ABOUT THIS BOOK

The sixteen essays collected in The Theater of Essence define the point of view of one of the most influential theater critics of our time. Jan Kott's subjects extend from Tadeusz Borowski, Ibsen, Ionesco, and Gogol to Bunraku theater in Japan, Yiddish theater in New York, and Grotowski's theater in Poland.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

JAN KOTT, formerly professor of literature at the University of Warsaw, left Poland for the United States in 1966. He has taught at Yale, the University of California at Berkeley, and the State University of New York at Stony Brook, as well as overseas in Japan, at the Catholic University at Louvain in Belgium, and at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. In 1964 he received the Herder Award in Vienna, and in 1984 the George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism. His other books include The Theater of Essence, The Bottom Translation, The Eating of the Gods, and Four Decades of Polish Essays (editor), all published by Northwestern University Press.

REVIEWS

"Kott is the best guide I know to the theatrical innovators of our time. Even the erudite scholarship is illuminated in the end by his own historical destiny as an exiled intellectual; if he looks backward to read Ibsen anew, or examines the perverse heart of Kabuki, his discoveries are still filtered through the consciousness and experience of Kott our contemporary." —Philip Roth

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"Criticism these days in usually dull, dehydrated, and pompous. But not Jan Kott's criticism. It is startling, juicy, informal, jazzy. Even those who think Jan a little mad will concede that there is no methodology in the madness." —Eric Bentley

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"Criticism these days in usually dull, dehydrated, and pompous. But not Jan Kott's criticism. It is startling, juicy, informal, jazzy. Even those who think Jan a little mad will concede that there is no methodology in the madness." —Eric Bentley

— -

"Kott is the best guide I know to the theatrical innovators of our time. Even the erudite scholarship is illuminated in the end by his own historical destiny as an exiled intellectual; if he looks backward to read Ibsen anew, or examines the perverse heart of Kabuki, his discoveries are still filtered through the consciousness and experience of Kott our contemporary." —Philip Roth

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

Introduction

Esslin, Martin

Shakespeare's Riddle

The Author of Comedy, or The Inspector General

Ibsen Read Anew

Witkiewicz, or The Dialectic of Anachronism

On Gombrowicz

lonesco, or A Pregnant Death

Noh, or About Signs

Bunraku and Kabuki, or About Imitation

The Icon of the Absurd

Why Should I Take Part in the Sacred Dance?

After Grotowski: The End of the Impossible Theater

The Theater of Essence: Kantor and Brook

Tadeusz Borowski: A European Education

A Cage in Search of a Bird

The Serpent's Sting

The Seriousness of Theater

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