Postmodern theatre
- The Wooster Group –
- Forced Entertainment -
© Pablo Pakula www.pablopakula.com
Lecture: Part 1
20 minute break
Lecture: Part 2
Main questions we will tackle:
•
•
•
•
•
What is Postmodernism?
What relationship does it have to Modernism?
What are the key philosophical concepts related to Postmodernism?
How does Postmodernism manifest in the arts? And in theatre?
Use the Wooster Group (and Forced Entertainment) as examples.
© Pablo Pakula www.pablopakula.com
Postmodernism
=
post - Modernism
(after?)
© Pablo Pakula www.pablopakula.com
(against?)
Why is Postmodernism hard to define?
• It is a concept that appears in a variety of disciplines and subject
eg. art, architecture, literature, communication, music...
• Does not have a unified doctrine , it is not a style or a movement
(ZEITGEIST! Zeit= time, geist= spirit/ghost)
• Its hard to locate as a historical time frame - not clear when it
© Pablo
Pakula www.pablopakula.com
began – in each disciplines it manifested at a different time
(after WWII? 1960S? 1970s? 1980s?)
• It is best described rather than defined, and can be described as a
set of strategic and critical practices that destabilised Modernist
understandings of concepts such as existence, presence, identity,
and meaning.
• Postmodernism need not necessarily a BREAK from Modernism, it
could be seen as an extension of it (a reworking and exacerbation
of Modernist ideals and practices).
MODERNISM
• Artistic trend emerging at the end of the nineteenth century and extending, depending
on the artistic genre, into the second half of the 20th century
These are all continued /
extended by
Postmodernism
-
-
emphasis on HOW seeing takes place rather than on WHAT is perceived
(rethinking representation, radical experimentation in form, the focus became
reading/perception itself rather than the content)
blurring of distinctions between genres and between ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture
emphasis on discontinuous narratives and collages of different materials
tendency toward self-consciousness
exploration of the psychological and subjective
use of parody and irony
BREAK AWAY
(characteristics rejected
by Postmodernism)
© Pablo Pakula www.pablopakula.com
- each separate movement endeavoured, in its turn, to depict reality in terms of a
singular fundamental truth that developed during the Modernist era
- attempting to construct a coherent world-view
- art is intrinsically related to progress and improvement
- emphasis on originality, autonomy and authenticity of the artwork
- form follows function
- rejection of elaborate formal aesthetics in favour of minimalist design
© Pablo Pakula www.pablopakula.com
POSTMODERNISM
(in art)
• Certain Modernist approaches continue to be explored in a more radical way: selfconsciousness, parody, irony, fragmentation, mixing of genres, ambiguity, and simultaneity...
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Form no longer follows function (or content)
Celebration of surface rather than depth
Rejection of the need for a unified/unifying aesthetic (pastiche, bricolage)
Emphasis on process rather than product
Hybridisation of art forms
Complete breakdown of distinctions between ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture (kitsch, parody...)
Extreme self-reflexivity (in a more playful and irreverent way)
Intertextuality (artworks reference/quote other artworks rather than ‘reality’)
Subversive attitude that debunks the authority of art institutions (i.e. reject museums)
© Pablo Pakula www.pablopakula.com
© Pablo Pakula www.pablopakula.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NLSvlkwfH0
© Pablo Pakula www.pablopakula.com
© Pablo Pakula www.pablopakula.com
Careful, don’t get caught up in simplistic binaries / oppositions
© Pablo Pakula www.pablopakula.com
1975
1913
V&A 'Postmodernism: Style and
Subversion 1970-1990'
(September 2011 - January 2012)
https://vimeo.com/32207784
© Pablo Pakula www.pablopakula.com
Other videos on Postmodern art:
http://
www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resourc
es/glossary/p/postmodernism
https://
www.youtube.com/watch?v=zs0zzsH
iVWc
© Pablo Pakula www.pablopakula.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0DwRAVJZ4A
Postmodernism is not just a question of style
but aPakula
new relationship
to the world
© Pablo
www.pablopakula.com
© Pablo Pakula www.pablopakula.com
Key philosophical concepts relating to Postmodernism:
‘Postmodern condition’
‘end of grand narratives’
© Pablo Pakula www.pablopakula.com
‘simulacrum’
‘hyperreality’
‘death of the author’
‘deconstruction’
‘différance’
Jean-Françoise Llyotard
(1924- 1998)
The Postmodern Condition. A Report on Knowledge (1979)
• commissioned by the government of Quebec
• identified trends in knowledge, science and technology
Postmodernism is the condition of culture in our advanced capitalist society.
