Boxing 2000 Richard Maxwell

"Experience the quickened, hopeful heartbeat that comes from watching that rare phenomenon, a genuinely original new talent at work." -New York Times

If you caught Richard MaxwellÔøΩ breakthrough work House here in 2000, you were among the first to experience the strangely compelling pull of his unique theatrical worldview. To date, the Wexner Center is the only U.S. organization outside of New York City to have presented Maxwell, one of the freshest new writer-directors on the scene and greatly in demand at important venues abroad. MaxwellÔøΩ radically stripped-down approach dispenses with common dramatic conventions to reveal stark truths.

Boxing 2000, co-commissioned by the Wexner Center, the Hebbel-Theatre of Berlin, and the Kaaitheater in Brussels, has been lauded as a major new work by this highly touted young talent. In it, poignant, tragicomic characters spar in and out of the ring with bluntly delivered dialogue and extremely deadpan humor. Their darkly off-beat but keenly crafted performances echo an American scene of vast numbness that, nonetheless, retains a dim spark of hope.

ItÔøΩ hard to shake off the lasting effects of MaxwellÔøΩ work. After seeing his plays, day-to-day occurrences can seem as if they were directly lifted from his scenesa sure sign youÔøΩe witnessed something special by a true artist.