Reality Principles: From the Absurd to the Virtual

By Herbert Blau

"Herbert Blau's long sustained inquiry into theater's most provocative questions--presence, liveness, and finitude--are, at their deepest level, queries into life. Reality Principles returns us to Blau's inspiring provocations and extends them to new subjects--9/11 and Ground Zero, the nature of charisma, Pirandello and Strindberg."
--Peggy Phelan, Stanford University

Reality Principles gathers recent essays by esteemed scholar and theater practitioner Herbert Blau covering a range of topics. The book's provocative essays--including "The Emotional Memory of Directing," "The Faith-Based Initiative of the Theater of the Absurd," "Virtually Yours: Presence, Liveness, Lessness," "The Human Nature of the Bot"--were given as keynotes and/or memorial lectures and are collected here for the first time. The essays take up a remarkable array of topics--from body art and the self-inflicted punishments of Stelarc, Orlan, and the Viennese Actionists, to Ground Zero and 9/11--and allow Blau to address critical questions of theater and theory, performance and relevance, the absurd and the virtual, history and illusion, community and memory. Reality Principles offers a panoramic view of Herbert Blau's perspectives on life and the imitation of life on stage.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0472051512
• ISBN13: 9780472051519
• Release Date: June 2011
• Publisher: University of Michigan Press
• Length: 300 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.9" x 8.9"