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Playing Underground
A Critical History of the 1960s Off-Off-Broadway Movement

Stephen J. Bottoms

Honorable Mention for the Barnard Hewitt Award from the American Society for Theatre Research (ASTR)

The first comprehensive history of Off-Off Broadway

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About the Book

Playing Underground is the first comprehensive history of off-off-Broadway, a theater whose legacy is still felt today. Off-off Broadway was the launching pad for many leading contemporary theater artists, including Sam Shepard, Maria Irene Fornes, and others, and it was a pivotal influence on improv comedy and shows like Saturday Night Live. Groups such as the Living Theatre, La Mama, and Caffe Cino captured the spirit of nontraditional theater with their edgy, unscripted, boundary-crossing subjects. Yet, as Bottoms discovers, there is no one set of truths about off-off Broadway to uncover; the entire scene was always more a matter of competing perceptions than a singular, concrete reality. Through interviews with dozens of the era's leading playwrights, performers, directors, and critics, Bottoms unearths a countercultural theater movement that was both influential and transforming—yet ephemeral and quintessentially of its moment.

"Playing Underground . . . goes to almost archaeological ends to unearth OOB's underpinnings . . . we get a whiff of the addictive immediacy of The Scene, the sense of something (good or bad) constantly happening. . . . Freedom, both dangerous and exhilarating, defines Bottoms's prose."
—American Theatre

"Bottoms clears a path through what was always a wildly overgrown grove. . . . The discoveries he makes along the way force us to rethink our understanding. . . . Bottoms's book, written with enormous intelligence, dexterity, and passion, should be read by the current generation of radical theater makers."
—Village Voice

Stephen J. Bottoms is the Wole Soyinka Professor of Drama and Theatre Studies at the University of Leeds. He is the author of Albee: Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and The Theatre of Sam Shepard: States of Crisis.