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List of contents
Introduction
Part One: Sordid Actuality (1835-1922)
1 Georg Büchner and the Breakdown of the History Play
2 Embarrassing Relatives: Naturalism, True Crime, and Bohemian Memory
3 Karl Kraus’s Cannibal Satire and Pedagogies of Reception
Part Two: Vanguards of Revolution and Reform (1917-1984)
4 The Documentary and Communist Vanguards
5 Midcentury Documentaries: For and Against Liberalism
6 Activist Endings and Optative Documentaries
Part Three: Documentary Theatre after Postmodernism (1977- )
7 The Wooster Group and Anna Deavere Smith: Parallax, Play, and Collage Ethics
8 Handspring Puppet Company: Reconciling with the Avant-Garde
9 Too Much Information
Conclusion: "This Is Not a Story about Failure"
About the author
Timothy Youker holds a PhD in Theatre from Columbia University. He has taught Theatre and Drama at Columbia and at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, and was most recently appointed as an Assistant Professor of English and Drama at the University of Toronto, Mississauga.
Summary
Documentary Vanguards in Modern Theatre argues for treating documentary theatre-makers as vanguardists who (for good or ill) push, remap, or transgress the margins of historical and political visibility, often taking issue with professional discourses that claim a monopoly on authoritative representations of the real. This is the fir
