What's There?!: Herb Blau on Paterson

I asked theater legend, writer, and Byron W. and Alice L. Lockwood Professor of Humanities at the University of Washington, Herbert Blau if there was a quality of consciousness in Paterson that has analogies to what goes on in experimental drama. He took this question for a ride, uninterrupted, resulting in this hypnotic read of Book One, without me having to say much else. The interview took place on 8-8-08 in his Seattle home. I’ve known Herb for close to 15 years, but that is just a sliver of his career, which has included directing some of the first productions of Beckett, Ionesco, Pinter and Genet in the US. He was also co-founder of San Francisco’s Actor’s Studio; co-director of the Repertory Theater of Lincoln Center in New York; one of the conceptual architects of CalArts; artistic director of the experimental theater group KRAKEN; and author of numerous books that, with a blooded prose that he considers theater in itself, take on theater’s impossible limits and the indelible impact of the image on thought. He is also an indefagitable teacher; while some fancy professors are phoning it in at 50, Blau continues to be a tireless and available resource for his students at 82.
Theater, Consciousness, Paterson, & Various Readings of Book I: (34:58)
Bonus Fragment: (2:35)