The Theater of Essence

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 backward to read Ibsen anew, or examines the perverse heart of Kabuki, his discoveries are still filtered through the consciousness and experience of Kott our contemporary. --Philip Roth ""Criticism these days in 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 the madness."" --Eric Bentley