Herbert Blau – författare

First published in 1992, To All Appearances is a book in which ideology and performance shadow each other, in a theoretical inquiry which ranges widely across historical periods and cultures. The author’s concerns—which include the social meaning of illusion and the cultural manifestation of power—take the reader from Jacobean drama to the pageantry of Robert Wilson; from Eleanora Duse to Laurie Anderson; from the puppet theater of Kleist to Kantor’s theater of the dead; and from the Kutiyattam temple dancers in Kerala to Womanhouse in Los Angeles.

A brilliant, uncontainable, and chastening look at the rhetoric of critical theory in relation to performance and ideological practice, this is undoubtedly a book for the twenty-first century. It returns us, through all appearances, to the unavoidable question in art, in politics, in the society of the spectacle: what, after all, is the future of illusion?

First published in 1992, To All Appearances is a book in which ideology and performance shadow each other, in a theoretical inquiry which ranges widely across historical periods and cultures. The author’s concerns—which include the social meaning of illusion and the cultural manifestation of power—take the reader from Jacobean drama to the pageantry of Robert Wilson; from Eleanora Duse to Laurie Anderson; from the puppet theater of Kleist to Kantor’s theater of the dead; and from the Kutiyattam temple dancers in Kerala to Womanhouse in Los Angeles.

A brilliant, uncontainable, and chastening look at the rhetoric of critical theory in relation to performance and ideological practice, this is undoubtedly a book for the twenty-first century. It returns us, through all appearances, to the unavoidable question in art, in politics, in the society of the spectacle: what, after all, is the future of illusion?

‘One of the great stories of the American theater..., the Workshop not only built an international reputation with its daring choice of plays and nontraditional productions, it also helped launch a movement of regional, or resident, companies that would change forever how Americans thought about and consumed theater.’ – Elin Diamond, from the Introduction

Herbert Blau founded, with Jules Irving, the legendary Actor''s Workshop of San Francisco, in 1952, starting with ten people in a loft above a judo academy. Over the course of the next 13 years and its hundred or so productions, it introduced American audiences to plays by Brecht, Beckett, Pinter, Genet, Arden, Fornes, and various unknown others.

Most of the productions were accompanied by a stunningly concise and often provocative programme note by Blau. These documents now comprise, within their compelling perspective, a critique of the modern theatre. They vividly reveal what these now canonical works could mean, first time round, and in the context of 1950s and 60s American culture, in the shadow of the Cold War.

Programming Theater History curates these notes, with a selection of the Workshop''s incrementally artful, alluring programme covers, Blau''s recollections, and evocative production photographs, into a narrative of indispensable artefacts and observations. The result is an inspiring testimony by a giant of American performance theory and practice, and a unique reflection of what it is to create theatre history in the present.

‘One of the great stories of the American theater..., the Workshop not only built an international reputation with its daring choice of plays and nontraditional productions, it also helped launch a movement of regional, or resident, companies that would change forever how Americans thought about and consumed theater.’ – Elin Diamond, from the Introduction

Herbert Blau founded, with Jules Irving, the legendary Actor''s Workshop of San Francisco, in 1952, starting with ten people in a loft above a judo academy. Over the course of the next 13 years and its hundred or so productions, it introduced American audiences to plays by Brecht, Beckett, Pinter, Genet, Arden, Fornes, and various unknown others.

Most of the productions were accompanied by a stunningly concise and often provocative programme note by Blau. These documents now comprise, within their compelling perspective, a critique of the modern theatre. They vividly reveal what these now canonical works could mean, first time round, and in the context of 1950s and 60s American culture, in the shadow of the Cold War.

Programming Theater History curates these notes, with a selection of the Workshop''s incrementally artful, alluring programme covers, Blau''s recollections, and evocative production photographs, into a narrative of indispensable artefacts and observations. The result is an inspiring testimony by a giant of American performance theory and practice, and a unique reflection of what it is to create theatre history in the present.