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Date added: 18.3.2015
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I go back and forth as to the necessity of the term dick-headed in criticism. This book makes a good case for it: Barkers theater is one where the audience is made to feel relentlessly terrible, but not to any educative or instructive purpose. Heavens no: the Theater of Catastrophe (as he says, repetitively, throughout the book) simple puts onstage terrible people doing awful things in order to push human limits (and, one guesses, buttons.) I saw this cited in a book of more general theater theory, and indeed there are a few moments of insight into what qualities make up the particular relationship between actors, directors, audience, and marketplace. But his tone throughout is superior--at one point Barker seems to be referring to himself in the third person--and his complaints that noone will produce his plays increasingly hilarious, given that the exemplary model for these is a five-hour play that makes people feel bad. Its interesting to see someone advocating, in a sense, theatrical art for arts sake, rather than for any particular purpose. Now Id like to go back to my bourgeois preconceptions that theater might have a social purpose, thanks. Arguments For A Theatre by Howard Barker
