The Theater of Essence

“Criticism these days is usually dull, dehydrated, and pompous. But not Jan Kott’s criticism. It is startling, juicy, informal, jazzy. Even those who think Jan a little mad will concede that there is no methodology in his madness… One often disagrees with his judgments, but even when I am right (if ever) and he is wrong, I still find him worth reading, just as worth reading, indeed, as if I were wrong and he was correcting my errors…” Eric Bentley

“Kott is the best guide I know to the theatrical innovators of our time. Even the erudite scholarship is illuminated in the end by his own historical destiny as an exiled intellectual; if he looks back-ward to read Ibsen anew, or examines the perverse heart of Kabuki, his dis-coveries are still filtered through the consciousness and experience of Kott our contemporary.” Philip Roth