bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Modification of Brassica Oil Using Conventional and Transgenic Approaches
Authors: Scarth Rachael , Tang Jihong
Published: April 2006

Modifying the fatty acid composition of Brassica seed oil to increase its value as a nutritional or as an industrial oil has been a major objective in Brassica breeding programs worldwide. The conventional approach to fatty acid modification has explored natural or induced mutations occurring in the same plant species or close relatives within the Brassica genus. These mutations have been shown to be associated with a few enzymes in the biosynthetic pathway of the fatty acids. Several types of Brassica oil with significantly altered levels of the long chain fatty acid erucic acid (C22:1) and medium chain fatty acids such as oleic acid (C18:1) and linolenic acid (C18:3) have been developed for different end uses through conventional breeding. When the necessary genetic variation is not available within Brassica species, gene transfer by genetic transformation has been applied, as this approach is not restricted by the sexual incompatibility barrier across species. The fatty acids targeted by the transgenic approach included fatty acids with various carbon chain lengths ranging from C8 to C22, with different numbers of double bonds, and with various functional groups such as epoxy and hydroxy fatty acids. A commercial specialty oil with high level of a novel fatty acid, lauric acid (C12:0), was produced as a result of the transfer of a FatB thioesterase gene from a distantly related plant species that produces seed oil with high level of this unusual fatty acid. Considerable progress has been achieved in altering the relative levels of the fatty acids found in Brassica oils for increased health and economic benefits and in developing Brassica oils which contain other unusual fatty acids, mainly through genetic transformation. Although the use of natural or induced mutations in the fatty acid biosynthesis within Brassica remains a valid option for oil modification, the transgenic approach will play an increasingly important role in the development of Brassica oils with altered novel fatty acid composition.
Motion in the Ocean: Some political dimensions of the Free Southern Theatre
Authors: O’Neal John
Published: April 2006

I remember thinking it strange, when I first started working in the Southern Student Movement in 1962, that there were so many people who, like me, thought of themselves as poets. I wrote a letter (to someone) describing them as poets who had come to the conclusion that the most profound poetry is the poetry of action and movement. When the problem becomes unspeakable then there is simply nothing to say—something must be done.

I was in the third wave of “students” who swept through the South with a dream in the early ‘60's. Sit-ins in ‘60, Freedom Rides in ‘61, and in ‘62 the forces gathered around the right to vote. After each wave there was a period of uncertainty while the new motion was in the making. That was a time to survey the damage and chaos which often seem to follow in the wake of dreams.
Og, Son of Naturalism
Authors: Fjelde Rolf
Published: April 2006

Looking over the lush material landscape and the thin spiritual atmosphere of contemporary America, Reinhold Niebuhr called this “the age of sophisticated vulgarity.” That was several years ago, when the first crackles of what was later fanfared into a cultural explosion made his phrase seem an excess of gloom. Now, however, after we have seen so many of the knowledgeable enmeshed by patterns in which they neglect, adulterate, or destroy the best they are or know, Niebuhr's estimate does not appear so extreme. Various kinds and degrees of extremes are my concern here—specifically one strand in the pattern: the extremes that occur toward the end of an artistic movement, when it disintegrates, yet sweeps on in splinters to disable its adherents and opponents alike.
Organizational Mediation: The Paris Commune Theatre Law
Authors: Suvin Darko
Published: April 2006

To be radical means to grasp things by the root.

And the root for man is man himself.

—Karl Marx, “Toward the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Law” (1843)

And the root for theatre is people showing forth human relations to people.

—a corollary (1969)

In a certain sense, politics—the organization of people's living together—is always implicit in the theatre performance, whose one defining trait is the presence of figures showing forth human relations in the “holy circle” of the stage. The only matter of special interest here is to find out when, why, and how the normative framework of human relations on the stage begins to differ so radically from a code acceptable to the audience that the performance has to explicate, thematize, and make programmatic its new and strange ethics and politics.
Journey Through the Night: Notes on Burmese Traditional Theatre
Authors: Becker A. L.
Published: April 2006

There seem to be four major theatrical traditions in Southeast Asia: the Eastern, strongly influenced by Chinese theatre and found in the coastal region of Vietnam; the Southern, previously Hindu-Buddhist and now Moslem, covering parts of Indonesia and Malaysia; the Central, Hindu-Buddhist, found in Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia; and the Western, more strictly Buddhist than the Central tradition and found chiefly in Burma and Ceylon. The traditional theatres of the Southern, Central, and Western areas share many features: they are commonly nightlong performances, done outdoors on a temporary bamboo stage, accompanied by a mainly percussive orchestra; they use either live actors or puppets; and dialogue and action are usually improvised around Indian epics and religious stories.

