Delayed utopias: Last theatrical trends of the 20TH century

Rodolfo Obregón

CONACULTA / CENART / Dirección General de Publicaciones
México, 2003
201 p.

The concepts, scenic practices, and theoretical budgets ¬—which the author considers prophetic—of the first half of the 20th century’s reformist artists (Craig, Appia, Reinhardt, Schlemmer, Witkiewicz, Decroux, Meyerhold, Copeau, Artaud and Brecht, among others) take shape and become the performances of the greatest stage creators of the last three decades of the 20th century. Common ground on esthetic formulas with those “historical avant-gardes” are found, and eight contemporary paradigmatic artist’s theater biographies are reviewed: Tadeusz Kantor and The Cricot 2, Robert Wilson, Eugenio Barba and The Odin Teatret, Pina Bausch and The Wuppertal Tanztheater, Ariane Mnouchkine, Peter Brook and The CIRT, Peter Stein and The Schaubühne, and Giorgio Strehler and The Piccolo Teatro di Milano.