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An evening celebrating Marc Robinson's new book American Performance in 1976, published by Cambridge University Press, 2025. The evening will feature a short introduction by Robinson followed by a talk, moderated by Frank Hentschker. Followed by a Q& A and a reception.
About American Performance in 1976
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, and visual art—responded to this period, before zeroing in on avant-garde theatre. 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.
Marc Robinson is dean of humanities and Malcolm G. Chace ‘56 professor of theater, dance, and 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 American Performance in 1976 (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2025), The American Play: 1787-2000 (Yale Univ. Press, 2009) and The Other American Drama (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1994). In addition, he is the editor of four books: Adrienne Kennedy: Collected Plays and Other Writings (Library of America, 2023), The Myopia and Other Plays by David Greenspan (Univ. of Michigan Press, 2012), The Theater of Maria Irene Fornes (Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1999), and Altogether Elsewhere: Writers on Exile (Faber and Faber, 1994). 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. He is a fellow of the New York Institute for the Humanities.
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