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The Segal Center hosted a conversation with Yale University's Sterling Professor Emeritus of Theatre Joseph Roach and Frank Hentschker as we reflected on Jonas Barish's iconic book The Antitheatrical Prejudice.
First published in 1981, Barish's The Antitheatrical Prejudice quickly earned praise as a groundbreaking text. The book explored the complex relationship between anti-theatrical movements and discourse and the theatre practices they sought to challenge, providing a fresh lens through which to view the history of performance. More than four decades later, it remains a key text in theatre and performance studies and continues to influence discussions on the disruptive power of theatre and its cultural significance.
In 2024, PAJ Publications released a new edition of The Antitheatrical Prejudice, featuring a foreword by Roach. On 14 April, we celebrated this updated edition and explore the insights it offers for understanding our contemporary moment.
Joseph Roach is the Sterling Professor Emeritus of Theater and Professor Emeritus of English at Yale University. He has chaired the Department of Performing Arts at Washington University in St. Louis, the Interdisciplinary PhD in Theatre at Northwestern University, and the Department of Performance Studies at NYU. His most recent book is It (Michigan, 2007), a study of charismatic celebrity. His other books and articles include Cities of the Dead: Circum-Atlantic Performance (Columbia, 1996), which won the James Russell Lowell Prize from MLA and the Calloway Prize from NYU; The Player’s Passion: Studies in the Science of Acting (Michigan, 1993), which won the Barnard Hewitt Award in Theatre History, and essays in Theatre Journal, Theatre Survey, the Drama Review, Theatre History Studies, Discourse, Theater, Text and Performance Quarterly, and others. He has served as director of Graduate Studies in English and chair of the Theater Studies Advisory Committee at Yale.
PAJ Publications: More than 150 titles in drama, criticism, and history have appeared under the PAJ imprint. Since its inception PAJ has published more than one thousand plays and performance texts, translated from twenty languages. PAJ titles are widely represented in all major university and national library collections, and arts archives around the world. Its international readership of critics, scholars, and artists crosses the borders between art forms, and the arts and humanities and science/technology. Titles can be ordered through Indie Pubs.
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