Herb Blau founded The Actor's Workshop with Jules Irving in San Francisco in the 1950s, where it introduced American audiences to plays by Brecht, Genet, Beckett, Pinter and many others for the first time. Each premiere was accompanied by a stunningly concise programme note penned by Blau which vividly reveals what these now canonical works could mean first time round, and in the context of 1950s and 60s American culture. Programming Theatre Historystunningly curates these notes, The Actor's Workshop's gorgeous programme covers, and Herb's recollections, into a narrative of what it is to define theatre history in the present.