Yet there are important differences even within the geographical areas. For example, in the South, shadow puppets are comparatively small, with articulated arms, and operated by a single puppeteer, or dalang. In the Central area, puppets are large, not articulated, and operated by a number of dancers; the dalang sits at the side of the screen narrating the story.
Building from Tagore
Authors: Mitra Sombhu
Published: April 2006

An important element in the development of the arts in modern India has been the search for uniquely Indian modes. In theatre, this has led to some experimentation with traditional genres. Sombhu Mitra, the distinguished Bengali actor-director, believes that there are distinctively Indian theatrical values and argues that these can only be realized through a creative engagement with the work of Rabindranath Tagore. For a different view, see the interview with Utpal Dutt (pp. 225-37 of this issue).—AJG

I have felt an affinity with Tagore's Raja (The King of the Dark Chamber) since I was very young, even before I understood its meaning. Later I read the play to many people, and I could see that it moved them too. But when I produced it with the Bohurupee Company, some remarked that it lacked the dramatic strength of my earlier production, Oedipus Rex. Oedipus has conflict, suspense, and tension; Raja hasn't.
On Style
Authors: Kirby Michael
Published: April 2006

There is no question that the so-called “Aristotelian unities of time, place and action” were, for several centuries, of primary importance in theatrical theory and criticism. At present, however, creative and critical reliance on these unities is slight or non-existent. Although they put up a struggle, unity of time and unity of place were eliminated some time ago. What appear to be examples may still be found, of course, but these tend to be expedients—the use of only a single setting can be vital when the economics of theatre are considered—and discussion seldom focuses on whatever unities of time or place they happen to possess. Even the concept of a single and complete action has little of the strength it once had. Shakespeare's plays are no longer deprived of their sub-plots in order to concentrate on a single action, and if the action of an “actionless” play like Waiting for Godot, for example, is “waiting,” no one would call that action complete.
Play of the Wheel
Authors: Baal Frédéric
Published: April 2006

The reel in Real Reel refers to a type of industrial spool used for electrical cables. The play is without a story, but rather a succession of scenic moments of no logical sequence. Thus, the spectator is transported from one unknown to another without progression.
Collective Creation
Authors: Shank Theodore
Published: April 2006

The group, rather than the individual, is the typical focus of the alternative society, and this is reflected in the structure of the new theatre organizations, their manner of working, and their theatre pieces. The collective creation of theatre pieces has become the method of conceiving and developing works in the alternative theatre. Society has become increasingly specialized and competitive. This is reflected in an established theatre based on competition and a theatrical method that focuses on individual specialists, such as playwright, director, and star actor. In reaction to the fragmentation of the established society, which for many has become disorienting, the alternative society has sought wholeness. This is evident in many ways, including its focus on group living and group activities, and in its theatre, which is based on the cooperation of a creative collective.

Instead of the two-process method of the traditional theatre—a playwright writing a script in isolation and other artists staging it—the new theatre practices a one-process method, wherein the group itself develops the piece from initial conception to finished performance.
A Director's Notes at Lincoln Center Handke's Stage is a Laboratory
Authors: Weber Carl
Published: April 2006

In Kaspar, Peter Handke's protagonist learns to master language only to become the victim of language: a man destroyed by his instrument of communication. “The last thought I had on Kaspar became the first thought to The Ride Across Lake Constance,” Handke wrote in his notes for the Berlin premiere of his last play. This thought was “to demonstrate the modes of human interchange in our society by means of precise observation.—The first attempts to define these observations were the plays My Foot My Tutor and Quodlibet, in which theatre forms appeared isolated from plots, so that these forms became poses and could become identical with poses in daily life: the representation of the theatre poses was, among other things, an attempt to present the modes of everyday behavior as poses, too.”
The Mime of Jacques Lecoq
Authors: Rolfe Bari
Published: April 2006

Jacques Lecoq's significance exists in several areas. One is that of Actor Training, for through him run the ripples emanating from Jazques Copeau in the 20's. Long after its brief existence, Copeau's school and its influence operated seminally, as did the Bauhaus experience in architecture and other arts. Copeau affected theatre in Europe and America with his explorations into free, non-naturalistic forms demanding great technical skill in voice and body; he was the seed from which new forms of education and production are still springing. Lecoq came to his principles through playing in the company of Jean Dasté, who had worked with Copeau. It is interesting to note that the four famous French names associated with mime: Decroux, Marceau, Lecoq and Barrault, all stem from Copeau; yet it would be difficult to imagine four artists who differ more in their professional choices.
The Sun People of 125th Street: The National Black Theatre
Authors: Harris Jessica B.
Published: April 2006

It is difficult to write on the National Black Theatre for this theatre cannot be categorized. To categorize it would limit its function and hinder its performance. For The National Black Theatre is not just a theatre. It is much more. It is a “Temple of Liberation, designed to preserve, maintain and perpetuate the richness of the black life-style.” This “temple” is partly formed by the resident acting company and liberation workshops, which are designed to promote positive black values. The workshops offer courses in evolutionary movement/dance, meditation, spiritual release, liberation theory and practice, numerology, astrology and ideology. Certainly, this is an indication that the scope of The National Black Theatre encompasses more than performance. Every Sunday, the theatre gives a symposium in which they present major artists, thinkers and scholars to the Harlem community.
Notes on Theatre in West Germany
Authors: Ryan Paul Ryder
Published: April 2006

