The resident repertory company in Cambridge, Massachusetts, affiliated with Harvard and known as the American Repertory Theatre, has long been considered one of the country’s most innovative cultural resources. The quality of its productions and the issues it has raised about the nature of the creative life have distinguished it among American theatre groups. Here is a treasury of criticism, reflection, observation, and insight from the ART’s post-production symposia, and pre-show talks, illustrated with photographs and drawings from ART archives. The notable contributors include a great many brilliant poets, novelists, dramatists, critics, scholars, lawyers, theatre directors, designers, and clowns, many of the Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winners. Whether Susan Sontag reflects on Milan Kundera’s Jacques and His Master, or Jonathan Miller on Sheridan’s School for Scandal, or Jan Kott on Hamlet, or Carlos Fuentes on Calderon’s Life is a Dream, or Derek Walcott on his musical Steel, or Harold Bloom on Ibsen’s Hedda Gabbler, or Anatole Smeliansky on Bulgakov’s Black Snow, the discourse is heightened and passionate. The book also includes revealing interviews with major theatrical figures—Dario Fo, Philip Glass, Robert Wilson, Andrei Serban, David Mamet, and many others—and lively articles from the ART’s founding artistic director Robert Brustein, its managing director Robert J. Orchard, and a variety of literary directors and dramaturges. In all, The Lively A.R.T. is a bountiful theatre experience, better than two on the aisle.
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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Admirers of the innovative, challenging American Repertory Theatre (A.R.T.), which has made its home in Cambridge, Mass., under the aegis of Harvard University since 1979, will enjoy this selection of articles and interviews culled from A.R.T.'s programs and newsletters. More rigorous readers may find it a bit fluffy, despite contributions by such eminent artists and scholars as Andrei Serban, Peter Sellars, Susan Sontag, Harry Levin, Don DeLillo and Harold Bloom. The pieces were all originally published to promote specific productions, so it's hardly surprising to find interviews full of soft-ball questions like, "How do you feel about your return to the A.R.T.?" and "Is there anything else you'd like to say about The Old Neighborhood?" Most of the articles by academics are short rehashes of received wisdom on the subject at hand (Ibsen as the first great modern dramatist, for example), although Robert Scanlan's essay on Waiting for Godot eschews the usual gaze-into-the-void clich?s and usefully reminds us of the play's roots in Beckett's experiences in the French Resistance. The introduction by artistic director Robert Brustein has his customary punchinessAhe cheerfully admits the company lost half its subscribers after its second seasonAand the final piece by managing director Rob Orchard makes a strong case for A.R.T.'s decision (unusual in America) to perform rotating repertory with a permanent company of actors. The book nicely documents the unique character of A.R.T.'s production history, its strong emphasis on avant-garde interpretations of the classics (from Shakespeare to relative obscurities like Gozzi's The King Stag) and its sideline in new plays by writers like David Mamet and Marsha Norman. But it still reads like program notes. 45 b&w photos. (June)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
This collection of short articles and interviews documenting 20 years of the American Repertory Theatre is a real mixed bag. Some pieces are thought-provoking, most notably those on Susan Sontag, Carlos Fuentes, and Larry Gelbart about ART productions they were associated with. Many more, however, are written in the empty, disposable style of industry magazines and subscriber newsletters. Even worse are the fawning, self-congratulatory interviews, many of them conducted by editor Holmberg and obviously intended to puff this or that production and to be reprinted in ART's subscriber newsletters. Still, there is enough gold among the pyrite to make the book worth a skim, if only for the flashes of brilliance in the pieces by ART artistic director and New Republic critic Robert Brustein, who also contributes a fascinating, exceptionally well-written introduction, recounting his theater's 20-year history and putting even the best pieces that follow to shame. Jack Helbig
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5.0 out of 5 stars
A rich compilation of articles and interviews.,
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This review is from: The Lively ART: Twenty Years of the American Repertory Theatre (Hardcover)
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.
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