Enter the Undead Author

Intellectual Property, the Ideology of Authorship, and Performance Practices since the 1960s

George Pate

Many narratives of theater history suggest that the 1960s marked the start of a turning away from traditional, script-based, playwright-centric production practices. Literary studies in this period began exploring the concept of the “death of the author” along similar lines. But the author refused to die quietly, and authorship reasserts itself in even revolutionary and avant-garde theaters throughout the latter half of the twentieth century. The model of authorship—valorizing individuality, ownership, and originality—serves to maintain traditional modes of production that reproduce and uphold dominant ideologies even when the products created by those modes of production claim to buck tradition or run counter to cultural currents. This ideology of authorship plays a part in playwrights shutting down productions of their own plays, in the privileging of individual authorship over joint authorship even in collaborative genres, and in the insistence on originality even in performance traditions rooted in a shared repertoire. This tension between the theoretical death of the author and the growth of actual authors’ abilities to control access to and even in some cases interpretations of their work exposes the deftness with which dominant ideologies and their attendant modes of production can repurpose the aesthetics of even countercultural or revolutionary movements in theater.

University Press Copublishing Division / Fairleigh Dickinson University Press

Pages: 172 • Trim: 6 x 8¾

978-1-68393-158-4 • Hardback • March 2019 • $105.00 • (£81.00)

978-1-68393-160-7 • Paperback • July 2021 • $41.99 • (£35.00)

978-1-68393-159-1 • eBook • March 2019 • $39.50 • (£30.00)

Series: The Fairleigh Dickinson University Press Series in Law, Culture, and the Humanities

Subjects: Law / Intellectual Property / Copyright, Literary Criticism / Drama, Performing Arts / Theater / Playwriting

Enter the Undead Author

Intellectual Property, the Ideology of Authorship, and Performance Practices since the 1960s

Hardback

Paperback

eBook

Summary

Many narratives of theater history suggest that the 1960s marked the start of a turning away from traditional, script-based, playwright-centric production practices. Literary studies in this period began exploring the concept of the “death of the author” along similar lines. But the author refused to die quietly, and authorship reasserts itself in even revolutionary and avant-garde theaters throughout the latter half of the twentieth century. The model of authorship—valorizing individuality, ownership, and originality—serves to maintain traditional modes of production that reproduce and uphold dominant ideologies even when the products created by those modes of production claim to buck tradition or run counter to cultural currents. This ideology of authorship plays a part in playwrights shutting down productions of their own plays, in the privileging of individual authorship over joint authorship even in collaborative genres, and in the insistence on originality even in performance traditions rooted in a shared repertoire. This tension between the theoretical death of the author and the growth of actual authors’ abilities to control access to and even in some cases interpretations of their work exposes the deftness with which dominant ideologies and their attendant modes of production can repurpose the aesthetics of even countercultural or revolutionary movements in theater.

Details

University Press Copublishing Division / Fairleigh Dickinson University Press

Pages: 172 • Trim: 6 x 8¾

978-1-68393-158-4 • Hardback • March 2019 • $105.00 • (£81.00)

978-1-68393-160-7 • Paperback • July 2021 • $41.99 • (£35.00)

978-1-68393-159-1 • eBook • March 2019 • $39.50 • (£30.00)

Series: The Fairleigh Dickinson University Press Series in Law, Culture, and the Humanities

Subjects: Law / Intellectual Property / Copyright, Literary Criticism / Drama, Performing Arts / Theater / Playwriting

Author

George Pate is assistant professor of theater and drama in the Department of English, Theater, and Liberal Studies at the University of South Carolina at Beaufort.

Table of Contents

Preface

Introduction

Chapter 1. 1984: The Author as Owner

Chapter 2. “A Necessary Myth”: The Author as Individual

Chapter 3. Whose Joke Is It Anyway? The Author as Originator

Conclusion

Bibliography

Index

About the Author

Enter the Undead Author

Intellectual Property, the Ideology of Authorship, and Performance Practices since the 1960s

George Pate

Enter the Undead Author

Intellectual Property, the Ideology of Authorship, and Performance Practices since the 1960s

ALSO AVAILABLE