Jack Gelber: Consider This explores the works of American playwright Jack Gelber (1932–2003), whose groundbreaking, immersive play The Connection (produced by The Living Theatre in 1959) served as the link between the Art Theatre/Beat Generation and the Off-Off-Broadway movement.With The Connection, Gelber provided a Pirandellian framework in which actors playing junkies demonstrated what it was like to wait for a fix. This play forever cemented Gelber’s ...

Playwrights have always demonstrated an incredible adaptability, able to nimbly adjust to new circumstances and media. This was never in greater evidence than during the coronavirus pandemic, when—with venues shuttered and stages darkened—writers and performers across the world scrambled to sustain the art of theater via remote video. Even today, it is clear that the experiences of 2020–21 have dramatically altered the landscape of theatermaking, as artists continually refine and deploy th...

Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Paula Vogel once said that theater helps us learn how to be comfortable with being uncomfortable with each other. Revolving around the theme of "this is who we are," the one-act plays in this latest edition of the Best American Short Playsseries (now in its ninth decade) explore the thoughtful ways in which playwrights are wrestling to make sense of our world today.The selected plays reflect how we perform our identities (private and public) and ho...

That theatre is a business remains a truth often ignored by theatre insiders and consumers of the performing arts alike. The essays in Theatre Symposium, Volume 22 explore theatre as a commercial enterprise both historically and as a continuing part of the creation, production, and presentation of contemporary live performance.The eleven contributors to this fascinating collection illuminate many aspects of commercial theatre and how best to examine it. George Pate analyze...