Rehm (drama and classics, Stanford U.) uses the word radical to point to ancient Greek tragedy as the root of modern theatre, but also to suggest the ability of theatre as capable of challenging and undermining accepted practice. In five essays he seeks to engage the original form of ancient tragedy through explorations of the performance space of Greek theater, tragedy's confrontation with fear, the relationship between freedom of agency and human constraints, the way tragedy dramatizes the ideology of the Athenian city-state and its empire, and the relationship between performance and temporality. Throughout he considers the lessons such investigations may have for modern theater. Distributed in the US by International Publishers Marketing. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)