A 3 day presentation
Richard Schechner is Professor of Performance Studies, a department he founded, at the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University, editor of TDR: The Drama Review, and artistic director of East Coast Artists. In 1967 he founded The Performance Group, an experimental theatre company based in SoHo (Performing Garage). In 1980 the company changed its name to The Wooster Group and continued under the leadership of Elizabeth LeCompte.
As a stage director, Richard Schechner is famous for his radical mounting of classical plays. The extremely controversial Dionysus in 69 (1970) is a landmark in American theater. One of his recent shows, YokastaS Redux (2005), presents Jocasta, Medea and Phaedra competing in a Worst Mother contest, a parody of Jerry Springer’s show.
His work as a theorist changed both the way the performing arts are studied and theatrical practice. His theory encompasses elements of anthropology, sociology, religious rituals and folklore, in a broad multicultural perspective.
Schechner’s books, translated into dozens of languages, have become part of bibliographies of theatrical art courses all over the world. Among them: Performance Studies-An Introduction (2002), The Future of Ritual (1993), Performance Theory (published in 1985 under the title Between Theater and Anthropology), and Environmental Theater (1973). A selection of his essays will be included in the first Romanian edition of the famous stage director’s works, with a preface by Saviana Stanescu in a dialogue with the author.
Play duration: 1-3 November
