Growing up in New York City in the 1940s and '50s, Richard Foreman found his calling while attending the theater every Saturday with his grandmother. He was controversial from the moment he started designing scenery for local theaters in Westchester County. "John Simon can never match the greatest review I got from the Bronxville paper when I did the scenery for a production of 'Strange Bedfellows,' which was a '50s fluffy comedy," he said. "The first sentence of the review was, 'Cast and audience suffered alike last night from a set designed by Richard Foreman.' It was a totally inappropriate surrealistic setting that had nothing to do with the play." Foreman went on to found the Ontological-Hysterical Theater in 1968, which produces one of his plays every year.