Daniel Sack

Associate Professor

Daniel Sack holds a joint appointment in the Commonwealth Honors College and the English Department, where he serves as the Graduate Program Director. He received his B.A. in English with a concentration in Creative Writing (Poetry) from Brandeis University and M.A./Ph.D. from Stanford University’s Drama Department. Prior to his appointment at UMass, he was Assistant Professor of Theatre Studies at Florida State University and a Five College Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow. Professor Sack's research traverses modern/contemporary theatre and interdisciplinary performance more broadly conceived (dance, performance art, and the visual arts), performance theory and dramatic theory, and critical writing as a creative practice.

 

His first book, After Live: Possibility, Potentiality, and the Future of Performance (University of Michigan Press 2015), explores how live performance stages different structures for representing the future's many divergent courses. A second short book, Samuel Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape, was published by Routledge in 2016. He is the editor of Imagined Theatres: Writing for a Theoretical Stage (Routledge 2017), which gathers together a host of conceptual performances, fantastical plays, and theoretical closet dramas written by close to 100 scholars and artists of the contemporary stage. The book received the 2018 Excellence in Editing Award from the Association for Theatre in Higher Education.

 

He is founding editor for the online open-access journal (www.imaginedtheatres.com).

 

For more info, visit his personal website here.

 

Research Areas

• Modern and Contemporary Theatre
• Performance Art
• Performance Studies
• Theatre Studies and Dramatic Theory
• Creative / Critical Writing

Publications

Books

• After Live: Possibility, Potentiality, and the Future of Performance (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, Theater: Theory/Text/Performance Series, 2015).
• Samuel Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape (New York/London: Routledge, Fourth Wall Series, 2016).
• Editor, Imagined Theatres: Writing for a Theoretical Stage (New York/London: Routledge, 2017).

Selected Articles and Book Chapters

• “Theatrical Performance in the Margins: Imagined Theatres on Page and Stage” in Closet Drama: History, Theory, and Genre, edited by Catherine Burroughs. (New York: Routledge, 2018).
• “Strip-showing and the Suspension of a Naked End” in Showing Off, Showing Up: Studies of Hype, Heightened Performance, and Cultural Power, edited by Laurie Frederik, Kimberly Marra, and Catherine Schuler. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2017).
• "A Constellation of Imagined Theatres: Technology and Performance" in Theatre Journal 68, no. 3 (September 2016).
• "Some Imagined Theatres: Readings from a Fictional-Theoretical Universe" in Theater, Vol. 45: 3 (Winter 2015).
• "Una stanza dalla potenzialità sconfinata, o della futurità [A Room of Endless Potentiality, or on Futurity]" in Toccare il reale. L'arte di Romeo Castellucci, edited and translated by Piersandra di Matteo (Napoli, Italy: Cronopio, 2015). Italian translation.
• "Not Looking into the Abyss: the Potentiality to See" in On Not Looking: The Paradox of Contemporary Visual Culture, edited by Frances Guerin (New York/London: Routledge, 2015).
• "On Losing One's Voice: Two Performances from Romeo Castellucci's e la volpe disse al corvo" in Theatre Forum (Winter 2014).
• "Walking In and Out of Place: the Pedestrian Performances of Tim Robinson" in Ireland, Performance, and the Historical Imagination, edited by Mary P. Caulfield and Christopher Collins (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).
• "White Cube, Black Room, Sweet Scent: Gregor Schneider in Edinburgh" inPAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art, Vol. 36: 3 (September 2014).
• "Guilio Cesare: pezzi staccati / Julius Caesar: spared parts," in Quaderno 5: Canto del Cigno (Swan Song), edited by Romeo Castellucci and Piersandra Di Matteo (Mantua, Italy: Corraini Edizioni, 2014). English and Italian translation.
• "The Brilliance of the Servant without Qualities: Bare Life and the Horde Offstage" in Studies in Theatre and Performance, special issue on Howard Barker, edited by Sarah Goldingay and Mick Mangan, Vol. 32: 3 (November 2012).
• "The Rabbit and Its Double" in Theater, special section on Romeo Castellucci, Vol. 37: 3 (October 2007).

Selected  Shorter Writings and Reviews
 

• Review essay. "Not Not I: Undoing Representation with Dead Centre's LIPPY" in European Stages, Vol. 4 (2015). Online.

• Book review. 'We're People Who Do Shows': Back to Back Theatre—Performance, Politics, Visibility, edited by Helena Grehan and Peter Eckersall (PR Books, 2014) in Contemporary Theatre Review, Vol. 25: 1 (February 2015).
• Review Essay. "Production and Destruction: The TEAM's Mission Drift charts the everyday apocalypses of American progress" in American Theatre, Vol. 29: 1 (January 2012).
• Review Essay. The Theatre of Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio (Routledge, 2007) by Claudia Castellucci, Romeo Castellucci, Chiara Guidi, Joe Kelleher, and Nicholas Ridout; and the Tragedia Endogonidia Film Cycle (Raro Cinema, 2007) by Socìetas Raffello Sanzio in TDR: The Drama Review, Vol. 53: 1 (Spring 2009).
• Performance Review. "62^nd Festival d'Avignon (2008)" in Theatre Journal, Vol. 61: 1 (March 2009).