Thieves Theatre

The Hill: A Thieves Theatre Podcast. Thieves Theatre, named in honor of Jean Genet, was founded in 1981 with its inaugural production of Genet’s Deathwatch at Illinois State Penitentiary, a maximum security prison outside of Chicago. The company soon became known for presenting edgy, multi-disciplinary, often site-specific work in prominent alternative performance spaces in Chicago, Toronto, and New York.

One significant period was from 1990 to 1993, when on the centenary of the Wounded Knee Massacre, the company erected a full-sized Lakota tipi replica in the then oldest Manhattan shantytown. This commemoration of the Native American lives lost a century earlier grew into a meditation on the nature and constituency of the “homeless nation” living across contemporary America.

The video podcast on this channel centers on this project, @tipionthehill, and includes highlights of the provocative work that preceded it in Thieves Theatre early history.