Any report on Olympic Theatre would be incomplete without mention of the tremendous amount of theatre activity generated throughout West Germany by the occasion of the Games. For the most part, this activity—some of it officially connected with the athletic events through a huge program called “Olympic Summer”—involved conventional theatre fare, ranging from productions of Brecht's Mother Courage, Büchner's Danton's Death, Wedekind's The Love Potion, Hochhuth's The Midwife, to Walcott's The Dream on Monkey Mountain (performed by the Negro Ensemble Company), the Chinese shadow play San mei hua pan ying, Genet's The Balcony, and Brook's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Although every major German city had a full Summer production schedule, most of the abovementioned plays were staged in or near Munich, Berlin, Augsburg, and Kiel.

The purpose of this piece, however, is not to survey all the theatre activity that took place in West Germany this past Summer, but to report in brief note form on some of the more interesting information I gathered on productions, playwrights and directors during the “Olympic Summer.”
The Mask: Abstract Theatre, Primitive and Modern
Authors: Kirby E. T.
Published: April 2006

“We have forgotten entirely that the primary symbol of the theatre is the mask…. In the mask lies a law, and this is the law of the drama. Non-reality becomes a fact.”

—Yvan Coll

To the modern temperament and to its artists, in a manner that will undoubtedly remain modern in generations to come, the main stream of theatre art in this century is clearly associated with developments in the visual and plastic arts. The sequence is apparent; from Gordon Craig (and Neo-Romanticism) through the Futurists, Dada, the work of the Russian formalists, the Expressionists, the Surrealists, the Bauhaus, and so on, to the work of the present day that draws in various ways upon this background. We perceive ever more clearly in this work an underlying intention: the creation of an abstract theatre. Its symbol, and that which clearly represents its function and aesthetics, is the mask—or the masked actor whom Craig called the Übermarionette.
Blue Blouse
Authors: Deák František
Published: April 2006

In many ways, the theatre of the Blue Blouse (Sinaiaia Bluza) was typical of Russian performance in the post-Revolutionary period. Using whatever materials were available, it attempted to create a new type of performance. Overtly political, it employed avantgarde as well as popular techniques. Energetically (and successfully) striving to reach a mass audience, it was created by both theatrical specialists and previously untrained personnel. Socially, if not artistically, Blue Blouse could almost be considered a “movement”: At its height, it probably involved more than 100,000 people. Before it was officially disbanded in 1928, the Blue Blouse had achieved an international reputation and was being emulated in other countries. Today it is almost forgotten.
Russian Notebook (1934)
Authors: Strasberg Lee
Published: April 2006

My trip to Moscow in 1934 was a present from Sidney Kingsley, whose play, Men in White, I directed. He wanted to give me something because the play was such a success, and he asked my wife of that time, Paula Miller, what would be the best thing to give me. She said a trip to Russia.

For me, it was an unusual opportunity. I had seen the Moscow Art Theatre in New York in 1923 and 1924. This was the beginning of my engagement with the practical problem of creative acting. I'd read a great deal, but until I met the people from the Moscow Art Theatre, some of whom remained in New York to open a laboratory theatre, I had little actual awareness of the training methods used at the Moscow Art Theatre.
Electro-Acoustical Space
Authors: Clauser John
Published: April 2006

The perception of space as primarily visual and “pure” enters man's consciousness as a fairly late development. In the Western world the transition from the multi-sensuous space of the nonliterate societies to the visual space of our recent past occurs with the geometry of Euclid. But the purely visual perceptions of Western history can no longer function as the only clues in perceiving a discontinuous and multileveled environment. High-speed, space-time, simultaneity, and the rise of the pervasive, ephemeral technologies of light and electronics have elevated acoustical values in our society. Auditory phenomena emerge in our culture as perceptual agents for defining space. Sound is existential: it connotes existence and the presence of activity, something going on. The depth and dimension of sound unite people as nothing else does.

The return of acoustical values to Western society should be a signal to practitioners of theatre to become aware of the audience's newly tuned-in acoustical perceptions.
The Scenography of Popular Entertainment
Authors: McNamara Brooks
Published: April 2006

There have been few attempts to seriously examine the architecture and design of traditional popular entertainments. For the most part, popular forms have not been thought to involve a high level of design or systematic organization of performance space. Yet, over the years, there. has emerged a distinctive scenography of popular entertainment. It has borrowed from conventional theatre, festivals, and folk performance. Essentially, however, it constitutes a highly independent scenographic strain While interest in that strain continues to grow, the scenography itself is rapidly disappearing. Increasingly, traditional popular forms are influenced by the scenography of the newest popular entertainments, television and film. The scenographic base of these new forms is quite different from that of traditional amusements: film and television are naturalist in their orientation. They are concerned more with presenting a seemingly coherent reality than with creation of spectacle and fantasy for their own sake—and the naive art of traditional popular forms is gradually giving way to the orderly and precise scenography of mass culture.
Théâtre Du Grand Guignol
Authors: Deák František
Published: April 2006

