1976 was a febrile, transitional year in cultural history, coming after Watergate and Vietnam and before the AIDS epidemic and the rise of the Conservative movement. Bicentennial triumphalism sounded dissonant against a violent past and uncertain future. Marc Robinson here explores how innovative artists across disciplines – drama, dance, music, film, visual art – responded to this period, before zeroing in on avant-garde theater. Over 1976, five landmark productions could be seen within months of one another: Cecil Taylor’s A Rat’s Mass / Procession in Shout, Meredith Monk’s Quarry, the Robert Wilson / Philip Glass opera Einstein on the Beach, Joseph Chaikin’s production of Adrienne Kennedy’s A Movie Star Has to Star in Black and White, and, finally, the Wooster Group’s first open rehearsal of Spalding Gray and Elizabeth LeCompte’s Rumstick Road. In close readings of these five works, Robinson reveals the poetics of a transformative moment in American culture.

Author Biography

Marc Robinson is Dean of Humanities and Malcolm G. Chace ’56 Professor of Theater, Dance, & Performance Studies and English at Yale University. He is also Professor in the Practice of Dramaturgy and Dramatic Criticism at the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale. His books include The American Play: 1787-2000 (2009) and The Other American Drama (Cambridge University Press, 1994, republished 1997). In addition, he is the editor of four books: Adrienne Kennedy: Collected Plays and Other Writings (2023), The Myopia and Other Plays by David Greenspan (2012), The Theater of Maria Irene Fornes (1999), and Altogether Elsewhere: Writers on Exile (1994, 1996). He has been awarded the 2009 George Jean Nathan Award and the 2010 George Freedley Special Jury Prize (both for The American Play), the 2012 Lambda Literary Award in LGBTQ+ Drama (for The Myopia and Other Plays by David Greenspan), and the 2004 Betty Jean Jones Award for Outstanding Teaching of American Drama.

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