Enter the Undead Author: Intellectual Property, the Ideology of Authorship, and Performance Practices since the 1960s

Many narratives of theater history suggest that the 1960s marked the start of a turning away from traditional, script-based, playwright-centric production practices. Literary studies in this period began exploring the concept of the “death of the author” along similar lines. But the author refused to die quietly, and authorship reasserts itself in even revolutionary and avant-garde theaters throughout the latter half of the twentieth century. The model of authorship—valorizing individuality...