Background
Blau, Herbert was born on May 3, 1926 in Brooklyn. Son of Joseph and Yetta (Roth) Blau.
( "This is a wonderful book not 'just' about fashion but ...)
"This is a wonderful book not 'just' about fashion but modernism, postmodernity, the arts and popular culture, design and technology, biology and culturalism. It has a lot to say about ideas in fashion (reflections on theories of performativity, temporality, difference, repetition, class/gender relations, and the recessive status of Beauty today, organize the chapters), and about fashion in ideas. And it's about how we might write cultural history for a 'posthistorical' time." —Meaghan Morris Beyond the theatricality of fashion, or its commerce, are other seductive issues that come with dress in its fascination-effect, including the validities, vanities, and deceits of appearance. No more than appearance, "nothing in itself," that fashion has substance, complex and elusive substance, is the thematic of this book, putting another complexion on the subject, the look, and the look that incites the look, in high style, street style, classical elegance or fetishistic chic, from farthingale and corset to power suits and grunge.
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( Herbert Blau here reflects on performance as it moved f...)
Herbert Blau here reflects on performance as it moved from the theatricalized activism of the sixties into the theoretical activism of the eighties. The essays theorize rather than formulate an ideological program. Blau takes risks at the speculative edge of thought. The Eye of Prey is comprised of diverse subject matter: love and mourning, play and aging, radical feminist and homosexual discourse, the politics of representation, comedy since the Absurd, Barthes and Beckett, Beckett and Derrida―a critique of certain aspects of postmodern thought and performance, and in particular the ideological program of "the subject of desire."
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(Spanning a quarter of a century, the essays in this book ...)
Spanning a quarter of a century, the essays in this book rehearse, in the movement of memory and cross-reflection, an extensive career in theater. The work of Herbert Blau-his directing, writing, and criticism-has been a determining force during this period as theater encounters theory. Blau's struggle to bring a critical intelligence to the American stage goes back half a century, to the quiescent postwar years (which he has eloquently described in The Impossible Theater: A Manifesto). His innovative work in performance began with early productions of now-canonical plays that were hardly known at that time (works by Brecht, Beckett, Genet, Pinter, Duerrenmatt, and others). His experience is as distinctive as his versatile habits of mind and conceptual urgency of style. If the impossible takes a little time (as the title of one essay states), Blau's struggle now continues in a theoretical vein. Performance-and his own compelling writing- has moved across other genres and disciplines into fashion, politics, sexuality, and theory. His diversity of thought is demonstrated here in commentaries about the newer modes of performance (including conceptual and body art), various American playwrights, Renaissance drama, new music and theater, voice, the senses and the baroque, and the photographic image. As the essays reflect upon each other, a kind of cultural history, with inflections of autobiography, develops-which is what readers of Blau's previous books have come to expect. Herbert Blau is Byron W. and Alice L. Lockwood Professor of the Humanities at the University of Washington. He has also had a long career in the theater as cofounder of The Actor's Workshop of San Francisco, codirector of the Repertory Theater of Lincoln Center in New York, and artistic director of the experimental group KRAKEN. Among his books are To All Appearances: Ideology and Performance (1992), Nothing in Itself: Complexions of Fashion (1999), and, most recently, Sails of the Herring Fleet: Essays on Beckett (2000).
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(This is a book in which ideology and performance shadow e...)
This is a book in which ideology and performance shadow each other, in a theoretical inquiry which ranges widely across historical periods and cultures. The author's concerns - which include the social meaning of illusion and the cultural manifestation of power - take the reader from Eleanora Duse to Laurie Anderson; from the puppet theatre of Kleist to Kantor's theatre of the dead; and from the Kutiyattam temple dancers in Kerala to Womanhouse in Los Angeles. This book should be of interest to undergraduates, postgraduates and academics of theatre and cultural studies.
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( Sails of the Herring Fleet traces esteemed director and...)
Sails of the Herring Fleet traces esteemed director and theorist Herbert Blau's encounters with the work of Samuel Beckett. Blau directed Beckett's plays when they were still virtually unknown, and for more than four decades has remained one of the leading interpreters of his work. In addition to now-classic essays, the collection includes early program notes and two remarkable interviews -- one from Blau's experience directing Waiting for Godot at San Quentin prison, and one from his last visit with Beckett, just before the playwright's death. Herbert Blau is Byron W. and Alice L. Lockwood Professor of the Humanities, University of Washington.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0472030019/?tag=2022091-20
Theater and literature educator
Blau, Herbert was born on May 3, 1926 in Brooklyn. Son of Joseph and Yetta (Roth) Blau.
Butyrylcholinesterase, New York University, 1947. Master of Arts in Speech and Drama, Stanford University, 1949. Doctor of Philosophy in English/American Literature, Stanford University, 1954.
Doctor in Arts (honorary), California Institute Arts, 2008.
Member of faculty, San Francisco State University, 1950-1965;
Professor of English, City College of New York, New York City, 1967-1968;
dean School Theater and Dance, provost, California Institute Arts, 1968-1971;
professor of arts, director inter-arts program, Oberlin (Ohio) College, 1972-1974;
dean division arts and humanities, U. Maryland., Baltimore, 1974-1976;
Professor of English, U. Maryland., Baltimore, 1976-1978;
Professor of English, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, 1978-1984;
distinguished Professor of English and comparative literature, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, since 1984. Participant Salzburg Seminar in American Studies, 1962, Rocky Mountain Writers Conference, U. Colorado, 1963, National.Theater Center, University of Wisconsin -Madison, 1964-1969. Visiting scholar Pratt Institute, 1967.
Visiting research professor Center 20th CenturyStudies, University of Wisconsin -Milwaukee, 1976. Visiting professor U. Giessen, Germany, 1979, New York University, 1982, U. Bosphorus, Turkey, 1984. Co-founder, co-director Actor's Workshop San Francisco, 1952-1965.
Co-director Repertory Theater Lincoln Center, New York City, 1965-1967. Founder, artistic director KRAKEN, 1971-1981.
( "This is a wonderful book not 'just' about fashion but ...)
(This is a book in which ideology and performance shadow e...)
( Herbert Blau here reflects on performance as it moved f...)
(Spanning a quarter of a century, the essays in this book ...)
( Sails of the Herring Fleet traces esteemed director and...)
(Very famous theater book)
(paperback)
Married Beatrice Manley, 1950 (divorced). Children: Richard, Tara Gwyneth, Jonathan. Married Kathleen Woodward, December 29, 1980.
1 child, Jessamyn.