If too many murders or atrocities are committed in the theatre, if violence is staged with a taste for shocking detail, or if too much blood spills, the name “Grand Guignol” is usually evoked. The image of Grand Guignol as a theatre of horror is just, but the exact nature and magnitude of the violence and horror are not usually understood. By the same token, the history and stage practices of this theatre are not generally known either. Despite a long existence of more than six decades, the Théâtre du Grand Guignol has been disregarded by historians and theoreticians as an insignificant form of entertainment. However, the fact that Grand Guignol represents a highly theatrical and specialized genre, which involved innovative mise en scène techniques and a unique performer-audience relationship, makes it interesting and relevant.
Peter Schumann's Bread and Puppet Theatre: Dada and Circus
Authors: Kourilsky Françoise
Published: April 2006

The Bread and Puppet Theatre has often been described as a street theatre whose desire is to reach a popular audience. Often this has meant performing in streets, parks, and city ghettos, doing anti-war parades, setting up workshops in poor neighborhoods, or building puppets with children and getting them involved in the preparation of a show. However, along with these outdoor performances, they have always done indoor shows. There are obvious differences between a “chamber play” such as Fire, played in a specific area before a limited number of spectators, and a street piece like A Man Says Good-bye to His Mother: Although both plays have the same “subject” (the war in Vietnam), the first one conveys the story by the form itself—movements, sounds, colors, volumes, etc.—and it is, in a way, the spectator's job to “read” it through all the assembled elements.
A Passion Play Near Amalfi
Authors: D'Aponte Mimi Gisolfi
Published: April 2006

The Sorrentine Peninsula juts into the Mediterranean about twenty miles below Naples. Its southern shore, although part of the same peninsula, is referred to as the Amalfi Coast. The famous Amalfi Drive winds along this shore from Positano to Vietrisul-Mare, offering travelers spectacular views of cliffs and sea. Here the scenery seems to epitomize that phenomenal blend of sea and mountain beauty so often found along the coasts of Southern Italy. The ritual life of this Sorrentine-Amalfatine peninsula is as theatrical as its landscape: processions, scenic representations, and occasional dramas blossom colorfully and prolifically during the varied seasons of the Roman Catholic liturgical year. Easter, Corpus Christi, Christmas, and the feast days of the saints and the Madonna all become occasions of special devotion, merry-making, and the organization of traditional extra-liturgical rituals of a theatrical nature.
Political Theatre in France Since 1968
Authors: Kourilsky Françoise , Champagne Lenora
Published: April 2006

The events of May, 1968, in France spurred a re-examination of the relationship between art and politics, of the function of the artist and the role of theatre in our society. After May, 1968, with its attacks on institutions for distributing a culture that is not a “culture in action sprung from life,” theatre artists sought a way to work outside the established structure, which they felt was separate from life and whose rigidity demanded a particular kind of production and hindered experimentation.

The desires to become more directly involved with life; to place the accent on the process of creation rather than on the final product; to establish a new kind of relationship with the spectators, considered on many different levels as“potential creators”; to insist on the actor's creativity; to rethink the role of the director as well as the role of the playwright resulted in new forms of political-popular theatre in France.
Rote Rübe: “Terror”
Authors: Calandra Denis
Published: April 2006

Rote Rübe is a theatre collective made up of three women and four men in their twenties, who live and work together in the Munich suburb of Grünwald They are dedicated, in their own words, to producing “political theatre that is fun and that makes identification possible.” These performers, who profess a Marxist orientation came together as acting students at the Otto Falckenberg Drama School in Munich They then grew disenchanted with the conservatory system, which they have described as “a factory for the delivery of material to subsidized theatres,” and gradually worked out their own methods, techniques, and principles.

They established their independent collective in December, 1971. The collective's chief performance space is the Munich Poplokal, or rock club, Crash, which has an audience of young apprentices, working class youths, students, and local residents. To further their aim of reaching “a public drawn from the maximum variety of social strata, and above all a public that doesn't go to the traditional theatre,” they have refined their theatrical means, reducing them to a flexible minimum, so that productions can be taken to community and youth centers, public squares, and cafes.
Seven Years
Authors: Jonas Joan , Krause Rosalind
Published: April 2006

My thinking about the medium of performance began in the late Sixties. In saying that, I am pointing to a particular conceptual context that was fully developed when I began to work—one that concerned itself with discovering new forms of movement and totally new ways of structuring the temporal shape of an event. Yet, when I survey the seven years of my work against that background of performances in the Sixties, I realize that those specific concerns with movement and temporality are not my concerns. My own thinking and production has focused on issues of space—ways of dislocating it, attenuating it, flattening it, turning it inside out, always attempting to explore it without ever giving to myself or to others the permission to penetrate it. I have returned again and again to a specific set of formal/material metaphors with which to shape this space.
Foregger and The Dance of the Machines
Authors: Gordon Mel
Published: April 2006

