I always feel that my overriding obligation is to make a complex compositional object that gives aesthetic pleasure. 
Yet sometimes, the pressure of the real world is such that I feel the need to respond to what’s happening politically or socially. But though I am anti-Bush and anti-war -- I don’t find it artistically satisfactory to simply “preach to the converted” and create a theatrical diatribe that expresses my political views.

The question is -- can what’s happening in the real world, and one’s response to it, be shaped in such a way that some kind of “mythic response” is created -- so one speaks about the real political situation -- yet is still creating an exhilarating theatrical object that allows one’s imagination to expand along with the twists and turns of its polyphonic structure. 
The solution I attempt in “King Cowboy Rufus Rules the Universe” is to put on stage, not George Bush himself, but a foppish English gentleman who, while seeming a figure from out of the past -- yet dreams of becoming an imitation George Bush -- acquiring that same power and manifesting similar limits of vision. I hope this allows many levels of theatrical irony and comic energy to co-exist with my anguished point of view concerning the direction in which current American policy is leading us.
-- Richard Foreman

CAST

Jay Smith (King Cowboy Rufus)
Juliana Francis (Susie Sitwell)
T Ryder Smith (The Baron Herman De Voto)

STAGE CREW

Michelle Diaz
Brenda Hattingh
Joel Israel
Shauna Kelly
Tommy Smith
Suzi Takahashi
Betsy Ware

PRODUCTION CREW

Joshua Briggs (Managing Director/Production Manager) 

Paul DiPietro (Technical Director )

Anthony Cerrato (Stage Manager) 

Brian PJ Cronin (Sound Operator) 

Sarah Krainin (Props Master) 

Kasia Walicka Maimone (Costumes)

Kate Manheim (Ms. Francis' Dress) 

Jeff Sugg (Master Electrician) 

Michael Darling and Paul DiPietro (Set Construction)

Nancy Winters (Paintings) 

Manuel Igrejas (Press) 

Elka Krajewska (Graphic Design) 

Diane White (Artistic Consultant)

Paula Court (Archival Photography) 

Ashley Havey (Box Office)

Performing Artservices, Inc. (Management and Administration for Ontological- Hysteric Theater, Inc.) 

Fourth Phase (Lighting Equipment)

NYC PRODUCTION INTERNS

Rob Chaitin

Jin-Hee Chung 

Will Davis 

Ashley Havey 

Miranda Huba

Tomoko Katori 

Yoho Myrvaagnes

Nathan Silver

Jong Hyuk Song 

Samantha Wilson

REHEARSAL OBSERVERS

Michael Scott Price
Melissa Rees