"I define postmodern as incredulity toward metanarratives." (Llyotard, 1979:xxiv)
© Postmodernism
Pablo Pakula
www.pablopakula.com
=
the end of grand narratives
Other characteristics of the Postmodern condition:
• The industrial production and the ‘proletariat‘, has been
moved out of sight, into the ‘3rd World‘
• Western societies have turned into consumer cultures
• Each and every aspect of social and cultural life has been
integrated into a global capitalist order (globalization)
• MASS MEDIA play a vital role: the ‘late capitalist culture‘
is above all an information and media society
Metanarratives / grand narratives:
• dominating ideologies
• reality can be explained and represented
in its totality
• used to unify our understanding
• attempted to explain the world through a
single prism (story)
i.e. religion, Marx, Freud
© Pablo Pakula www.pablopakula.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGZiLMGdCE0
Jean Baudrillard (1929- 2007)
He devised theory of simulation and constructed notion of ‘simulacrum’:
we live in a world of simulations.
- we live in Disneyland
- everything is a model or an image
Simulation: where the copy has replaced the original.
Simulation is “different from a fiction or a lie in that it not only presents an
absence as a presence, the imaginary as the real, it also undermines any contrast
to the real, absorbing the real in itself” (Baudrillard, 1994:3)
© Pablo Pakula www.pablopakula.com
When the copy becomes more real than the real: hyperreality
Some of his provocative statements:
• “the Gulf War did not take place“
The image of war preceded and ‘stood in’ for war.
Hyperreality: Where the real
object has been effaced by the
signs of its existence (The Matrix,
or The Trumann Show)
© Pablo Pakula www.pablopakula.com
© Pablo Pakula www.pablopakula.com
© Pablo Pakula www.pablopakula.com
Roland Barthes (1915- 1980)
Image – Music - Text (1977)
• ‘From Work to Text’
• ‘ The Death of the
Author ’
“The birth of the
reader must be at the
cost of the death of
the author.”
Key ideas:
• meaning is not something definitive, bestowed on the text by its author, but only
ever activated in the process of reading (lecture) – or performance
• the text is not a finished artistic product (a ‘work‘ of art), but an active process
involving the reader
© Pablo Pakula www.pablopakula.com
Therefore:
• the popular questions ‘What does it mean?‘ and ‘What does the author/director
want to tell me?‘ are utterly useless and irrelevant
• meaning is not a matter of authorial intention, but the reader (audience) gives the
meaning in the encounter with a book/show
• analysing/interpreting a text should mean to “appreciate the plural“, not to
narrow it down to the one meaning
Jaques Derrida (1930- 2004)
Key terms:
‘deconstruction’
‘différance’
• relativist attitude
• concepts are not ‘givens’ but constructed
• all signs are invested with power
• there are always traces of the disavowed
workings of ideology in the text (i.e. implicit
contradictions, presuppositions)
• nothing expressed in language has a
‘natural’ meaning
• opposing concepts rely/contain each
other
• meaning is endlessly deferred and
always differs (it slips away)
destruct + reconstruct = deconstruction
because
• strategy to challenge the power of a text
• seeks to unearth and expose these hidden
traces (of exclusion and repression)
• subvert out confidence in commonplaces
(turns words, meanings, and concepts on
their head)
• a sign does not mean something to us
because of its ‘original’ substance or
unique identity (which it doesn’t have)
• each sign brings with an excess of
meaning that must be excluded and
muted for it to work as a signifier
© Pablo Pakula www.pablopakula.com
© Pablo Pakula www.pablopakula.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgwOjjoYtco
Questions?