Nikolai Foregger (1892-1939), christened Nicholas Baron Foregger von Greiffenturn, the sole descendant of an aristocratic Russo-German family, was one of the most extreme exponents of mechanization and abstraction in the Soviet theatre and dance during its first decade. Foregger belonged to that unique generation of Russian writers, artists, directors, and dance-masters who, born in the 1890's, quickly reached their artistic maturity in the early Twenties. Writers and artists like Mayakovsky, Sergei Tretyakov, Isaac Babel, Varvara Stepanova, and Alexander Rodchenko are among the best known of that era. In the fields of theatre and dance, there were Foregger Eisenstein, Sergei Radlov, Boris Tikhonovich, Boris Ferdinandov, the FEKS group Vera Maya, and Kasyan Goleizovsky. Together, despite acknowledged differences in motivation and style, these young artists accepted the critical appellative Constructivist to describe their art.

With the exception of Eisenstein (see T61) and Meyerhold, who was judged according to other standards, the scenic work of the Constructivists is not well known although at the time of the Constructivist period (1920-1924), many of their productions and techniques were considered more radical than Meyerhold's and in fact prefigured many of his own post-revolutionary innovations, such as Biomechanics and mobile decor.
The Puppet Theatre of Robert Anton
Authors: McClelland Maurice
Published: April 2006

The conditions of a solitary bird are five:

The first, that it flies to the highest point;

the second, that it does not suffer for company,not even of its own kind;

the third, that it aims its beak to the skies;

the fourth, that it does not have a definite color;

the fifth, that it sings very softly.

Saint John of the CrossSongs of Light and Love

Working alone in his one-room New York apartment, Robert Anton has built and continues to perform an event that cuts across the problems and history of making theatre. It is hard to say who “makes” this theatre. Anton has built “actors” with heads no bigger than an inch and a half, whose hands are the size of fingernails.
The Friends’ Roadshow
Authors: Levy Micky
Published: April 2006

Scaffolds were placed in the center of the auditorium, and five raised platforms were set around the perimeter of the space: two had curtains hanging from makeshift wires across the back, another was a booth stage with a framework of poles on which fabrics were draped, one stage was used by the orchestra, and one was set up as-a boxing ring. The audience seated themselves on top of, under, and around the central construction. They were surrounded by the stages, contained by them. A mirrored ball hanging overhead rotated slowly, casting colored light over the entire space.

The orchestra played “Yesterday.” Five people in costumes emerged onto the largest of the playing areas and applauded the audience, who promptly responded with whoops and cheers.
Nuyorican Theatre
Authors: Morton Carlos
Published: April 2006

Hector Rodriquez, at age thirteen, was considered a “hopeless incorrigible” by his teachers at a “600 School” for problem children in New York City. Rodriquez could not read or write, nor did he show the slightest inclination for mathematics or science. He spent his days playing hooky on Lower East Side street corners, or else he would go up to Times Square to hustle money.

Rodriquez seemed destined to lead the life of the hundreds of other players, pushers, pimps, and prostitutes that infest the Times Square area until he met Miguel Pinero, an award-winning Nuyorican (shorthand for New York and Puerto Rican) playwright—himself a former child of the barrio.

“My brother Louie and I were arguing, and this other dude comes up and punches me in the eye, and I start to cry, and this other dude comes up and says he's Miguel Pinero, and he buys us some hot chocolate and asks if I'd like to be in a play written by him, and I says ‘sure,’ and next thing you know I'm working onstage in Sideshow,” said Rodriquez.
Robert Wilson and Therapy
Authors: Simmer Bill
Published: April 2006

As Robert Wilson's theatre is more widely publicized, he is inadvertently developing a reputation as an experimental “therapist.” Several newspaper articles have pointed to his work with brain-damaged children in Texas, his early involvement with Headstart programs and his work with the aged and terminally ill at Goldwater Memorial Hospital. Although this work was done many years ago, his reputation as a “therapist” continues to grow because of his continuing collaboration with Christopher Knowles, a brain-damaged youth, and, earlier, his work with Raymond Andrews, a deaf-mute. However, Wilson is not a therapist and does not consider himself one.

According to Webster, therapy is “a remedial treatment of bodily disorder” or “an agency (as treatment) designed or serving to bring about social adjustment.” If we accept this definition, then what Wilson has done is very different; in fact, almost the opposite.
Chinese-American Theatre
Authors: Wong Yen Lu
Published: April 2006

Ask anyone—almost anyone—about Chinese theatre in America and you'll get fast directions to Chinatown, be it New York, San Francisco or Los Angeles, and assurances that there you can see the real thing. What they mean are the numerous productions of Peking Opera, or sometimes Cantonese Opera, that take place every year.

But walk the streets of any Chinatown; push your way through dense crowds; meet the kids split between life at school and at home; come to know the garment workers in the sweatshops on the second floor above the restaurants, grocery stores and souvenir shops; hang around the steaming restaurant kitchens for awhile, and you'll be forced to wonder what all this has to do with those elaborate stories of princesses, kings and courtiers, sung in dialects that almost no one can follow without assistance, of a past time that has become a never-never land.
Joseph Chaikin the Actor
Authors: Kellman Alice J.
Published: April 2006

The eight-week run of Georg Büchner's Woyzeck at the New York Shakespeare Festival Public Theatre in March and April saw his first major acting since his days with The Living Theatre.

