The Coronet Theatre is a reimagined architectural and design jewel, originally built as a grand Victorian Playhouse, now a pioneering home for international, cross-disciplinary arts. Curated by Artistic Director Anda Winters, over the past decade it has become a significant cultural landmark.
Known for world and UK premieres, its mission is to bring artists and art forms from around the world, championing work that would not otherwise be seen. The programme enables access for diverse audiences to world-class theatre, dance, music, film and visual arts through co-productions, commissions, and invited works.
Centrally situated in London’s Notting Hill, The Coronet has two main spaces: The Auditorium and The Print Room Studio. With the additional performances and exhibitions in the bar, the atmospheric upper rooms, and basements, the whole building is a living global showcase.
THE WOOSTER GROUP
NAYATT SCHOOL REDUX
Nayatt School Redux is a contemporary reworking of Nayatt School, one of The Wooster Group’s most famous productions, created by visionary director Elizabeth LeCompte and autobiographical monologist Spalding Gray.The original Nayatt School launched Gray’s prestigious career.
Nayatt School Redux opens with Wooster Group member Kate Valk, who reveals newly-restored archival recordings of Gray’s original performance, mixed with her own stories. Gray described his beginnings in the theatre and played LPs from his record collection including an LP of T.S. Eliot’s The Cocktail Party.The Group’s current company reinvent scenes from the original production, culminating in the climactic sequences of The Cocktail Party.
CAST & CREATIVE TEAM
Directed by
Composed by
Performers:
Sound & Original Music
Lighting
Set
Original Video and 16mm
Nayatt School film
Additional Video
Assistant Director
Costumes
Dramaturg
Elizabeth LeCompte
The Company
Ari Fliakos, Andrew Maillet, Michaela
Murphy, Suzzy Roche, Scott Shepherd, Maura Tierney, Kate Valk, Omar Zubair
Eric Sluyter & Omar Zubair
David Sexton
Elizabeth LeCompte
Ken Kobland
Wladimiro Woyno, Irfan Brkovic, Andrew Maillet, Yudam Hyung Seok Jeon
Michaela Murphy
Elizabeth LeCompte & Enver Chakartash
Matthew Dipple
Excerpts from The Cocktail Party used by permission of the T.S. Eliot Estate
Thanks to Antonia Belt, Niall Cunningham, Gabriela Krumova, Erin Mullin, Tony Oursler, Jennifer Tipton, and Rita Ackermann and Hauser & Wirth
DIRECTORS’ NOTE
The original title of this piece was Since I Can Remember: I guess because I wanted to go back and look at the impulses we had as a company in our early days in the late 1970s. I also wanted to reconstruct Nayatt School for our archives because no complete record of the piece survives.The piece is one of several works that I created with Spalding Gray around his autobiography. It is crucial in our Group’s history because it features the first experiment with the monologue form that Spalding went on to make his métier.
Of course, in reanimating Nayatt School, our current company soon discovered that when it is placed in a new time and new context, new possibilities and resonances emerge. Inevitably, we recognized that we weren’t just making an archival record: we were making a new piece on top of the original, drawing new material from T.S. Eliot’s The Cocktail Party and a new monologue by Kate Valk, who joined the company during the making of Nayatt School.
Elizabeth LeCompte
ABOUT THE WOOSTER GROUP
The Wooster Group, led by founding member and director Elizabeth LeCompte, is a company of experimental theater and media artists.
Since 1975, the Group has created more than 40 theater works and 22 media pieces. Productions include: Rumstick Road (1977), the dance For the Good Times (1982), L.S.D. (...Just the High Points...) (1984), Brace Up! (1991), The Hairy Ape (1996), House/Lights (1998), To You, the Birdie! (Phèdre) (2002), Hamlet (2006), the opera La Didone (2008), Vieux Carré (2009), The Room (2015), The Town Hall Affair (2017), A Pink Chair (In Place of a Fake Antique) (2018), The Mother (2021), all directed by LeCompte.
Media pieces directed by LeCompte include: White Homeland Commando (1992), Wrong Guys (1997), the 360° video installation, There Is Still Time . . Brother (2007), the Dailies (2010-2020), an online series of short original and archival videos, and A Reading and Response to the Poems and Paintings of Erna Rosenstein for Hauser & Wirth.
Kate Valk has directed Early Shaker Spirituals: A Record Album Interpretation (2014), as well as two collaborations with Eric Berryman: The B-Side: Negro Folklore from Texas State Prisons (2017) and Get Your Ass in the Water and Swim Like Me (2024).
