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| TDR (The Drama Review) | |
|---|---|
| Title | TDR (The Drama Review) |
| Discipline | Performance studies; Theater; Dance; Performance art |
| Abbreviation | TDR |
| Publisher | Yale School of Drama; MIT Press (current) |
| Frequency | Quarterly |
| History | 1955–present |
| Website | (see publisher) |
TDR (The Drama Review) is a quarterly scholarly journal focused on performance studies, theater, dance, and performance art, originating in 1955. It functions as a hybrid of peer-reviewed scholarship, editorial essays, and archival presentation, engaging practitioners and scholars across institutions such as Yale School of Drama, New York University, Harvard University, University of California, Berkeley, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The journal has chronicled and shaped debates around figures and movements including Jerzy Grotowski, Antonin Artaud, Bertolt Brecht, Joseph Chaikin, Marina Abramović, and Richard Schechner.
Founded in 1955 under the auspices of Wesleyan University and the Yale School of Drama, the journal emerged amid postwar interest in avant-garde theater associated with companies such as Living Theatre, Merce Cunningham Dance Company, and festivals like the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Early editors cultivated dialogue between practitioners linked to Grotowski's Laboratory Theatre, Peter Brook's Royal Shakespeare Company, and American experimentalists including Judson Dance Theater and Black Mountain College affiliates. The 1960s and 1970s saw engagement with political theater exemplified by Augusto Boal and Bertolt Brecht-influenced collectives, alongside documentation of happenings connected to Allan Kaprow and performance art linked to Fluxus contributors such as Yves Klein and Nam June Paik. Through the 1980s and 1990s editors responded to institutional shifts at New York University and debates at Theatre Communications Group conferences, incorporating scholarship on postdramatic theatre from figures associated with Hans-Thies Lehmann and the European postwar avant-garde. In the 21st century, editorial moves coordinated with academic programs at MIT and collaborations with archives such as the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.
The journal operates with an editorial board drawn from academic departments and arts institutions including Columbia University, Princeton University, University of Chicago, and Stanford University. Its editorial policy balances commissioned dossiers, peer-reviewed essays, translated texts by authors like Antonin Artaud and J.L. Austin, and archival reproductions of materials from artists such as Meredith Monk and Robert Wilson. Each issue often centers on a thematic dossier curated by guest editors affiliated with organizations like Performa, Walker Art Center, or the Brooklyn Academy of Music, combining scholarly apparatus with performance documentation: production photographs by photographers linked to Bill Viola and Henri Cartier-Bresson-style reportage, annotated scripts, and rehearsal notes from companies including Wooster Group and La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club. The format includes critical essays, translations, scenographic portfolios, interviews with practitioners such as Peter Sellars, and pedagogical commentaries used in curricula at Juilliard School and Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.
Coverage spans historical analysis of canonical works—discussions of Shakespeare productions, revivals at Globe Theatre (London), and stagings by directors like Olivier—to contemporary explorations of site-specific performance in locales such as Times Square and Tahrir Square. The journal publishes scholarship on dance innovators including Martha Graham, Pina Bausch, and William Forsythe, alongside ethnographic studies of ritual and popular performance traditions in regions from West Africa to Southeast Asia. It addresses interdisciplinary intersections with visual art and media through examinations of collaborations involving Joseph Beuys, Andy Warhol, and Cindy Sherman, and engages with critical theory from thinkers associated with Jacques Derrida, Walter Benjamin, Michel Foucault, and Judith Butler. Special issues have foregrounded topics such as performance and politics, mediated performance under technologies from video art to virtual reality, and practices of archival recovery featuring materials from the collections of Library of Congress and university archives.
Scholars credit the journal with institutionalizing the field of performance studies alongside programs at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts and UC Berkeley's theatre departments, influencing curricula, tenure evaluations, and syllabus formation that reference texts from Erving Goffman to Richard Sennett. Critical reception ranges from praise in outlets like The New York Times and The Guardian for its role in documenting avant-garde practice to academic debate about editorial interventions and canon formation debated at conferences like the Association for Theatre in Higher Education and published in forums such as Performance Research. The journal's dossiers have catalyzed exhibitions at institutions including the Museum of Modern Art and Tate Modern, and informed theatrical programming at festivals like Venice Biennale and Spoleto Festival USA.
Contributors include prominent scholars and practitioners: Richard Schechner, Peggy Phelan, Erika Fischer-Lichte, Judith Malina, Julian Beck, Victor Turner, Erving Goffman, Hans-Thies Lehmann, Marina Abramović, Robert Wilson, Peter Brook, Janet Cardiff, Annie Sprinkle, Trisha Brown, Philip Auslander, Sally Banes, Clive Barker (novelist), Ariane Mnouchkine, Eugène Ionesco, Samuel Beckett, Tadeusz Kantor, Heiner Müller, Dario Fo, Liz Lerman, Gilbert Sorrentino, Raja Rao, Grotowski, Joseph Chaikin, Merce Cunningham, Mikhail Bakhtin, Jacques Lecoq, Anne Bogart, Suzanne Lacy, Gillian Rose, Tim Etchells, Hito Steyerl, Yvonne Rainer, and Sondra Hale. Special issues have addressed topics such as "Performance and Politics", "Archives and Counter-Archives", "Global Performance Ecologies", and retrospectives on movements like Fluxus, Happenings, and Postdramatic Theatre.
The journal is published quarterly by MIT Press in collaboration with academic partners and is indexed in multidisciplinary databases used by libraries at New York Public Library, British Library, Bibliothèque nationale de France, and university consortia. It is available in print and electronic formats via institutional subscriptions held by research libraries at Harvard, Yale, Columbia, University of Oxford, and University of Cambridge. Digital archives of past issues are accessible through academic platforms used by scholars citing works in journals such as Modern Drama, Theatre Journal, and Contemporary Theatre Review. Category:Academic journals in theatre studies