Richard Schechner

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Richard Schechner (born August 23, 1934 in Newark , New Jersey ) is a theater director , producer and university lecturer. William Hunter Shephard once jokingly referred to him as "Professor of the Dionysiac Theater".

Life

Schechner has taught as a professor of performance studies at New York University since 1967 . In addition, he edited the magazine "The Drama Review". He coined the term "Environmental Theater". But for Schechner not only the performance itself is important. He sees the theater as a process, the performance is only a small part of it. That is why Schechner founded the “Performance Group”, with which he worked for a long time in various workshops (and with which he also produced Dionysus in 69 ). He was influenced by Nietzsche , Marshall McLuhan and Antonin Artaud . Schechner was fascinated by rituals and their staging and meaning. His enthusiasm for anthropology and cultural studies mingled in the theater with the rituals and an interesting and unique mixture of representation emerged. An actor from his group once said what Schechner expects from a theater:

The Theater “needs to attempt to rediscover the efficacy of performance as a ritual experience”. Therefore it needs to include “formally patterned behaviors with ceremonial significance” such as dances, rituals and similar forms of activities.

Fascination with Greek theater

The Greek theater was so special for Schechner because it is directly related to social life. Simultaneously with his fascination with Greek theater, he criticized the abstract and rigid theater of the Americans at the time. The American ideal of self-realization and the selfishness that results from it don't work in the theater, says Schechner. It is important to learn to achieve something in a group. But Schechner's not just about staging a theater, but also about achieving something political.

Theatrical revolution

In his essay "Actuals: Primitive ritual and performance theory", Schechner formulates five basic qualities that a theater must have:

  1. Processes: something that happens here and now.
  2. Final actions, exchanges or situations
  3. Competition: something must be at stake
  4. Initiation: A change in the theater for the audience
  5. A space that is used specifically and organically.

Fonts

  • Schechner edited TDR ( The Drama Review , formerly The Tulane Drama Review ) from 1962 to 1969 and has been its editor again since 1986
  • TDR / China has been published every two years since 2007 by the Richard Schechner Center for Performance Studies at the Shanghai Theater Academy
Books

author

  • Public domain. 1968.
  • Environmental theater. 1973.
  • Theaters, Spaces, and Environments. 1975. (with Jerry Rojo and Brooks McNamara).
  • Essays on Performance Theory. 1976.
  • The End of Humanism. 1981.
  • From the Ramlila to the avant-garde. 1983.
  • Between Theater and Anthropology. 1985.
  • The Engleburt Stories. 1987. (with Samuel MacIntosh Schechner).
  • The future of ritual. 1993.
  • Performance theory. (a revised version of Essays on Performance Theory) 1988.
  • Performance Studies - An Introduction. 2002. ISBN 0-415-37246-1 .
  • Over, Under, and Around. 2004.
  • Theater anthropology: play and ritual in a cultural comparison. Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 1990.

editor

  • Dionysus in 69th 1970.
  • Ritual, Play, and Performance. 1976. (with Mady Schuman).
  • By means of performance. 1990. (with Willa Appel).
  • The Grotowski Sourcebook. 1997. (with Lisa Wolford).

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b William Hunter Shephard: The Dionysus Group. New York, Bern, Frankfurt / Main, Paris 1991, ISBN 978-0-8204-1352-5 , 1991.
  2. ↑ Chapter Actuals in: Performance Theory. New York, London 1977, pp. 50f.
personal data
SURNAME Schechner, Richard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American theater director, producer and university professor
DATE OF BIRTH August 23, 1934
PLACE OF BIRTH Newark (New Jersey)