About
Our Mission
The Deconstructive Theatre Project is a Brooklyn-based not-for-profit ensemble performance laboratory that exists to devise and premiere new multidisciplinary work. The company is dedicated to producing performances that experiment with the relationships between theatrical vocabularies, content, and form and to providing broad community access to its process and productions.
Our Story
The Deconstructive Theatre Project was launched by Founding Director Adam J. Thompson in 2006. The company’s name is loosely inspired by the work of Jacques Derrida, the founder of the philosophy of deconstruction.
Deconstruction is not a dismantling of the structure of a text, but a demonstration that it has already dismantled itself. Its apparently-solid ground is no rock, but thin air.
The Deconstructive Theatre Project trains artists to share skill sets within and exercise those outside of the boundaries of their artistic identities during the creative process. Productions are gestated over the course of one year using the company’s three-stage creative process and premiere in New York City each autumn.
The Deconstructive Theatre Project’s inaugural theatrical production was Moisés Kaufman’s Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde (2006). Over five subsequent years the company has devised and premiered Brecht & Co. (2007), The Girlie Show (2007), The American Sex Project (2008), a site-specific staging of Michel Marc Bouchard’s Lilies, or The Revival of a Romantic Drama (2009), and an original two-actor cirque adaptation of Antigone (2011).
The Deconstructive Theatre Project is a member of The Network of Ensemble Theatres, the Brooklyn Arts Council, and the Alliance of Resident Theatres/New York. The company has received local and international residencies from The Stuart Street Playhouse, Chez Bushwick, The Center for Performance Research, Middle Collegiate Church, The School of Making Thinking, Kunsthof Tangendorf, and IRT Theatre and has performed in Boston, New York City, the Catskills, and San Francisco.
