3rd Edition

The Twentieth Century Performance Reader

Edited By Teresa Brayshaw, Noel Witts Copyright 2013
    544 Pages
    by Routledge

    544 Pages
    by Routledge

    The Twentieth-Century Performance Reader has been the key introductory text to all types of performance for over fifteen years. Extracts from over fifty practitioners, critics and theorists from the fields of dance, drama, music, theatre and live art form an essential sourcebook for students, researchers and practitioners.

    This carefully revised third edition offers focus on contributions from the world of music, and also privileges the voices of practitioners themselves ahead of more theoretical writing. A bestseller since its original publication in 1996, this new edition has been expanded to include contributions from:

    Bobby Baker; Joseph Beuys; Rustom Bharucha; Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker; Hanns Eisler; Karen Finley; Philip Glass; Guillermo Gómez-Peña; Matthew Goulish; Martha Graham; Wassily Kandinsky; Jacques Lecoq; Hans-Thies Lehmann; George Maciunas; Ariane Mnouchkine; Meredith Monk; Lloyd Newson; Carolee Schneemann; Gertrude Stein; Bill Viola.

    Each extract is fully supplemented by a contextual summary, a biography of the writer, and suggestions for further reading. The volume’s alphabetical structure invites the reader to compare and cross-reference major writings on all types of performance outside of the constraints and simplifications of genre, encouraging cross-disciplinary understandings.

    All who engage with live, innovative performance, and the interplay of radical ideas, will find this collection invaluable.

    1. Marina Abramovic: Interview  2. Laurie Anderson: The Speed of Change  3. Adolph Appiah: Actor, Space, Light, Painting  4. Antonin Artaud: Theatre of Cruelty  5. Bobby Baker: Performance Artists Bobby Baker  6. Rustom Bharucha  7. Eugenio Barba: Words or Presence  8. Pina Bausch: Not How People Move but What Moves Them  9. Julian Beck: Acting Exercises  10. Samuel Beckett: Quad  11.Walter Benjamin: What is Epic Theatre?  12. Augusto Boal: Theatre as Discourse  13. Bertolt Brecht: Short Description of a New Technique in Acting Which Produces an Alienation Effect  14. Peter Brook: The Deadly Theatre  15. Trisha Brown: Trisha Brown: An Interview  16. John Cage: Four Statements on the Dance  17. Edward Gordon Craig: The Actor and the Uber-Marionette  18.  Merce Cuningham: You Have to Love Dancing To Stick To It  19. Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker: Interview with David Hughes  20. Isadora Duncan: The Dancer of the Future 21. tim Etchells: On Performance Writing 22. Hanns Eisler  23. Richard Foreman: How To Write a Play  24. Karen Finley: Interview with Andrea Juno  25. George Maciunas: Expanded Arts Diagram  26. Roselee Goldberg: Performance Art from Futurism to the Present  27. Martha Graham: Graham 1987  28. Guillermo Gómez-Peña: The Art of Camoflauge  29. Philip Glass  30. Matthew Goulish: The Creature from the Black Lagoon  31. Jerzy Grotowski: Statement of Principles  32. Tatsumi Hijikata: Man, Once Dead, Crawl Back!  33. Alfred Jarry: On the Futility of the 'Theatrical' in Theatre  34. Tadeusz Kantor: The Theatre of Death: A Manifesto  35. Wasily Kandinsky: On Stage Composition  36. Allan Kaprow: Assemblages, Environments and Happenings  37. Elizabeth LeCompte: Interview  38. Robert Lepage: Robert Lepage in Conversation  39. F.T. Marinetto: The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism  40. Meredith Monk: Process Notes on Atlas  41. Vsevolod Meyerhold: First Attempts at a Stylised Theatre  42. Ariane Mnouchkine: Building up the Muscle of the Imagination  43. Heiner Müller: 19 Answers by Heiner Müller  44. Lloyd Newson: Interview with Jo Butterworth  45. Erwin Piscator: Epic Satire  46. Hans-Thies Lehmann: Prologue from Postdramatic Theatre  47. Yvonne Rainer: A Quasi Survery of Some 'Minimalist' Tendencies in the Quantatively Minimal Dance Activity Midst the Plethora, or an Analysis of Trio 48. Hans Richter: How did Dada Begin?  49. Richard Shechner: The Five Avant Gardes...or None?  50. Carolee Schneeman: Meat Joy  51. Oskar Schlemmer: Man and Art Figure  52. Wole Soyinka: Theatre in African Traditional Cultures: Survival Patterns  53. Konstantin Stanislavski: Intonation and Pauses  54. Gertrude Stein: Look at Me Now Here I Am  55. Stelarc: Interview with Nicholas Zurbrugg  56 Bill Viola: The Visionary Landscape of Perception  57. Robert Wilson: Interview  A Chronology of Texts  A Bibliography of Performance

    Biography

    Teresa Brayshaw is Director of Performing Arts at Leeds Metropolitan University. She teaches, directs and performs in a wide range of international performance contexts, and is co-editor of Training Grounds, located within the international journal Theatre, Dance and Performance Training.

    Noel Witts is Emeritus Professor of Performing Arts at Leeds Metropolitan University, and was the founder and first Director of the Department of Performing Arts at De Montfort University. He has been a commentator on theatre for the BBC, has served as an Arts Council advisor for 20 years and has written widely on theatre, including most recently Tadeusz Kantor (Routledge). He was a founding member of the journal Performance Research.