Description: For more than thirty years, the playwright and director Richard Foreman has been a pioneering figure in the American theater. His Ontological-Hysteric Theater has earned an international reputation for extending the boundaries of experimental theater (and has won several Village Voice Obies, including one for Best Play in 1998). His work for the New York Shakespeare Festival, the Guthrie Theatre, the Paris Opera, and the Brooklyn Academy of Music has brought his unique vision to mainstream audiences with innovative productions of the classics and the works of other playwrights.

This new volume in PAJ's Art + Performance series is the first critical edition devoted to Foreman's work. Edited by Gerald Rabkin, this wide-ranging anthology includes a collection of contemporary reviews tracing Foreman's reception from the 1960s to today, a series of informative interviews, a section of critical essays, and a selection of Foreman's writings (including the compete text of My Head Was a Sledgehammer). The book also offers a detailed chronology of Foreman's career, a current bibliography, and twenty photographs from his plays.

Rabkin's comprehensive introduction traces the development of Foreman's career and place: his contributions within the context of post-1950s experimental theater. From Foreman's founding of the Ontological-Hysteric Theater in 1968, to his artistic and personal partnership with Kate Manheim, to his company's move to the historic theater at Saint Mark's Church in the 1990s, Richard Foreman chronicles the remarkable vision and singular voice of one of America's most important theater artists.

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