© Pablo Pakula Further
www.pablopakula.com
reading:
Richard Appignanesi & Chris Garratt, Postmodernism for beginners
Christopher Butler, Postmodernism, a very short introduction
Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism
Philip Auslander, From Acting to Performance
Nick Kaye, Postmodernism and Performance
© Pablo Pakula www.pablopakula.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCTOpdlZJ8U&index=1&list=RDVCTOpdlZJ8U
POSTMODERNISM IN THEATRE
© Pablo Pakula www.pablopakula.com
“a range of cultural practices and sensibilities that have developed since the
1980s especially and that reject some of the apparent certainties, or 'grand
narratives', of modern paradigms of thought. Challenging ideas of coherent
identity and universal value and truth as not only impossible but also
duplicitous, it proposes that these 'grand narratives' only pretend to
represent everyone's interest and actually represent dominant class
interests.” (Allain & Harvie, 2014:231)
POSTMODERNISM IN THEATRE
- movement away from text-based theatre
- unconcerned with the author's intention
- devising approaches
- non-linear composition
- here-and-now of performance
- hybridisation of performance disciplines
- intertextuality (mixing high and low cultural source materials)
- playful and destabilising approach to identity
- performer vs actor / performing vs acting
© Pablo Pakula www.pablopakula.com
PERFORMING
ACTING
- actor portrays a character
- takes place within a fictional framework
- text-based
- 'truthfully' conveys emotion
- essentially naturalistic
- director-led
© Pablo Pakula www.pablopakula.com
PERFORMING
- expression of Postmodernism's interrogation of the idea of a unified subject
- resists psychological characterisation
- playfully self-aware / self-reflexive (conventions, pastiche)
- here-and-now of the performance event
- frequently prioritises the actor's role as a scenographic elements
- performer-led
- possibility of autobiographical materials
POSTDRAMATIC THEATRE
Hans-Thies Lehmann, 1999 (English translation 2006)
- challenges dominant theatre hierarchies which invest authority in the text
(de-prioritises narrative text/drama based in psychologically coherent characterisation/plot)
- foregrounds theatrical aspects
- non-linear structuring
- often more about the sensory than rational
(time/space/image for what they are as experiences not how they convey narrative)
- often situated in the here-and-now of performance rather than within a fictional frame
- tends to be self-reflexive, metatheatrical
- demands the audience to construct meaning, acknowledging
© Pablo Pakula www.pablopakula.com
“What makes the theory of postdramatic theatre distinctive and most constructive within
theatre and performance studies is that is is specifically a theory of theatre practice,
generated from within theatre.” (Allain & Harvie, 2014:231)
The Wooster Group
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvHgJwU4TfY
© Pablo Pakula
www.pablopakula.com
The Wooster Group
• Offspring of Richard Schechner’s Performance Group
• Founded in 1980 (had been working in parallel since 1975)
• Work collaboratively
• Elizabeth LeCompte (director/dramaturg)
• Performances are text-based
Yet they use text in a totally different way to traditional
stagings of plays
© Pablo Pakula www.pablopakula.com
Productions include:
Nayatt School (1978) T.S. Eliot‘s The Cocktail Party
Route 1 & 9 (1981) Thornton Wilder‘s Our Town
L.S.D. (just the high points) (1984) Arthur Miller‘s The Crucible
Brace Up! (1991) Chekhov‘s Three Sisters
House/Lights (1999) Gertrud Stein‘s Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights
To You, The Birdie! (2002) Racine‘s Phèdre
Poor Theatre (2004) based on J. Grotowski and W. Forsythe
Intertextuality
‘Source‘ texts are:
Intertextuality
• open to interrogation (deconstructed, decentered)
&
• quoted rather than staged in their entirety
Deconstruction
• juxtaposed / collaged with other 'texts'
•(fragments of popular culture, media, films, personal recollections, etc)
© Pablo Pakula www.pablopakula.com
Route 1 and 9
Route 1 & 9 disrupted Our Town’s
universalizing fantasy of a white, middleclass, puritan American idyll by
introducing the racial and cultural
difference Wilder’s play omitted.
