Monthly Archives: May 2018

The Contemporary American Monologue: Performance and Politics. Eddie Paterson. New York: Methuen, 2015; Pp. 232. The Contemporary American Monologue: Performance and Politics by Eddie Paterson offers comparative analyses of solo performance artists Spalding Grey, Laurie Anderson, Anna Deavere Smith, and Karen Finley. In his introduction, Paterson clearly lays out his arguments and the organization of […]

Stage for Action: U.S. Social Activist Theatre in the 1940s. Chrystyna Dail. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2016; Pp. 194. In Stage for Action: U.S. Social Activist Theatre in the 1940s, Chrystyna Dail reveals a significant piece of theatre history and asserts its rightful place in the canon of American drama. Dail begins the book […]

Immersions in Cultural Difference: Tourism, War, Performance. Natalie Alvarez. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2018; Pp. 214. Reading Natalie Alvarez’s Immersions in Cultural Difference: Tourism, War, Performance is a fantastic reminder of what theatre and performance studies have to offer during a cultural moment in which “reality” programming is often difficult to discern from […]

Black Performance on the Outskirts of the Left. Malik Gaines. New York: NYU Press, 2017; Pp. 248.  It begins with a bold proposition. In Black Performance on the Outskirts of the Left, scholar-practitioner Malik Gaines suggests that performance is a radical act and that black performances can amend “dominant discourses that manage representation and constrain […]

Samuel Beckett’s Theatre in America: The Legacy of Alan Schneider as Beckett’s American Director. Natka Bianchini. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015; Pp. 204. To discuss the production history of Samuel Beckett’s work in the US is inevitably to begin with Alan Schneider. Schneider directed the American premiere of all twelve of Beckett’s major works, from […]