bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Spectacles and Scenarios: A Dramaturgy of Radical Activity
Authors: Baxandall Lee
Published: April 2006

[A constitutional republic] cannot forever withstand continual carnival on the streets of its cities and the campuses of the nation. Unless sage debate replaces the belligerent strutting now used so extensively, reason will be consumed and the death of logic will surely follow.

Vice President Agnew, Honolulu Address to the Young Presidents Organization, May 2, 1969

There is so much upheaval in the world, it's more theatrical than the theatre. The theatre is in a state of unrest and we're all trying to find out what its function is.

Mildred Dunnock, N.Y. Times, January 18, 1969

Action from principle, the perception and the performance of right, changes things and relations; it is essentially revolutionary, and does not consist wholly with anything which was.

Henry David Thoreau, “Civil Disobedience”
The Greater Sound
Authors: Gleason Ralph J.
Published: April 2006

Today, all over the United States, American young people are being spoken to by revolutionists in words they understand, in a style that makes those words acceptable, and through an invisible medium that old professional politicos have not yet picked up on.

This medium is the phonograph record, purveyor of bubble gum music and symbol of Elvis Presley's “Houn’ Dog” and the celebrated “Get off of my Blue Suede Shoes” (which John Lennon once called a protest song). One of the leading manufacturers, Columbia Records, runs a series of advertisements in the underground press the theme of which is “The man can't bust our music” and “Know your friends.” The implication aligns “us” against “them,” and the context of the advertising design and illustration is interracial, hippie, pot-smoking youth.

Is Columbia for legalization of marijuana? No. Columbia is for making money. Thus the investment in music aimed at long-haired youth.
Sören Brunen's Figurer
Authors: Godard Colette
Published: April 2006

Sören Brunen's background is in architecture, and he envisions a “Machine-Theatre” that would portray the development of situations through purely mechanical means. Figurer, performed by the Packett Troupe at the Pistol Teatern in Stockholm, represents an initial phase in the evolution toward such a performance.

In issue #17 of Théâtre et Université, the production is described as follows:

The play is divided into eleven parts. It makes use of film, slide projections, sound tracks, compressed air machines, etc. It is performed by mannequins, silhouettes carved in plywood, and live actors. Each mannequin represents a particular stance or attitude. In other words, a given actor has been frozen in a state of suspension, a theatrical moment. He is perpetually re-creating and repeating the gesture he was making or the words he was speaking at the moment when he became frozen. At the same time, the live performers play the part of mannequins.
Theatre & Culture
Authors: Buenaventura Enrique
Published: April 2006

At a 1967 symposium in Montreal, I, along with other colleagues, had to answer the question: “What kind of theatre should we do?” Throughout almost my entire professional life, I have been asked that same question and with each new stage of my life I responded differently. But when I heard it in that foreign country, where the only thing familiar to us Latin Americans were the Indian reservations, I suddenly felt I was on another planet, stunned. I don't remember what I answered. I said something vague and unrelated—“anti-culture”—and I realized I was again entering a new stage.

At this time I had just finished Documents from Hell, which was staged by Danilo Tenorio of TEC (Experimental Theatre of Cali), my own theatre in Colombia, and was the most serious attempt we at TEC had made to become involved in the life of our people.
The Theatre of Gombrowicz
Authors: Goldmann Lucien
Published: April 2006

Critics generally have considered Gombrowicz’ plays Ivona, Princess of Burgundia and The Marriage as purely oneiric, incoherent texts whose principal value lies in their grotesqueness and affectivity. Gombrowicz himself interpreted the plays as attempts to present the problem of youth. In contrast to these views, I will try to show that both plays are compelling satires of society.

The two plays deal with two different societies. In Ivona, Princess of Burgundia it is pre-World War II European society (the play was written in 1935) or, more precisely, the ruling classes of that society. The Marriage (1946) is about the new society which resulted from the war and from the seizure of power by the communist parties, with emphasis on the events leading up to that seizure.
Some Religious Aspects of Indian Traditional Theatre
Authors: Richmond Farley
Published: April 2006

Many Indian traditional theatre performances are connected with different Hindu religious cults and deities and performed by devotees. Drawing upon a common body of religious literature—the Puranas, the Mahabharata, and the Ramayana—these theatres enact the individual episodes especially meaningful to a given deity, cult, and, sometimes, region. Since they are most often performed within a religious context, they require ritual cleanliness and other devotional observances. These, the most overtly religious actions, may occur at the opening or closing or may suffuse the entire performance, in which case the performance itself is a votive offering.

