Stuart Sherman

Who was Stuart Sherman?

Stuart A. Sherman was a performance artist, playwright, filmmaker, videographer, poet, essayist, sculptor and collagist. He was born 9 November 1945 to Helen Gordon and Samuel Sherman in Providence, Rhode Island. Soon after attending Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, Sherman moved to Manhattan and began a career in the arts which would span the next three decades. Before mounting his own work, Stuart Sherman worked extensively with Charles Ludlam in the early days of the Ridiculous Theatrical Company and with Richard Foreman's Ontological-Hysteric Theater.

Sherman was possibly best known for his solo "spectacles": programs of very short playlets performed on portable tabletops propped open on the sidewalk—or in the park, or someone’s apartment—in which he would physically manipulate and create semantic "dramas" around inanimate objects. He created and performed eighteen "spectacles" in all as well as larger-scale dramatic works, including Chekhov, Brecht and Strindberg, a trilogy of short plays adapting and commenting obliquely on those authors, Slant, and Solaris.