In the ten years (1963-1973) that Chaikin served as director in The Open Theatre, the company he founded, he rarely acted. He had very little interest in performing, and yet “I still defined myself not as a director, but much more as an actor. I still do.”

Chaikin is still uncertain as to why he was drawn to acting, except perhaps as an escape, a way to “get out of this crummy Brooklyn context that was my life, whereas the theatre and the radio and the movies seemed like they were these other orbits of existence.” Determinism also played a role, since Chaikin did—and still does to a certain extent—view acting as a chosen lifestyle, a way to “pick the kind of life you'd want to work in.” Acting provided a tremendous sense of freedom.
The Welfare State Theatre
Authors: Shank Theodore
Published: April 2006

The itinerant “fringe” or “experimental” theatre groups supported by the Arts Council of Great Britain can be divided into those concerned solely with esthetic expression and those that aim at social efficacy. The latter can be further divided into those with “political” intentions and those with “social” objectives. There are revolutionary socialist theatre groups, often comprised of Marxists, who play almost exclusively for trade union members at meetings and workingmen's clubs, attempting to raise political awareness with respect to the worker in a capitalist society and to stimulate discussion about political problems. And there are theatre groups that do not consider their work overtly political who make plays dealing with the problems of certain constituencies such as teachers, children, old people, prisoners, women, or gays, sometimes involving them in theatrical activities as a kind of therapy.

In 1976-77 the largest Arts Council subsidy received by a “fringe” or “experimental“ group went to the Welfare State Theatre, which refuses to be placed in any of these categories.
Spirochete and the War on Syphilis
Authors: O'Connor John S.
Published: April 2006

The Living Newspapers are among the most famous productions of the Federal Theatre Project (1935-39). Across the nation, tens of thousands of citizens saw various “editions” of these topical dramas. They were exciting theatre and effective documentary. They experimented with such stage devices as levels, masks, lighting, projection, and a loudspeaker, and they enlivened the “reporting of actual truth” through episodic scenes that were sometimes realistic, sometimes expressionistic. Since the closing of the Federal Theatre and the virtual death of the Living Newspaper, documentaries have generally become less theatrical and more detached.

Though the stated intent of the Living Newspaper was merely to dramatize the news, most observers found a clear editorial viewpoint. The plays usually ended with the mention of a specific piece of legislation or a critical case currently in the courts that the audience should support.
Patrice Chereau Poets Invent the Future
Authors: Godard Colette
Published: April 2006

Peasant women are chattering. Young aristocrats dressed in three-cornered hats and Brandenburg jackets, but with their eyes hidden behind dark glasses, slouch around a little red ochre square, where some white sheets are drying. Patrice Chereau, eighteen years old, has gotten hold of a play by Marivaux, a little-known work, The Inheritor of the Village; he sees himself labeled with a trademark that will never leave him—insolence.

The insolence of a young dandy, rich, cultivated, who gets his kicks by drawing mustaches on family portraits, say his detractors. The subversive insolence of the poet who breaks down the doors of all the prisons, including cultural ones, say his supporters. Chereau receives the attacks and the homages with a cantankerous selfassurance, with the haughty disdain of a man who knows he is going to be king.
Luca Ronconi
Authors: Quadri Franco
Published: April 2006

In 1966, the Italian critics labeled Luca Ronconi a “producer of madness,” not only for the themes he chose but for the frenzied characterization typical of the acting. Later, after Orlando Furioso (1969), [see T47], they saw him as a conjurer of extraordinary medieval festivals, through a play of simultaneous scenes that bordered on the “extraordinary and magical.” But since the critical acclaim of Orlando eight years ago, Ronconi has never again wanted to take on a performance/production that could be performed all over the world, precisely in order to free himself from the label that each success brings. Even when he recreated Ariosto's poem for television, he drew on—as the medium itself demanded—an entirely new formula. It is time, then, to put aside easy definitions and to look without preconceptions at Ronconi and what he has done since Orlando Furioso.
Studio Scarabee's Havana JoJo
Authors: Argelander Ron
Published: April 2006

Studio Scarabee was founded in 1965 when Adri Boon, a painter, presented a series of happening-related art performances at the Hague Art Circle. Since then, the activities of the Dutch group have been characterized by an extensive investigation of the possibilities in mixing different mediums. As a brochure of the Studio points out, Scarabee seeks to practice a form of total theatre in the tradition of Schlemmer and Moholy-Nagy, using techniques resembling those employed by Josef Svoboda. Havana JoJo, Scarabee's latest work, which was presented at The New Theatre Festival in Baltimore, incorporates many of the techniques and themes developed by the studio over the years. Popular culture is the basic source of the subject matter; elements of shock, violence and sado-masochism are parodied; transvestism is displayed (in the form of a fire-eating female impersonator); camp humor abounds; dadaist and surrealist principles of association between the elements are strong.
Group Altro's ICS
Authors: Applin Denise
Published: April 2006

Altro was founded in 1972 in Rome by Achille Perilli, an artist, with the two fundamental and complementary ideas of collective work and intercode creation. Perilli, who originally worked as an artistic collaborator with only one actor, was subsequently joined by Lucia LaTour, an architect who does most of the choreography; Walter Branchi, a composer; and Bruno Magno, a photographer and lighting technician. Luciano Martinis and Gianni Trozzi have been working with the group from the beginning.