The main rituals connected with Indian traditional theatre begin in the dressing room hours before a performance. Thus, Kathakali actors begin their makeup procedures with a silent prayer for success.
Korean Mask Plays
Authors: Yoh Suk-Kee
Published: April 2006

Mask plays, one principal form of traditional theatre in Korea, were developed during the late Yi dynasty (around the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries) from a pure folk origin. Since the Confucian ruling class of the Yi dynasty ignored or tried to suppress all forms of theatrical entertainment, these plays have followed the tastes of popular audiences and thus reflect commoners’ resentment towards the privileged classes of those days. They were performed in the open air and usually lasted throughout the night. Among them the most representative forms still extant are the Yangju Pyol Sandae mask play and the Pongsan mask dance.

Mask plays consist of ten scenes or so, very loosely linked. All the characters—every Korean mask play has more than twenty—wear masks, which differ according to role: there are twenty-two masks in the Yangju Pyol Sandae and twenty-six in the Pongsan.
A Midsummer-Night's Dream The Royal Shakespeare Company
Authors: Richie Donald
Published: April 2006

At the beginning of Peter Brook's production of A Midsummer-Night's Dream the entire cast, caped like artists of the flying trapeze, stride to the crash of snare drums through the double doors of their canvas-white trapeze-hung set, smile professionally, mindful of later heights and daring, gesture a grand if impersonal welcome and are off into the wings and about their work. This Dream is to be a circus—that best of all dreams for children of a certain age.

The play begins. As at the circus the only color is the costume—the actor is boldly outlined against the white, looking at times like an oleo, at times like a Kate Greenaway illustration, at times Chinese. Musicians, prop men are visible at the sides, those actors not working look on from above with a professional interest.
The Living Theatre in Brazil
Authors: Ryan Paul Ryder , Beck Julian , Malina Judith
Published: April 2006

“The theatre is in the street. The street belongs to the people. Free the theatre. Free the street. Begin.”

From Paradise Now

The Living Theatre came alive again during the Summer. A glimpse of the group's new work in progress, The Legacy of Cain, surfaced along with news that 15 members of the group, including Julian Beck and Judith Malina, had been arrested in Brazil.

The Legacy of Cain is the first major work by the group since Paradise Now, which had its world premiere in Avignon, France, on July 24, 1968.

At this writing, just past mid-August, the 15 members of The Living Theatre are still being held in “preventive detention” by the authorities in Brazil. A spokesman for the group said that under Brazilian law the group could be held until October 1 without formal charges being brought.
From the Bauhaus to Black Mountain
Authors: Schawinsky Xanti
Published: April 2006

My theatre work started when I was studying art and architecture under Kandinsky, Klee and Gropius at the Bauhaus in Weimar in 1924. One day, Kurt Schmidt, rushing by, said: “Hey, Schawinsky! Come to my atelier tonight at eight!” When I arrived, several of his friends were already there. The gathering ended in a theatrical improvisation in which a hilarious group of characters danced, acted and exclaimed a lot of nonsense—Napoleon, Goethe, a dog, Frau von Stein, Voltaire, Bismarck. Rags, hats, umbrellas and other objects served as costumes and props. I was fascinated. It reminded me of my boyhood marionette and puppet theatre, but this, of course, was much more sophisticated.

The following day, Schmidt asked me if I would join in the preparation of a full-fledged stage performance. We met at the theatre workshop in the park. It was a large gothic pavilion that was empty except for a grand piano and an old armchair.
Theatre of Fact
Authors: Isaac Dan
Published: April 2006

Scarcely any political question arises in the United States that is not resolved, sooner or later, into a judicial question.

Alexis de Toqueville

Theatre of Fact, like a fast sock in the jaw from, the thirties, has forced its way onto the American stage again. But unlike its noisy brawling predecessor, the Living Newspaper, which was fathered by the Federal Theatre out of the fertile discontent of the depression, this present brand of Theatre of Fact has lowered its voice and grown more decorous. It has entered the courtroom.

Two German playwrights have had a prime influence in the use of court records as dramatic material. Heinar Kipphardt's In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer and Peter Weiss’ The Investigation, produced first in Germany and then here in the United States in the mid-sixties, effected radical departures in dramatic form insofar as they relied almost entirely on the sheer weight of fact and the dialectic of courtroom argument to provide the movement and emotion expected of an evening in the theatre.
Oedipus, a New Work
Authors: Perreault John
Published: April 2006

The performance area is a large rectangle set off by silver tape. The audience is arranged on three sides of the rectangle.

Throughout the performance a young girl holding a cane sits on a stage or a platform. She is “Antigone.” She does not move until Section Fifteen.