(Allain & Harvie, 2014:131)
• Wilder‘s Our Town
• Blackface performers
• Comedy routine by Pigmeat Markham
• Home movies (journey away from New York
on the New Jersey thoroughfare, and a homemade porno)
LSD (just the high points)
• Miller‘s The Cruicible
• Beat generation authors
• Writings and recordings by Dr. Timothy
Leary (LSD advocate) – including a debate
with Gordon Liddy (involved in Watergate)
• Re-staging of a rehearsal (on LSD?)
Vieux Carré (2009)
“Juxtapositions like these produce
new resonances in both sources of
material,
often
working
to
deconstruct the assumed elitism of
the ‘classic’ texts and to expose some
of the prejudices – about race,
gender, and age for example – on
which they rely”
(Allain & Harvie, 2014:92)
©“OurPablo
texts stand Pakula
as an alternativewww.pablopakula.com
theatre language which redefines the
traditional devices of story-line,
character and theme. Each production
reflects a continuing refinement of a
nonlinear, abstract aesthetic which at
once subverts and pays homage to
modern theatrical ‘realism‘.“
(Wooster Group press release, quoted
in Aronson, 1985:152)
Vieux Carré (2009)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=257qO9UgrD8
© Pablo Pakula www.pablopakula.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJ7VXojxyTM
Deconstruct realism's claim to portray 'the truth'
“While acknowledging the power and seduction of naturalism’s
illusionistic performance, the Group’s work also challenges its
cultural dominance and perceived truth through a number of
alienation techniques – for example, showing the actor putting
drops in his eyes to simulate tears, and replaying a monologue,
first as emotionally-charged realism and a second time accelerated
and ridiculous” (Allain & Harvie, 2014:93)
Fish Story (1994)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvfKKV8Mxyg
© Pablo Pakula www.pablopakula.com
Fish Story (1994)
Approaches to performance/acting:
North Atlantic (1985)
• No consistent emotions or
psychology
• Acting in quotation marks
• Persona rather than character
• Self-aware
• Use of ‘non-matrixed‘ acting (task
based)
• On a par with technology
• Juxtaposes realism with stylisation
and dance/movement
• Eclectic aesthetics (no single,
unified style)
© Pablo Pakula www.pablopakula.com
The Emperor Jones (1993)
https://
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cf6uSn
nX9Ig
Pastiche
Poor Theatre (2004)
North Atlantic (1984)
https://
www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTwgh1g8
N7Q
Poor Theatre (2004)
https://
www.youtube.com/watch?v=43O_4vhtT
Dk
© Pablo Pakula www.pablopakula.com
https://
Shakonnet Point (1975)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsDsIDzuP8
Y
Shakonnet Point (1975)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8m
hKCFEIRCc
https://
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSBKh6O75
_o
“The company began not with a play but with improvisations based on objects and images brought in
by Spalding Gray that had personal associations for him. ''We began to structure it,'' Mr. Gray wrote in
an article at the time, ''like a piece of music (concern with rhythm), like a painting (concern with light
and color), and like a dance (concern with movement).''
Out of this process came ''Sakonnet Point,'' an almost wordless evocation of childhood and the first of
''Three Places in Rhode Island.'' The second and the most autobiographical of the Wooster Group's
work was ''Rumstick Road.'' Using taped conversations with his relatives and his own remembrances,
Mr. Gray presented an emotional documentary about his mother, who committed suicide in 1967. The
documentary elements appeared alongside choreographed movement and visual images inspired by
themes of madness, religion, and medical treatment that surfaced in the story of Spalding Gray's
mother and would reappear in the group's later work. (...)
© Pablo Pakula www.pablopakula.com
''Nayatt School,'' for instance, examines medicine and religion as healing forces. It uses three comichorror stories performed as slapstick routines, a scene from T.S. Eliot's ''The Cocktail Party'' with several
roles played by children, and some autobiographical vestiges from ''Rumstick Road''; the piece opens
with a monologue in which Mr. Gray discusses his acting career, his mother's psychiatric treatment, and
her Christian Science faith.