The idea of intercode creation has often extended beyond theatrical performance to workshop activities, political seminars, photographic exhibitions, concert series, and a lecture on linguistics. Of nine projects to date, only five have been performances; and some of those performances have included related “side shows.”
Gay Analysis
Authors: Patrick Robert
Published: April 2006

The first point of gay analytical guidelines is personal: Is that character gay? Is that character like me?

The second point is political: Is that a good way to represent me? How does that reflect on me?

The third is esthetic: Do I like being represented that way?

The fourth is psychological: Is what I am seeing the work of the oppressors, or the work of oppressed brothers and sisters; i.e., is this how they think?

The fifth is philosophical: Why do people represent other people that way? What does it do? Is it good or bad to represent people that way? In what way is it good and/or bad? How could it be improved?
A Wall in Venice/3 Women/Wet Shadows: Alan Finneran's Performance Landscape
Authors: Solomon Rakesh H.
Published: April 2006

Alan Finneran, founder and director of SOON 3, comes from a visual-arts background, having studied sculpture and painting in Ann Arbor, where he also started The Third Incident Company. Since moving to San Francisco in 1973 by way of Boston—where he was a cofounder and director of Zone—his creations have progressed from gigantic, technologically complex structures that, ideally, required a gymnasium-sized performance space to small intimate pieces that only need a twenty-foot-square playing area. In the Cinemasculpture to be Performed, as he called the large-scale steel-and-plastic modular fabrications, Finneran tried to create a unique “hybrid performance form” synthesizing sculpture, film, and performance. Evolving from the cinemasculptures and retaining several connections, A Wall in Venice/3 Women/Wet Shadows represents Finneran's latest focus. The piece, hereafter referred to as “Venice,” was performed on April 28 and 29, 1978 at SOON 3's Dreamland Ballroom at 2678 California Street, San Francisco.
Aleister Crowley’s Rites of Eleusis
Authors: Brown J. F.
Published: April 2006

It had been placed there by Aleister Crowley, occult magician, poet, and author of the advertised ceremonies. It was located directly at the end of an article that rapturously praised a preview of the Rites held during the past summer. The article was signed “P.”—certainly not the most inventive of Crowley's numerous pseudonyms, which included “Lord Boleskine,” “Oliver Haddo,” “Count Vladimir Svareff,” and his favorite, “The Beast.”

Crowley's predilection for fictive names was matched by his fascination with costume, whether it was the leopard-skin robe he wore as a Magician of the Golden Dawn, the black gown of the alchemist, the Headdress of Horus with the eye in the triangle, or, as “Baphomet,” full Masonic regalia. The theatrical urge in Crowley becomes apparent from whatever direction he is viewed. His early interest in the occult and its secret systems of knowledge was quickly focused on ritual magic. His poetry was soon elaborated into dense mystery plays. He even dramatized the personality conflicts between himself and others—William Butler Yeats, for one—by engaging them in “magical combat.”

The Rites of Eleusis occurred in Aleister Crowley's life at a point midway between a series of visions he had in North Africa in 1909, which revealed to him his true nature as a Magus, and his involvement with a secret society called the O.T.O. in 1912, from whom he learned the rudiments of the sex-magic that obsessed him for years. He was 35 years old at the time of the performances. The persecution by the press, which was to last until he died in i947, had not yet begun. He saw himself as the prophet of a new religion— Crowleyanity—and the Rites were to be his first great evangelization.
Madeleine: Two Reviews
Authors: Marx Henry
Published: April 2006

Madeleine-Madelaine-Madeleine G.-Madame Madeleine-Madame Magdaleine—the many names under which the famous “sleep dancer” appeared early this century in Europe, only heightens the mystery surrounding her. We do not precisely know where she hails from nor do we know anything about her fate after closing out a strange dancing career of roughly one decade. She lived in Munich, but most certainly was not born there, and no information is available as to when and where her death occurred.

