432 Pages
    by Routledge

    432 Pages 28 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    Few have had quite as much impact in both the academy and in the world of theatre production as Richard Schechner. For more than four decades his work has challenged conventional definitions of theatre, ritual and performance. When this seminal collection first appeared, Schechner's approach was not only novel, it was revolutionary: drama is not just something that occurs on stage, but something that happens in everyday life, full of meaning, and on many different levels. Within these pages he examines the connections between Western and non-Western cultures, theatre and dance, anthropology, ritual, performance in everyday life, rites of passage, play, psychotherapy and shamanism.

    Author's Note; Acknowledgements; Introduction: The fan and the web; 1. Approaches; 2. Actuals; 3. Drama, script, theater, and performance; 4. From ritual to theater and back: the efficacy-entertainment braid; 5. Towards a poetics of performance; 6.Selective inattention; 7. Ethology and theater; 8. Magnitudes of performance; References; Index

    Biography

    One of contemporary theatre's most celebrated directors, he is also a world-renowned artist and scholar.

    'Reading Performance Theory by Richard Schechner again, three decades after its first edition, is like meeting an old friend and finding out how much of him/her has been with you all along this way.' – Augusto Boal