The Twentieth Century Performance Reader

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.

Teresa Brayshaw is Director of Performing Arts at Leeds Metropolitan University. She teaches, directs and performs in a wide range of international performance contexts, and is co-editor of Training Grounds, located within the international journal Theatre, Dance and Performance Training. Noel Witts is Emeritus Professor of Performing Arts at Leeds Metropolitan University, and was the founder and first Director of the Department of Performing Arts at De Montfort University. He has been a commentator on theatre for the BBC, has served as an Arts Council advisor for 20 years and has written widely on theatre, including most recently Tadeusz Kantor (Routledge). He was a founding member of the journal Performance Research.

1. Marina Abramovic: Interview 2. Laurie Anderson: The Speed of Change 3. Adolph Appiah: Actor, Space, Light, Painting 4. Antonin Artaud: Theatre of Cruelty 5. Bobby Baker: Performance Artists Bobby Baker 6. Rustom Bharucha 7. Eugenio Barba: Words or Presence 8. Pina Bausch: Not How People Move but What Moves Them 9. Julian Beck: Acting Exercises 10. Samuel Beckett: Quad 11.Walter Benjamin: What is Epic Theatre? 12. Augusto Boal: Theatre as Discourse 13. Bertolt Brecht: Short Description of a New Technique in Acting Which Produces an Alienation Effect 14. Peter Brook: The Deadly Theatre 15. Trisha Brown: Trisha Brown: An Interview 16. John Cage: Four Statements on the Dance 17. Edward Gordon Craig: The Actor and the Uber-Marionette 18. Merce Cuningham: You Have to Love Dancing To Stick To It 19. Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker: Interview with David Hughes 20. Isadora Duncan: The Dancer of the Future 21. tim Etchells: On Performance Writing 22. Hanns Eisler 23. Richard Foreman: How To Write a Play 24. Karen Finley: Interview with Andrea Juno 25. George Maciunas: Expanded Arts Diagram 26. Roselee Goldberg: Performance Art from Futurism to the Present 27. Martha Graham: Graham 1987 28. Guillermo Gómez-Peña: The Art of Camoflauge 29. Philip Glass 30. Matthew Goulish: The Creature from the Black Lagoon 31. Jerzy Grotowski: Statement of Principles 32. Tatsumi Hijikata: Man, Once Dead, Crawl Back! 33. Alfred Jarry: On the Futility of the 'Theatrical' in Theatre 34. Tadeusz Kantor: The Theatre of Death: A Manifesto 35. Wasily Kandinsky: On Stage Composition 36. Allan Kaprow: Assemblages, Environments and Happenings 37. Elizabeth LeCompte: Interview 38. Robert Lepage: Robert Lepage in Conversation 39. F.T. Marinetto: The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism 40. Meredith Monk: Process Notes on Atlas 41. Vsevolod Meyerhold: First Attempts at a Stylised Theatre 42. Ariane Mnouchkine: Building up the Muscle of the Imagination 43. Heiner Müller: 19 Answers by Heiner Müller 44. Lloyd Newson: Interview with Jo Butterworth 45. Erwin Piscator: Epic Satire 46. Hans-Thies Lehmann: Prologue from Postdramatic Theatre 47. Yvonne Rainer: A Quasi Survery of Some 'Minimalist' Tendencies in the Quantatively Minimal Dance Activity Midst the Plethora, or an Analysis of Trio A 48. Hans Richter: How did Dada Begin? 49. Richard Shechner: The Five Avant Gardes...or None? 50. Carolee Schneeman: Meat Joy 51. Oskar Schlemmer: Man and Art Figure 52. Wole Soyinka: Theatre in African Traditional Cultures: Survival Patterns 53. Konstantin Stanislavski: Intonation and Pauses 54. Gertrude Stein: Look at Me Now Here I Am 55. Stelarc: Interview with Nicholas Zurbrugg 56 Bill Viola: The Visionary Landscape of Perception 57. Robert Wilson: Interview A Chronology of Texts A Bibliography of Performance