There should be spotlights focused on the performance rectangle and one dim spot on “Antigone.” Behind her should be a large screen for slideprojections. Everything else should be dark, and the lighting should be arranged in such a way that it will be possible to see the slide projections without turning off the lights.

All of the objects and props to be utilized are arranged within the rectangle. There are: Silver tape, incense sticks stuck into small lumps of clay, four full-length mirrors—the inside of the mounting is painted red so that when they are broken this becomes visible, but the backs are painted black—twelve wooden yardsticks, six pairs of nylon stockings, the I Ching, three gas masks, three stones, a hammer.
Women's Theatre Groups
Authors: Rea Charlotte
Published: April 2006

Women's theatre groups in the United States have developed during the last five years as a means of exploring and expressing women's identity, potentialities, and the nature of oppression. By dramatizing their conflicts and joys, the women in these groups seek to make other women feel good about being female and to experience outrage at what they consider to be the gross injustices in the relationship between the sexes.

Feminists began forming their own theatre groups because they felt stifled by male domination in both the traditional and experimental theatre worlds. The groups, most in the New York area, vary in performing style, intent and internal structure from the traditional mode of The New Feminist Theatre, a group with a well-defined leader, to the collective arrangement of the It's All Right to be Woman Theatre, where feminism is expressed through the structure of the group and theatre pieces.
T’ai Chi Ch’uan: The Integrated Exercise
Authors: Delza Sophia
Published: April 2006

T’ai Chi Ch’uan is a system for activating the body for the simultaneous development of physical, emotional and mental well-being. It is useful for the actor because it promotes a heightened perceptivity, sensitive awareness and stamina. Since the exercise has no stylistic mannerisms, it enhances the ability to manipulate the body expressively for any desired effect.

T’ai Chi Ch’uan (pronounced Tye Gee Chwon) has a long history. Its roots go back into the Chou Dynasty (5th Century B.C.), when concern for physical and mental health was being expressed in a philosophy of movement. But the organized exercise of T’ai Chi as we know it today dates from the 12th Century.
Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes
Authors: Kirby Victoria Nes
Published: April 2006

The work of Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes is not very well known in the United States. Although he appears to be a playwright of some importance, none of his plays has, until now, been translated into English. Of course there are reasons for this neglect, one of which may be that he has been involved in other arts, primarily painting, and has not concentrated his energies exclusively in the theatre. During his lifetime, Ribemont-Dessaignes, who is now 87 years old, has been a painter, poet, novelist, essayist, editor, composer, radio personality, actor and “dancer,” as well as playwright. In addition, he has written a children's book and translated into French works by Nietzsche and Michelangelo.

The son of an obstetrician, Ribemont-Dessaignes was born on June 19, 1884, at Montpellier in the south of France. When he was young he secretly composed symphonies, operas and quartets and wrote a drama.
Journey to Ka Mountain
Authors: Langton Basil
Published: April 2006

We had flown to Tehran and motored for two days across the vast country of Iran to arrive just in time for the royal opening of the Arts Festival in Persepolis, featuring the Kathakali Dance Theatre of India. The following day was hot and I was already tired, but I was there to see the Festival, and the next event was Robert Wilson's Overture to KA MOUNTAIN and CUARDenia Terrace, performed by the Byrd Hoffman School of Byrds. My host in Iran had told me a great deal about the importance of Robert Wilson's work in the theatre. He said it was “significant,” “avantgarde,” and “new.” But I was not impressed. I had never heard of Robert Wilson.

I have spent some 45 years in the theatre as an actor and a director, and I like to think that I have not only seen everything that is new in the theatre, but I have also done what is new.
A Scenography of Light
Authors: Arnott Brian
Published: April 2006

One of the most imaginative and innovative productions of recent London seasons was Arrabal's The Architect and the Emperor of Assyria. It was staged by the National Theatre of Great Britain in the Spring of 1971. Arrabal set his microcosmic fantasy on an island inhabited by a solitary man who lives without any knowledge whatsoever of civilization or mankind. As the play begins, this creature stands midstage, terrified by the roar of an approaching jet aircraft. The intensity of the sound builds as the aircraft passes low overhead. A deafening crash follows. The creature, petrified with fear, falls to the floor and hides his head. At this point, the second of the play's two characters appears. He approaches and announces himself as the only survivor from the crash. The panic-stricken creature flees, uttering bird-like screams of terror.
Red Grooms’ Homemade Theatre: Hippodrome Hardware
Authors: Argelander Ronald
Published: April 2006

Red Grooms is an artist whose creative activities have been numerous and varied in arts peripheral to (but making use of) painting, such as film, sculpture and performance.

