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Erika Fischer-Lichte. The Show and the Gaze of Theatre: A European Perspective. Iowa City. University of Iowa Press. 1997. x + 412 pages, ill. $49.95 ($22.95 paper). ISBN 0-87745607-0 (608-9 paper).
The Director of the Institute of Theatre Studies at the Free University of Berlin, Erika Fischer-Lichte offers drama buffs everywhere an encyclopedic compendium of multi- and intercultural theatre revolving around performance, theory, history of theatre studies, and avantgarde trends. That she begins her meticulously prepared introduction with an analogy between theatre and a market is very apropos. "For, like a market," she writes, "where an intense exchange of commodities takes place, an exchange of all kinds of cultural goods and products goes on between theatre and other spheres of social life." After tracing the evolution of theatre,...