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Free Association: An Autobiography
Steven Berkoff has been variously described as exciting, controversial, thrilling, egocentric, electric, dynamic and difficult. A gifted playwright, a charismatic stage performer, an inventive director and a screen actor - who is Steven Berkoff? Of Russian extraction, born in the East End and schooled in Hackney, he has become one of the foremost innovators in British theatre since bursting upon the scene with Metamorphosis in 1969. A childhood spent ranging freely between London and New York, teenage years spent going 'up West', working as a waiter on a cruise ship, an unhappy stint as a salesman in London, Iceland and Germany (gambling at the same tables in Wiesbaden as Dostoievsky), then on to drama school, a course of mime with Jaques Le Coq in Paris and early days in weekly rep in the early sixties, this first collection of autobiographical writings from Steven Berkoff shows how he eschewed the establishment and broke new ground, how he utilised his life experiences theatrically and developed his radical use of the English language for his plays East, West and Greek, and his adaptations of Kafka and Edgar Allan Poe.
410 pages, Hardcover
First published October 1, 1997
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About the author
Steven Berkoff
69 books10 followersSteven Berkoff is an English actor, writer and director.Best known for his performance as General Orlov in the James Bond film Octopussy, he is typically cast in villanous roles, such as Lt. Col Podovsky in Rambo: First Blood Part II, Victor Maitland in Beverly Hills Cop, and Adolf Hitler in epic mini-series War and Remembrance.
His earliest plays are adaptations of works by Franz Kafka: The Metamorphosis (1969); In the Penal Colony (1969); and The Trial (1971); these complex psychological plays are said to be nightmarish and to create a disturbing sense of alienation in their audiences. In the 1970s and 1980s, he wrote a series of verse plays including: East (1975); Greek (1980); Decadence (1981); West (1983); Sink the Belgrano! (1986); Massage (1997); Sturm und Drang; and The Secret Love Life of Ophelia (2001). East, Greek and West were punk-inspired works about working class London youth based on Oedipus and Beowulf respectively.
Berkoff employs a style of heightened physical theatre known as "total theatre". Drama critic Aleks Sierz describes his Berkoff's dramatic style as "in yer face": "the language is usually filthy, characters talk about unmentionable subjects, take their clothes off, have sex, humiliate each another, experience unpleasant emotions, become suddenly violent. At its best, this kind of theatre is so powerful, so visceral, that it forces audiences to react: either they feel like fleeing the building or they are suddenly convinced that it is the best thing they have ever seen, and want all their friends to see it too. It is the kind of theatre that inspires us to use superlatives, whether in praise or condemnation."
According to Annette Pankratz, in her 2005 Modern Drama review of Steven Berkoff and the Theatre of Self-Performance, by Robert Cross, "Steven Berkoff is one of the major minor contemporary dramatists in Britain and – due to his self-fashioning as a bad boy of British theatre and the ensuing attention of the media – a phenomenon in his own right."
"I'm scared of Steven Berkoff" is a line in the lyrics of "I'm Scared" (1992), by Queen's guitarist Brian May, released on his first solo album Back to the Light (1993). Brian May has declared himself as a great admirer of Berkoff.
The Berkoff Performing Arts Centre was named for him at Alton College, in North East Hampshire on 20 June 2008.
His earliest plays are adaptations of works by Franz Kafka: The Metamorphosis (1969); In the Penal Colony (1969); and The Trial (1971); these complex psychological plays are said to be nightmarish and to create a disturbing sense of alienation in their audiences. In the 1970s and 1980s, he wrote a series of verse plays including: East (1975); Greek (1980); Decadence (1981); West (1983); Sink the Belgrano! (1986); Massage (1997); Sturm und Drang; and The Secret Love Life of Ophelia (2001). East, Greek and West were punk-inspired works about working class London youth based on Oedipus and Beowulf respectively.
Berkoff employs a style of heightened physical theatre known as "total theatre". Drama critic Aleks Sierz describes his Berkoff's dramatic style as "in yer face": "the language is usually filthy, characters talk about unmentionable subjects, take their clothes off, have sex, humiliate each another, experience unpleasant emotions, become suddenly violent. At its best, this kind of theatre is so powerful, so visceral, that it forces audiences to react: either they feel like fleeing the building or they are suddenly convinced that it is the best thing they have ever seen, and want all their friends to see it too. It is the kind of theatre that inspires us to use superlatives, whether in praise or condemnation."
According to Annette Pankratz, in her 2005 Modern Drama review of Steven Berkoff and the Theatre of Self-Performance, by Robert Cross, "Steven Berkoff is one of the major minor contemporary dramatists in Britain and – due to his self-fashioning as a bad boy of British theatre and the ensuing attention of the media – a phenomenon in his own right."
"I'm scared of Steven Berkoff" is a line in the lyrics of "I'm Scared" (1992), by Queen's guitarist Brian May, released on his first solo album Back to the Light (1993). Brian May has declared himself as a great admirer of Berkoff.
The Berkoff Performing Arts Centre was named for him at Alton College, in North East Hampshire on 20 June 2008.
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July 9, 2018
Irascible, meandering but thoroughly entertaining; the chopped-up sequencing of events will frustrate some, but if you've any interest at all in Berkoff, the great iconoclast of British theatre, then there's plenty to enjoy here (especially when he really lets rip on all he hates in the fusty, constrictive atmosphere of 'traditional, respectable' theatre).
Displaying 1 of 1 review