Herbert Blau (May 3, 1926 – May 3, 2013) was an American director and theoretician of performance. He was named the Byron W. and Alice L. Lockwood Professor in the Humanities at the

University of Washington The University of Washington (UW, simply Washington, or informally U-Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington. Founded in 1861, Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast; it was established in Seattl ...

Early life and career

Blau earned his bachelor's degree in chemical engineering from

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then- Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin. In 1832, th ...

(1947). Later, he earned his master of arts in drama (1949) and doctorate in English and American literature (1954), both from Stanford University. As co-founder (with

Jules Irving Jules Irving (né Julius Israel; April 13, 1925 – July 28, 1979) was an American actor, director, educator, and producer, who in the 1950s co-founded the San Francisco Actor's Workshop. When the Actor's Workshop closed in 1966, Irving moved ...

) of The Actor's Workshop in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...

(1952–1965) and co-director of the Repertory Theater of

Lincoln Center Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts (also simply known as Lincoln Center) is a complex of buildings in the Lincoln Square neighborhood on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. It has thirty indoor and outdoor facilities and is host to 5 milli ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

(1965–67), Blau introduced American audiences to ''avant garde'' drama in some of the country's first productions of Samuel Beckett, Jean Genet, and Harold Pinter including the 1957 performance of Beckett's '' Waiting for Godot'' at

California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...

's San Quentin State Prison. This was the '' Godot'' that during the

second red scare McCarthyism is the practice of making false or unfounded accusations of subversion and treason, especially when related to anarchism, communism and socialism, and especially when done in a public and attention-grabbing manner. The term origina ...

, after extralegal State Department maneuvers denied travel permission for unstated political reasons to a member of the company, represented American theater at the 1958

Brussels World's Fair Expo 58, also known as the 1958 Brussels World's Fair (french: Exposition Universelle et Internationale de Bruxelles de 1958, nl, Brusselse Wereldtentoonstelling van 1958), was a world's fair held on the Heysel/Heizel Plateau in Brussels, Bel ...

. In 1968, Blau signed the "

Writers and Editors War Tax Protest Tax resistance, the practice of refusing to pay taxes that are considered unjust, has probably existed ever since rulers began imposing taxes on their subjects. It has been suggested that tax resistance played a significant role in the collapse of ...

" pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War. In 1968, Blau was named founding provost and dean of the School of Theatre and Dance of the

California Institute of the Arts The California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) is a private art university in Santa Clarita, California. It was incorporated in 1961 as the first degree-granting institution of higher learning in the US created specifically for students of both ...

(CalArts), where he led the way in designing its educational model. With president Robert W. Corrigan, Blau recruited faculty including artists

Allan Kaprow Allan Kaprow (August 23, 1927 – April 5, 2006) was an American painter, assemblagist and a pioneer in establishing the concepts of performance art. He helped to develop the " Environment" and " Happening" in the late 1950s and 1960s, as well ...

John Baldessari John Anthony Baldessari (June 17, 1931 – January 2, 2020) was an American conceptual artist known for his work featuring found photography and appropriated images. He lived and worked in Santa Monica and Venice, California. Initially a painter ...

, and

Nam June Paik Nam June Paik (; July 20, 1932 – January 29, 2006) was a Korean American artist. He worked with a variety of media and is considered to be the founder of video art. He is credited with the first use (1974) of the term "electronic super h ...

, composers

Mel Powell Mel Powell (born Melvin Epstein) (February 12, 1923 – April 24, 1998) was an American Pulitzer Prize-winning composer, and the founding dean of the music department at the California Institute of the Arts. He served as a music educator for over ...

and

Morton Subotnick Morton Subotnick (born April 14, 1933) is an American composer of electronic music, best known for his 1967 composition '' Silver Apples of the Moon'', the first electronic work commissioned by a record company, Nonesuch. He was one of the foun ...

, musician

Ravi Shankar Ravi Shankar (; born Robindro Shaunkor Chowdhury, sometimes spelled as Rabindra Shankar Chowdhury; 7 April 1920 – 11 December 2012) was an Indian sitarist and composer. A sitar virtuoso, he became the world's best-known export of North In ...

, ethnomusicologist Nicholas England, designers Peter de Bretteville and

Sheila Levrant de Bretteville Sheila Levrant de Bretteville (born 1940) is an American graphic designer, artist and educator whose work reflects her belief in the importance of feminist principles and user participation in graphic design. In 1990 she became the director of th ...

, choreographer

Bella Lewitzky Bella Lewitzky (January 13, 1916, Los Angeles, California – July 16, 2004, Pasadena, California) was a modern dance choreographer, dancer and teacher. Biography Born to Jewish Russian immigrants, Lewitzky spent her childhood on a ranch in San ...

, director

Alexander Mackendrick Alexander Mackendrick (September 8, 1912 – December 22, 1993) was an American-born director and professor, long based in Scotland. He was born in Boston, Massachusetts, and later moved to Scotland. He began making television commercials befor ...

