A Conversation with John Collins

On 13 April 2026, TORCHES continues with a conversation with the award-winning director and founder and artistic director of Elevator Repair Service, one of the most acclaimed experimental theater companies in New York City.

John Collins is the founder and artistic director of Elevator Repair Service (ERS), a New York City-based ensemble that creates original works for live theatre. A native of Vidalia, Georgia, Collins graduated cum laude from Yale University in 1991, with a BA in Theatre Studies and English Literature. Under Collins’s direction, Elevator Repair Service builds theatre performances from a variety of sources that include found text, amateur video, film, literature, and ensemble-generated choreography. Finished productions clash high-tech and low-tech design and mix disparate texts and forms to create live performances that are propelled by humor, narrative, pathos, and controlled chaos. ERS has cultivated a large following in New York and throughout the United States, Europe, and Australia. As artistic director of ERS, John has directed or co-directed over seventy domestic and international productions of fifteen original full-length ERS works. Recent work includes Gatz (New York premiere at The Public Theater, 2010), The Sound and the Fury (April Seventh, 1928) (New York Theatre Workshop, 2008), and The Sun Also Rises (premiered at the Edinburgh International Festival in 2010).

TORCHES: 30+ Years of Downtown Performance

As co-founder of HERE Arts Center—described by the Obie committee as “a lasting home for the weird and wild in downtown performance”—Kristin Marting spent the past three decades immersed in making, witnessing, and supporting groundbreaking performance in New York City. TORCHES is a much needed exploration of New York City’s unique and influential downtown performance world from the 1990s through the 2020s. Part memoir, part oral history, and part cultural inquiry, TORCHES offers in-depth video conversations with more than thirty of the most imaginative and boundary pushing artists working in the field today. TORCHES is both a living archive and an offering for the future. Learning about these artists and their work is not just looking back; it can ignite what’s coming next. They are not only inventors of form—they are keepers of community, fire-starters for our future. See more about the project on the TORCHES website at torchesnyc.org.

About HowlRound TV

HowlRound TV is a global, commons-based, peer-produced, open-access livestreaming and video archive project stewarded by the nonprofit HowlRound. HowlRound TV is a free and shared resource for live conversations and performances relevant to the world’s performing arts and cultural fields. Its mission is to break geographic isolation, promote resource sharing, and develop our knowledge commons collectively. Anyone can participate in this community of peer organizations revolutionizing the flow of information, knowledge, and access in our field by becoming a producer and co-producing with us. Learn more by going to our contribute content page.