Nature Theater of Oklahoma talks with performance artist/theater maker Daniel Alexander Jones, and also with his alter-ego, the uber-glamorous “soulsonic superstar” - Jomama Jones. A conversation that touches on character, imagination, creativity, realness, possibility, and growth - in all its marvelous and weedy aspects - and the everyday work we do to tend that garden.

Nature Theater of Oklahoma talks with Natalia Koliada of the Belarus Free Theatre about the challenges of making art in a police state where people are regularly kidnapped, killed and tortured. We’ve blabbed a lot in this podcast about the difficulties of making theater even working in the best possible circumstances – so how does this ambitious company company manage to keep itself going in the face of real physical threat and displacement? (The leadership of the company, including Natalia, are currently in London living in exile, while the majority of their actors and collaborators remain in Belarus). How does it work when rehearsals are conducted over skype and performances are streamed live via internet from London for audiences in Belarus? Can we learn anything from their resourcefulness and perseverance? (Yes.)

Nature Theater of Oklahoma talks again with the venerable comedian, musician, magpie - Reggie Watts.  A conversation about self-image, self-care, imitation and actualization.  How does an artist become an original, and what does that even mean?  How can we build into this idea of “image” the potential and even mandate to change and grow into the future? And how can we safeguard for ourselves the joy we have in making the work?  

Nature Theater of Oklahoma talks with Joeri Smet, Karolien De Bleser, and Angelo Tijssens of the Ghent-based company, Ontroerend Goed in our first ever podcast recorded in front of a live audience in Vooruit.  Join us as we consider whether or not the audience changes anything about the way we work.  When we work in front of an audience do we always somehow want it to go well?  Would it be better if we in fact created a little less community and a little more unrest? Or should we just shut up already and watch some football? (This podcast was recorded as part of the Possible Futures Festival for Vooruit in Ghent.)

Nature Theater of Oklahoma talks with writer, professor and researcher in cultural anthropology, Rik Pinxten of the University of Ghent, about such wide-ranging topics as creativity, animals, intuition, art, religion, science, culture, language, mathematics and finally our potential (and Rik feels there is a potential) to still change the world we live in. (This podcast was recorded as part of the Possible Futures Festival for Vooruit in Ghent.)

Nature Theater of Oklahoma talks with Eva Verity and Hazel Venzon of the Canadian company Mammalian Diving Reflex – all about “art” as a category of human activity. Both of our companies make work which falls under this dubious moniker “art,” but the activity may be in each case very different in scope, location, participants, and intent.  So, what makes “art” – well – “art”? Or is this all-inclusive category even meaningful?  Is it something (much like Pavol’s moustache) that we should at last just stop touching and leave well enough alone? (This podcast was recorded as part of the Possible Futures Festival for Vooruit in Ghent.)

Nature Theater of Oklahoma talks with researcher and activist Barbara Van Dyck, who has been in the news recently in Belgium for her activity against a field of experimental genetically modified potatoes. From Barbara we learned a lot in just one short hour about the scientific concerns surrounding genetic modification of agriculture – and also enjoyed some hot discussion with her about art, activism, progress, the future and “the social good”. (This podcast was recorded as part of the Possible Futures Festival for Vooruit in Ghent.)

Nature Theater of Oklahoma talks with American dancer/choreographer/artist Andros Zins-Browne about his journey from the world of classical ballet through Chris Burden and Jackass, into modern dance and out again into his current work: Welcome to the Jungle. Join us for a conversation in which we reflect on more than a few personal experiences of reinvention, investigation, discovery, and evolution. (This podcast was recorded as part of the Possible Futures Festival for Vooruit in Ghent.)

Nature Theater of Oklahoma talks with Belgian artist Sarah Vanhee about her recent project Lecture for Everyone for which she is invited by various groups to speak (always unannounced) in a location where an audience is already gathered for an entirely different situation or event. What does it mean to come into a public situation as an outsider or stranger? Who is the guest and who is the host in such a performance – in any performance? And just what do we invite when we intervene? (This podcast was recorded as part of the Possible Futures Festival for Vooruit in Ghent.)

