In Search of Theater

by Eric Bentley

This book was written between 1946 and 1952, and first published in 1953. It is now widely regarded as the standard portrait of the European and American theater in the turbulent and seminal years following World War II; but it is far more than that. It ranges back as far as Ibsen and even Shakespeare, and has contributed very substantially to a number of reputations that would long outlast 1950, such as those of Bertolt Brecht, Charles Chaplin and Martha Graham. For Bentley fans, it is an essential link in a chain that runs from The Playwright as Thinker to The Life of the Drama to The Brecht Memoir and Thinking About the Playwright.

Genres: Nonfiction, Theatre

385 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1953

About the author

Eric Russell Bentley was a British-born American theater critic, playwright, singer, editor, and translator whose work shaped twentieth-century theatrical discourse. Educated at University College, Oxford, and Yale University, where he earned his doctorate, he later taught at Black Mountain College and Columbia University and served as theatre critic for The New Republic. Known for his incisive and uncompromising criticism, he became one of the foremost English-language authorities on Bertolt Brecht, translating, editing, and performing Brecht’s work and recording landmark albums of Brecht songs. Bentley was also an accomplished playwright, with Are You Now Or Have You Ever Been, drawn from Un-American Activities Committee hearings, becoming his most produced play. He appeared for decades as a cabaret performer and was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame. An advocate for artistic and political freedom, he publicly opposed the Vietnam War and later spoke openly about his homosexuality and its influence on his work.

Reviews

[Joshua Kyle · Rating 4 out of 5]

"A surprising number of great plays—and i fear this means old plays—have been seen on Broadway."

Found this book at a unique secondhand store in downtown Boone. Something to note about it is that it's a travel book with an index. Now, Search of Theatre is published in 1953 and written by a critic in his 40's who clears up early on that these travels are not to find just any theatre he may come across, but the "idea" of theatre housed in a production's actors and in the patrons that frequent it. In itself, the account is a tragedy of a story and Bentley, being a realist to the max, gives his firm but friendly views on the houses he visits as he moves from thought to thought, town to town and country to country in the book.