Drop dead : performance in crisis, 1970s New York / Hillary Miller.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Miller, Hillary, author.

Series:

Performance works

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Theater--New York (State)--New York--History--20th century.

Theater.

Recessions.

Performing arts--Economic aspects.

Performing arts.

Theater--Economic aspects.

History.

New York (State)--New York.

Performing arts--New York (State)--New York--History--20th century.

Theater--Economic aspects--New York (State)--New York.

Performing arts--Economic aspects--New York (State)--New York.

Recessions--New York (State)--New York.

Nineteen seventies.

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

ix, 274 pages ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

Evanston, Illinois : Northwestern University Press, 2016.

Summary:

Drop Dead: Performance in Crisis, 1970s New York offers a fascinating and comprehensive exploration of how the city's financial crisis shaped theater and performance practices in this turbulent decade and beyond. New York City's performing arts community suffered greatly from a severe reduction in grants in the mid-1970s. A scholar and playwright, Hillary Miller skillfully synthesizes economics, urban planning, tourism, and immigration to create a map of the interconnected urban landscape and to contextualize the struggle for resources. She reviews how numerous theater professionals, including Ellen Stewart of La MaMa E.T.C. and Julie Bovasso, Vinnette Carroll, and Joseph Papp of The Public Theater, developed innovative responses to survive the crisis. Combining theater history and close readings of productions, each of Miller's chapters is a case study focusing on a company, a production, or an element of New York's theater infrastructure. Her expansive survey visits Broadway, Off-, Off-Off-, Coney Island, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, community theater, and other locations to bring into focus the large-scale changes wrought by the financial realignments of the day. Nuanced, multifaceted, and engaging, Miller's lively account of the financial crisis and resulting transformation of the performing arts community offers an essential chronicle of the decade and demonstrates its importance in understanding our present moment. Book jacket.

Contents:

Introduction: City in crisis, performance in Crisis

Planned shrinkage and the new theater : Ellen Stewart, La Mama e.t.c., and Julie Bovasso

TKTS and "lost audience" anxiety : fiscal crisis Times Square

Vinnette Carroll's Urban Arts Corps and the "inevitability of interdependency"

The theater of poverty : Everyman in Coney Island

How the public became a public : Joseph Papp's Civic Building

The Brooklyn syndrome : BAM and outer-borough arts

Conclusion. the myth of self-sufficiency.

Notes:

Based on the author's thesis (doctoral)--City University of New York, 2013.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780810133884

0810133881

9780810133891

081013389X

OCLC:

948339861