As part of the Art in the Anchorage program, W. David Hancock presented the multifaceted play Deviant Craft. A literary, interactive performance, Deviant Craft was about a group of fictional female psychiatric ward inmates, who stage Shakespeare’s The Tempest as an innovative rehabilitation technique. Performed by the Foundry Theater company, Deviant Craft drew on theatrical and literary allusions, so as to present an intriguing open-ended meditation on art and chicanery, insanity and genius.

As the audience gathered for the start of the drama, actors approached people and began to converse in character. Eventually ushered into a crude, barn-like theater, the audience watched the “inmates” alternate between an interpretative performance and the oration of their own life stories.

Multiple Artists

Deviant Craft

Manhattan

1995