Matt O’Hare

If you would have to choose: Love play or fight?
For me, play means interacting with what’s around you — testing boundaries and capabilities. What is learned through play provides valuable information that I think allows you to make better decisions (a kind of protection, I suppose).

The hero of your youth?
Indiana Jones: a professor who hates fascists and goes on adventures.

What was your last dream?
A lot of my dreams seem to involve being in some kind of post-apocalyptic city where people have converted old warehouses into self-sustaining living spaces. I think it embodies both my fear of the future and my desire for this kind of communal lifestyle.

What do you learn in theater?
I think theatre is most valuable as a means of understanding human interaction in a live and heightened context.

What do you unlearn in theater?
Hopefully we unlearn old points of view or beliefs that have outlived their usefulness. Hopefully we unlearn the walls of protection we build around ourselves.

Does reality deserve suspiciousness?
I believe anything we take for granted deserves our skepticism (and our generosity).

How do you relate to plants, animals and algorithms?
With openness and skepticism.

Biografie
Matt O’Hare ist ein amerikanischer Theatermacher, Dozent und Medienkünstler, mit einem Schwerpunkt auf dem Zusammenspiel von Kultur und Technologie. Er realisierte mehrere multimediale Theaterarbeiten in den Vereinigten Staaten, u.a. «No Exit» (2019), «The Cure For All Disease» (2017),  «We The New Community» (2016), Sam Shepard and Joseph Chaikin’s «Tongues» (2013). 2013/14 tourte er mit der new-media-Theaterkomapgnie The Builders Association mit den Produktionen «House/Divided» und «Sontag: Reborn».  2019/20 entwickelt er an der University of Houston eine live-action Fortsetzung des Films «Waterworld». Am Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute doktorierte er in Electronic Arts.

Foto: © Flavio Karrer