The Death of Character

What makes this book exceptional is Fuchs' acute rehearsal of the stranger unnerving events of the last generation that have in the cross-reflections of theory determined our thinking about theater. She seems to have seen and absorbed them all. - Herbert Blau, Center for Twentieth Century Studies, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. A work of bold theoretical ambition and exceptional critical intelligence. - Una Chaudhuri, New York University...Fuchs makes an exceptionally lucid and eloquent case for the value and contradictions in postmodern theater. - Alice Rayner, Stanford University. Surveying the extraordinary scene of the postmodern American theater, Fuchs boldly frames key issues of subjectivity and performance with the keenest of critical eyes for the compelling image and the telling gesture. - Joseph Roach, Tulane University. In this engrossing study, Elinor Fuchs explores the multiple worlds of theater after modernism. She begins with the story of the decline of character, once the central link between the artist and the spectator. In theatrical modernism Fuchs sees a series of strategies to compensate for this decline.
Postmodern theater no longer greets the demotion of character with anxiety, despair, or satisfaction as in Pirandello, Beckett, or Brecht but puts in its stead a multiple subject, a protean spectator, and a dispersed field of attention. These changes are reflected in the dramaturgy, staging, gender representations, and audience expectations of contemporary theater. While "The Death of Character" engages contemporary cultural and aesthetic theory, Elinor Fuchs always speaks as an active theater critic. Nine of her Village Voice and American Theatre essays conclude the volume. They give an immediate, vivid account of contemporary theater and theatrical culture written from the front of rapid cultural change.