The Rise of Performance Studies: Rethinking Richard Schechner's Broad Spectrum

Few individuals have positioned their work more controversially or consequently than Richard Schechner within the pivotal debates that define Performance Studies. The Rise of Performance Studies is the first collection of essays to critically examine the profound contributions that Schechner has made to Performance Studies as a discipline.

JAMES HARDING is Professor of English at the University of Mary Washington, USA. He is a former editor of Theatre Survey, and the author of Cutting Performances: Collage Events, Feminist Artists, and the American Avant-Garde and Adorno and a Writing of the Ruins: Essays on Anglo-American Literature and Culture. He is currently finishing a new monograph entitled Decentering the Edge: Critical Theories of Avant-Garde Performance.

CINDY ROSENTHAL is Professor of Drama and Dance and Director of Women's Studies at Hofstra University. She co-edited Restaging the Sixties: Radical Theatres and their Legacies (University of Michigan, 2006) with James Harding and Living on Third Street: Plays of the Living Theatre 1989-1992 (Autonomedia, 2008) with Hanon Reznikov. Current projects include Ellen Stewart Presents: Posters and Chronicles from the Archives of La Mama Experimental Theatre, a monograph analyzing Ellen Stewart's life and work through oral histories and poster art (forthcoming, University of Michigan Press). Her work is also published in Theatre Journal, TDR and Women in Performance. She is a founding member of the Bread Loaf Acting Ensemble in Middlebury, Vermont.