In this essay, director Andrew Utter sketches in his own words the evolution of Uranium Madhouse. The original essay was published on a blog in late 2010, a few months before UM’s inaugural production of Rick Burkhardt’s Conversation Storm and Charles Mee’s The House of Cards.
Why Uranium Madhouse?
Many people whom I have told the name of my theater company, Uranium Madhouse, have chuckled upon hearing it, and, after a moment, exclaimed, “I like it!” But I think the reason for this name, what I am gesturing at with it, is not immediately obvious. I don’t think that’s a bad thing, I like a good enigma as much as the next guy and probably more. I have produced a lyrical explanation in the company Mission Statement, and the 9 Muses page on the website, I think, also does an excellent job of invoking the intended esprit de corps of the thing, but I realize a bit more about where the name came from might be in order.
Suffice to say that I have been attracted to madness as a phenomenon in literature and performance in a variety of milieus. My dissertation was on the Austrian novelist and playwright Thomas Bernhard. His novels feature fixated, cranky narrators who are relentless in their attempts to characterize and define their worlds. One such narrator describes his world as a “a completely, totally carnivalistic system,” invoking the carnival of medieval Europe in which norms were inverted and taboos were broken, that is, a world of madness. I found this carnivalistic quality mirrored in many places: the politics of the 2008 campaign, which featured the lunatic Sarah Palin; the world of nightclub performance art in San Francisco, in which I participated for a time; and in many of the plays that I have come to love over the course of my time as a theater director.
The notion of radioactivity resonated in another way with me: I had studied acting with some truly remarkable teachers at Yale, and had come to see the actor as a generator of “heat,” and I don’t even really mean the quotation marks. An actor who was working from a visceral place seemed to radiate in a way that compelled our attention from deep within our cores. This phenomenon was so important to me that I would eventually found an acting school, so that I could put the process of helping actors radiate in this fashion at the center of my work and develop my skill at doing so.
In a moment of epiphany, it all seemed to come together in the phrase Uranium Madhouse: the radiation, the danger, the insanity, the vitality. It had to be. It was what I wanted to do with the second half of my life. To create a context and an artistic family which would celebrate all of this and invite the society in which we live to join in our revels.
The Duchess of Malfi is our third production. It was preceded by our inaugural production in 2011, two contemporary American plays, Conversation Storm and The House of Cards, and then by our production of Bertolt Brecht’s comedy A Man’s A Man in 2012, in a new translation authorized by the Brecht estate. This production was sponsored by the Goethe Institut Los Angeles and the International Brecht Society. As the company coalesces and strong working relationships are forged, we look forward to presenting more frequently in the coming years.
– Andrew Utter