The Lively Art: A Treasury of Criticism, Commentary, Observation, and Insight from Twenty Years of the American Repertory Theatre

Rating:
Summary: A rich compilation of articles and interviews.
Review: THE LIVELY ART is an amazing collection. The names in the table of contents include many of the greatest artists today: Peter Sellars, Andrei Serban, Susan Sontag, Milan Kundera, Carlos Fuentes, Marsha Norman, Philip Glass, Robert Wilson, Heiner Muller, Dario Fo, JoAnne Akalaitis, Don de Lillo, Elliott Goldenthal, Liviu Ciulei, David Rabe, David Mamet, Paula Vogel, and Christopher Durang. Through interviews and articles written by the artists themselves, the pieces in this anthology provide an invaluable insight into the creative process and also an overview into contemporary theater practices. Some of the selections, like the acrimonious exchange of letters between Samuel Beckett and artistic director Robert Brustein, have great historical importance and raise important questions about the relation of any production to the text that inspired it.

In addition, distinguished scholars have contributed provocative essays: Robert Brustein, Harry Levin, Richard Gilman, Stephen Greenblatt, Jan Kott, and Harold Bloom. These articles provide interesting examples of current critical approaches from the new historicism (Greenblatt on King Lear) to production history (Kott on Hamlet). And in the symposium excerpt about The Taming of the Shrew sparks fly when a great theater director (Andrei Serban) confronts three formidable Harvard English professors: Greenblatt, Brustein, and Marjorie Garber. I particularly appreciated the remarks on Brecht by Harvard law professor Martha Minow as well as Arthur Holmberg's urbane essay "Machiavellis of the Bedroom--an Erotic Endgame." Also, the interviews with Janathan Miller, Philip Glass, and Robert Wilson are illuminating. The production photographs are a giant bonus.

This book is indispensable for anyone interested in contemporary drama. I can think of no other theater in the world that could have put together such a collection. Charles Gunnard Thomas, New York City.