Description
Book SynopsisExamines recent and contemporary work by such groups as Rimini Protokoll, Societas Raffaelo Sanzio, the Gob Squad, Nature Theatre of Oklahoma, and Foundry Theatre, while revealing the deep antecedents of today’s theater, placing it in useful historical perspective. While many may consider it a post-postmodern phenomenon, the “theater of the real”, as it turns out, has very deep roots.
Trade ReviewA pleasure to read… the prose has Carlson’s usual clarity and force. While previous critics have noted the incursion of ‘the real’ into avant-garde performance, to my knowledge Carlson is the first to see this as a key driver of theatrical developments since the eighteenth century. One of the book’s virtues is that it integrates French, German, and Russian theatre history on the one hand, and developments within the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries on the other, to our understanding of the historical avant-garde and more recent European and American experimental theatre.” — Andrew Sofer, Boston College
