Playing Underground: A Critical History of the 1960s Off-Off-Broadway Movement (Theater: Theory/Text/Performance) | 
| Author: Stephen J. Bottoms
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Category: Book
Buy New: $19.95
New (12) Used (8) from $16.50
Avg. Customer Rating:  3 reviews
Sales Rank: 868435
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 448
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 6.2 x 1.1
ISBN: 0472031945
Dewey Decimal Number: 792
EAN: 9780472031948
ASIN: 0472031945
Publication Date: November 20, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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Product Description
"Scrupulously researched, critically acute, and written with care, Playing Underground will become a classic account of an era of hard-won free expression."
-William Coco
"At last---a book documenting the beginnings of Off-Off Broadway theater. Playing Underground is an insightful, illuminating, and honest appraisal of this important period in American theater."
-Rosalyn Drexler, author of Art Does (Not!) Exist and Occupational Hazard
"An epic movie of an epic movement, Playing Underground is a book the world has waited for without knowing it. How precisely it captures the evolution of our revolution! I am amazed by the book's scope and scale, and I bless its author especially for giving two greats, Paul Foster and H. M. Koutoukas, their proper, polar places, and for memorializing such unjustly forgotten masterpieces as Irene Fornes's Molly's Dream and Jeff Weiss's A Funny Walk Home. Stephen Bottoms's vivid evocation of the grand adventure of Off-Off Broadway has woken and broken my heart. It is difficult to believe that he was not there alongside me to breathe the caffeine-nicotine-alkaloid-steeped air."
-Robert Patrick, author of Kennedy's Children and Temple Slave
Few books address the legendary age of 1960s off-off Broadway theater. Fortunately, Stephen Bottoms fills that gap with Playing Underground---the first comprehensive history of the roots of off-off Broadway.
This is a theater whose legacy is still felt today: it was the launching pad for many leading contemporary theater artists, including Sam Shepard, Maria Irene Fornes, and others, and it was a pivotal influence on improv comedy and shows like Saturday Night Live.
Off-off Broadway groups such as the Living Theatre, La Mama, and Caffe Cino captured the spirit of nontraditional theater with their edgy, unscripted, boundary-crossing subjects. Yet, as Bottoms discovers, there is no one set of truths about off-off Broadway to uncover; the entire scene was always more a matter of competing perceptions than a singular, concrete reality.
No other author has managed to illuminate this shifting tableau as Bottoms does. Through interviews with dozens of the era's leading playwrights, performers, directors, and critics, he unearths a countercultural theater movement that was both influential and transforming-yet ephemeral and quintessentially of its moment.
Playing Underground will be a definitive work on the subject, offering a complete picture of an important but little-studied period in American theater.
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| Customer Reviews:
A Time When a new Theatrical Genre Was Born March 30, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
The Off-Off-Broadway theatre scene in New York City is one of the strong reasons for living in New York City, and perhaps their best times were when they were getting started in the 1960's. This was a time when social changes were afoot in our country. The pill had freed up female sexuality, for most of the decade the Vietnam war was underway, and everything came together in New York. No one knows when it really began, but it came alive at the Cafe Cino. And while the story of Joe Cino and his cafe is told in a chapter, you may be interested in the bigger treatment given in 'Return to the Cafe Cino.'
This book then goes on to describe the growth of the Off-Off-Broadway scene after Cino, new theaters, stronger and breaking into categories, but retaining still the idea of non-commercial, far out theater, in small venues.
In Cino days, actors who were members of the union frequently performed using another name. Now there is a special category of contract and there are more actors working OOB than on the Bib B itself.
social history of influential 1960s unconventional theater December 25, 2004
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Bottoms gives shape to the marginal field of "basement theaters, cafe theaters, hole-in-the-wall theaters, and theaters thriving on rough edges, raw passion, and a fierce sense of immediacy and 'liveness' of the stage event itself and of the audience" which sprang up in the 1960s along with the experimentation in other parts of the culture as well. A Professor in the Department of Theatre, Film, and Television Studies at the U. of Glascow, Bottoms sees the connection between this "off-off-Broadway" theater of the tumultuous and quixotic 1960s and today's popular entertainment. The raucousness of rock concerts, the brazenness of Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction," the provocative live performances, and rap lyrics all had precursors in the "illegitimate" theater of the 60s. Bottom's engaging work is both historical and critical. He cites the artistic and cultural sources while also bringing in the wider social milieu of the time. General themes and developments share space with activities and individuals connected with particular theaters and troupes. "Playing Underground" is a benchmark work of thorough research which goes into the social and political agendas of this theater scene while at the same time imparting its unconventional, often deliberately provocative and obscene, and in the long run, influential performance style.
Applause from a participant August 24, 2004
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
This book is an epic movie about an epic movement. "Playing Underground" is a book the world has waited for without knowing it. New York's off-Off Broadway theatres in the 1960's created the styles that mark Post-Modern art--not only stage plays but films and music as well. I know. I was there. How precisely this book captures the evolution of our revolution! I am amazed by its scope and scale, and I bless its author especially for giving two greats, playwrights Paul Foster and H.M. Koutoukas,their proper, polar places, and for memorializing such unjustly forgotten masterpieces as Irene Fornes' "Molly's Dream" and Jeff Weiss' "A Funny Walk Home." Stephen Bottoms' vivid evocation of the grand adventure of Off-Off Broadway has woken and broken my heart. It is difficult to believe that he was not there alongside me to breathe the caffeine-nicotine-alkaloid-steeped air. The photographs show how we flaunted our youth and imagination in the dark, dusty, often dirty coffeehouses, churches, galleries, basements, and "black boxes" where modern theatre--and so much more--began.
Robert Patrick, author of "Kennedy's Children," "Temple Slave," and "Film Moi: Narcissus in the Dark"
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