Contours of the Theatrical Avant-Garde - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 047209727X ISBN 13: 9780472097272

Publisher: University of Michigan Press, 2000

Synopsis

Contours of the Theatrical Avant-Garde is a critical history of avant-garde performance and the problemation relationship of text to perfroamnce. The book's essays explore the development of avant-garde theater and its relation to questions of textuality, authority, and the academy. Although the canon of modern and contemporary drama would be difficult to imagine without the influential legacy of the movements and strands of the historical avant-garde, this critical history is often overlooked in courses on modern and contemporary drama and theater. Though primarily focusing on issues of textuality and performance, the essays regard the antitextualism of the avant-garde as indicative of the wide variety of anti-cultural sentiments that have characterized avant-garde performance. The volume begins with the anti-textual sentiments of the avant-garde, then offers antitextual models, explores specific performances, and ends with a critical analysis of the avant-garde. Uniting the array of opinions articulated is a belief that despite the problems that haunt the traditions of avant-garde theater, it can nonetheless offer continued valuable insights into the industries of literature, theater, scholarship, and culture.

About this title

About the Author

James M. Harding is Professor of Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park. He is the author of Performance, Transparency and the Cultures of Surveillance; The Ghosts of the Avant- Garde(s): Exorcising Experimental Theater and Performance; and Cutting Performances: Collage Events, Feminist Artists, and the American Avant-Garde, among other books.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Michigan Press
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 047209727X
• ISBN 13: 9780472097272
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 312
• Editor: Harding James M.