Daniel Sack

Food and Religion in American Culture

Whitebread Protestants

Lively essays on the meanings and methods of tears in performance

On the Act of Crying

Cue Tears

101. Theatre/duty -- Ju Yon Kim -- Gloss: Ju Yon Kim -- 102. A theatrical revenge melodrama with ring-tones -- Sarah Bay-Cheng -- Gloss: Jennifer Parker-Starbuck -- 103. Thee Thy Thou Thine (a fragment) -- Rose English -- Gloss: Wendy Houstoun -- 104. Then a cunning voice and a night we spend gazing at stars -- Emily Johnson -- Gloss: Emily Johnson -- 105. Three dramaturgical miniatures (after Nietzsche) -- Joseph Cermatori -- Gloss: Daniel Sack -- 106. Thresholding -- Erin Manning -- Gloss: Erin Manning -- 107. Touching touches -- Isaiah Matthew Wooden -- Gloss: Isaiah Matthew Wooden -- 108. Triptych -- Kyle Gillette -- Gloss: Patrick Anderson -- 109. Two dances -- Susan Leigh Foster -- Gloss: Susan Leigh Foster -- 110. TwoDoor drama -- Rebecca Schneider -- Gloss: Daniel Sack -- 111. Universal theatre machine (for Leibniz, Turing, Brecht, and Boal) -- Annie Dorsen -- Gloss: Christopher Grobe -- 112. Unstill lives -- Bonnie Marranca -- Gloss: Bonnie Marranca -- 113. Untitled (imaginary theatre #1) -- André Lepecki -- Gloss: Rebecca Schneider -- 114. Untitled (imaginary theatre #2) -- André Lepecki -- Gloss: Matthew Goulish -- 115. Variations (I-III) -- Deirdre Heddon -- Gloss: Deirdre Heddon -- 116. Vocabulary -- VK Preston -- Gloss: VK Preston -- 117. The waiting room -- Michael McMillan -- Gloss: Michael McMillan -- 118. Wanderspiele -- Natalie Alvarez -- Gloss: Deirdre Heddon -- 119. What to, where (a poets theatre) -- Carla Harryman -- Gloss: Carla Harryman -- 120. Women & children & an old man Godot -- Richard Schechner -- Gloss: Richard Schechner -- 121. -- Rajni Shah -- Gloss: Rajni Shah -- Notes on contributors -- Related works -- Constellations

Writing for a Theoretical Stage

Imagined Theatres

"We lay there without moving. But under us all moved, and moved us." - Krapp Samuel Beckett’s most accessible play is also one of the twentieth century’s most moving dramas about aging, memory, and disappointment. Daniel Sack offers the first comprehensive survey of Krapp’s Last Tape (1958) with a general reader in mind. Structured around a series of questions, five approachable sections contextualize the play in the larger career of its Nobel-Prize-winning writer, explore its major thematic concerns, and offer comparative analyses with Beckett’s other signal works. Sack also uses discussions of significant productions, including those directed by the playwright himself, to ground interpretation of the play in terms of its performance and provide a useful resource to directors and actors. Both a critical and personal exploration of this haunting play, this volume is a must-read for anyone with an interest in Beckett’s work.

Samuel Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape

An exploration of how live events--theater, dance, and installation art--stage encounters between the present and a radically ambivalent future

Possibility, Potentiality, and the Future of Performance

After Live

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At the beginning of Whitebread Protestants, Daniel Sack writes "When I was young, church meant food. Decades later, it's hard to point to particular events, but there are lots of tastes, smells, and memories such as the taste of dry cookies and punch from coffee hour - or that strange orange drink from vacation Bible school." And so he begins this fascinating look at the role food has played in the daily life of the white Protestant community in the United States. He looks at coffee hours, potluck dinners, ladies' afternoon teas, soup kitchens, communion elements, and a variety of other things. A blend of popular culture, religious history and the growing field of food studies, the book will reveal both conflict and vitality in unexpected places in American religious life.

Imagined Theatres collects theoretical dramas written by some of the leading scholars and artists of the contemporary stage. These dialogues, prose poems, and microfictions describe imaginary performance events that explore what might be possible and impossible in the theatre. Each scenario is mirrored by a brief accompanying reflection, asking what they might mean for our thinking about the theatre. These many possible worlds circle around questions that include: In what way is writing itself a performance? How do we understand the relationship between real performances that engender imaginary reflections and imaginary conceptions that form the basis for real theatrical productions? Are we not always imagining theatres when we read or even when we sit in the theatre, watching whatever event we imagine we are seeing?

Daniel Sack

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