Table of Contents:
  • pt. I. 1900-1920
  • 1. Preface to Miss Julie / August Strindberg
  • 2. Decay of Lying: An Observation / Oscar Wilde
  • 3. Laughter / Henri Bergson
  • 4. Against Naturalism in the Theatre (from "Unnecessary Truth") / Valery Bryusov
  • 5. People's Theatre / Romain Rolland
  • 6. Modern Drama / Maurice Maeterlinck
  • 7. Colored Men and Women on the Stage / Aida Overton Walker
  • 8. Naturalistic Theatre and the Theatre of Mood / Vsevolod Vaslov Meyerhold
  • 9. Actor and the Uber-marionette / Edward Gordon Craig
  • 10. Tragic Theatre / William Butler Yeats
  • 11. Against the Well-Made Play / George Bernard Shaw
  • 12. Futurism and the Theatre / F.T. Marinetti
  • 13. Sociology of Modern Drama / Georg Lukacs
  • 14. Foreword to The Social Significance of Modern Drama / Emma Goldman
  • pt. II. 1920-1940
  • 15. On Comedy / Luigi Pirandello
  • 16. On a New Type of Play / Stanislaw Witkiewicz
  • 17. Organic Unity / Adolphe Appia
  • 18. Man in the Tunnel, or: The Poet and the Play / Georg Kaiser
  • 19. Negro and the American Stage / Alain Locke
  • Drama of Negro Life / Alain Locke
  • 20. "Krigwa Players Little Negro Theatre": The Story of a Little Theatre Movement / W.E.B. Du Bois
  • Criteria of Negro Art / W.E.B. Du Bois
  • 21. Modern Theatre is the Epic Theatre / Bertolt Brecht
  • Theatre for Pleasure or Theatre for Instruction / Bertolt Brecht
  • Alienation Effect in Chinese Acting / Bertolt Brecht
  • 22. Memoranda on Masks / Eugene O'Neill
  • Second Thoughts / Eugene O'Neill
  • Dramatist's Notebook / Eugene O'Neill
  • 23. Plays / Gertrude Stein
  • 24. Characteristics of Negro Expression / Zora Neale Hurston
  • 25. Prophecy of Lorca / Federico Garcia Lorca
  • 26. On the Balinese Theatre / Antonin Artaud
  • No More Masterpieces / Antonin Artaud
  • 27. What is Epic Theatre? / Walter Benjamin
  • 28. Essence of Tragedy / Maxwell Anderson
  • 29. Signs in the Chinese Theatre / Karel Brusak
  • pt. III. 1940-1960
  • 30. Dynamics of the Sign in the Theatre / Jindrich Honzl
  • 31. Some Thoughts on Playwrighting / Thornton Wilder
  • 32. Tragedy and the Common Man / Arthur Miller
  • 33. Poetry and Drama / T.S. Eliot
  • 34. Timeless World of the Play / Tennessee Williams
  • 35. "Enlightenment" and Modern Drama / John Gassner
  • 36. Problems of the Theatre / Friedrich Durrenmatt
  • 37. Green Goddess of Realism / Sean O'Casey
  • 38. What is Theatre? A Point of View / Eric Bentley
  • 39. Specific Forms of Drama / Northrop Frye
  • 40. Avant-Garde Theatre / Eugene Ionesco
  • 41. Beyond Bourgeois Theatre / Jean-Paul Sartre
  • pt. IV. 1960-1980
  • 42. Theatre of the Absurd / Martin Esslin
  • 43. Death of Tragedy / George Steiner
  • 44. Task of Brechtian Criticism / Roland Barthes
  • Theatre and Signification / Roland Barthes
  • 45. Of Bert Brecht
  • Not Simple but Simplified / Lionel Abel
  • 46. Notion of "Action" / Francis Fergusson
  • 47. Drama / Peter Szondi
  • 48. Dramatic Form
  • And: Tracking Down Implications / Kenneth Burke
  • 49. Theatre of Cruelty and the Closure of Representation / Jacques Derrida
  • 50. Towards the Poor Theatre / Jerzy Grotowski
  • 51. Drama from Ibsen to Brecht / Raymond Williams
  • 52. Immediate Theatre / Peter Brook
  • 53. Notes on the Contemporary Theatre / Peter Weiss
  • 54. Edge of Impossibility: Tragic Forms in Literature / Joyce Carol Oates
  • 55. Notes on Chicano Theater / Luis Valdez
  • 56. "Empathy or What? Emotion or Reason?" and "Experiments with the People's Theatre in Peru" / Augusto Boal
  • 57. Ridiculous Theatre, Scourge of Human Folly / Charles Ludlam
  • 58. Manifesto of Structuralism / Michael Kirby
  • 59. Drama and the African World-View / Wole Soyinka
  • 60." ... I thought I was hallucinating hallucinating" / Robert Wilson
  • 61. Languages of the Stage / Patrice Pavis
  • 62. Reflections on Post-Modernism / Heiner Muller
  • 63. Unrecovered losses/black theater traditions / Ntozake Shange
  • pt. V. 1980-2000
  • 64. Theatre Happening 1967 / Tadeusz Kantor
  • 65. Native American Theatre / Jeffrey E. Huntsman
  • 66. World On Stage / Bert O. States
  • 67. Images and Reflections: Ritual, Drama, Carnival, Film, and Spectacle in Cultural Performance / Victor Turner
  • 68. Eurasian Theatre / Eugenio Barba
  • 69. Aristotle's Poetics and Zeami's Teachings on Style and the Flower / Megumi Sata
  • 70. Desire Cloaked in a Trenchcoat / Jill Dolan
  • 71. From Parody to Politics / Judith Butler
  • 72. Los Angeles / Reza Abdoh
  • 73. Foundations for a Theater / Richard Foreman
  • 74. Elements of Style / Suzan-Lori Parks
  • 75. Explicit Body in Performance / Rebecca Schneider
  • 76. Mourning Sex: Performing Public Memories / Peggy Phelan
  • 77. Written Drama/Oral Performance / Erika Fischer-Lichte
  • 78. What is Performance Studies Anyway? / Richard Schechner
  • 79. I, Carmelita Tropicana / Alina Troyano
  • 80. Limits of Performance: The Insane Root / Herbert Blau
  • 81. Structure of Theater: A Japanese View of Theatricality / Mitsuya Mori
  • 82. Ritual Theatre (Theatre of Transition) / Heisnam Kanhailal
  • Theatre in Theory: Working Units.