This long-awaited production by Richard Maxwell & New York City Players will tackle a characteristically wide-ranging set of concerns, following their ethos of “creating new plays about people, relationships, and above all, feeling.”
Learn more about New York City Players.
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Get Into It
“Field of Mars” is a world premiere, so we can’t give you a sneak peek of the show. Get a behind the scenes look at a (previous) rehearsal process, captured in the Wooster Group’s “Dailies” series.
Get Thee to the LIbrary
Recommended readings to get you in gear for the show.
Sarah Gorman, The Theatre of Richard Maxwell and the New York City Players. Routledge, 2011.
Richard Maxwell, Plays: 1996-2000. Theatre Communications Group, 2004
Richard Maxwell, Theater for Beginners. Theatre Communications Group, 2015.
Richard Maxwell, Evening Plays. Theatre Communications Group, 2020.
Read All About It
Bomb Magazine | 2008
Richard Maxwell by John Kelsey
“I want to see what happens if you do all of those things you imagined.”
The New Yorker | 2014
The Theatre: An Interview with Richard Maxwell by Hilton All
Richard Maxwell is one of the more adventurous theatre artists that this country has produced in decades.
Hazlitt | 2014
Eating the Heart of Richard Maxwell BY NAOMI SKWARNA
The two interviews I’ve now done with Maxwell… have not made me any more expert in his work.
Walker Art | 2015
The Unadorned Archetype: Discussing The Evening with Richard Maxwell
“I think you have to be good at reading the heart. Understanding your relationship to your own heart.”
Extra Credit
Maxwell & the New York City Players are reaching way back for the title of this show: “The term ‘Field of Mars’ (Latin: Campus Martius) goes back to antiquity, and designates an area, inside or near a city, used as a parade or exercise ground by the military.” (Thanks, Wikipedia!) The “Mars” invoked here is not the planet but the god for whom the planet is named – Mars, the Roman god of war.
New York doesn’t have a field that shares this name, but you can take a stroll on one in Paris, New South Wales or St. Petersburg, pictured above.
You can also visit the site of the first Field of Mars, although the field itself has long, long since been repurposed. The Pantheon itself was built on the original Campus Martius, and by the 1st century BC, the whole field had been drained and used to build public spaces (including theatres).