In 1963, Grooms began to have one-man shows regularly in New York. These took place at the Tibor de Nagy Gallery on 57th Street. At least two of his five art exhibits in this gallery included films—Fat Feet (1966) and Tappy Toes (1970). Prior to 1963, Grooms had “performed” an action-painting entitled “A Play Called Fire” (1958), a proto-Happening called The Burning Building (1959), and a Happening-like work dubbed The Magic Train Ride (1960).

While Grooms’ art includes a wide range of mediums, there appears to be no sharp stylistic differentiation between them. His paintings, films and performance pieces all exhibit a highly personal, if not idiosyncratic, way of working. Many of his friends appear as performers in his films and theatre pieces, and as cutouts in his constructions.
Infinidome
Authors: Saltzman Jared , O'Donnell Stephen
Published: April 2006

“Since Gordon Craig, every artist of the theatre has tried every way conceivable to bridge the gap between audience and stage,” wrote Blanding Sloan, artist, scene designer, and Eastern Regional Director of the Federal Theatre Project, in 1939. “The Infinidome is the answer, and makes possible the ultimate in theatre production and creation.” It was to be, as he put it, “the last word in modern theatre design, and the first step toward the theatre of the future.”

From the beginning of Sloan's career, a radical approach to design was an integral part of his work. In an article in Theatre Arts in 1918, a critic wrote that Sloan's sets revealed “a structural sculpturesque sense of the play of light and the third dimension. Like the other stage artists to whom the unities of the drama are something felt, and not a merchant phrase, Mr. Sloan has searched in vain for a definition, a word, that will explain rationally and coldly what he can consummate irrationally and artistically.
Shiraz-Persepolis and the Third World
Authors: Ryan Paul Ryder
Published: April 2006

“The Theatre of the Third World” was the main theme of the Seventh Festival of Arts that was held this year as in years past in the spectacular ancient environments of Shiraz and Persepolis in Iran. The festival, which was held from August 30 to September 9, presented a number of works by “Third World” theatre troupes in addition to hosting the Second Third World Theatre Conference.

Where is the Third World? The term Le Tier Monde (the Third World) was invented by a number of French writers during the late 1950's. To them, the Capitalist countries constituted the “first” world, while the “second” consisted of nations living under Communist regimes. Thus, the newly independent nations of Africa and Asia were termed “the Third World,” with some South American states, for little reason, also being lumped into this category.
The World Festival of Youth and Students
Authors: Julian Michel
Published: April 2006

The Tenth World Festival of Youth and Students was of such proportions that it seems difficult to believe it really happened. “Think big,” I was told before I went to East Berlin, capital of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), “only then will you have some idea of what to expect.” Even with this advice, I was totally unprepared for what was probably the biggest festival in the world since World War II.

The opening ceremony unleashed activity that grew in momentum, scope, and size for nine days. As part of a festival by and for young people, it was much more colorful and boisterous than any Olympic opening. Delegations of young people from 119 countries marched through the city of Berlin for three hours before arriving at the festival stadium, which was already packed with nearly sixty thousand people. The event itself was so big that the delegations had been split into two groups in the morning.
The Golden Age of the Boulevard
Authors: Carlson Marvin
Published: April 2006

To the theatre historian, the year 1830 means Hugo and the premiere of Hernani. For the great majority of the theatre public of the period, however, Hugo was a name scarcely known and the battle of Hernani was a minor passing scandal. Neither the new romantic experiments nor the declining neoclassic tradition they were attempting to replace represented theatre to this public. For them, theatre was the rope-dancing of Mme. Saqui, the pantomimes of Déburau, Kiony the elephant performing in plays written especially for him, the view of Timbuktu at the Cosmorama, the spectacular melodramas of Bouchardy, or the full-scale Napoleonic battle recreated at the Cirque-Olympique.

This astonishingly varied popular theatre was the direct descendant of the fair theatres, which had challenged the entertainment monopoly of the state-supported theatres, with varying degrees of success, for two hundred years. Then, primarily because of the rapidly changing political situation, the great fairs had disappeared. The Foire Saint-Germain, destroyed by fire in 1762, was never rebuilt.
The Actor and the Magician
Authors: Olf Julian M.
Published: April 2006

In many respects the stage magician is an initiate in some of the subtlest, most sophisticated challenges ever to face a performing artist. Where he succeeds, his success is due to his unique solutions to problems that are by no means peculiar to his craft. They are problems of the deepest concern to many actors as well. The following observations compare the art of the actor with that of the magician. An effort is made to identify an area of both practical and theoretical concern that bridges theatre and the neighboring field of popular entertainment.

