An unconventional biography that explores Mostel's life from the Orthodox Jewish homes of his immigrant parents to the underground night-clubs where he began his career doing stand-up comedy and on to theatre, film, and television.

This book traces three tumultuous decades of avant-garde theatre in the U.S. It begins with the Living Theatre, and explores diverse ensembles such as The Open Theatre, The Performance Group, and Bread and Puppet Theatre. It also looks at the women's theatre movement, and examines the work of Robert Wilson, Meredith Monk, Richard Foreman and more. There are sections devoted to ritual concepts, theatre in the streets, radical participation of the spectator, workshops in prisons, spectacles such as the Greenwich Village Halloween Parade, and much more. This giant colloquium involves the people who changed the face of theatre from the '60s onward. Filled with photos, drawings, private notes and fliers, it is part ongoing history, part document, part journal, part complaint and part blessing.