Phil Auslander and actor Willem Dafoe have crossed paths on two occasions so far. In 1984, the late Michael Kirby, then editor of The Drama Review, commissioned Phil to interview a young actor who was one of the founders of the Wooster Group, the now legendary experimental theatre in New York City, for a special issue. At the time, Dafoe was appearing in the Wooster Group's LSD: Just the High Points. The special issue never happened, but an article based on the interview was published in TDR in 1985.
On the occasion of a conference about the Wooster Group sponsored by the Free University of Brussels to take place in the spring of 2002, Phil proposed to interview Dafoe again to see where his thoughts on acting, performing, and everything else were after eighteen years and many, many performances with the Wooster Group and on film. This time, the interview was videotaped and the video, edited by Georgia Tech student Dawn Pendergast (who also prepared a transcript) as part of an independent study, was shown at the conference. Phil also presented the 22-minute film to the Theatre Department at Emory University in the fall of 2002.
Video Clip from 2002 Interview