Nature Theater of Oklahoma talks with Barbara Raes, artistic director of Vooruit in Ghent.  Vooruit, originally the festival center of the Ghent labor movement, and a symbol of the socialist movement, is today a busy arts center and hub of cultural innovation.  The name “vooruit” translates in English to “forward, ” but are we capable curators of our own idealism?  Why does today’s passion for radical change always seem to become tomorrow’s collective burnout?  Should we strategize more and hope less? Is there such a thing as sustainable revolution? (This podcast was recorded as part of the Possible Futures Festival for Vooruit in Ghent.)

Nature Theater of Oklahoma talks with artists Halory Goerger and Antoine Defoort from the company L’Amicale de Production about finding a productive balance between collaboration and antagonism, both when we make work together as a duo or a team, and also in regard to our relationship with the audience, with whom we also work and work against in various ways.  Are there any rules to live by? Are we fundamentalists? What’s a Bible humper? And more importantly – when are these guys coming to perform in New York? (This podcast was recorded as part of the Possible Futures festival for Vooruit in Ghent.)

Nature Theater of Oklahoma talks with playwright Jeffrey M. Jones (aka Jeff Jones) about death, politics and money. A podcast in which we dare to ask the question: who IS the President of the United States?  And what does the answer potentially imply about my mental competence? (Plus – added bonus! – we all imagine a future television series we would make based on life in the New York theater – something along the lines of Dallas, but with far less cash and fewer horses.)

Nature Theater of Oklahoma talks to Philip Bither, Senior Curator of Performing Arts at Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, about ego, humility, and identity.  Is it an arrogant act to program work (or make work) that you may personally feel is important -- for an audience who may not want that kind of challenge?  What is the grass roots work a good curator has to do to find and foster public interest (as populist as we can make it) in these so-called “difficult” works?

Nature Theater of Oklahoma talks with artist/choreographers Heine Avdal and Yukiko Shinozaki about performances in and out of the theater space.  Yukiko and Heine have made performances in their hotel room, in rented offices, shopping centers; Nature Theater has also worked inside and outside the traditional theater building - but why do we do it?  What uncomfortable questions does off-site work provoke about audience and our interaction and relationship with them?   

Nature Theater of Oklahoma talks with Lebanese visual and performing artist Rabih Mroué - about so many things! - but mainly about difference and similarity, self and community, solo and group, inside and outside, original and imitation.  Though we both make performance and theater, we come from very different backgrounds and environments, and even different working situations.  What are the influences that make us who and what we are and what we make?  And what has been his particular experience growing up and making art in Beirut?

Nature Theater of Oklahoma talks with Sean Patten & Bastian Trost of the Berlin-based group Gob Squad about the social relations, work ethics - and just plain ethics - of collective art-making.  How do we negotiate making group work and – quite frankly - DOES the group work?  How do we come together and how do we stay together and most importantly – how do we keep this very economically precarious idea of group work going?

Nature Theater of Oklahoma talks with painter, sculptor, performing artist and German enfant terrible Jonathan Meese – all about art and ideology, insider and outsider, and risk and responsibility.  Do artists need to remain playful, irresponsible, provocative – even untrustworthy– to make our best work?  How does one reconcile one's desire to please one's mother with a desire to make art that includes simulating oral sex on an extraterrestrial?  Some time well spent with one of our most inspiring guests ever.

Nature Theater of Oklahoma talks today with the extremely inspirational artist – and comedian – and musician – Reggie Watts.  All about stuff and nonsense, conscious and unconscious, perception, and improvisation – not just in performance but as philosophy, as a way of living and being in the world.

