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Alchemies of Theater: Plays, Scores, Writings
Dick Higgins, Edited by Bonnie Marranca
In addition to his work as visual artist, publisher, poet, and composer, Dick Higgins (1938–98) was also a genuine man of the theater. A founder of Fluxus, he was a major figure in artistic communities in downtown New York City, across Europe, and in Japan. Yet as important as Higgins's work has been to historians of the American avant-garde, relatively little attention has been paid to his radical theatrical vision.
Alchemies of Theater brings together a broad selection of Higgins's writings and theater-related work, much of it unpublished or long out of print, including plays and performance scores, drawings, and writings on theater and performance. As this book demonstrates, Higgins deconstructed the drama long before it became a project of theater; undercut the traditional roles of author and director; created what is now considered "devised" theater; pioneered the use of media in theater, writing the first electronic opera; and was a precursor in deconstruction and "postdramatic" avant-garde traditions. His Intermedia manifesto offered a sweeping view of interdisciplinarity—in effect, a new arts ecology.
Alchemies of Theater brings together a broad selection of Higgins's writings and theater-related work, much of it unpublished or long out of print, including plays and performance scores, drawings, and writings on theater and performance. As this book demonstrates, Higgins deconstructed the drama long before it became a project of theater; undercut the traditional roles of author and director; created what is now considered "devised" theater; pioneered the use of media in theater, writing the first electronic opera; and was a precursor in deconstruction and "postdramatic" avant-garde traditions. His Intermedia manifesto offered a sweeping view of interdisciplinarity—in effect, a new arts ecology.
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Contents
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Acknowledgments
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Preface
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Plays and Performance Scores
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Introduction
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Twenty-Seven Episodes for the Aquarian Theater
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Inroads Rebuff’d or The Disdainful Evacuation
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Amerikaka I
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Stacked Deck
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Celestials
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Mystery
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Clown’s Way: A Drama in Three Hundred Acts
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Act: A Game of 52 Soaphorse Operas
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The Tart, or Miss America
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The Hanging Gardens of Vienna (with Alison Knowles)
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Quartet
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Twelve Metadramas
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Roughly Five Minutes
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Performance and Drawing
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Introduction
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Graphis
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Graphis 82 Kit
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Graphis 82
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Graphis 19
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Graphis 65
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Graphis 89
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Graphis 118
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Graphis 177
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Graphis 202
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Music and Dance
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Introduction
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Danger Music No. 15 (for the dance)
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Danger Music No. 20 (Music of Changes)
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Danger Music No. 25
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Danger Music No. 34
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Danger Music No. 43
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Long Constellation (Number Ten)
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Concretion No. 6 “Telephone Music”
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Solo for Wind Instruments
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Two Contributions for the Theater (No. 3 and No. 4)
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A Dance for Maureen Connor
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Writings
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Introduction
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Towards an Abstract Theater
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Intermedia
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The New Humanism
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Performance, Taken Socially
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Signature Performances
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Citable Link
Published: 2024
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
- 978-0-472-05678-1 (paper)
- 978-0-472-07678-9 (hardcover)
- 978-0-472-22169-1 (ebook)