A director and theoretician of performance, Herbert Blau (b. 1926) is professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Washington. See Washington (disambiguation for other uses The University of Washington, founded in 1861, is a public research University As co-founder of The Actor's Workshop in San Francisco (1952-1965) and co-director of the Repertory Theater of Lincoln Center in New York (1965-68), Blau introduced American audiences to avant-garde drama in some of this country's very first productions of Samuel Beckett, Jean Genet, and Harold Pinter including the legendary 1957 performance of Beckett's Waiting for Godot at California's San Quentin State Prison. Samuel Barclay Beckett (13 April 1906 – 22 December 1989 was an Irish Writer, Dramatist and poet Jean Genet (ʒɑ̃ ʒəˈnɛ in French ( –) was a prominent controversial French writer and later political activist. Waiting for Godot is a play by Samuel Beckett, in which two characters wait for someone named Godot who never arrives San Quentin State Prison is located on 432 acres (17 km² on Point San Quentin in Marin County, California, United States, north of San Francisco He extended the challenges of such cutting-edge work as artistic director of the experimental group KRAKEN (1968-1981). The two books that emerged from that work—Take Up the Bodies: Theater at the Vanishing Point (University of Illinois Press, 1982) and Blooded Thought: Occasions of Theater (Performing Arts Journal Publications, 1982)—received the George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism and became seminal books in the developing field of performance theory. Blau's most recent book is The Dubious Spectacle: Extremities of Theater (University of Minnesota Press, 2002). His first is The Impossible Theater: A Manifesto (Macmillan Company, 1964). In addition to the theater, Blau has taken up the subjects of literature, visual arts, fashion, postmodern culture and politics.
References
- Marranca, Bonnie and Gautam Dasgupta. "The Play of Thought: An Interview with Herbert Blau," Performing Arts Journal 14:3 (September, 1992): 1-32.
External links
- Internet Broadway Database
- Audio and video from Herbert Blau's 2004 lecture, "The Right Side of the Tracks, from As If: An Autobiography"
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| NAME | Blau, Herbert |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Blau, Herb |
| SHORT DESCRIPTION | American director and theoretician of performance |
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