Emily Mann

Reviews / Votes

A timely, accessible biography of one of America's greatest living theatrical icons ... It underscores, for theatre-makers, students, and researchers alike, the potential of performance as a radical force for change. * Journal Of American Drama And Theatre * Alexis Greene's authoritative biography of playwright/director Emily Mann narrates the life and artistic story of one of the most important people in contemporary American theatre since the Civil Rights era. Mann, the granddaughter of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, was the first woman to direct on the stage of the Minneapolis's Guthrie Theatre, the first to become the artistic director of Princeton, NJ's, McCarter Theatre, and the first to write plays that became known as "theatre of testimony." The book chronicles her career in the American theatre at a historical moment when movements for racial, gender, and social justice, in Mann's vision, gave it purpose and energy.
Emily Mann also recounts Mann's artistic determination and decisions in ways that illuminate all the important micro choices that allowed her to mount theatre productions that spoke into their cultural moment. Greene's painstaking research allows her to recreate Mann's landmark productions, many of which became central to American theatre history.
Most of all, Emily Mann elegantly traces how Emily Mann became herself, and how her personal and political engagements with immigration, civil rights, anti-Semitism, feminism, and social justice became the palimpsest for her vital, indelible, inspiring artistic, professional, and personal life. -- Jill Dolan, Annan Professor of English and Theatre, Princeton University If B for Biography equals B for Boring to you, I suggest you adjust your opinion for this excellent biography. Alexis Greene has written a lively and fascinating book about an important theater artist-artistic director, director, and playwright Emily Mann. * Third Coast Review *