Theatre Is Not Safe by Gordon Rogoff (review)

two, and enables Theweleit to demonstrate how language about women has constructed Western civilization. While Theweleit never decides whether an affirmation of life resides in economic revolution or in disobedience to the Oedipal laws of gender identity , his odd mix of detailed history, speculative analysis, personal, unexpurgated confession (and some questionable interpretation) creates a book that oozes, slips, leaks into precisely those living forms the Freikorpsmen would destroy. Highly accessible, shocking, finally hopeful, Theweleit's accumulation of detail and de-centerings performs its own exuberant antipatriarchal and revolutionary gesture. Kathleen Hulley Theatre Is Not Safe Gordon Rogoff Northwestern University Press; 280 pp.; $42.95 (cloth), $15.95 (paper) For over twenty years Gordon Rogoff has written intelligently,cogently, and sensitively about American theatre; therefore it is a pleasure to have in hand a collection of his articles and reviews, most of which appeared in The Village Voice. One of the joys of this book is to observe the evolution of a real theatre mind, to be witness to the long, slow development of a complex and very human sensibility. This is the record of a rich life, carefully considered . It sometimes seems that New York critics are divided into two camps: the Social Validators uptown, whose self-appointed task is the creation of the official canon of "good' theatre, and the Thought Police downtown, who cannot resist pointing out mistakes in other people's thinking in the interest of an ideological presumed agenda. Unlike these, however, Rogoff has never been the prisoner of his own opinions. Nor does he ever resort to the barbarous gobbledegook of semiotics and Post this-and-that. Rogoff is far too subtle for this, and his deep commitment to theatre deepens his insights , allowing him to examine his own anger for the sake of understanding what is, finally, at stake: the quality of our theatre life. Unfortunately, the ills Rogoff has so accurately diagnosed are just as much in evidence today. Indeed, American institutional theatre seems more careerist and bureaucratic than ever; more devoted to big, dumb buildings and lo-cal plays; more apt to mistake headlines for politics, rhetoric for commitment, and simple-mindedness for simplicity. Let us hope Rogoff will be around to chronicle the emergence of a better day. But whatever transpires, his account of it is likely to be worth reading. Mac Wellman 92 ...