Most art conceals the complexity of its manufacture. In the performing arts, the problem of concealment is compounded because we do not see the product separate from its maker—nor do we even necessarily see it at the completion of its manufacture. The performing artist demonstrates the process of manufacture, and a large portion of our appreciation stems from his continual affirmation of its simplicity in the face of our knowledge of its inherent complexity.
Indigenous African Theatre
Authors: Kirby E. T.
Published: April 2006

It is true, as Ruth Finnegan has observed, that “with a few possible exceptions, there is no tradition in Africa of artistic performances which includes all the elements which might be demanded in a strict definition of drama—or at least not with the emphases to which we are accustomed (Finnegan, 516).” Drama in the accepted sense of the term, as a situational interaction expressed in dialog between characters, is found in a number of rudimentary forms, in simple comedies, and in puppet plays. However, several African performance modes that verge upon drama may be considered as types or aspects of theatre. To be sure, a concept of theatre might well include dance and almost anything “dramatic” done before an audience. But since there is little sense in applying the term indiscriminately, as certain studies of African theatre have tended to do, it would seem best to focus on what might be called theatre only in its relationship to the concept and definition of drama.
The Creation and Development of People Show #52
Authors: Kirby Victoria Nes
Published: April 2006

The members of the People Show do not call their presentations “plays.” Nor do they consider themselves to be actors. A show does not begin with a script; there is little or no story or narrative. Between shows, the performers lead very separate lives, but they constantly collect material and ideas for new pieces. When they come together to create a new show, each person contributes his own ideas and helps decide on an over-all structure. They choose their own costumes and create their own characters.

The fact that they are all the “authors” of a show and that the characters they play are created from their own imaginations gives the People Show an unusual energy and freedom. Although the structure and images usually remain the same in each repetition, the performers are free to improvise and experiment, using each other, props, and other elements as cues and motifs.
Meyerhold's “D. E.”
Authors: Hedgbeth Llewellyn H.
Published: April 2006

D.E. was a political review in three acts and fifteen episodes directed by Vsevolod Meyerhold and first produced in Leningrad on June 15, 1924, for delegates to the Fifth Congress of Comintern. It re-opened on July 3, 1924, in Moscow at the Meyerhold Theatre. Based primarily on Ilya Ehrenburg's novel, Trust D.E., it also drew heavily on Bernard Kellermann's The Tunnels and touched upon novels by Pierre Hamp and Upton Sinclair.

A 1927 program offers a synopsis of the play, as well as the order of the episodes. Two world powers, the falling bourgeoisie and the rising proletariat, are juxtaposed in short theatrical sketches. Three American millionaires—Jubs, Twist, and Hardayle, who are in search of new markets—accept a proposal by Jens Boot, an international adventurer, to form “D.E.,” an organization whose aim is to destroy Europe, without boycotting American products or disseminating Socialistic ideas. Their ultimate goal is to claim Europe as an American colony.
Theatre du Soleil: The Golden Age, First Draft
Authors: Kirkland Christopher D.
Published: April 2006

The Théâtre du Soleil, the gaudy and tumultuous star in a rising constellation of French leftist theatre troupes, emerged early this spring from eighteen months of work to offer a devoted public some contemporary reflections. The Golden Age, First Draft, staged by director Ariane Mnouchkine in three warehouses of an abandoned arsenal in the woods of Vincennes on the eastern outskirts of Paris, has succeeded in moving the group in an entirely different direction from their previous work, such as the unanimously acclaimed 1789 (see T52). But the current production, unlike its predecessors, is not offered as a finished product or as a concept fully realized. It is rather a public beginning, a point of departure.

Mnouchkine's troupe began attracting wide attention in 1967 with a production of Arnold Wesker's The Kitchen. It has grown increasingly popular with an innovative, pre-Brook production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, which was performed in a circus hall; with its step into nonliterary, collective creation titled The Clowns; and with the satirically caricatured historical spectacles 1789 and 1793.
Air Dancing
Authors: Carroll Noël
Published: April 2006

The introduction of non-traditional materials in contemporary art has facilitated the emergence of air dancing—dances that are performed off the floor by means of support systems, such as scaffolding, ropes, rubber cords, wires, or a combination of these materials.

