Coosje: The “Play” Is The Thing, But Each “Thing” Is A Collaboration (2012 FRIGID NEW YORK FESTIVAL)
by Stephen Tortora-Lee on February 25, 2012
A pear is always more than just a pear and a man is more than the sum of his collaborations.
Coosje the story of Claes Oldenburg (played by Steven Conroy) and his long-time collaborator and wife Coosje van Bruggen (played by Julie Congress). It is also the story of a Pear who is “self-aware” (played by Haley Greenstein).
Like Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park with George, Coosje is a story about how an artist’s process of creating helps them develop a new reality for themselves as well as for the people seeing it. Coosje allows for intimate interaction with the elements of the creative process. This play highlights the notion that every piece of art is the completion of a journey for an object (real or imagined, sentient or inanimate) to get to the place where its inclusion in the art creates the context and meaning of the art itself.
