Richard Schechner

Richard Schechner
Occupation	Professor
Known for	Performing arts

Richard Schechner is a University Professor and Professor of Performance Studies at the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University, and editor of TDR: The Drama Review.

Richard Schechner received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Cornell University in 1956, a Master's degree from the University of Iowa two years later, and a Ph.D. from Tulane University in 1962. He edited The Drama Review, formerly the Tulane Drama Review, from 1962–1969; and again from 1986 to the present.

Schechner went on to become one of the founders of the Performance Studies department of the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University. He founded The Performance Group of New York in 1967 and was its artistic director until 1980, when TPG changed its name to The Wooster Group. The home of both TPG and TWG is the Performing Garage in New York's SoHo district, a building acquired by Schechner in 1968. That year Schechner signed the “Writers and Editors War Tax Protest” pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War. In 1992, Schechner founded East Coast Artists, of which he was the artistic director until 2009. He additionally writes for journals worldwide.

In the 1990s, Schechner originated "rasaboxes," a technique of emotional training for performers and others.

Beginning in 2007, the Richard Schechner Center for Performance Studies at the Shanghai Theatre Academy began publishing the bi-annual TDR/China.

In March 2005, the Richard Schechner Center for Performance Studies was inaugurated as part of the Shanghai Theatre Academy, where Schechner is an Honorary Professor. With The Performance Group Schechner directed many productions including Dionysus in 69 based on Euripides' The Bacchae (1968), Makbeth based on Shakespeare's Macbeth (1969), Commune group devised piece (1970), Sam Shepard's The Tooth of Crime (1972), Bertolt Brecht's Mother Courage and Her Children (1975), David Gaard's The Marilyn Project (1975), Seneca's Oedipus (1977), Terry Curtis Fox's Cops (1978), and Jean Genet's The Balcony (1979). With East Coast Artists, Schechner has directed Faust/gastronome (1993), Anton Chekhov's Three Sisters (1995), William Shakespeare's Hamlet (1999), and Schechner's and Saviana Stanescu's YokastaS (2003, YokastaS Redux 2005), Lian Amaris's Swimming to Spalding (2009), Imagining O (three versions: 2011, 2012, 2014). Schechner has also directed in Asia and Africa: Anton Chekhov's Cherry ka Baghicha (1983 in Hindi) in New Delhi, Sun Huizhu's Mingri Jiuyao Chu Shan (1989 in Shanghai in Mandarin) August Wilson's Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (1992) at the Grahamstown Festival, South Africa, Aeschylus's The Oresteia (1995 in Taipei in Mandarin), and Shakespeare's Hamlet (2007 in Shanghai and 2009 in Wroclaw, Poland, in Mandarin).

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