The Theatre of Images

In the tradition of the avant-garde, the three plays collected in this volume challenge the conventional understanding of performance. Building on visual arts and dance, as well as on the work of such innovators as Gertrude Stein, Bertolt Brecht and John Cage, playwrights of the American avant-garde - and of the Theater of Images in particular - Robert Wilson, Richard Foreman and Lee Breuer have carried on the tradition of experimental theatre.;In "Pandering to the Masses: a Misrepresentation", Richard Foreman, a philosopher as well as a playwright, creates a reality on stage that reflects his own reality - focusing on familiar, everyday events with the addition of recorded voice and projected image.;"A Letter for Queen Victoria", by Robert Wilson, is an opera without singers. Verbal declamations take the place of arias, creating a spectacle without narrative structure through tableaux and gesture.;Represented in comic-book form, "The Red Horse Animation" demonstrates the play's reliance on cinematic techniques in its composition. It is what author Lee Breuer calls "caption literature", a radical alternative drama documenting the conception of dramatic work.