Howard Barker's Art of Theatre

Director-dramatist Howard Barker is a restlessly prolific, compulsively controversial, provocative multi-media artist.

Beyond his internationally acclaimed theatrical productions for his award-winning theatre company The Wrestling School, Barker is also a poet, a painter whose work has been exhibited internationally, and a philosophical essayist on the power of art to provoke moral speculation, and on the theatricality of the human being in crisis. In France, his drama was the subject of a major retrospective season, 2009-10, comprising no less than seven theatrical productions (four of which were staged at the Od on, the French national theatre). His plays have been further, belatedly, acknowledged by the British Royal National Theatre, in an acclaimed 2012 production of his 1985 play Scenes from an Execution featuring Fiona Shaw.

This collection of essays provides international viewpoints on the full range of Barker's achievements, and argues for their unique importance at the forefront of several genres of modern art. These varied complementary perspectives, by established and emergent international scholars, argues that the full scale and reach of Barker's objectives and achievements nevertheless remains relatively undervalued, until this volume; which will constitute important reading for lecturers, postgraduates and undergraduates, theatre practitioners and enthusiasts interested in the most searching forms of contemporary theatre and modern art.

It includes a reflection on the distinctive challenges of performing Barker's work by the actress Melanie Jessop; new essays from Elisabeth Angel-Perez, Mary Karen Dahl, Charles Lamb, Michel Morel and Heiner Zimmermann; an interview with the artist; and an essay by Barker himself.