'Kathy Acker was incredibly warm – but her writing was so aggressive'

As she prepares to direct an unstaged script by the late pirate queen of counterculture, theatre-maker Kate Valk recalls how they met – and how she dealt with Acker’s challenging attitude to sexKate Valk leads the way up a winding marble staircase, past video screens showing unspeakable acts of body modification, to an empty room at the top of London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts. She pulls up two red plastic chairs and sits herself down on one, her laptop open on her knees. The videos are part of an edgy multimedia tribute to Kathy Acker that sprawls across the ICA’s lower floors. Valk is here to add a final theatrical flourish, directing a previously unstaged script by the pirate queen of 70s and 80s counterculture.With its ornate cornicing and makeshift furniture, this deserted chamber could be a set for the Wooster group, the New York-based theatre ensemble to which Valk has belonged for the last four decades. Screens are everywhere in their shows, and at one moment – when trying to demonstrate the way in which she works – Valk puts her laptop down on the bare floor and starts to speak directly to it. “I can facilitate an encounter with the text,” she says. “This. Is. An. Encounter.” Continue reading…
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