OZ Arts Nashville

The Wooster Group

(New York, NY)

Symphony of Rats

December 6-8

Tickets from $30

See more and save! This performance is included in the 2024-25 Season Subscription ($225), 6-Show Experimental Package ($140), and Flex Package (from $165). Learn more.

“American theater’s most inspired company.” 
The New York Times 

“Deliriously trippy…A delightful love letter from one giant of experimental theater to another”
The New York Times

“I was grinning like a kid at the circus…the theatrical avant garde is still f*cking sh*t up as gleefully as ever.”
Vulture

The legendary Wooster Group transforms OZ into a sort of mad laboratory for their latest “deliriously trippy” production Symphony of Rats, directed by Elizabeth LeCompte, the mater familias of American experimental theater, and her acclaimed collaborator Kate Valk. Widely hailed as one of the world’s most influential and boundary-breaking performance companies, The Wooster Group unleashes a multimedia arsenal at the absurdity of presidential powers and the hilarity of masculine fantasies about control. Featuring singing, stunts, and stupefying multi-screen visuals, this reimagining of a 1988 play by avant-garde guru Richard Foreman is a genre-bending thrillride that New York Magazine describes as “delightful…an attempt to theatricalize the chaos of the brain.”


Written when Ronald Reagan was in the oval office, Symphony of Rats feels more like sci-fi sarcasm than anything seriously political, with a president who receives messages from outer space and a menagerie of aides who scurry in search of a purpose, and occasionally break into song. This delightfully smart and entertaining production is the must-see theatrical event of the season.

ABOUT THE WOOSTER GROUP

The Wooster Group is a company of artists based in New York City that makes work for theater, dance, and media. They develop and perform their work at The Performing Garage in Manhattan at 33 Wooster Street. They also bring their work to other venues in New York as well as theaters around the world on national and international tours.
 
The company has sustained a full-time, ongoing ensemble since the mid-70’s. They are constantly morphing. With their many artistic associates, they have created and performed over fifty works directed by Elizabeth LeCompte.