Terminal: The Text as History

Abstract

Experimental theatre groups of the last two decades often proceeded without a prescriptive text as their generative source. The collective performances, based on rehearsal exercises, group examinations of personal themes, and other innovative material, relied not on the structure of a play script, but rather on theatrical structures inherent in the groups performance philosophies. But the best works of the Living Theatre, Open Theater, Performance Group, and their contemporaries have long since passed into theatre history, leaving behind some rather disorganized and unreliable documentary evidence — notebooks, production photos, interviews, reviews, and occasional critical analysis. By far the most important article of documentation, however, is the postscriptive performance text, the printed and published recording of the performance event, now anthologized with considerable frequency.