Josh Feye: Hi, Theresa.
Theresa Bucheister: Hello, how’s it going?
JF: I’m great! How are you?
TB: So fun to, like, get a Kansas City, Missouri number and be like, oh, I think that’s Josh!
JF: Yes. Oh yeah, thank you for taking the time to speak with me, and I’m happy to speak with a fellow person from the Kansas/ Missouri region. So I really wanted to speak with you about this year’s festival season, and you recently got into theatre marketing.
TB: Yeah, it’s interesting that I am very unintentionally becoming a “PR person”. It makes a lot of sense and is also like - what am I actually doing? When I started The Exponential Festival 11 years ago, it was something I did out of necessity in order to get people to come out and see the shows and write about the shows. Nobody hired me to do that. I was doing it because I had started a thing and wanted people to know about it. And then that extended into other areas of my life, like The Brick. All these years later, based on some kind words and pieces of advice from trusted people, I am like - maybe this is a thing I can and should do. And sometimes I get to do that with my awesome Privy collaborators, Bailey Williams and Julia Greer.
JF: I was talking with someone at PhysFestNYC a couple of years ago, and they said you were so much about community building and just getting people to the shows. It all tracks for me.
TB: This might make sense on various levels with you because you are a sort of multi-hyphenate person… When I’m doing it because it’s my job, I feel this responsibility to be successful at it, though when I was doing it before, I was just doing it because of pure motivation. Because I believe in the artists and the projects, yet I felt no pressure to be successful at it because it wasn’t my job. And so now that it’s my job, I’m like, oh my God, I have to be good at this. What does that mean?
JF: That’s so real.
TB: I feel like that might be true of almost anything because we live in a capitalist society, so it’s like, oh shit, if someone’s paying me, then all of a sudden I have to execute, and if no one’s paying me, then who cares how it goes? But I care very deeply about how it goes for all the stuff that I’ve done for free. Of course. I guess the idea of anyone having any expectations of me didn’t exist as much then. I really don’t mind the idea of doing something just because I love it. However, I unfortunately need money too, and I work jobs, but I’m like, can the thing I love also be the thing that pays me? Jury’s out.
JF: That’s like the plight of the working artist, so yeah, I totally get you. I’m curious, what is your star sign?
TB: I’m a Libra.
JF: Oh my God, incredible!
TB: What is your star sign?
JF: I’m a Gemini, so we’re both air.
TB: My brother is a Gemini and is my best friend, and I feel like both signs are so much about duality, and I’m constantly trying to find the balance between them, and my brother is just violently flinging between all of the sides. But I get it. I get him , and I think that he gets me on a level that other people don’t… not that other people are more one-dimensional than Libras and Geminis, buuuuuut…
JF: {laughs} It’s so linked to what we do as artists, because our astrology is our life path. Did you always know that you wanted to be an artist?
TB: You know, I think so. I am having this conversation with so many swirling conversations, but when you look back at me as a completely free-of-influence type of child, which no one is ever totally free of influence, but the version of myself that had no idea what a career is or why one would make a choice that would lead to another choice, just my pure instinct, it all makes a lot of sense with the person that I am now. Like, I was always trying to turn anything into a theater, anything into a performance space, even before I knew what that really meant. And I was also constantly wanting to put on costumes. My brother and I would put pantyhose on our heads and hop around the neighborhood acting like rabbits. So it’s very exhibitionist too. It was in front of people. It was not just for us. It was like we’re gonna put on these costumes, and everyone will perceive us.
JF: So, when was the moment that you realized that’s what you were going to make your life’s work?
TB: Oh gosh. Yeah, it’s always been (maybe) the fuel of existence. The older I get, the more people I meet probably relate to this... It’s definitely saved my literal life many times as a young person dealing with depression and trauma and not knowing how to actually manage it. I didn’t have the resources available to get help, and so I think that art was a thing that could actually save my life, so then it became very important to me. As a young person, it just became so inherent in my ability to live another day that I can’t really imagine living without it. So there’s that. And then I also think that if I was really bad at it, then I might have had to have had a conversation with myself at this point and be like - maybe this thing can be really important to you, but maybe it’s not the main thing in your life. Over the years, I feel like it is a skill that I’ve honed with time and practice. So it’s an impulse that has been driving me for a very long time, but a skill that has developed, through a lot of hard work, collaboration, experimentation, weird failures and attempts and weird successes… those things have actually made me good at the thing, however subjective that term is.
JF: And so how are you managing being in two places and trying to make work in either?
TB: Yeah, it’s interesting because I honestly got really sort of mind fucked last Friday seeing the rehearsal for without mirrors, the new Jerry Lieblich play with David Greenspan!
