Daily Inspiration: Meet Asher Hartman

Today we’d like to introduce you to Asher Hartman.

Hi Asher, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
I started in theater around 1976 as an apprentice at The Berkeley Rep Theater in the Bay Area. Since then I’ve been through several life go-rounds from teaching aerobics and designing clothes in Tokyo to working in LA’s Skid Row, to daytime bartending, writing reference books and painting, curating and painting, which led me back to the theater, which is a little bit like an addiction. Rethinking theater from the perspective of visual art made see theater without the heavy imperative of storytelling, which is for me a bit of a trap, as the stories we tell tend to be, in my experience, tied to our cultures in sometimes beautiful, sometimes limiting ways. My theater tends to play in the underworld, in the unconscious with its nefarious, devious and troubling signs.

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Making performance theater, making art is never a smooth road. It’s a lifelong commitment. Theater and performance in LA have long been imperiled, overshadowed perhaps by the film and television industry, by rules that limit who can perform where, by lack of funding, by what seems like dwindling audiences and maybe by fear of what audiences can handle. And space. Space is expensive. People who make live art are champions. LA is loaded with talent, drive, and invention. Lots of people with extraordinary talent struggle. I’ve been surprisingly lucky to have support. Oddly, this support started when I stopped caring if people liked my work. I stopped trying to conform. My brain won’t let me. I think and write in ways that are often confounding to others. It took me thirty years to realize that I wasn’t going to be able to write a “good” play and to recognize that I have a tendency to goad audiences into seeing our own complicity with the issues I’m interested in like racism and fascism. I wish I had been more accepting of myself earlier, but maybe self-acceptance is a benefit of aging.

Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I make live art at the juncture of theater and performance, using tactics from both worlds to write, direct, and co-design performance works about American violence, especially the psychological violence in which we all swim. I use clown, cringe humor, complex texts, and abstraction to make grimy, nasty, intellectual, foolish comic-tragedies about life in the US. I’m most proud of my work with great curators and organizations who helped me think about how to make architectural spaces for theater, about how a stage encompasses and informs an audience. In those rare situations, I’ve been able to actually build theatrical spaces for a specific play. I’m rewarded by working with great actors, co-directors, and designers who are willing to take big risks with their art, despite the challenges of making work that’s surreal, strange, dense, and difficult.

We’d love to hear about any fond memories you have from when you were growing up?
I don’t have a favorite childhood memory because there are so many good ones: my aunt screaming at the top of the stairs in a silver paper dress, rumors of aliens killing cattle and draping them over tree limbs in Golden Gate Park; a seemingly endless line of police motorcycles parked on our block before a crackdown on protesters at SF State; hiding in the dryers at the local laundromat, scooping up tadpoles from rain puddles in plastic cups; watching a scene from The Inflated Mouse (Der Fledermaus) at the public library, chatting with a nudist in a red convertible, my father walking our vacuum cleaner like a dog down the block midnight.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.gawdaffulnationaltheater.company/
• Instagram: @chickentasteslikewood

Image Credits
1. Michael Bonnabel as Alfred, The Dope Elf, Yale Union, 2019 Ian Byers-Gamber photographer 2. Philip Littel, Michael Bonnabel, Paul Outlaw and Joe Seely in Sorry Atlantis, or Eden’s Achin Organ Seeks Revenge, Machine Project, 2017an Byers-Gamber photographer 3. Jacqueline Wright, Paul Outlaw, Joe Seely, Michael Bonnabel, Philip Littell and Zut Lorz in The Dope Elf, 2109 Ian Byers-Gamber photographer. 4. Cliff Hengst in Mr. Akita, Tang Art Museum, BAMPFA, Hauser&Wirth, 2015-2017.. Ian Byers-Gamber photographer.