'Point Judith,'' according to Miss LeCompte, is about ''forming new structures for the family.'' It
juxtaposes three examples of community: the all-male crew of an oil rig, as characterized in a short
play called ''Rig,'' written for the company by Jim Strahs; a group of nuns (played by the same male
actors), seen on film frolicking by the sea; and the family in ''Long Day's Journey Into Night,'' a portion
of which is surreally acted out.
(Shewey, 1982) www.nytimes.com/1982/05/16/theater/the-wooster-group-stirs-controversy-with-an-avant-garde-series.html?pagewanted=all
Pastiche
Rumstick Road (1977)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cOmMw45NQc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEtpx2d8Ry4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCHgXHbz2AI
© Pablo PakulaNayatt
www.pablopakula.com
School (1978)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZaD_dszXtEA
Point Judith (1979)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbiRxWV_njU
Use of multimedia:
• Simulacrum: everything is simulation (media saturation of consumer
culture makes it impossible to distinguish between 'the real' and the
representation)
• Non-hierarchical relationship between life performers and technology
(pre-recorded or live feed, mics, voice alteration…)
• Distancing effect: highlights that this is a performance/artifice
© Pablo Pakula www.pablopakula.com
• Structural fragmentation, conflicting points of view, quoting other ‘texts’
To You, The Birdie! (2002)
Hamlet (2007)
Route 1 & 9 (1981)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRRa6LwPyEk
Brace Up! (1991)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pso5vlO7PeY
House/Lights (1999) © Pablo Pakula
www.pablopakula.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqd3kLN12oA
Hamlet (2007)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gDb9mq4uMY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_10u984AvzE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SHhKHEE9LE
Further characteristics:
• Self-referential / self-reflexive making reference to the process of making the piece,
as well as quoting previous productions
(since Postmodernism is concerned with meaning-making and meaning-representation it’s often
self-conscious / self-reflexive, emphasising process over production)
• Offers many readings (ambiguous, contradictory)
(meaning is always multiple and contingent on contexts, ‘The Death of the Author': democratic
understanding of the production of meaning - produced by the audience)
• Theatre exposed as a medium deconstructing its own materiality and conventions, as
well as acknowledging the stage apparatus
© Pablo Pakula www.pablopakula.com
Brace up! (1991)
La Didone (2008)
What about the audience?
• Not silent and distant consumers
• Have to make sense of the fragments (associatively)
• Thus they are activate in the meaning-making process
• The work fosters plurality
• Accusation: ‘super-competent spectator'
(think about Shrek – multilayered viewing experience?)
© Pablo Pakula www.pablopakula.com
House/Lights (1999)
North Atlantic (2010 restaging)
The South Bank Show: The Wooster Group (1987, ITV)
http://www.ubu.com/film/wooster_south-bank_part-1.html
http://www.ubu.com/film/wooster_south-bank_part-2.html
© Pablo Pakula
www.pablopakula.com
Liz LeCompte and William Forsythe in conversation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yYW9HQ_f4E
A practical invitation...
Here's a little something to do before your seminar next week.
Think of it like a recipe of sorts, interpret it and adapt it as you see fit.
In your independent study groups (or individually):
Pick an existing play or fairy-tale you know well.
© Pablo
Pakula
www.pablopakula.com
Consider what other ‘texts’ you might be able to collage it with.
Remember we are using the word ‘text’ in its broadest sense:
an actual text, quoted movement/dances, tasks, songs, autobiographical material…
Consider what each new ‘text’ will add/highlight/deconstruct in the
original source play/fairy-tale.
You may want to use post-its to come up with a preliminary structure (channel surf)
And in the UK?
© Pablo Pakula www.pablopakula.com
North Atlantic (1984)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8U-frxRMzxY
Hula (1981)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3vBZYoZdNM
Forced
Entertainment
Since 1984
(UK)
© Pablo Pakula www.pablopakula.com
The company was founded by six graduates from Exeter University (since then they have
been joined by a number of different performers – including a Kent graduate).