This article is not intended as a historical survey of air dancing. Rather, it represents a theoretical speculation on the esthetic options afforded by air dancing. For this purpose, I have contrasted two choreographers, Batya Zamir, who has only recently incorporated aerial elements in her work, and Stephanie Evanitsky, whose Multigravitational Experiment Group has been involved in air dancing since 1969. The choice of these artists has not been undertaken to evaluate what air dancing ought to be or who the best aerial dancers are. The aim is more limited. Zamir and the Multigravitational Group were chosen to clarify two opposing poles of artistic development in dancing.
Jerry Grotowski's Paratheatrical Projects
Authors: Mennen Richard
Published: April 2006

The Research University organized by Jerzy Grotowski from June 14th to July 7th, 1975, in Wroclaw. Poland, was a series of introductions to the Laboratory's paratheatcal activities that are part of the “Mountain with a Pillar of Flame” project. The vocabulary as well as the work of the Teatr Laboratorium has been evolving since the first public exposure in 1973. The entire series of events which took place: in Philadelphia and the University ot Pittsburgh at that time was called “The Grotowski Special Project” (and included performances of Apocalypm cum figuris. workshops, and a symposium) but the term “Special Project” referred only to a certain kind of activity. This activity has “paratheatrical” objectives, synonymous with those articulated in “Holiday/The Day That is Holy” (T-58), and which, according to Grotowski, is a new kind of performing art (in contradistinction to the art of performing in the theatre).
Ontological-Hysteric Theatre: Third Manifesto
Authors: Foreman Richard
Published: April 2006

…the process of living always grows out of or is based on certain assumptions: these are like the soil on which we stand, or which we use as a point of departure.

And this is true in every field.…Every idea is thought, every picture is painted, out of certain assumptions or conventions which are so basic, so firmly fixed for the one who thought the idea or painted the picture that he neither pays heed to them, nor, for that matter, introduces them into his picture or idea; nor do we find them there in any guise except as presupposed and left, as it were, to one side. This is why we sometimes fail to understand an idea or a picture; we lack the clue to the enigma, the key to the secret convention.

Ortega y Gasset
Radlov's Theatre of Popular Comedy
Authors: Gordon Mel
Published: April 2006

Sergei Radlov (1892-1958) is remembered today chiefly for his inventive Shakespearean productions of the Thirties, during the last period of theatrical experimentation in Stalinist Russia. Yet, Radlov was largely responsible for the growth of an entirely new performance mode in the Soviet theatre—Constructivism. During the years 1920-1922, Radlov's Petrograd group, Theatre of Popular Comedy, drawing its inspiration from Yuri Annenkov's production of The First Distiller (September 24, 1919), popularized many of the performance concepts of Filippo Tommaso Marinetti's “Variety Theatre Manifesto.” Within a few months, however, Radlov began to introduce changes that would radically alter the development of Soviet theatre.

Like Annenkov, Radlov received his earliest training in the pre-Revolutionary studios of Nikolai Evreinov and Vsevolod Meyerhold. By the winter of 1918, after organizing the agitational group, The First Communal Troupe in Petrograd, Radlov mounted comic reconstructions of ancient Greek and Russian farces under the auspices of the Theatre Department of the Ministry of Education (TEO).
Theatre as Prison Therapy
Authors: Ryan Paul Ryder
Published: April 2006

They can imprison your body, man, but they can't lock up your mind.

—anonymous prison performer, 1975

While theatre groups have been entertaining and conducting workshops in prisons for many years, it is only since 1973 that studies have been made to assess the therapeutic value of theatre programs connected to prison systems. Hard evidence is being amassed that theatre workshops for prisoners and ex-offenders significantly reduce the rate of re-arrest among participants—more so than any other of the many remotivational programs in the correctional systems across the country. Nationally, 85 percent of those released from prison are re-arrested within a year, most within the first four months. The rate of re-arrest among participants in theatre workshops in the New York/New Jersey area is currently 10 to 15 percent.
Theatre of the Mechanized Grotesque. Roussel's Impressions of Africa
Authors: Cherniack-Tzuriel Abba
Published: April 2006

Raymond Roussel's three Parisian productions of Impressions of Africa in the years 1911 and 1912 electrified many of the future Dadas and Surrealists, such as Guillaume Apollinaire and Francis Picabia, into what Duchamp called a “decisive shock.” Not only were Roussel's publicity and staging unusually lavish for an avant-garde production of its time, but the performance itself promoted an entirely new attitude toward the concept of primitive consciousness and machinery. As Duchamp wrote in 1950, “It is true that I am indebted to Raymond Roussel for having enabled me, from 1912, to think of something else instead of retinal painting.”
Structural Analysis/Structural Theory
Authors: Kirby Michael
Published: April 2006

Webster defines “analysis” as “a separating or breaking up of any whole into its parts so as to find out their nature, proportion, function, relationship, etc.” “Theory” is defined as “an idea or mental plan of the way to do something.” Thus intellectual analysis involves the creation of a system of ideas by which an existing phenomenon can be “separated” or “broken up” mentally; theory provides an intellectual base for the creation of phenomena. Theatrical analysis examines existing or historical performance; theatrical theory provokes and originates performance.