Nature Theater of Oklahoma talks with Oskar Eustis, director of The Public Theater in New York City about leadership, ethics, and idealism.  How does Oskar navigate the economic disparity he encounters every day – running an arts institution that has to both market itself to wealthy backers and nurture an often very impoverished community of working artists?  What are the possibilities he sees in the future toward making a better, more sustainable working environment – and ultimately better art – in the American theater?

Nature Theater of Oklahoma talks with writer Lucy Alibar (whose film Beasts of the Southern Wild was just nominated for four Academy Awards), about how she straddles the worlds of both stage and film.  Also, how has it been to negotiate that success with its looming opposite: failure?  When you have a big move forward in your artistic career, how do you manage the fear that sometimes follows, and the pressure to make another immediate hit?  (All this and more about story, land, race, history, religion, and the future.)

Nature Theater of Oklahoma talks with Lenore Manderson, writer, researcher and medical anthropologist at Monash University in Australia about our mutual fascination with the human body.  Join us as we discuss the body in practice and in performance, as signifier of vulnerability, power, visibility, ability, disability – and difference.

Nature Theater of Oklahoma talks with Australian arts advocate, festival director, and world-renowned singer and performance artist Robyn Archer about building a life for herself in the theater – what about the resistance she’s faced along the way?  How do we continually track that resistance and disturbance in our lives and work (and curatorial choices) in order to avoid complacency?

Nature Theater of Oklahoma talks with Erica Meyer, an Episcopal priest at the Church of the Good Shepherd in New York City about how she came to her calling as a religious leader.  How does she lead a community of people toward wholeness and sanctification?  Where does her belief come from and what does she do with her own doubt and grief?  What does any of this have to do with theater, you might ask?  (Really, go ahead and ask!)

Nature Theater of Oklahoma talks with artists Christer Lundhal & Martina Seitl about shared practice and crossed disciplines.  How do we open up new possibilities in perception, and create room for ambiguity and playful slippage in roles, in context, and in life.  Do we have to go all the way to the moon – or Mars even – just to get a change in perspective?

Nature Theater of Oklahoma talks with Swedish choreographer and filmmaker Gunilla Heilborn about levels of commitment.  Do we always need to push it 200%?  What about we just try 80% and call it a day?  Join us as we examine our minimalist and maximalist tendencies and trace the influence of these habits and preferences on our work.

Nature Theater of Oklahoma talks with Swedish playwright and director Mattias Andersson of Backa Teater in Göteborg about local and global art.  What does it mean to have a theater and to make work in the city where you grew up, to be in dialogue with a city of intimates?  How do we make the personal public – or is it vice versa?

Nature Theater of Oklahoma talks with writer, editor, and theater thinker Tom Sellar about surrender and control – physical, mental, and structural.  Join us as we clear the air – talking about artists and critics, and the whole interdependency and strangeness around that relationship.   We rely on critics to write about the work, but what do we care about really?  Do we want intelligent writing or just positive gush?  Do critics appreciate that they are just seeing one performance and it all may be going horribly wrong?  All this and even more thoughts about social practice, multi-media, durational performance, art brut, and political theater. 

Nature Theater of Oklahoma talks with theater-maker Aaron Landsman about our mutual time together growing up in NY theater in the 1990s.  We examine how and why we are still here – still doing this.  Join us as we talk with Aaron, too, about his new work, City Council Meeting, and probe the intersection of faith, life, art and committed “social practice".

Nature Theater of Oklahoma talks again with New York avant-garde legend Richard Foreman about sardines, and (reluctantly) also about theater.  We discuss his new play, Old-Fashioned Prostitutes, which opens next week at The Public Theater, and also his critically-acclaimed film Once Every Day, which was recently screened at the Berlin Film Festival and at Anthology Film Archives in New York.

Nature Theater of Oklahoma talks with David Garland, composer and creator of the music program Spinning on Air on WNYC in New York City – about host and guest, yin and yang, creative and receptive, intent and effect.  David also plays two of his own musical compositions, made with some very unconventional instruments, live for us in the closet.

