ABSTRACT
This chapter examines three phases of the reaction to Antonin Artaud's challenge which has become postmodern theater. The first phase is best represented by the early work of Samuel Beckett, which marks a transitional phase between a modern theater that challenged the themes of traditional theater but did not undertake a fundamental rethinking of theatrical inscription, and a postmodern theater that does undertake this rethinking of the whole idea of theater. The second phase is found in the work of the Becks' "Living Theater", Richard Schechner's "Performance Group", and the French groups from the late 60s and early 70s, Theatre du Soleil, Le Folidrome, and Theatre de la Salamandre, which sought to replace the dead theater of representation with Artaud's "impossible" communal festive theater, either in a sacred form or a secular form. The last phase suggests that Artaud may not have had the last word to say about the possibilities of theater for a postmodern era.
