Oscar Gross Brockett (March 18, 1923 – November 7, 2010) was president of the American Theatre Association.
An American Theater historian, he was Dean of the College of Fine Art at the University of Texas in Austin.
His master's thesis was about the production history of Of Mice and Men;[1] his dissertation was about satire in English Restoration comedies.
Albeit at a time when essentially only professional theater was used as the standard by which to survey the historical development, his analysis of public performance spanned the totality of Western culture, from the Greeks to the 20th century.
Maintaining a conventional approach despite the changes in his discipline, Brockett succeeded in surveying often complex (and sometimes contradictory) research written by a staggering number of specialists: "Brockett managed to assemble a dense but fluid narrative, illustrated liberally with drawings, paintings, and photographs.