Spanning a quarter of a century, the essays in this book rehearse, in the movement of memory and cross-reflection, an extensive career in theater. The work of Herbert Blau-his directing, writing, and criticism-has been a determining force during this period as theater encounters theory.
Blau's struggle to bring a critical intelligence to the American stage goes back half a century, to the quiescent postwar years (which he has eloquently described in The Impossible Theater: A Manifesto). His innovations in performance began with early productions of now-canonical plays that were...
Spanning a quarter of a century, the essays in this book rehearse, in the movement of memory and cross-reflection, an extensive career in theater. ...
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...
"Herbert Blau's long sustained inquiry into theater's most provocative questions--presence, liveness, and finitude--are, at their deepest level, queries into life. Reality Principles returns us to Blau's inspiring provocations and extends them to new subjects--9/11 and Ground Zero, the nature of charisma, Pirandello and Strindberg." --Peggy Phelan, Stanford University
Reality Principles gathers recent essays by esteemed scholar and theater practitioner Herbert Blau covering a range of topics. The book's provocative essays--including "The Emotional Memory of...
"Herbert Blau's long sustained inquiry into theater's most provocative questions--presence, liveness, and finitude--are, at their deepest level, qu...
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...