Since both the analysis and theory of theatre involve more or less coherent systems of ideas, analysis and theory might be thought to be identical or interchangeable. Analytical systems might be expected to be useful for creating performance; theoretical systems might be supposed to function as well for analysis as they do for creation.
JoAnne Akalaitis of Mabou Mines
Authors: Sommer Sally R.
Published: April 2006

JoAnne Akalaitis’ vital statistics are representative of other Mabou Mines members. Change the sex and weight, and her profile could well be used by other company members: they are middle-aged; all but one are parents (there are eight children with the company); they are actors who live on Manhattan's lower east side. However typical this may be for membership within the company, it is atypical of other avant-garde theatre groups, who tend to be in their twenties or early thirties and childless.

Another unique fact is the stability and duration of their professional and personal relationships. Akalaitis, Ruth Maleczech, Lee Breuer and William Raymond first met and worked together in 1962, David Warrilow and Frederick Neumann joined them in 1965. When they, along with Philip Glass, officially formed Mabou Mines in 1969, they had an extensive shared history of friendship and work on which to base the professional and business association.
Joan MacIntosh of The Performance Group
Authors: Aronson Arnold
Published: April 2006

During this past December and January, The Performance Group undertook a rather rigorous performing schedule, doing their four-hour Mother Courage [T66] at 7 PM followed by a midnight show of The MacIntost Project [T70] in the theatre's upstairs space. Joan MacIntosh played the lead role in both productions. (Marilyn actually used two casts playing simultaneously in a mirror image production; Elizabeth LeCompte also played the part of The Star.) At one point MacIntost told Richard Schechner, her husband and a director of the Group, that she had decided that Mother Courage dies and goes to heaven where she becomes Marilyn Monroe.

Since the members of the Group all participate in cleaning the theatre, setting props, and about an hour and a half of pre-show notes and warm-up exercises, this meant being at the theatre from 4:30 PM to 2:30 or 3 AM besides whatever other rehearsals, classes, and day-today chores were involved.
New Theatre in China
Authors: Rea Kenneth
Published: April 2006

Chinese theatre must be judged on its own terms—as a weapon of the revolution. “Content first, then art” is the dictum. The revolution has given the theatre an abundance of themes. In return, the theatre fulfills its purpose by helping to educate the people and by debating important issues. It is, after all, part of the state machinery. It is also a superb example of didactic art that is popular at all levels of society.

One of the secrets of the theatre's success lies in the sheer depth of involvement on the part of all concerned. In Peking, an instructor told a visitor: “We educate our artists not for art's sake, but wholeheartedly to serve the people. We don't lock them up in classrooms, either, but let them go out to the workers, peasants and soldiers to learn from them as well. If they're going to portray revolutionary characters on the stage, they must first learn to become good revolutionaries themselves.”
Het Werkteater
Authors: Flakes Susan
Published: April 2006

This project is about children who, for whatever reasons, find themselves in shelters or institutions. We sketch, in a number of scenes, situations that can lead to the placement of children in a shelter, what happens to the children, the reactions of those who take on the care and companionship of the children, and the reaction of the outside world. Niet Thuis is an improvised drama; that means that the text and scenes are not completely set. We would like to perform this piece for workers in shelters, social academies, etc.
Max Reinhardt High Priest of Theatricality
Authors: Esslin Martin
Published: April 2006

Among all the great personalities who, early in this century, created and established the modern concept of the director in the theatre (Antoine, Lugné-Poe, Gordon Craig, Stanislavsky), Max Reinhardt (1873-1943) is often dismissed as an eclectic who took his ideas from others and dabbled in all forms of theatre for the sake of personal commercial success. While there is a grain of truth in this view, it nevertheless completely misrepresents one of the greatest personalities in the theatre of this or any other age.
Klaus Michael Grüber
Authors: Locke Stephen
Published: April 2006

Yes, we are exhausted, like commuters from the suburbs at the Gare d'Austerlitz after a day of work. That is what it is all about: to be exhausted without interpreting the exhaustion.

Klaus Michael Grüber in an interview, Le Monde, May 15, 1975

Klaus Michael Grüber is one of Germany's most controversial theatricalist directors. He has been called elitist, esoteric, artificial, unpolitical and incomprehensible by many critics; his productions have often left the audience—in a half-filled house—thoroughly dismayed and perplexed. But Grüber has also been praised as Germany's most imaginative and original director, a man who conjures up unforgettable visions, a man who like no other director carries theatrical expression to its absolute extremes. This article intends to describe Klaus Michael Grüber's development and some of his major productions and to let a few people speak who have worked with him. Grüber himself has very seldom given public expression to his theories and methods.
Visualization, Language and the Inner Library
Authors: Shepard Sam
Published: April 2006

I feel a lot of reluctance in attempting to describe any part of a process which, by its truest nature, holds an unending mystery. At the same time I'm hoping that by trying to formulate some of this territory I can make certain things clearer to myself.

