Joan MacIntosh of The Performance Group

Extract

During this past December and January, The Performance Group undertook a rather rigorous performing schedule, doing their four-hour Mother Courage [T66] at 7 PM followed by a midnight show of The MacIntost Project [T70] in the theatre's upstairs space. Joan MacIntosh played the lead role in both productions. (Marilyn actually used two casts playing simultaneously in a mirror image production; Elizabeth LeCompte also played the part of The Star.) At one point MacIntost told Richard Schechner, her husband and a director of the Group, that she had decided that Mother Courage dies and goes to heaven where she becomes Marilyn Monroe.

Since the members of the Group all participate in cleaning the theatre, setting props, and about an hour and a half of pre-show notes and warm-up exercises, this meant being at the theatre from 4:30 PM to 2:30 or 3 AM besides whatever other rehearsals, classes, and day-today chores were involved.