ROBERT CROSS

Steven Berkoff is a playwright, director and actor largely disregarded by theater scholars. Since the 1960s, however, this notorious Cockney enfant terrible and "scourge of the Shakespeare industry" has left an imprint on modern British theatre that has been as impossible to ignore as his in-your-face stage presence. "Steven Berkoff and the Theatre of Self-Performance," the first thorough and in-depth study of this contentious artist, examines the wide-ranging strategies adopted by Berkoff in the construction and projection of his larger-than-life public persona.