JF: Ahhh! I can’t wait!
TB: It’s so good, and it is very much like - a person examines their identity without anyone else to examine it other than themselves. And then I go from that to The First Line of Dante’s Inferno, the Kirk Lynn show that’s at La MaMa, which I highly recommend going to see, which is also sort of about who are you depending on the context of the situation, whether you’re being perceived or not, who’s perceiving you, where you are, are you in the life that you built or have you escaped that life and are you in the forest? So that was Friday, and I’ve been having this whole experience of returning to Kansas and being like - am I myself in both places? And how does that self behave differently in both places while being consistently myself? There are things that are amazing about Kansas that cannot exist in New York and there are things about New York that cannot exist here, How do I exist in both of them is sort of the weird question that I have for myself right now. One of the things I miss the most when I am in Kansas (over the past monthI was in NY), is that I saw 40 shows in one month.
JF: Wow, yeah. That’s such an intense experience.
TB: And within that too, it’s not only seeing the shows but hanging out with people, talking to people about the shows, having this frenetic and intense sort of community of ideas and feelings just flinging around. And then I come back here and I have really great, thoughtful conversations with people, but it’s not even possible to see that much art. And then no one really wants to talk about it in the same way. You go see a show and people get in their cars and go home.
JF: Yeah, I feel you because I’m trying to navigate where I wanna go from New York, cause I don’t wanna be here forever, but I want to be near the theatre. I need it.
TB: I feel like you could go anywhere and not be bored. I can go anywhere and not be bored, but what about the things that feed you? Some of those things can also take away from you at times, of course. I know this will sound weird to you, because we don’t know each other well yet, but I’m a very introverted person. I need to be alone, really alone, and New York can make that really hard. But if I’m an introvert in Kansas, that means I can really go into myself and away from others. I can recede quite a bit. In New York, I can’t recede in the same way, and I think that’s been mostly good for me.
JF: Yeah, that’s interesting. What are you discovering about the art scene in Kansas City and in Lawrence, Kansas?
TB: Well, Kansas City seems to be great, but I don’t know how to drive. That was another big discovery. I was like - I’m going to learn how to drive. Then I was like - no, I’m not. I thought the public transportation had to have gotten better since I lived here 20 years ago. It has not. I can take a Lyft, but sometimes you call a Lyft here and it says your driver will be there in 30 minutes. I’m like - what are you talking about?! So I have to get people to take me to Kansas City. That is hard. Occasionally that works, and I’ve gone to stuff because I’ve bought the tickets and they’ve given me a ride, but it makes me dependent on somebody to drive me, which sucks. So I’m not really getting to experience Kansas City art in the way that I would like. But it also reveals to me - OK, Theresa, if you’re not going to learn how to drive, then you really do need to go to a place where you can get yourself around without needing to drive. I think there are some other cities in the United States that would not be a good fit for me, just because of that.
JF: Are you contemplating going to a different city now?
TB: When I left New York, I was open to anything. I needed to leave. The things that you love can also be the things that hurt you. When I left New York, I was walking with a cane. My nose was bleeding every day. My bank account was negative and I was in a lot of debt because I’d done a lot of things I really cared about but never prioritized my finances or my health. Over time, those things got to a point where I couldn’t fix them. When I was younger, I could bounce back differently or take out a credit card. But physically and mentally, I was learning that I could not bounce back in the way that I had before and that I actually needed to step away to prioritize different kinds of health. In doing that, I was like -New York did this to me! I’m going to leave New York. Then I was like - Oh my God, I miss New York so much. I’ve been back like 12 times in 2025, and I was just back for a month. I don’t know what that says about a slight degree of masochism that I might have, but leaving after 20 years made me feel open to the possibility of something else. I love spending time in Lawrence to be around my family and people I’ve known for a long time. While I know people in almost every other place I’d be interested in living, like LA, Minneapolis, Chicago, Austin, New Orleans, Boston, and both Portlands, none of those places are home in the way that Kansas is home. And none of them are New York. So I feel like my heart lives in two places right now - my Kansas home and my New York home. A year and a half ago I was really open to living in other places, but since then it has narrowed to wanting to spend my time in Kansas and New York.
JF: I wanted to ask you about another big event this year in festival season, Prototype’s revival of What to Wear by Richard Foreman and Michael Gordon. And you’ve worked with Foreman.