Nature Theater of Oklahoma looks backward (and forward!) in theater time with curator Mark Russell of Under the Radar Festival in New York City.  Join us as we chat with Mark about his early years in the Austin, TX music scene, his tenure at PS122, the invention of UTR, and hopes and fears about his upcoming move to Lausanne, Switzerland.  Together we talk about drilling down, burning out, and branching out, and still somehow keeping one foot in the city we all love.

Nature Theater of Oklahoma talks again with choreographer/dancer/artist Mårten Spångberg about conning, cunning, consciousness, unconsciousness and – hey, by the way, are we just maybe making religious art?  What?  Political art?  What do we stand for?  What is an example of an idea that would be bad enough to scare us?  A conversation that ranges all over the place, even to Swedish motorbikes, chakra breathing, Baader Meinhof, Chinese mafia, ending in love and anger in the year 2013.  Hang in there.

Nature Theater of Oklahoma goes off the leash with the devilishly gifted and multi-talented performer/dancer/composer Mike Iveson, Jr.  Join us as we talk about about pride, prejudice and process.  Are we ever ONLY devised, dictatorial, collaborative, impulsive?  Top down authoritative or totally egalitarian?  Should we finally accept that process is a messy thing – resistant to even our best laid plans?  (All this plus much more about insects, sea walnuts, spiritual visitation, psychics, and alien possession.)

Nature Theater of Oklahoma goes deep with artist Xaviera Simmons, talking about infection, inspiration, difference, and indifference – race and (like - ohmigod!) audience.  What were we thinking?  Is anger, aggression and dissatisfaction a prod to artistic enterprise? or a burden we should leave behind?

Nature Theater of Oklahoma talks to choreographer/dancer/artist Mårten Spångberg.  A far-fetched discourse on corruption, bullshit, undermining, alchemy, pain-in-the-ass, architecture - and so much more!  Including also rodents, moles, foxes, dragons, aliens, monsters and other totem species of the artistic animal underground.

Nature Theater of Oklahoma talks to NPR correspondent Robert Smith about radio, reporting, and storytelling.  What happens when we put extreme constraints of time on narrative – as in durational theater and art projects (such as Chris Marclay’s The Clock and our current project, Life and Times) – and in public radio which is typically built in short 3-6 minute story segments?  We also examine the ways in which live performance and radio are both shaped (respectively) by the physical presence and absence of their audience.

Nature Theater of Oklahoma talks to actor Scott Shepherd of ERS and the Wooster Group about strictures, exposures – and helicopters!  We also ponder the intangible and ineffable in theater and the surprising and inevitable consequences of vitamins, nutrition, and bad shellfish on acting

Nature Theater of Oklahoma talks to playwright and performer Sibyl Kempson about adjustments we have to make when real life gets more dramatic than theater.  How do we weigh life and death against the old showbiz notion of “the show must go on”?  Also, enjoy as we share a few choice words about ambient theater, New Jersey theater, theater for dogs, cats, cavemen and aliens - among others. (We also try podcasting with our eyes closed to see what we look like inside ourselves.)

Nature Theater of Oklahoma talks to Adina Tal, director and founder of Nalaga’at Center in Tel Aviv about her work with a diverse company of deaf-blind actors (Muslims, Jews and Samaritans working together) in Israel.  How can you direct someone who can neither see nor hear you - and who can neither see nor hear his audience or his fellow actors on stage?  What kind of deeper questions does this work raise about perception and understanding?

Nature Theater of Oklahoma talks to theatre artist/dream-maker Joris Lacoste about his work with found audio in performance, and the issues it raises about originality, reproduction, truth and faithfulness.  We also talk about his recent work involving hypnosis.

Nature Theater of Oklahoma talks to Annemie Vanackere, the new director of the Hebbel am Ufer in Berlin, about the relative merits and certain pitfalls of too much leadership.  Also too much dependency.  How can artists develop and maintain a share of agency in the work, as well as a healthy balance of power in our relationships with grantors, curators, and producers?  

