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AMERICAN AVANT-GARDE THEATRE: A HISTORY. By Arnold Aronson. London: Routledge, 2000; pp. 256. $75.00 cloth, $24.95 paper.
There is something delightfully practical about Arnold Aronson's American Avant-Garde Theatre: A History. Concise, informed, and accessible, it is in many respects the primer that scholars have long sought for courses on US avant-garde theatre. The book's relatively short length and its focus on the most familiar currents of US experimental performance suggest that its target audience is not so much seasoned scholars of avant-garde theatre history as beginning students who, for example, before moving into the detailed performance histories of the latter five chapters of the book, require the basic theoretical registers that the first two introductory chapters provide. Yet more advanced scholars should not be put off by the relative simplicity of the theoretical introduction, which somewhat superficially summarizes arguments from Gertrude Stein, Antonin Artaud, and John Cage. The remainder of the book offers an insightful look at some of the most widely celebrated moments in postwar US experimental performance.
The milestones cited in Aronson's history are important but familiar ones. Beginning with the work of John Cage (via Marcel Duchamp), the book constructs a linear narrative of American avantgarde theatre that includes chapters on "Off Broadway, the Happenings, the Living Theatre," "The 1960s: Collectives and Rituals," "Smith, Wilson and Foreman," "Performance Art," and "The Wooster Group, Reza Abdoh, and the End of the Avant-Garde." The book's closing echo of Richard Schechner's well known assertion that the avantgarde has devolved into style is typical of echoes ringing throughout the book. In many respects, it begins and...