<DIV>"Scrupulously researched, critically acute, and written with care, <i>Playing Underground</i> will become a classic account of an era of hard-won free expression."<br>-William Coco<br><br>"At last---a book documenting the beginnings of Off-Off Broadway theater. <i>Playing Underground</i> is an insightful, illuminating, and honest appraisal of this important period in American theater."<br>-Rosalyn Drexler, author of <i>Art Does (Not!) Exist</i> and <i>Occupational Hazard</i><br><br>"An epic movie of an epic movement, <i>Playing Underground</i> is a book the world has waited for without knowing it. How precisely it captures the evolution of our revolution! I am amazed by the book's scope and scale, and I bless its author especially for giving two greats, Paul Foster and H. M. Koutoukas, their proper, polar places, and for memorializing such unjustly forgotten masterpieces as Irene Fornes's <i>Molly's Dream</i> and Jeff Weiss's <i>A Funny Walk Home</i>. Stephen Bottoms's vivid evocation of the grand adventure of Off-Off Broadway has woken and broken my heart. It is difficult to believe that he was not there alongside me to breathe the caffeine-nicotine-alkaloid-steeped air."<br>-Robert Patrick, author of <i>Kennedy's Children</i> and <i>Temple Slave</i><br><br><br>Few books address the legendary age of 1960s off-off Broadway theater. Fortunately, Stephen Bottoms fills that gap with <i>Playing Underground</i>---the first comprehensive history of the roots of off-off Broadway.<br><br>This is a theater whose legacy is still felt today: it 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 <i>Saturday Night Live</i>.<br><br>Off-off Broadway 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.<br><br>No other author has managed to illuminate this shifting tableau as Bottoms does. Through interviews with dozens of the era's leading playwrights, performers, directors, and critics, he unearths a countercultural theater movement that was both influential and transforming-yet ephemeral and quintessentially of its moment.<br><br><i>Playing Underground</i> will be a definitive work on the subject, offering a complete picture of an important but little-studied period in American theater.<br><br></div>