10,000 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 theater experience to provide an insight into the theater 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 theater 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, theater artists, and groups of the late twentieth century.

"The appeal of this book extends far beyond academia . . . To people who work in theatre, it offers an exhilarating excursion through the great achievements of the past half-century; to theatre lovers, a delightful memory palace as well as supplement to our own cherished recollections of great performances; finally, to students and young artists, an inspiring invitation to embark on their own lifelong voyages of artistic discovery." --Una Chaudhuri, New York University , "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 half-century of work for the stage." --Alisa Solomon, Columbia School of Journalism

Marvin Carlson is the Sidney E. Cohn Distinguished Professor of Theatre, Comparative Literature and Middle Eastern Studies at the 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.