They create performances in a collaborative process where Tim Etchells functions as an
‘editor‘, not as author.
Their rehearsals are not focused towards a ‘product outcome‘’, but to find a structure of
rules within which to play and develop material.
Projects range from stage shows, site-specific or durational performances, online/CDs...
© Pablo Pakula www.pablopakula.com
200% and Blood Thirsty
(1987)
Bloody Mess
(2004)
KEY CARACTERISTICS
Postmodern approach
• don’t produce one clear-cut meaning but the audience constructs their own
• often ambiguous, contradicting tensions in the work (use of humour)
• theatre exposed as a medium: it deconstructs its own (usually hidden)
materiality and conventions (performances about performance)
Not presentations of a fictional world, but are situated in the here and now of the
performance event
• liveness
• performances are open and may change
• audience acknowledged in their role as audience
• DIY aesthetics
• ‘Poetics of failure’
• performers not actors
• ‘task-based’
• acting ‘between quotation marks’
• no emotions, no psychology or characterisation but persona
• a list as ‘the loosest collection of material’
© Pablo Pakula www.pablopakula.com
How We Work
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jw2RbmuvuW0
On Making Performance - Tim Etchells speaking
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2fRfN5U7GA
‘Early Years Mix’ (various works)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35Rev3xVs5o&feature=related
Hidden J (1994)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkVzofQSqBo
Extract of First Night (2001) and Speak Bitterness (1994)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJCVdaGA04I
Spectacular (2008)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OO83wpfSBs
© Pablo Pakula www.pablopakula.com
The Thrill of It All (2010)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3d02U0u_1sk
Tomorrow's Parties (2011)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fig0PWCwSpM
The Coming Storm (2012)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6lc4bEDcNw
On The Coming Storm (2012)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gROamn4bEfc
Durational work:
On duration
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mLlozWPbVs
12am: Awake & Looking Down (1993)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljsUnsNcSjk
Speak Bitterness (1994)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgwAQ_-VwWY On Speak Bitterness
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjCjHvuCb_8
© Pablo Pakula www.pablopakula.com
Quizoola! (1996)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGOr-DrXieU&feature=related
Quizoola! (2013)
24 hour version – check out #Quizoola24
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bm_8WgqIvg
And on the Thousandth Night... (2000)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjsrLtpx2EI
On scripted improvisation
https://
www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8nsllBp5lw&list=PL-blz3DjyJIwdaVJHtKE7pjmPKf0YxRjf&ind
ex=13
OPPORTUNITY TO SEE FORCED ENTERTAINMENT!
© Pablo Pakula www.pablopakula.com
1st - 6th March 2016
Barbican, London
Complete Works: Table Top Shakespeare (2015)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufVne7LqAag
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_OhS3WexV4
Just £3 per play!
http://www.barbican.org.uk/theatre/event-detail.asp?ID=18680
www.forcedentertainment.com
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Allain, P. & Harvie, J. The Routledge Companion to Theatre and Performance
Appignanesi, R. & Garratt, C. , Postmodernism for beginners
Aronson, A. American Avant-garde Theatre: A History
Auslander, P. From Acting to Performance
Butler, C. Postmodernism, a very short introduction
Callens, J. ed., The Wooster Group and its Traditions
Jameson, F. Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism
Kaye, N. Postmodernism and Performance
Quick, A. ed., The Wooster Group Work Book
Shewey, D. ‘The Wooster Group Stirs Controversy with and Avant-garde
Series’, New York Times, 16th May
© Pablo Pakula www.pablopakula.com
Preparation for your seminar:
Reading:
• three journal articles (you will have to look for them yourself)
Revisit some of the screenings mentioned today, and discuss them in your
independent study groups.
© Pablo Pakula www.pablopakula.com
View the documentary: The South Bank Show: The Wooster Group (1987, ITV)
http://www.ubu.com/film/wooster_south-bank_part-1.html
http://www.ubu.com/film/wooster_south-bank_part-2.html
Remember the practical invitation!