In seinem nur zwölf Jahre umfassenden Schaffen brach der iranische Theatermacher Reza Abdoh mit sämtlichen Parametern des Theaters und brachte seine Schauspieler und das Publikum oft an ihre Grenzen. Seine halluzinatorischen Traumlandschaften waren eindringlich, seine Inszenierungen adressierten sprachgewaltig die bitteren politischen Realitäten seiner Zeit – vom staatlich sanktionierten Rassismus über die Weigerung der Reagan-Regierung, sich der AIDS-Krise anzunehmen, bis hin zu den Kriegen der USA. Kurz vor seinem Tod verfügte er, dass seine Stücke nicht neu aufgeführt werden dürfen. Der Katalog enthält neben zahlreichen Abbildungen neue Essays über die Einflüsse und Rezeption seines Werkes, bereits publizierte und bisher unveröffentlichte Interviews mit Reza Abdoh, Gespräche mit Weggefährten sowie Skripte seiner Stücke und Presseberichte.

Incorporating interviews, critical essays, reviews, and the complete text of the play The Hip-Hop Waltz of Eurydice, Reza Abdoh is a comprehensive introduction to this influential and controversial theater artist. By the time he died of AIDS in the spring of 1995 at age 32, Reza Abdoh had written, assembled, and directed well over a dozen works for the stage. In this first complete account of his career, Abdoh emerges as an internationally acclaimed artist who was influenced by a wide range of cultures and sources. Yet he is also distinctly American: a visionary who drew heavily on popular culture to expose sexual, racial, and media obsessions in American society. Despite this influence, Abdoh's works are not typical of American theater, according to theater critic Daniel Mufson, because they vehemently reject sentimentality and happy endings.

Incorporating interviews, critical essays, reviews, and the complete text of the play, The Hip-Hop Waltz of Eurydice, this is an introduction to the influential and controversial theatre artist, Reza Abdoh. By the time he died of AIDS in 1995 at the age of 32, Abdoh had written, assembled and directed well over a dozen works for the stage. In this account of his career, Abdoh emerges as an internationally acclaimed artist who was influenced by a range of cultures and sources. Yet he is also distinctly American: a visionary who drew heavily on popular culture to expose sexual, racial and media obsessions in American society. Despite this influence, Abdoh's works are not typical of American theatre, according to theatre critic Daniel Mufson, because they vehemently reject sentimentality and happy endings.

An uninhibited portrait of growing up gay in 1980s Alabama: exploring art and sex with “more layered insight than the page count should allow” (Hanif Abdurraqib, MTV News). DeShawn lives a high, creative, and promiscuous life in San Francisco. But when he’s called back to his cramped Alabama hometown for his uncle’s funeral, he’s hit by flashbacks of handsome, doomed neighbors and sweltering Sunday services. Amidst prickly reminders of his childhood, DeShawn ponders family, church, and the men in his life, prompting the question: Who deserves love? A modern American classic, Since I Laid My Burden Down is a raw and searing look into the intersections of memory, Blackness, and queerness. “Performance artist Purnell beautifully captures a personality through introspection and memory in this slim novel . . . a compelling portrait of a particular disaffected kind of gay youth caught between religion, culture, and desire.” —Publishers Weekly “It’s a true novel, chaptered, and bound, that not only holds its own as queer literature, with its unapologetically misanthropic narrative, but also expands upon it.” —San Francisco Chronicle “An antidote to the rigamarole of gay lit.” —Mask Magazine “Slim yet potently realized, with a lot to ponder.” —The Bay Area Reporter “Since I Laid My Burden Down has a fearless (sometimes reckless) humor as Brontez Purnell interrogates what it means to be black, male, queer; a son, an uncle, a lover; Southern, punk, and human. An emotional tightrope walk of a book and an important American story rarely, if ever, told.” —Michelle Tea, author of Castle on the River Vistula

An Iranian American returns home to help a friend and finds his life in danger: “Remarkable . . . a smart, eloquent novel.” —Dalia Sofer, author of The Septembers of Shiraz The year is 2008. Reza Malek’s life is modest but manageable—he lives in a small apartment in Harlem, teaches at a local university, and is relieved to be far from the blood and turmoil of Iraq and Afghanistan, where he worked as a reporter, interpreter, and sometimes lover for a superstar journalist who has long since moved on to more remarkable men. But after a terse phone call from his best friend in Iran, Reza reluctantly returns to Tehran. Once there, he finds far more than he bargained for: the city is on the edge of revolution; his friend is embroiled with Shia militants; and his missing mother, who was alleged to have run off before the revolution, is alive and well—while his own life is now in danger. Against a backdrop of corrupt clerics, shady fixers, political repression, and the ever-present threat of violence, this novel offers a telling glimpse into contemporary Tehran, and spins a riveting morality tale of identity and exile, the bonds of friendship, and the limits of loyalty. “[A] swift, hard-boiled novel . . . Shadowy zealots exist everywhere, whether in conference rooms or interrogation rooms or—most often—in rooms that can serve as both.” —TheNew York Times Book Review “A gripping portrait of a nation awash in violence and crippled by corruption.” —Publishers Weekly “A smart political thriller.” —Laila Lalami, Pulitzer Prize-nominated author of The Moor’s Account “Gives readers a visceral sense of life in a country where repression is the norm . . . Recommended for espionage aficionados and for readers who enjoy international settings.” —Library Journal “A fascinating glimpse of contemporary Iran through the familiar story of childhood friends whose paths are beginning to diverge irreversibly.” —Shelf Awareness

This stunning contribution to the field of theatre history is the first in-depth look at avant-garde theatre in the United States from the early 1950s to the 1990s. American Avant-Garde Theatre offers a definition of the avant-garde, and looks at its origins and theoretical foundations by examining: *Gertrude Stein *John Cage *The Beat writers *Avant-garde cinema *Abstract Expressionism *Minimalism There are fascinating discussions and illustrations of the productions of the Living Theatre, the Wooster Group, Open Theatre, Ontological-Hysteric Theatre and Performance Group. among many others. Aronson also examines why avant-garde theatre declined and virtually disappeared at the end of the twentieth century.

The photograph of a stage design model is an illusion; it creates the impression of the performance having already taken place. Models have a discrete energy that is heightened even more if one takes pictures of them. The philosopher Gaston Bachelard politely trivialized working on the miniature as "an exercise that has metaphysical freshness; it allows us to be world conscious at slight risk." Hardly anyone else renders this more clearly visible than the stage designer Johannes Schütz. Whether at the Burgtheater in Vienna, the Deutsches Theater in Berlin, or the Schauspielhaus in Hamburg--his works are at once simple, radical, and clear. The formal austerity that Schütz conceives with extraordinary caution is an invitation into worlds in which one can both lose as well as collect oneself. Based on the photographed models, the publication permits not only immersing oneself in these stage spaces but becoming acquainted with the celebrated set designer's approach in fascinating interviews.