Theater of the Avant-Garde, 1890-1950: A Critical Anthology ed. by Bert Cardullo and Robert Knopf, and: The Twentieth-Century Performance Reader ed. by Michael Huxley and Noel Witts (review)

316 REVIEWS lice," brings Ihe role of new technology into the discussion. This new technology helps us reconsider linearity in perfollOance and, according to Susan Kozel, the relationship between the visible and the invisible. It offers new opportunities to manipulate form to transmit content, as well as new ways to make politics accessible. The strongest work here is Sue-Ellen Case's discussion of the challenges and promise of the Internet for lesbians and lesbian perfonnance. In conclusion, some of the essays collected here will speak truth to you; and some, heresy; almost all will leave you wanting more. Ultimately, The Routledge Reader in Politics and Petformance reaffillOs the desire to use performance to change the world. Hopefully, this will help some of us do just that. BERT CARDULLO AND ROBERT KNOPF, eds. Theater a/the Avant~Garde, 1890-[950: A Critical Anthology. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001. Pp. 523. $45.00 (Hb); $21.95 (Pb). MICHAEL HUXLEY AND NOEL WITTS, eds. The Twentieth-Cenwry Peliormance Reader. 2nd ed. London: Routledge, 2002. Pp. xxii +465. $29.95 (Pb). Reviewed by Robin Nelson, Manchester Metropolitan University In compiling anthologies, sourcebooks, or critical readers. editors are faced with choices, not just about what to include and what to leave out, but about the envisaged uses of the compilation and the critical approach which lends coherence to the collection. In this light, the two sourcebooks under consideration here make for interesting comparisons. Both are concerned with theatre! perfollOance and the twentieth century. Cardullo and Knopf, however, elect to focus on the first half of that century, specifying Ihe period 1890 to 1950 in their title, while the emphasis in Huxley and Witts is on the second half of the twentieth century, pointing to the early twenty-first century, notwithstanding the inclusion of several seminal pieces dating from prior to 1950 (for example, the selections from Appia, Craig, Marinetti, Benjamin, and Brecht). The difference in attitude to history between the two books is, however, more significant than the mere selection of a period for emphasis. Cardullo and Knopf are concerned with a linear, progressive history. They consciously attempt "a revisionist history of modem drama" (y) and organize their selection of plays and articles more or less in chronological order. Each of their subsections is titled to reflect a movement, fonn , or "ism." Each practitioner is introduced with a short contextualizing biography and select bibliography. Thus, Cardullo and Knopf have sought to foreground "a history of genuinely avant-garde drama, as isolated from twentieth-century developments in con- Reviews ventional vensUc fonns" (I). Acknowledging that it is "late" (2) to be embarking on such an enterprise, they point, on the one hand, to an overemphasis , in publications, on the psychologically oriented realist-naturalist tradition and, on the other, to the difficulties in unearthing the plays and documents of the avant-garde, particularly copies translated into English. In contrast, as part of a general resistance to categorization, Huxley and Witts explicitly resist an approach that foregrounds chronology and linear history . Indeed, with a rhetorical flourish echoing the most declamatory moments of the avant-garde, their "manifesto becomes: away with categorisation" (6). The second edition of their reader, like the first, organizes its selection of articles alphabetically, rather than chronologically (though a chronology is appended). As a matter of principle, Huxley and Witts let the artists speak first and foremost, offering only a brief contextualizing biography and suggested further reading after each essay or interview. A feature of Huxley and Witts's approach, however, is to bring out resonances, sometimes synchronically, instead of sketching the context of an historical moment. Thus, Marinetti is cross-referred to Abramovic, since both artists provoke politically, while a concern with ritual is seen to connect Artaud with Hijikata and Soyinka. Differences are sometimes drawn in these one-liner comparisons, as well as resonances being amplified. Though Huxley and Witts are somewhat ambivalent about history as traditionally conceived, eschewing it but "having a proper respect for it and what it can teach" (6), their general stance loosely reflects a postmodern shift in attitude to history. In Cardullo and Knopfs anthology, the military term "avantgarde " denotes a cutting edge, as the forward...