TB: It was really interesting. I had my personal experience with it, and I don’t want that to impede anyone else’s, because for a lot of people this was the first Foreman performance they’d been able to see live and not on video, and that’s huge. For me, I was excited I’d get to go. At first, I thought I wouldn’t be able to because there were only three dates and they were evenings when I already had tickets to shows. Then they added a matinee, and I could go. So I had this general excitement and hopefulness. When I got there, and this is my issue, not everyone else’s, I was devastated. I feel like several things were operating on my mind. One, I don’t think certain things Foreman did really well work in a space like BAM. If he had been doing it there, he would have figured out how to make it work, but they did the show based on an old recording and didn’t adjust anything. So certain elements just didn’t work. The plexiglass didn’t work. The strings didn’t work. The lights didn’t work. None of it functioned the way Foreman used those tools to achieve things. I also prefer his plays to his operas. The text in this one was pretty simple and straightforward. There were still some real banger lines, things that make you think. But the plays, and the way actors handle repetition and duration in a play, are so different than in an opera. I think I just personally prefer the plays.
JF: Yeah, I think I do too.
TB: The third thing is very selfish. About halfway through, wanting so much to like it, I got hit with the heavy feeling that I’d never see a Richard Foreman show again. It hurt so badly. I knew that was the case, but I hadn’t fully known it yet. I hope other people read and interpret his works. You can go to ontological.com and access all of his journals for free, even things that never made it into productions. I want to see people’s takes on Foreman. But to see something alleging to do Foreman as Foreman would have intended felt like a lie to me, and it hurt. It was grief. That show made me feel a very heavy dose of grief.
JF: I only discovered him after he passed away, and I wish I’d known about him earlier. He feels so aligned with me in many ways.
TB: I think about people I always assumed I would work with. Catherine O’Hara passing, I was like, wait, we haven’t worked together yet. David Lynch. Anthony Bourdain. People I felt a deep connection to because of how I related to their art or interviews. I couldn’t imagine not working with them someday. Then suddenly you realize you never will. But you can work with the things they put into the world. That’s an incredible part of being an artist. Those reverberations continue long beyond your existence. I was very lucky to work with Foreman. It’s unlikely that I would have, being a kid from Kansas who went to KU and not Yale. But I did, and it has been an incredibly powerful point in my life. His work makes so much sense to me. To some people it doesn’t at all, but to me it hits my brain, my heart, and my body in ways other things don’t. I’m glad his work exists for other people to encounter, even if they never encountered him.
JF: I want to ask some Dionysian Dream questions. Do you have a favorite film about the theatre?
TB: I have a few. One is The Playhouse by Buster Keaton. There is blackface in it, which almost everyone did in the 1920s. That doesn’t make it right, obviously, but it bears mentioning. It’s a short where he plays all the characters. He’s the orchestra, the performers, the audience, the stagehand. Technically, to pull that off in the 1920s is wild. It’s seamless and so funny. It feels like a precursor to Monty Python. Then he wakes up and it’s all a dream, but he’s in love with twins. It’s very conscious and unconscious, mirrors, seeing yourself inside everything. Extreme confusion ensues. It’s literally set in a theater. I’d also say The Muppets Take Manhattan. It’s devastating and beautiful, hopeful and incredibly real. Moving to New York to be an artist, getting amnesia and thinking you’re an accountant. It’s so relatable. It was also the first time I realized Manhattan was called that because, being from Manhattan, Kansas, I just called it New York City. My third is Synecdoche, New York, the Philip Seymour Hoffman movie. The idea of what someone would do with a MacArthur Genius Grant and how the story unfolds, replacing yourself with other selves. It’s inspiring and hopeful and also deeply depressing.
JF: Is there a theatre artist, living or dead, you’d love to have a night on the town with?
TB: There are so many, but I’d love to hang out with Bill Irwin. We’ve been in the same place many times. We once sat next to each other at Shakespeare in the Park during The Taming of the Shrew. It was happenstance. I was having a moment. He had no idea who I was. It’s strange to sit next to someone you admire who doesn’t know you.
JF: What would you guys do?
TB: If he drinks, I’d take him to a bar and say, tell me everything. But it might be more fun to do something outside his practice. My favorite place in New York is Coney Island. We’d take the F train down, get a hot dog if he eats meat, or a beer if not. I’d ask, do you want to go to the sideshow first or ride the Cyclone? We’d do both. We’d get our fortunes from Zoltar before riding the Wonder Wheel. Maybe go to the aquarium or walk the pier. Then we’d take the F train back.
JF: What are your dreams for the future of American theatre?
TB: My dream is that artists can continue to test and change the palette of audiences. That we’re not content to feed people the same buttered noodles from birth to death. That we can say, want to try this? Want to try this? Want to try this? Encourage people to step outside what they think they like. If they still don’t like it, that’s fine. But what gives me hope is that people have the capacity to do things outside of what they think they already know. An artist can lead the way.
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