Martin Puchner
H. Gordon Garbedian Chair in English and Comparative Literature
Co-Chair, Theatre Ph.D. Program
Research -- Drama
Stage Fright: Modernism, Anti-Theatricality, and Drama (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002).
A study of the tension between modernist literature and the theater. After reconstructing the emergence of Wagner's extreme form of
theatricality, this book examines writers and directors--from Mallarmé and Yeats to Stein, Joyce, and Beckett--whose suspicion of
the theater motivated their most daring formal innovations, their most important poetic choices, and their most radical reforms of the
stage.
Reviews
Comparative Literature 56:1; Modernism/Modernity 11:1; Theatre Journal 55:3; Modern Drama 46:2; Theatre Research International 29:3; The Germanic
Review 78:4; Brecht Yearbook 29; The Comparatist (May 2004); James Joyce Quarterly 40.4; Journal of Beckett Studies 15:1&2 (Fall 2005/Spring2006).
Theaterfeinde: Die anti-theatralischen Dramatiker der Moderne, expanded German edition, translated by Jan Küveler (Freiburg:
Rombach Verlag, 2006).
Reviews
Kult (read this review online)
Editorial Work and Introductions
Against Theatre: Creative Destructions on the Modernist Stage, editor, with Alan Ackerman (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006).
Modern Drama: Critical Concepts, editor, a 4-volume anthology of critical writing (New York: Routledge, 2008).
Tragedy and Metatheatre: Essays on Dramatic Form, by Lionel Abel, with an introduction by Martin Puchner (New York: Holmes
and Meier, 2003).
Six Plays by Henrik Ibsen, with an introduction and notes by Martin Puchner (New York: Barnes and Noble, 2003).
Norton Anthology of Drama, 2 vols., general editor, with J. Ellen Gainor and Stanton Garner, Jr.
(New York: Norton, 2009)
Editor, Theatre Survey, Cambridge UP. Read editorials on drama, theater, and the archive.
See especially issue 49:2, which contains the English version of Alain Badiou's short book on theatre, Rhapsodie
pour le théâtre. To order the special issue, print this form.
Theater and Philosophy: a lecture by Alain Badiou, with responses by Martin Puchner and Bruno Bosteels, organized
by Emily Apter at NYU on November 7, 2008.
States of the Field, co-editor, with Jody Enders, anniversary issue of Theatre Survey 47:2 (2006).
Other Editing
Kafka and the Theater, guest editor, special issue of The Germanic Review 78:3(2003).
Modernism and Anti-Theatricality, co-editor, with Alan Ackerman, special issue of Modern Drama 44:3 (2001).
"Performing the Open: Actors, Animals, Philosophers," in Animals and Performance, special issue, edited by Una Chaudhuri, TDR 193 (spring 2007).
"The Performance Group: Between Theory and Theater," in Restaging the Sixties: Radical Theaters and Their Legacies, edited by James Harding and Cindy
Rosenthal (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006).
"The Avant-Garde is Dead: Long Live the Avant-Garde," in Mapping the Neo-Avant-Garde, edited by David Hopkins (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2006).
"Das Innenleben der Puppen: Neugier und Gewalt im unmenschlichen Theater," in Philologische Neugier, edited by Caroline Welsh (Berlin: Max Planck
Institut, 2004). Reprinted in: Umwege des Lesens: Aus dem Labor Philologischer Neugier, edited by Christoph Hoffmann and Caroline Welsch (Parerga
Verlag, Berlin, 2006):79-90.
"Debord and the Theater of the Situationists," Theatre Research International, 29:1 (March 2004): 4-15.
"Screeching Voices: Avant-Garde Manifestos in the Cabaret," in Avant-Garde Critical Studies, ed. Dietrich Scheuneman (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2001): 113-135.
"Kafka's Anti-Theatrical Gestures," The Germanic Review 78: 3 (summer 2003): 177-193.
"Reading the Sirens' Gestures: Kafka between Silent Film and Epic Theater," Kafka Society Journal, 21: 27-39.
"Police, Paranoia, Theater: Thomas Pynchon's Vineland," in Police Forces, edited by Klaus Mladek (New York: Palgrave, 2007).
"The Modernist Drama," in Encyclopedia of Modern Drama, edited by Gabrielle H.Cody and Evert Sprinchorn (New York, Columbia University Press, 2007).
"The Closet Drama," in Encyclopedia of Modern Drama, edited by Gabrielle H. Cody and Evert Sprinchorn (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007).
"Joe Orton," in Contemporary British Writers (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1999): 363-78.
"Tall Horse: Animating Animals," HotReview, edited by Jonathan Kalb (2005).
"Beckett/Albee," directed by Lawrence Sacharow, Theatre Journal 56: 2 (2004): 306-308.
"Two Puppet Operas," HotReview, edited by Jonathan Kalb (2004).
"Mother Courage and Her Children," HotReview, edited by Jonathan Kalb (2004).
"Mabou Mines Dollhouse," HotReview, edited by Jonathan Kalb (2003).
"An Interview with JoAnne Akalaitis," director of In the Penal Colony, with music by Philip Glass, The Germanic Review 78:3 (summer 2003): 261-264.
The Portable Theater, Alan L. Ackerman Jr. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), Theatre Journal, fall 2001.
Theater der Keuschheit, Keuschheit des Theaters: Zu einer Geschichte der (Anti-) Theatralität von Gryphius bis Kleist, by Christopher J. Wild (Freiburg im
Breisgau: Rombach, 2003), Germanic Review (spring 2007).
Also see:
Poetry of the Revolution: Marx, Manifestos and the Avant-Gardes (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006).
Plato's Shadows: An Essay on Theater and Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).
"On Henrik Ibsen," London Review of Books 29:3 (February 2007).
"In Memoriam Harold Pinter," N+1 (January 2009).