Goat Island (performance group) explained

Goat Island was a collaborative performance group based in Chicago, Illinois and founded in 1987.^[1] They toured internationally and made nine performance works before disbanding.^[2] In 2006 they announced The Lastmaker (2007) would be the last work that they would create as a company, and the final performances were held at Swain Hall, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, in February 2009.

As their final project, they created a film based on The Lastmaker, published under the title A Last, A Quartet a collection of films,^[3] which also contained previous films made by Goat Island.

In 2019, the Chicago Cultural Center hosted a cross disciplinary retrospective: goat island archive – we have discovered the performance by making it.^[4] The event included an exhibition, archives, a performance series, and symposia.^[5]

Members

Goat Island members have included:

• Karen Christopher (1990-2009)
• Joan Dickinson (1988-1990)
• Matthew Goulish (1987-2009)
• Lin Hixson (director, 1997-2009)
• Mark Jeffery (1996-2009)
• Greg McCain (1987-1995)
• Timothy McCain (1987-1995)
• Antonio Poppe (1995-1996)
• Bryan Saner (1995-2009)
• Charissa Tolentino (2008)
• Litó Walkey (2002-2009)

Performances

• Soldier, Child, Tortured Man (1987)
• We Got A Date (1989)
• Can't Take Johnny to the Funeral (1991)
• It's Shifting, Hank (1993)
• How Dear To Me the Hour When Daylight Dies (1996)
• The Sea & Poison (1998)
• It's an Earthquake in My Heart (2001)
• When will the September roses bloom? Last night was only a comedy (2004)
• The Lastmaker (2007)

Sources

• Bottoms, Stephen J., and Matthew Goulish, eds. 2007. Small Acts of Repair: Performance, Ecology, and Goat Island. London and New York: Routledge. .
• Goat Island, 2000. "School Book 2: Goat Island." Chicago: Goat Island and The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
• Goulish, Matthew. 2000. 39 Microlectures: In Proximity of Performance. London and New York: Routledge. .
• Hixson, Lin and Goulish, Matthew. 2007. "A Lasting Provocation". TDR: The Drama Review 51.4 (T 196 Winter): 2-3.
• Lowe, Nicholas, and Skaggs, Sarah, 2020 (editor Mike Vanden Heuvel) "Goat Island". American Theatre Ensembles Volume 1. Post-1970: Theatre X, Mabou Mines, Goat Island, Lookingglass Theatre, Elevator Repair Service, and SITI Company. Methuen Drama/Bloomsbury Press, London, UK. 129-221.

External links

• Brooklyn Rail Conversation with Lin Hixson and Matthew Goulish
• Official website

Notes and References

1. Book: Cull, Laura . Deleuze and performance . 2009 . Edinburgh University press . 978-0-7486-3504-7 . Deleuze connections . Edinburgh . 132-146.
2. Web site: Goat Island - Routledge Performance Archive . 2024-03-21 . www.routledgeperformancearchive.com.
3. Web site: Unbound - Live Art - Books, DVDs and Editions. Unbound. Unbound. 2016-12-02.
4. Web site: goat island archive – we have discovered the performance by making it . 2024-03-21 . www.chicago.gov . en.
5. Tsatsos . Irene . Dickinson . Joan . Christopher . Karen . Goulish . Matthew . McCain . Greg . McCain . Tim . 1991 . Talking with Goat Island: An Interview with Joan Dickinson, Karen Christopher, Matthew Goulish, Greg McCain, and Tim McCain . TDR . 35 . 4 . 66–74 . 10.2307/1146163 . 1146163.