Breaking the Rules: The Wooster Group

Rating:
Summary: Engaging though Dated Look at Soho Shenanigans
Review: For the last 25 years, The Wooster Group has been one of the most influential and important experimental theatre groups in the country. They have managed, along with such contemporaries as Richard Foreman and Robert Wilson, to redefine the boundaries of what theatre is and what it can do while all the while having a wonderfully fun and zany time. This book not only gives in-depth analysis of seven of the group's pieces, but also manages to record the feelings and personalities of the group members through the countless interviews and dialogues represented. The result is a terrifically informative book which captures much of the unique collaborative process that goes into each work, each one a theatrical "explosion" of visceral excitement. However, like all experimental theatre, it is terribly difficult to really represent theatre that is not based on standard written texts; a production of the Wooster Group must be experienced first-hand in conjunction with this book to really appreciate what the troupe has achieved. Any reader must also recognize that although this is the only text devoted solely to the Soho performers, it is, at the time of this review, twelve years old and does not represent the current productions but rather the processes and experiements, constructions and deconstructions, odds and ends that led to what they are today.