Ivo van Hove on His Famously Short Rehearsal Times
nytimes.comI was at New York Theatre Workshop 25 years ago with my first production: Eugene O’Neill’s “More Stately Mansions” (1964). Since then, people have called me “the man you love to hate or hate to love” — a badge of honor, as far as I’m concerned.
Later, I moved on to Broadway, but I kept returning to NYTW. Its rehearsal space is upstairs on the third floor, and I originally disliked it because it feels like a big living room, but eventually I fell for it.
I’ve now done eight productions here, the last of which was “Lazarus” in 2015 with David Bowie. When we took this portrait, I was preparing for a February festival in Amsterdam, where my company and I presented several plays based on the works of the French novelist Édouard Louis.
My most recent adaptation of one of his books, 2021’s “Combats et Métamorphoses d’une Femme” [“A Woman’s Battles and Transformations”], premiered in the Netherlands last September.
