Includes bibliographical references (pages 225-240) and index.
Contents:
Introduction: where is poets' theater? -- Repeating Gertrude Stein -- "Everyone is watching us!" the poets' theatre, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1950-1956 -- From poets' theater to "antitextual" theater: the living theatre and the rhetoric of the real -- Sounding the revolution: Amiri Baraka's Black Arts poets' theater -- Carla Harryman and the ethics of performance -- Poets' theater as postdramatic theater: learning from Suzan-Lori Parks's The America play -- Epilogue: poets' theater in the twenty-first century.
Summary:
"Acts of Poetry examines the rhetoric, history, and practice of postwar American poet's theater. American poet's theater proliferated in the postwar period, when rich, performance-oriented poetry and theater scenes came together on the makeshift stages of urban coffee houses, shared apartments, and underground theaters. And yet its importance and history have been almost entirely ignored by critics. Acts of Poetry shines a spotlight on the practice of poet's theater by examining key groups and practitioners. Bringing together cultural history and criticism, it maps poet's theater in relation to performance practices such as poetry readings, avant-garde theater, and conceptual art and demonstrates not only the emergence of poet's theater in the postwar period but its continuation and legacy today"-- Provided by publisher.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.