, film scholar

Gene Youngblood Gene Youngblood (May 30, 1942 – April 6, 2021) was an American theorist of media arts and politics, and a respected scholar in the history and theory of alternative cinemas. His best-known book, ''Expanded Cinema'', was the first to consider vi ...

, filmmaker Pat O'Neill, and animation artist

Jules Engel Jules Engel (born Gyula Engel, March 11, 1909 – September 6, 2003) was an American filmmaker, painter, sculptor, graphic artist, set designer, animator, film director, and teacher. He was the founding director of the experimental animation ...

. In 1971, after three years at CalArts, Blau moved to Oberlin College, where he formed the experimental theater group KRAKEN, with which he continued presenting challenging productions for another decade. The two books that emerged from that work—''Take Up the Bodies: Theater at the Vanishing Point'' (University of Illinois Press, 1982) and ''Blooded Thought: Occasions of Theater'' (Performing Arts Journal Publications, 1982)—received the

George Jean Nathan George Jean Nathan (February 14, 1882 – April 8, 1958) was an American drama critic and magazine editor. He worked closely with H. L. Mencken, bringing the literary magazine ''The Smart Set'' to prominence as an editor, and co-founding and ...

Award for Dramatic Criticism. In 1974, Blau became the Dean of the Division of Arts and Humanities at the

University of Maryland Baltimore County The University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) is a public research university in Baltimore County, Maryland. It has a fall 2022 enrollment of 13,991 students, 61 undergraduate majors, over 92 graduate programs (38 master, 25 doctoral, ...

(UMBC), bringing KRAKEN with him. While there, he saw a young Kathleen Turner perform and persuaded her to transfer to UMBC. After a contentious tenure, Blau resigned in 1976. In addition to the theater, Blau has taken up the subjects of literature, visual arts, fashion, postmodern culture, and politics. CalArts conferred an honorary doctor of arts degree to Blau in May 2008.

Personal life

Blau was born in

Brooklyn Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...

. He married actress Beatrice Manley in 1949 and they divorced in 1980. They had three children: film professor Dick Blau, Tara Gwyneth Blau, and Dr. Jonathan Blau. Blau married a second time to Kathleen Woodward and they had one daughter, Jessamyn Blau.

Death

Blau died on his 87th birthday, May 3, 2013, in

Seattle, Washington Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest region ...

from cancer. He is survived by his wife, Kathleen Woodward, three children from his first marriage, a daughter from his second marriage, seven grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren.

Books

*Blau, Herbert. ''Programming Theater History: The Actor's Workshop of San Francisco.'' New York: Routledge, 2013. (paperback) (hardcover) *Blau, Herbert. ''As If: An Autobiography, Volume 1.'' Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2011. (hardcover) (paperback) (ebook) *Blau, Herbert. ''Reality Principles: From the Absurd to the Virtual.'' Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2011. (paperback) (hardcover) (ebook) *Blau, Herbert. ''The Dubious Spectacle: Extremities of Theater, 1976-2000.'' Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002. (paperback) (hardcover) *Blau, Herbert. ''Sails of the Herring Fleet: Essays on Beckett.'' Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000. (paperback) (hardcover) (ebook) *Blau, Herbert. ''Nothing in Itself: Complexions of Fashion.'' Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999. (paperback) (hardcover) *Blau, Herbert. ''To All Appearances: Ideology and Performance.'' London/New York: Routledge,1992. (paperback) (hardcover) *Blau, Herbert. ''The Audience.'' Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990. (paperback) (hardcover) *Blau, Herbert. ''The Eye of Prey: Subversions of the Postmodern.'' Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987. *Blau, Herbert. ''Take Up the Bodies: Theater at the Vanishing Point.'' Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1982. (paperback) (hardcover) *Blau, Herbert. ''Blooded Thought: Occasions of Theater.'' New York: Performing Arts Journal Publications, 1982. *Blau, Herbert. ''The Impossible Theater: A Manifesto.'' New York: Macmillan, 1964; rpt. Collier, 1965.

References

External links

* *The documentary film,
The Impossible Itself
'' covers Herbert Blau's 1957 production of Waiting for Godot and San Quentin State Prison. *Audio of Herbert Blau's lectur
"The Right Side of the Tracks, from ''As If: An Autobiography''"
at the

Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities The Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities, located in Seattle, Washington, is one of the largest and most comprehensive humanities centers in the United States. Housed in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Washington ( ...

on October 28, 2004. *Th
New York Public Library for the Performing Arts
houses the program notes Herbert Blau wrote for productions of The Actor's Workshop of San Francisco and for the Repertory Theater of Lincoln Center, 1952-67. Correspondence and other documentary materials are also included in the archives. {{DEFAULTSORT:Blau 1926 births 2013 deaths People from Brooklyn Writers from Seattle Deaths from cancer in Washington (state) New York University alumni Stanford University alumni American chemical engineers University of Washington faculty California Institute of the Arts faculty San Francisco State University faculty American tax resisters American theater critics American theatre directors Journalists from New York City Activists from New York (state) Activists from California Engineers from New York City Scientists from New York City