Sails of the Herring Fleet traces esteemed director and theorist Herbert Blau's encounters with the work of Samuel Beckett. Blau directed Beckett's plays when they were still virtually unknown, and for more than four decades has remained one of the leading interpreters of his work. In addition to now-classic essays, the collection includes early program notes and two remarkable interviews -- one from Blau's experience directing "Waiting for Godot" at San Quentin prison, and one from his last visit with Beckett, just before the playwright's death. Herbert Blau is Byron W. and Alice L....
Sails of the Herring Fleet traces esteemed director and theorist Herbert Blau's encounters with the work of Samuel Beckett. Blau directed Beckett'...
Herbert Blau here reflects on performance as it moved from the theatricalized activism of the sixties into the theoretical activism of the eighties. The essays theorize rather than formulate an ideological program. Blau takes risks at the speculative edge of thought. The Eye of Prey is comprised of diverse subject matter: love and mourning, play and aging, radical feminist and homosexual discourse, the politics of representation, comedy since the Absurd, Barthes and Beckett, Beckett and Derrida--a critique of certain aspects of postmodern thought and performance, and in particular the...
Herbert Blau here reflects on performance as it moved from the theatricalized activism of the sixties into the theoretical activism of the eighties...
As If: An Autobiography traces the complex life and career of director, scholar, and theorist Herbert Blau, one of the most innovative voices in the American theater. From his earliest years on the streets of Brooklyn, with gang wars there, to the often embattled, now-legendary Actor's Workshop of San Francisco, the powerfully told story of Blau's first four decades is also a social history, moving from the Great Depression to the cold war, with fallout from "the balance of terror" on what he once described in an incendiary manifesto as The Impossible Theater. Blau has...
As If: An Autobiography traces the complex life and career of director, scholar, and theorist Herbert Blau, one of the most innovative voices i...
Herbert Blau founded, with Jules Irving, the legendary Actor's Workshop of San Francisco, in 1952. Over the course of the next 13 years and its 100 or so productions, it introduced American audiences to plays by Brecht, Beckett, Pinter, and various unknown others. Most of the productions were accompanied by a concise programme note by Blau. These documents now comprise a critique of the modern theatre. This book curates these notes, with a selection of the Workshop's incrementally artful, alluring programme covers.
Herbert Blau founded, with Jules Irving, the legendary Actor's Workshop of San Francisco, in 1952. Over the course of the next 13 years and its 100 or...