Author Description

Readers and acolytes of the Beat Generation tend to be familiar with the prose and poetry of the seminal writers of this period: Jack Kerouac, Gregory Corso, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Diane di Prima, and many others. Yet all of these authors, as well as other less well-known Beat figures, also wrote plays - and these, together with their countercultural approaches to what could or should happen in the theatre - shaped the dramatic experiments of the playwrights who came after them, from Rochelle Owens to Sam Shepard, to the many vanguard performance artists of the seventies. This volume, the first of its kind, gathers essays about the exciting dramatic work of the Beat Generation, ranging from its well-known representatives such as Kerouac, Ginsberg and Burroughs, to the 'Afro-Beats' - LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka), Bob Kaufman, and others. It offers original studies of the women Beats - di Prima, Bunny Lang - as well as groups like the Living Theater who in this era first challenged the literal and physical boundaries of the performance space itself.