Tanks to all at Palgrave Macmillan who encouraged and shaped this project,
especially Nicola Cattini, Tomas Rene, Vicky Bates, and the anonymous
readers of the proposal. Tanks to the colleagues who gave me
insights, including Dean Adams, Allison Amidei, Bruce Auerbach, Hala
Baki, Tomas Burch, Carlos Cruz, Kaja Dunn, David Fillmore, Andrew
Hartley, Jorge Huerta, Rick Kemp, Chuyun Oh, Kaustavi Sarkar, Dylan
Savage, Joanne Tompkins, Robin Witt, Amanda Zhou, and members of the
“Pedagogy of Extraordinary Bodies” working group at the American Society
for Teatre Research conference in fall 2017. Tanks also to Chuyun Oh
and Kaustavi Sarkar for help with illustrations here. And thanks to the
authors and editors of Wikipedia, who have made many details of theatre
history quickly accessible online, with further references given as well.
Tanks to the colleagues who responded to my e-mail query in summer
2017 about a potential theatre history textbook, especially Sarah
Bay-Cheng, Cheryl Black, Sara Ellen Brady, David Carlyon, Teresa DurbinAmes,
Susan Kattwinkel, Maiya Murphy, John O’Connor, Felicia Ruf,
Shannon Blake Skelton, and Nathan Tomas. Tanks to the artists I have
met, who gave me insights about their work. Tese included Kazimierz
Braun (who directed me in Te Card Index at the University of Notre Dame
in 1982, welcomed my visit to his theatre in Poland, and co-wrote a play
with me that he staged at Swarthmore College in 1986), Herbert Blau (my
dissertation mentor, 1988–1992), Ola Rotimi (who lectured in one of my
classes), William Sun (who discussed playwriting with me and introduced
me to others), Richard Schechner