The Group’s most recent theater production is Symphony of Rats (2024), directed by LeCompte and Valk.The Group’s next piece will be a new work based on the company ’ s 1980s work L.S.D. (…Just the High Points…) directed by LeCompte.
The Group has been included in numerous museum and gallery shows, among them three Whitney Biennials, “The Body Electric” at the Walker Art Center, and an exhibition devoted to the Group’s work at carriage trade in 2019-20.
In 2025, LeCompte received the Venice Biennale’s Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement in Theater. Her other awards include the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize, a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation fellowship, the Chevalier des Artes et des Lettres, and an inaugural Doris Duke Performing Artist award.
Based at The Performing Garage in the SoHo neighborhood of New York City, the Group was founded by Elizabeth LeCompte, Spalding Gray, Ron Vawter, Jim Clayburgh, Willem Dafoe, Kate Valk, and Peyton Smith.
CURRENT COMPANY & ASSOCIATES
Aaron Amodt, Alex Artaud, Antonia Belt, Eric Berryman, Zbigniew Bzymek, Hai-Ting Chinn, Niall Cunningham, Maya Davis, Dennis Dermody, Matthew Dipple, Dan Dobson, Mike Farry, Jim Fletcher, Ari Fliakos, Clay Hapaz, Nile Harris, Cynthia Hedstrom, Jonathan Hull, Eleanor Hutchins, Bruce Jackson, Yudam Hyung Seok Jeon, Marika Kent, Ken Kobland, Bella Kouds, Elizabeth LeCompte, Andrew Maillet,Tavish Miller, Erin Mullin, Michaela Murphy, Matthias Neckermann, Guillermo Resto, Suzzy Roche, Kaneza Schaal, David Sexton, Scott Shepherd, Joseph Silovsky, Eric Sluyter, Phillip Edward Spradley, Maura Tierney, Jennifer Tipton, Ariana Smart Truman, Kate Valk, Monika Wunderer, Jharis Yokley, Omar Zubair
DIRECTOR’S CIRCLE
Antonia & David Belt, Paul Cassidy & Vernon Evenson, Buddy Dikman, Alan Mark & Jeffrey Fraenkel, Frances McDormand, Catherine Orentreich (the Orentreich Family Foundation),Tom Shapiro, Wendy vanden Heuvel, Cecile Winckler
ABOUT NAYATT SCHOOL (1978)
The original Nayatt School was composed by Spalding Gray and Elizabeth LeCompte, with Gray creating his opening monologue and LeCompte directing.Their collaborators were Libby Howes, Bruce Porter, and Ron Vawter. Jim Strahs contributed additional text.The piece was performed in New York, Philadelphia, and Amsterdam during 1978 and 1979, and was revived in New York in 1982 as part of a Wooster Group retrospective.
The original 1978 company included performers Spalding Gray, Libby Howes, Ron Vawter, Joan Jonas, Ursula Easton,Tena Cohen, Michael Rivkin, Erik Moskowitz, Vicky Raab, and Gabrielle Lansner. Design: Elizabeth LeCompte and Bruce Porter. Lights: Jim Clayburgh. Stage Managers: Gabrielle Lansner and Vicky Raab.Technical Director: Bruce Porter. Kate Valk and Willem Dafoe performed in the 1982 revival.
LEADING POETS, INTIMATE READINGS
30 Apr - 02 May
BY CARYL CHURCHILL
Praise for the original production of Escaped Alone: 06 - 09 May
“Caryl Churchill’s magnificent play unleashes an intricate, elliptical, acutely female view of the apocalypse. Revolutionary.”
Christodoulidou, Merilee Ettia, Katrina Foster, Trey Francis, Thea Gavanski, Hugo Gregg, Li IkokuSmith, Dane Kostic, Emma LairdCraig, Maria Lisberg-Jonasson, Hamza Mullick, Kajsa Wiberg
Norquist, Andreane Rellou
Trustees
Linda Bernhardt, Mike Fisher, Mimi Gilligan, Jane Quinn, Anda Winters, Bill Winters (Chair)
Thank you to our patrons for their generous support:
Honorary Trustee
Mimi Gilligan
Cupola
Mike Fisher and T. S. Eliot
Foundation
Club Room
Tom and Maarit Glocer, Julia and Scott Rochester, and Jane Quinn
