History and Criticism

Eileen Blumenthal

Theater history and criticism

Eileen Blumenthal has a Ph.D. in history of the theater from Yale and M.A. and B.A. degrees in English and American literature from Brown. Her specialties include contemporary experimental theater and traditional Asian theater and theater. She is the author of a book on Joseph Chaikin, numerous theater reviews and articles in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Village Voice, American Theater, Asian Theater Journal, Theater, Natural History, and Cultural Survival. She authored a book and many published articles on the performing arts and the contemporary politics of Cambodia, and produced the American tour of theaters from Cambodia in the fall of 1990.
Blumenthal has served as a consultant for public television performing-arts projects, university theater/theater programs, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Her photographs have appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Dance Magazine, Natural History, Cultural Survival, and the Village Voice. Her awards include a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship, a Kent (Danforth) Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism, a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship for University Teachers, and a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Residency. At Rutgers, she has taught history of theater, theater criticism, introduction to graduate study in theater, and modern experimental theater.
Books include:
Puppetry: A World History
Julie Taymor, Playing With Fire (with Julie Taymor)
Joseph Chaikin: Exploring at the Boundaries of Theater
Les danseuses sacrées d’Angkor (with Suppya Nut)

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