The work of British playwright, director, painter, and photographer Howard Barker (b. 1946) is not well known in the US, although this eclectic but richly rewarding volume makes apparent it should be. Indeed, Barker's drama and the loosely affiliated group dedicated to producing it since 1986, the Wrestling School, are arguably marginal even in their native Britain. For this one can blame both Barker’s eccentric, polyphonous, resistant, emphatically anti-naturalistic texts (which, as the editors are quick to assure the reader, are ‘different’ rather than difficult) and his uncompromising dedication to an alternative discipline of theater, which he has unfolded in a series of commentaries dedicated to the ‘theatre of catastrophe.’ Here, in an interview published as ‘On Discipline,’ Barker remarks: ‘My intense concern is that the experience of the play is not diluted by weak practices.’ The book comprises three complementary sections: ‘Howard Barker and the Wrestling School’ offers essays and interviews with Barker and some of the regular actors and directors associated with the Wrestling School over three decades; ‘Readings/Inversions’ provides scholarly considerations of Barker’s work in relation to ‘new writing,’ spirituality, and visuality; and ‘Other Barkers’ offers essays scanning particular productions and approaches. Reynolds and Smith make a strong case for (re)discovering Barker’s important oeuvre. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals.
R. Remshardt, University of Florida, USA
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