Two famous Munich painters—Fritz August von Kaulbach and Albert von Keller—made portraits of her on which she looks beautiful, even-faced, dark-haired, with extremely bushy eyebrows, protruding Jaws and a low nose bridge. In photographs she always wears a white wrap-around, with her eyes mostly closed.
Anthroposophical Performance
Authors: Creese Robb
Published: April 2006

Between 1909 and 1913 the German section of the Theosophical Society held annual conventions in Munich. Part of the festival was the production of plays that were pertinent to spiritual science. It was Rudolf Steiner who gave the impulse for dramatic performances. His four “Mystery Dramas” were written for the Theosophical conventions. He wrote plays only when he knew that they were about to go Into rehearsal in Munich, and each was in production for about two months. In those days there was not yet any special training for the amateur performers in the plays, save in rehearsal periods. Each play was revived each year between 1910 and 1913 so that by 1913 all four plays were performed for the Society's two-week meeting.
Mitchell's Death: Linda Montano's Autobiographical Performance
Authors: Shank Theodore
Published: April 2006

Since 1973 the California artist Linda Montano has used her own life—past and present—as material for her performances. After her estranged husband died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in August 1977, her work focused on reactions to his death.

Some of her earlier performances consisted of her usual activities being observed by others, in 1973, when she lived in San Francisco, she sent announcements to her friends saying that she would stay home for a week and would be available. She photographed everyone who visited during the week and documented food intake, telephone calls, and dreams. In other events she lived-in at several galleries and on the beach for three days at a time. In one of these events, she was blindfolded; in another she listened to her heart murmur with a stethescope. These living events are “framed“ for the viewer by being removed from their usual context.
Squat Theatre Underground, 1972-1976
Authors: O'Quinn Jim
Published: April 2006

The now-expatriate Hungarian theatre company Squat performed a new work called The Skanzen Killers in January, 1972, in Kassak, a suburb of Budapest. After one performance at the town culture house, the group's license to perform was withdrawn by government authorities on the grounds that the play was “obscene” and “apt to be misinterpreted from a political point of view.” For the next four years Squat went underground.

Between the time of The Skanzen Killers and the group's problem-ridden emigration to France in 1976, the fifth floor apartment of Squat members Peter Halasz and Anna Koos in Kassak became an outlaw theatre. Here more than a dozen complete experimental theatre pieces were developed and presented in private performances for friends, theatre aficionados, artists in various fields, and political sympathizers. The group also performed privately in an unused country chapel and in a sand pit on an uninhabited island.
Laurie Anderson: Performance Artist
Authors: Gordon Mel
Published: April 2006

I always felt it was a mistake being labeled as an autobiographical artist.[…] Most of the work that I do is two-part or stereo, not monolithic at all—so there's always the yes/no, he/she, or whatever pairs I'm working with.

Laurie Anderson, 1979

Since her first performance work in 1974, Laurie Anderson has found herself concerned with a basic esthetic dilemma that has troubled a number of other performance artists: how to create an intensely personal art that is not just simple autobiography. How can the performer/author bring raw, unmediated materials from his/her life and structure them to strike a balance between his/her own needs and those of the audience? For Anderson, the resolution is not only intellectual but technical; it is one that leads to a new performance style.
Linda Mussman's Time and Space Limited Theatre
Authors: O'Quinn Jim
Published: April 2006

From the moment a Linda Mussman performance begins, it is apparent that she and her actors intend to use the theatre's basic tools—language and movement—in highly unconventional ways. Sentences begin, but splinter or dissolve into fragments before they are finished. Words are stretched and distorted and twisted out of shape. Phrases drone like incantations till their meanings dissolve. The actors move in quick athletic bursts, or haltingly like wind-up toys, or in formal patterns like dancers. They freeze unexpectedly with a face or hand or foot isolated in a pool of light. Whether it is Mussman's own playfully abstract poetry as in her “triptych” Room/Raum, Door and Window (1978-79), the flowing rhetoric of Georg Buchner's Danton's Death (1980), or the delicate narrative of a Japanese fantasy play, The Bandit Princess (1978), the language of the piece is fragmented, its delivery restructured, and it is associated with oddly stylized movement.
Peter Zadek and Hamlet
Authors: Canaris Volker
Published: April 2006

Peter Zadek grew up in the English theatre, using the English language and applied himself to the plays of Shakespeare with intensity. After preparation in Ulm and Hannover, Zadek made his first great experiments with Shakespeare on the German stage in Bremen. Measure For Measure presented a radical reformulation of the play's characters and their potential through the acting of the performers, thus furiously destroying the narrative structure of the play. This was based on the self-investigation and self-discovery of a group of theatre people—the articulation of their situation with theatrical means was the primary impulse motivating the performance.
Lothar Schreyer and the Strmbϋhne
Authors: Gordon Mel
Published: April 2006

By the time the word Expressionism became widely used in Germany in the years 1910-1911, it had already acquired magical properties. It denoted a kind of primitive, anti-rational, anti-classical, non-French creation; various graphic artists, writers, philosophers and dancers from Central Europe began to label their work “Expressionist.” Without a center or an adjudicating leader, without any authoritative pronouncements or clearly stated manifestos, a trend, rather than a movement, was growing up around this term. In one Berlin art gallery, Sturm, founded by Herwarth Walden and promoted in its influential periodical, Der Sturm, pieces from nearly every contemporary European avant-garde movement—French Cubism, Italian Futurism, and others—were gathered together under the single heading of Expressionism.