The Piscator Notebook

Piscator founded the Workshop after emigrating to New York, having collaborated with Brecht to create "epic theatre" in Germany. The Piscator Notebook documents the author Malina's intensive and idiosyncratic training at Piscator's school.

'Theater legend Malina has written one of the most interesting studies of the avant-garde theatrical movement published in the last several years.' – CHOICE Judith Malina and The Living Theatre have been icons of political theatre for over six decades. What few realise is that she originally studied under one of the giants of twentieth century culture, Erwin Piscator, in his Dramatic Workshop at The New School in New York. Piscator founded the Workshop after emigrating to New York, having collaborated with Brecht to create "epic theatre" in Germany. The Piscator Notebook documents Malina’s intensive and idiosyncratic training at Piscator’s school. Part diary, part theatrical treatise, this unique and inspiring volume combines: complete transcriptions of Malina’s diaries from her time as a student at the Dramatic Workshop, as well as reproductions of various of Piscator’s syllabi and teaching materials; notes on Malina’s teachers, fellow students – including Marlon Brando and Tennessee Williams – and New School productions; studies of Piscator’s process and influence, along with a new essay on the relationship between his teaching, Malina’s work with the Living Theatre and "The Ongoing Epic"; an introduction by performance pioneer, Richard Schechner. The Piscator Notebook is a compelling record of the genealogy of political theatre practice in the early 20th Century, from Europe to the US. But it is also a stunningly personal reflection on the pleasures and challenges of learning about theatre, charged with essential insights for the student and teacher, actor and director. 'Piscator is the greatest theatre man of our time.' – Bertolt Brecht

This study of the Piscatorbühne season of 1927–1928 uncovers a vital, previously neglected current of radical experiment in modern theater, a ghost in the machine of contemporary performance practices. A handful of theater seasons changed the course of 20th- and 21st-century theatre. But only the Piscatorbühne of 1927–1928 went bankrupt in less than a year. This exploration tells the story of that collapse, how it predicted the wider collapse of the late Weimar Republic, and how it relates to our own era of political polarization and economic instability. As a wider examination of Piscator’s contributions to dramaturgical and aesthetic form, The Piscatorbühne Century makes a powerful and timely case for the renewed significance of the broader epic theater tradition. Drawing on a rich archive of interwar materials, Drew Lichtenberg reconstructs this germinal nexus of theory and praxis for the modern theatre. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars in theatre, performance, art, and literature.

Ensemble Theatre Making: A Practical Guide is the first comprehensive diagnostic handbook for building, caring for and maintaining ensemble. Successful ensembles don't happen by chance: they can be created, nurtured and maintained through specific actions taken by ensemble leaders and members. Ensemble Theatre Making provides a thorough step-by-step process to consistently achieve the collaborative dynamic that leads to the group trust, commitment and sacrifice necessary for the success of a common goal.

Richard Schechner is a pioneer of Performance Studies. A scholar, theatre director, editor, and playwright he is University Professor of Performance Studies at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University and Editor of TDR: The Journal of Performance Studies. He is the author of Public Domain (1969), Environmental Theater (1973), The End of Humanism (1982), Performance Theory (2003, Routledge), Between Theater and Anthropology (1985), The Future of Ritual (1993, Routledge), and Over, Under, and Around: Essays on Performance and Culture (2004). His books have been translated into French, Spanish, Korean, Chinese, Japanese, Serbo-Croat, German, Italian, Hungarian, Bulgarian and Polish. He is the general editor of the Worlds of Performance series published by Routledge and the co-editor of the Enactments series published by Seagull Books. Sara Brady is Assistant Professor at Bronx Community College of the City University of New York (CUNY). She is author of Performance, Politics and the War on Terror (2012).

This volume surveys and assesses the contributions of Vsevolod Meyerhold, Erwin Piscator and Bertolt Brecht to theatre-making, which richly exemplify the range of ways that directors address dramatic material, theatrical space and their audiences. Their directorial work marks an unmistakeable interest in developing the political potential of theatre in the early 20th century, although each director offered more to their actors, collaborators and spectators than simply the staging of politics and the political.

Collective creation - the practice of collaboratively devising works of performance - rose to prominence not simply as a performance making method, but as an institutional model. By examining theatre practices in Europe and North America, this book explores collective creation's roots in the theatrical experiments of the early twentieth century.

The Twentieth-Century Performance Reader has been the key introductory text to all types of performance for over fifteen years. Extracts from over fifty practitioners, critics and theorists from the fields of dance, drama, music, theatre and live art form an essential sourcebook for students, researchers and practitioners. This carefully revised third edition offers focus on contributions from the world of music, and also privileges the voices of practitioners themselves ahead of more theoretical writing. A bestseller since its original publication in 1996, this new edition has been expanded to include contributions from: Bobby Baker; Joseph Beuys; Rustom Bharucha; Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker; Hanns Eisler; Karen Finley; Philip Glass; Guillermo Gómez-Peña; Matthew Goulish; Martha Graham; Wassily Kandinsky; Jacques Lecoq; Hans-Thies Lehmann; George Maciunas; Ariane Mnouchkine; Meredith Monk; Lloyd Newson; Carolee Schneemann; Gertrude Stein; Bill Viola. Each extract is fully supplemented by a contextual summary, a biography of the writer, and suggestions for further reading. The volume’s alphabetical structure invites the reader to compare and cross-reference major writings on all types of performance outside of the constraints and simplifications of genre, encouraging cross-disciplinary understandings. All who engage with live, innovative performance, and the interplay of radical ideas, will find this collection invaluable.