Announcing a new book from ISGS President Emeline Jouve, Just published in France by Deuxième Époque (and soon to be translated into English). A Century of the Avant-Garde: Essays on U.S. Theatre plunges the reader into a century of New York’s experimental creations, explored through the lens of the avant-garde. Until now, the concept of the avant-garde has been restricted to American theatrical forms born after the end of World War II. Such a chronological constraint overlooks the aesthetically innovative and politically subversive works that existed well before the 1950s and those that emerged after the 1970s. This study goes beyond the concept of the “historical avant-garde” in order to examine the creation of iconoclastic works that could, more generally, be understood as part of an ongoing experimental vanguard.
Three waves of avant-garde work are identified and discussed. The first corresponds to the birth of a national U.S. theatre during the period 1910-1940. The second wave tracks the post-war phenomenon that lasts through the 1970s. The third wave, which sprang to life after the 70s, continues to shake the theatrical scene until the 2010s.
In addition to redefining the avant-garde in order to grasp the experimental impulse that created stunning theatre in the margins of conventional work, A Century of the Avant-Garde proposes a condensed survey of the history of American theatre by contextualizing the avant-gardist waves and examining the aesthetic, political and economic characteristics of each period.
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