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.

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.

This book offers the first in-depth look at avant-garde theatre in the United States from the early 1950s to the 1990s looking at its origins and its theoretical foundations through an examination of literature, cinema and art.

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.

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

An examination of Lee Lozano's greatest experiment in art and endurance—a major work of art that might not exist at all. The artist Lee Lozano (1930–1999) began her career as a painter; her work rapidly evolved from figuration to abstraction. In the late 1960s, she created a major series of eleven monochromatic Wave paintings, her last in the medium. Despite her achievements as a painter, Lozano is best known for two acts of refusal, both of which she undertook as artworks: Untitled (General Strike Piece), begun in 1969, in which she cut herself off from the commercial art world for a time; and the so-called Boycott Piece, which began in 1971 as a month-long experiment intended to improve communication but became a permanent hiatus from speaking to or directly interacting with women. In this book, Sarah Lehrer-Graiwer examines Lozano's Dropout Piece, the culmination of her practice, her greatest experiment in art and endurance, encompassing all her withdrawals, and ending only with her burial in an unmarked grave. And yet, although Dropout Piece is among Lozano's most important works, it might not exist at all. There is no conventional artwork to be exhibited, no performance event to be documented. Lehrer-Graiwer views Dropout Piece as leveraging the artist's entire practice and embodying her creative intelligence, her radicality, and her intensity. Combining art history, analytical inquiry, and journalistic investigation, Lehrer-Graiwer examines not only Lozano's act of dropping out but also the evolution over time of Dropout Piece in the context of the artist's practice in New York and her subsequent life in Dallas.