Theory and Practice of the Indeterminate Theatre

Abstract

Richard Schechner has recently come full circle back to the editorship of The Drama Review, which he earlier transformed from a quietly respected academic journal into the voice of American avant-garde theatre between 1962 and 1969. By this time, he had also joined the Drama faculty of New York University, where he still teaches, and created the Performance Group, for whom his productions included Dionysus in '69, Makbeth. The Tooth of Crime. Oedipus, and The Balcony. His early advocacy of environmental theatre, celebrated in his book of that name in 1973, developed into his present concern with theatre anthropology, the focus of his recent study. Between Theatre and Anthropology, discussed by Eugenio Barba in NTQ10 (1987). In October 1988 Schechner contributed to the Leicester conference ‘Points of Contact: Theatre. Anthropology, and Theatre Anthropology’, and there Nick Kaye discussed with him the relationship between his practical and theoretical work, its evolution, and the influences upon it–also looking in more detail at his most recent production, a performance combining Don Juan and Don Giovanni.