lost Years

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 December 2021

Extract

People become myths overnight these days. It is worth looking at the elements of myth and truth in the matter of Tom O'Horgan, not just to save a soul or two, but because the truth in this case is much more interesting. O'Horgan, newly discovered if not newly made director of Hair, Futz, and Tom Paine, and (with England's Brook and Poland's Grotowski) a director who has got something there. But while Brook seems stuck (at least momentarily) in mannerisms and overused-effects, and Grotowski is busy turning theatre into a perpetual wailing wall, O'Horgan manages to make theatre a consistently colorful and often unabashedly joyful experience, with a vitality that even when spurious (which happens), is as catching as the common cold. He is unique, not in method or message, but in his uses of methods and messages: Ohorganism seems the only apt term for what he is doing and being, as none of the common labels quite covers the phenomenon.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © 1969 The Drama Review

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