| Abstract: | In the early twentieth century, avant-garde artists working in Europe declared their desire to kick playwrights and their books out of the theater. Performance, they argued, had become too verbal, too intellectual, and too book-bound. So, beginning with the Futurists, the vanguards emphasized the bodily experience of live performance, especially its nonverbal elements. Though Futurist impresario F. T. Marinetti wrote of "killing the book," neither he and his Italian colleagues nor any of the other avant-gardes did so. In fact, they published widely - and what they published changed the histories of the performing and the book arts. Taking up the work of prominent theater and performance artists working in and across Europe and North America, Beyond Text reveals the audacity and beauty of avant-garde performance in print. The book will appeal to students and scholars of twentieth- and twenty-first century theater and performance art, particularly those engaged in mapping the intersections of performance and media. |
|---|