Richard Foreman's Ontological-Hysteric Theatre: The Influence of Gertrude Stein

Abstract

It seems somewhat remarkable that anyone writing on Gertrude Stein's work in 1976 could state: Throughout the book, I have attempted to place Stein within the context of the avant-garde movements of the first fifty years of twentieth-century literature and painting, for that is the only way in which her can be adequately measured.' One could agree with Michael J. Hoffman's opinion, as stated in the preface to his book Gertrude Stein, if one ignores the extraordinary impact of Stein's theories on avant-garde art, particularly theatre, in the second half of the twentieth century. In fact, she produced a body of theoretical writing that establishes her position as a leading thinker in all twentieth-century art. Thus, if an analysis of her work is relegated to the first fifty years of this century, and further limited to the avant-garde movements in literature and painting, then her importance is not fully realized and her achievement will be, ultimately, inadequately measured. In a lecture dated 1935, Stein said: The world can accept me now because there is coming out of your generation somebody they don't like, and therefore they accept me because I am sufficiently past in having been contemporary so they don't have to dislike me. So thirty years from now I shall be accepted.2