Ten Thousand Nights

Esteemed scholar and theater aficionado Marvin Carlson has seen an unsurpassed number of theatrical productions in his long and distinguished career. Ten Thousand Nights is a lively chronicle of a half-century of theatre-going, in which Carlson recalls one memorable production for each year from 1960 to 2010.  These are not conventional reviews, but essays using each theatre experience to provide an insight into the theatre and theatre-going at a particular time.  The range of performances covered is broad, from edgy experimental fare to mainstream musicals, most of them based in New York but with stops at major theatre events in Paris, Berlin, Moscow, Milan, and elsewhere. The engagingly written pieces convey a vivid sense not only of each production but also of the particular venue, neighborhood, and cultural context, covering nearly all significant movements, theatre artists, and groups of the late twentieth century. 
 
"Carlson's descriptive evocations of these long past, ephemeral experiences are enjoyably lucid, jargon-free, and densely informative without being stodgy."
—Times Literary Supplement
 
“Brings back to life some of the greatest theatre productions of the last five decades. Marvin Carlson has been a passionate theatre-goer not only in New York but in London, Paris, Berlin, and Moscow as well, witnessing some of the most exciting European productions of the era. Only Marvin Carlson could have written such a wonderful and engaging theatre history.”
—Erika Fischer-Lichte, Freie Universität Berlin
 
“Marvin Carlson has probably attended more performances than any other person on the planet. . . One couldn’t ask for a more amiable, passionate, astute, and knowledgeable guide to a rich half­century of work for the stage.”
—Alisa Solomon, Columbia School of Journalism

 

Marvin Carlson is Sidney E. Cohn Distinguished Professor of Theatre, Comparative Literature and Middle Eastern Studies, City University of New York and director of the Marvin Carlson Theatre Center at the Shanghai Theatre Academy.  His many influential books have been translated into fifteen languages.