The Wooster Group

Directed by Elizabeth LeCompte

Featuring Ari Fliakos, Frances McDormand, Scott Shepherd, Kate Valk, and special guest artists Steve Cuiffo, Koosil-ja Hwang, Paul Lazar, Zachary Oberzan, Jenny Seastone-Stern and Maura Tierney

North Atlantic takes a satiric look at the role of the military and the growing influence of technology in American culture during the late Cold War period, after Vietnam and before the fall of the Berlin Wall. The story follows an international peacekeeping force on an aircraft carrier in the North Atlantic, tracing the cultural and sexual dynamics that rise to the fore as they carry out their top-secret mission. Written expressly for the company by James Strahs in 1982, North Atlantic joined a series of Wooster Group works rooted in American themes and told in the rhythms of the American vernacular—works based on texts by Thornton Wilder, Arthur Miller, Eugene O’Neill, and Gertrude Stein. A nostalgia piece, it brings the analog (pre-digital) 1980s to life through slang, song and dance.