Reality Principles: From the Absurd to the Virtual

Reality Principles gathers recent essays by esteemed scholar and theatre practitioner Herbert Blau covering a range of topics. The book’s provocative essays-including
The Emotional Memory of Directing,

The Faith-Based Initiative of the Theater of the Absurd,

Virtually Yours: Presence, Liveness, Lessness,

The Human Nature of the Bot
-were given as keynotes and/or memorial lectures and are collected here for the first time. The essays take up a remarkable array of topics-from body art and the self-inflicted punishments of Stelarc, Orlan, and the Viennese Actionists, to Ground Zero and 9/11-and allow Blau to address critical questions of theater and theory, performance and relevance, the absurd and the virtual, history and illusion, community and memory. Reality Principles offers a panoramic view of Herbert Blau’s perspectives on life and the imitation of life on stage.