Rumstick Road (video reconstruction)

The Wooster Group’s 1977 production Rumstick Road has been recognized by critics and scholars as a landmark work that helped usher in a new era of experimental performance. Composed by Spalding Gray and Elizabeth LeCompte in response to the suicide of Gray’s mother, Rumstick Road combines Gray’s personal recorded conversations, family letters, the writings of Mary Baker Eddy, 35mm slides, music, and dance.

This video reconstruction keeps faith with the theater piece by registering, in a new composite, the vivid texture of time and memory that shaped the original production. LeCompte and filmmaker Ken Kobland have worked with Wooster Group archivist Clay Hapaz to layer, juxtapose, and blend together numerous archival fragments – including U-Matic video, Super 8 film, reel-to-reel audio tapes, photographs, and slides – in order to reconstruct that lost performance.