A wide-ranging, inspiring documentary history of the American theater movement as told, at the time of its making, by the visionaries who goaded it into being. This anthology collects over forty essays, manifestos, letters, and speeches that are each introduced and placed in historical context by the noted writer and arts commentator Todd London, who spent nearly a decade assembling this collection. The founding visions of theaters from across the country are represented here, including: Arena Stage (Washington, DC), El Teatro Campesino (California), Barter Theatre (Virginia), Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Roadside Theater (Kentucky), Second City (Illinois), Theatre 47 (Dallas), Bread and Puppet (Vermont), The Actor's Workshop (California), Public Theater (New York), Minnesota Theatre Company, The Group Theatre (New York), and dozens more. This celebration of the artists who came before is an exhilarating look backward, as well as toward the future.
Todd London is in his fifteenth season as artistic director of the Tony Award–winning New Dramatists, where he has worked closely with more than a hundred of America's leading playwrights and advocated nationally and internationally for hundreds more. The author of The Artistic Home and Outrageous Fortune: The Life and Times of the New American Play, he has written, edited, and/or contributed to eleven books.
FORBIDDEN BROADWAY
