In this fascinating collection of more than three-dozen conversations on contemporary art and ideas, Bonnie Marranca and Gautam Dasgupta bring together influential performers, video artists, playwrights, filmmakers, composers, and critics to talk about the artistic process, the perception of artworks by audiences, and the complex aesthetic, social, and political interrelationships that artworks reflect in the life of a culture. At the center of inquiry are issues that have preoccupied arts discussion in the last quarter of the century, addressed here by the very artists and thinkers responsible for extending the boundaries of their chosen fields in their search for new artistic and critical languages.

Conversations takes up a broad range of key questions. What is the nature of presence? How does one see? Where does meaning reside? Topics include the creative process, the impact of criticism and historical legacies, arts funding and education, the modernism/postmodernism debates, and the special tensions between private and public spheres and between personal statement and the need for communication.

This lively reader includes introductions, by the founders of PAJ, to each of the conversations, highlighting their original context and important themes. Organized into three sections—"Art and Its Audience," "Writers and Composers," and "Bodies of Work"—this volume includes more than fifty individual contributors in what amounts to a panoramic and polyvocal view of the American experimental arts scene. Contributors include John Cage, Gary Hill, Laurie Anderson, Edward Said, Susan Sontag, Umberto Eco, John Ashbery, Robert Jay Lifton, Philip Glass, Stanley Kauffmann, Edwin Denby, Mac Wellman, Maria Irene Fornes, Trisha Brown, Carolee Schneemann, Robert Wilson, Richard Foreman, Herbert Blau, John Guare, Judith Malina, Elizabeth LeCompte, Wallace Shawn. In touchstones that are surprisingly similar, what emerge from these conversations are the high standards and intellectual rigor these artists bring to their work, commitment to artistic ideals, and the demands placed on the artists as well as the public.

Bonnie Marranca and Gautam Dasgupta are the cofounders and editors of Performing Arts Journal/PAJ Publications. They are coauthors of American Playwrights and coeditors of Animations: A Trilogy for Mabou Mines, Interculturalism and Performance, and Theatre of the Ridiculous, the last two available from Johns Hopkins.