Plays with Films by Richard Foreman

Plays with Films by Richard Foreman

Plays with Films brings together texts of the final three productions of Richard Foreman's Ontological-Hysteric Theater at St. Mark's Church-in-the-Bowery: Zomboid (2006), Wake Up Mr. Sleepy Your Unconscious Mind is Dead (2007), and Deep Trance Behavior in Potatoland (2008). In these three exhilarating and challenging works, Foreman turns to a meditation on the mechanical and digital reproductions of screen images within the discipline of theater, and thereby recalibrates and expands the potential relationship we can have with the live art that is theater. Extending the model of theater as a reverberating machine, Foreman's use of film in these plays is intimately integrated into the complex network of impulse generators, creating an unprecedented experience of multi-dimensional scriptural space, a new kind of total theater that effectively recharges and redirects the issues of consciousness he has been exploring with indefatigable intensity since the establishment of his theater in 1968. The bodied reality of theatrical experience, and the recognition of unconsciousness within that experience, becomes more fraught with peril in today's screened world. These plays, originally conceived as his final theater works (though he did change his mind), engage in ways that continue his ambition to upend habitual thinking and may prove transformative for the individual's ability to interpret and understand the threats of deadening conformity and loss of identity through the new digital culture. Employing an innovative typographical presentation, Plays with Films demonstrates how America's most daring theater artist alchemizes reproducible and non-reproducible reality into a unique contemplation of the project of self-construction in the 21st century.

Foreman, Richard: - Having completed a BA in literature at Essex University in 1973, Richard Foreman took on a variety of occupations including community arts and theatre work. In the late 1980s, writing as 'Dick Foreman', he became a full time scriptwriter of comic strips, progressing from one-off stories to a monthly series for US publisher DC comics. 'Black Orchid' ran for two years. Following this, his working life switched to other interests, but for twenty years he continued writing quarterly scripts for photo-stories/comic strips in 'Who Cares?', a national magazine for children in care. Since 2009 he has returned full time to writing. Following a series of well-received articles for Alan Moore's 'Dodgem Logic' magazine, he began work on 'Wilful Misunderstandings'. He has recently contributed to the magazines 'Roundyhouse' and 'Tears in the Fence' and is currently writing a novel.

SKU	NIN9780983697282
ISBN 13	9780983697282
ISBN 10	0983697280
Title	Plays with Films
Author	Richard Foreman
Condition	New
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Contra Mundum Press
Year published	2013-04-30
Number of pages	324
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	This is a new book - be the first to read this copy. With untouched pages and a perfect binding, your brand new copy is ready to be opened for the first time