What Next? is an original play by Linda Mussmann
In collaboration with Hudson Eye Festival 2025
Performed by Claudia Bruce and Anthony Zanetta
In keeping with Mussmann’s non-narrative style, two voices sing, shout, echo, and meld together to articulate a sophisticated, poetic, socio-political critique.
Religion, consumerism, tyranny, the role of history and literature – even theatre itself – all are drawn into question in this challenging, funny, dynamic performance.
SAID & DONE
Presented by the Jonah Bokaer Arts Foundation in partnership with TSL
Written and directed by Linda Mussmann
in collaboration with Claudia Bruce & Charlotte Stickles
2024
Performed at Center for Performance Research Brooklyn, NY
The 2023 Hudson Eye Festival
Originally performed at Time & Space Limited, Hudson NY August 25, and September 1, 2023
Said & Done recalls a vintage photograph – mysterious and compelling – its impact caught in a flash of sound & image & movement. It is a spectacle rooted in the past and projected into the future – with gestures and reflections that open up space and time.
Gertrude Stein’s The Making of Americans
Adapted and Directed by Linda Mussmann
A TSL 50th Anniversary Event
2023
Special Event, TSL Reading/Performance: The Making of Americans
By Gertrude Stein. Adapted and directed by Linda Mussmann.
Performed by: Claudia Bruce, Sophie Kreitzberg, Jesse McCormick, Serafina Rotondi. Carl Skoggard, Wendy Spielmann, Charlotte Stickles, and Anthony Zanetta
"Americans", based on Stein's 1908 kaleidoscopic novel, was first adapted for performance by Mussmann in 1976 at the Universalist Church on 76th and performed again in 1979 at TSL's 22nd Street Storefront in NYC.
For TSL’s 50th Anniversary, Mussmann revisited the text and adapted it for a company of new voices.
To quote Stein: "A space of time is an essentially American thing this sense of space of time and what is to be done within this space of time and you will realize that it is something filled always with moving."
Virginia Wolf’s The Waves [Chapter 1]
Adapted and directed by Linda Mussmann
2023
Linda Mussmann first adapted the chapter one of The Waves, written in 1931 by Woolf, for the stage in 1977.
Using six performers to play Woolf’s six characters, the project was presented in her 22nd Street storefront in Chelsea NYC.
46 years later, in 2023, the original adapted script was read by six new performers: Claudia Bruce, Nat Drake, Dave King, Sienna Reid, Wendy Spielmann, and Antony Zanetta.
The reading provides an opportunity to look at some early work that Linda created in NYC as she experimented and searched for her own voice. After The Waves, Claudia Bruce joined Linda as a performer and quickly become the central presence in Linda’s work. The Woolf project that followed was based on an essay published after her death in 1941 called The Moment. It marked the beginning of the collaboration between Linda and Claudia that continues today.
Green Chairs
2022
Linda Mussmann wrote the text for Green Chairs in 2014, using a series of musings – threads and snippets – from her daily writings. The dislocated and realigned script, a characteristic feature of Mussmann/Bruce productions, introduces a new group of performers to this method of work developed by Linda and Claudia over the past 40 years.
The Mussmann/Bruce performance style was influenced by the creative power of a previous generation of artists and thinkers including Cage, Cunningham, Johns, Stein, Wittgenstein, Bausch, Brecht, the mothers and fathers of DADA – to name a few.
Green Chairs is an experimental happening addressing the impermanence of our times – a force that drives the work forward and, at the same time, sets up limits to be contemplated and explored by creative thinking and doing.
Performers include: Rebecca Cosenza, Lina Dahbour, Ellen Donnelly, Jesse McCormick, Catherine Meringolo, Rebecca Sylvia Posner, in collaboration with Claudia Bruce and Charlotte Stickles.
The Hudson Eye presents Table of Contents
One voice: Claudia Bruce
One sonic landscape artist: John Moletress
One text writer and image maker: Linda Mussmann
2022
Claudia Bruce's unique vocal style honed over 40 years of performances
The unconventional sound instruments that John Moletress has constructed out of copper pipes, glass, and water – outfitted with various digital technologies and artist-programmed circuit board
Texts by Linda Mussmann, whose poetic nature offers a meditative use of language to make statements about seeing & saying, weather reports, time & space, and how to move from the meaning of words to create stories outside the narrative.
The film images of Linda Mussmann's outdoor sculpture (Table of Contents) were compiled and edited by Teo Camporeale. The work meditates on chance and the willingness to let go of the habits and expectations of a rigid theater. Leave your past and future at the door and step into a moment of live theater which requires someone to do something and someone to experience the doing of the thing.
The Hudson Eye presents
See They Say
2021
A re-imagining of a text by Linda Mussmann which dates back to 1983, first appearing as Is the Dialogue Read, then Camouflage, and now See They Say.
The performance featured music and voice by Claudia Bruce, and the music of composer Semih Firincioğlu.
Stage design by Mussmann.
The projected films, edited by Kevin Gilligan and Henry Munson, have been compiled from 8mm films shot by Mussmann during the 1980’s in TSL’s New York City storefront, as well as in parts of upstate NY and rural Indiana.
Manifesto 10.10.2020
On October 10th, 2020, for the first time since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, Linda Mussmann and Claudia Bruce took to the stage once more. The world was halted but the show had to go on. Linda recited her manifesto outside TSL on the new parking lot stage. The screen behind her gave viewers a glimpse of Claudia as she performed both inside and outside via a Zoom livestream.
Linda and Claudia's original iphone clips are weaved between their archival material featuring "Indiana Cornfield" (1983) and "Paperplay" (1981).
Documentation by Karen Keats.
Edited by Kevin Gilligan.