Laura Farabough is a pioneer in site-specific theater and in the use of video onstage. A central figure in the San Francisco alternative theater scene of the 1970s and 1980s, Farabough wrote and directed landmark pieces such as Somewhere in the Pacific (1977) for Cronkhite Beach, just north of San Francisco, and Surface Tension (1981), a play written to be performed in swimming pools. She began writing plays for performers and video in 1977; her theatrical application of video preceded that of many renowned video-savvy theater practitioners such as the Wooster Group and John Jesserun. Theater historians and critics who remember to take West Coast artists into account consistently recognize the importance of her contributions to contemporary American theater.

Until the 1990s, critics consistently treated Farabough as a theater practitioner despite the fact that she writes all the plays she produces, designs, directs, and sometimes performs. The striking visual content of...