Nature Theater of Oklahoma talks to playwright/director Tina Satter of the New York company Half Straddle about sports, rigor, training, discipline and commitment.  Also up for consideration: should experimental theater be looking more ambitiously at stadiums and mass audience?  Do revolutions really happen in small rooms?

Nature Theater of Oklahoma talks to Bruce Gladwin, director of Back to Back Theatre, based in Geelong, Australia, about ability, disability, inability, responsibility – obstacles – and audience.  (And also, while we’re at it – let’s talk about being “special” and the many pitfalls of that label.)

Nature Theater of Oklahoma talks to writer, composer and performer Cynthia Hopkins about her trip to the Arctic Circle and what she discovered there – also about meditation, crisis, climate change, the future, the primordial past, artistic genius, ecstatic experience, the unseen world, the divine, prayer – and the cosmos.  And Cynthia sings to us a few songs in the closet, too.  

Nature Theater of Oklahoma talks to designer, director and performer Jim Findlay about his work both within and without Collapsable Giraffe.  Join us as we delve into the deep love and attachment (and nostalgia) we feel for feral work and feral spaces, William Boroughs, Artaud, Werner Schroeter, centaurs, androids, prehistoric plant life, and the ultimate post-human future of the planet when machines take over!

Nature Theater of Oklahoma talks with Gavin Quinn, director of Dublin-based Pan Pan Theatre company, about empathy and the physical presence of actors.  When you remove the actor from performance (as they do in All That Fall) -- what possibilities does that lack of an obvious physical and emotional center open up for an audience?  (Plus: we experiment for the first time with podcasting in the dark!)

Nature Theater of Oklahoma meets with choreographer/dancer/performance artist Miguel Gutierrez , who braves athsma and kittens, to explore with us the nature of stunt, risk, and personal necessity in the work.  Also, honestly – how complicated is our relationship to audience? And to museums, for that matter. (Hello, MoMA!)

Nature Theater of Oklahoma talks with John Collins, director of Elevator Repair Service in New York, about sleepless nights, Supreme Court oral arguments, gun control, the Newtown school shootings, benevolent dictatorships, emancipation, risk, responsibility, reason, and other things that have absolutely nothing to do with theater… or do they?

Nature Theater of Oklahoma talks to Gideon Lester, Director of Theater Programs and Professor of Theater at Bard College, also one of the curators of the Crossing the Line Festival in New York, about becoming brave and strategies for inscribing that bravery into our cultural institutions and universities.  How should we train and cultivate a courageous new generation of artistic leaders?  (Or: Where are all our new young failures going to come from – and why do we need them more than ever?)

Nature Theater of Oklahoma talks to actor/director Paul Lazar of Big Dance Theater about navigating a tremendously diverse body of work. Paul has worked in everything from the Wooster Group’s Brace Up to Hollywood gangster flics, from Korean monster movies to modern dance (he’s currently working with Mikhail Baryshnikov on a new piece). And he now hosts his own radio show “Talk to Paulie” on BBOX Radio in New York – a show on which we are, also, simultaneously HIS guests. (A radio show within a radio show!)

Nature Theater of Oklahoma talks to Eric Dyer of the Brooklyn-based performance group Radiohole about play and playfulness, artist and ensemble.  How far out, to the extreme edge of failure, are we willing to push ourselves and our work in order to try and stay “wild”?  Does our willingness to embrace failure and be more courageous hinge in part on our ability to trick ourselves into crafting a more playful relationship to the audience, curators, and funders that we hope will eventually embrace that work?

Nature Theater of Oklahoma talks again with their very first OK Radio guest, playwright/director Young Jean Lee, about American celebrity culture, our capacities for violence and repression – plus lots of dancing our way around Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. (And added bonus feature: Young Jean explains the workings of the economic “Pareto” principle and how to beneficially apply it to your personal life!)