Reality Principles

"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.