I've always felt that the term “experimental” in regard to theatre forms has been twisted by the intellectual community surrounding the artist to the extent that now even the artist has lost track of its original essence. In other words, a search for “new forms” doesn't seem to be exactly where it's at.

There comes a point where the exterior gyrations are no longer the most interesting aspect of what you're practicing, and brand-new exploration starts to take root. For example: In the writing of a particular character where does the character take shape?
Two Pages a Day
Authors: Terry Megan
Published: April 2006

I was bused to the theatre at the age of seven. There was a program, sponsored by the Junior League, to bring children to live theatre. I lived in a small fishing village outside of Seattle; it was a long bus ride, but it changed my life. Professional actors, who had worked together for twenty years under the direction of Mrs. Florence Bean James (who had studied with Stanislavsky) were playing Rumplestiltskin. That was it. I fell in love.

As soon as I was allowed to go about on my own (fourteen), I went back to that theatre and hung around and begged to clean Johns and sort nuts and bolts until they took me into the company.

Mrs. James and her actor husband, Burton, inspired me to write for the theatre. They always hoped a playwright would emerge from their theatre.
Hamlet at the Vakhtangov
Authors: Law Alma H.
Published: April 2006

The premiere of Hamlet at the Vakhtangov Theatre in Moscow on May 19, 1932, marked Nikolai Akimov's debut as a director. A talented Leningrad artist, the young Akimov had already attracted considerable attention in theatrical circles with his unconventional setting for Tartuffe in 1929, featuring the unscrewed joints of an enormous exhaust pipe, and his striking design in 1931 for Schiller's Intrigue and Love, which made use of a huge, shiny silver disk set on stage at a sharp angle to suggest the top of large sphere.

With his production of Hamlet, Akimov was determined to sweep away once and for all the pall of gloomy symbolism cast by earlier interpretations. His most immediate targets were the 1911 Gordon Craig production and the one at the Second Moscow Art Theatre in 1924, with Mikhail Chekhov both directing and playing the title role. “A sickly degenerate,” is the way Aklmov dismissed Chekhov's Hamlet.
The Bumba-meu-Boi [Brazil]
Authors: Neto José Possi
Published: April 2006

Except for Carnival, Bumba-meu-Boi, one of the most complex manifestations of Brazilian popular theatre, is the only festival that is still held throughout all Brazil. It is both a procession and a dramatic performance; its basic theme concerns the death and resurrection of an ox. Given the central theme of the Ox, it would appear that Bumba-meu-Boi should occur only in basically pastoral areas; however, it is performed in mining, fishing, and agricultural areas as well. It occurs during the “King's Day,” between Christmas and January 6, and during the Festas Juninas, the St. Anthony's Day, St. John's Day and St. Peter's Day celebrations, between June 13 and 29.

In parts of Brazil where life is still relatively traditional and provincial, the Bumba-meu-Boi maintains its primary structure, main characters, and the basic theme of the Ox.
Squat's Pig, Child, Fire!
Authors: Shank Theodore
Published: April 2006

The expatriate Hungarian theatre company known as Squat has quite literally attempted to make their life their art. Because the two are seen as identical, art is not an activity that can be given up. They are totally committed. They did give up their theatre when authorities in Budapest prohibited their performances, and after performing in their apartment and other illegal places for four years and giving up their passports, they permanently gave up their country and moved to France, then Holland, and now New York. In the West they took the name Squat because it suggested new settlers—both geographical and spiritual.

Originally the group formed in 1969 as Kassák Theatre at the Kassák Culture House in Budapest. In 1972 when the company did its first completely new work, The Skanzen Killers, the group's license to perform was withdrawn on the grounds that it was “obscene” and “apt to be misinterpreted from a political point of view.”
Spazio Zero’s To Salvatore Giuliano
Authors: Garrone Nicola
Published: April 2006

Lisi and Silvana Natoli founded the group Spazio Zero in 1973. Their work focuses on certain ethnic and historical aspects of Sicily, Sicily being, for them, a microcosm of the Third World. The title of their most recent production, To Salvatore Giuliano, is a dedication to a famous Sicilian criminal. Giuliano began as a rebel, then became the emblem of the revolt of the poor in southern Italy. The American invasion and the collapse of state authority after Italy's defeat in the second World War turned him toward politics. He championed an attempt at secession from Italy, masterminded by the Mafia, who expected to profit by Sicilian independence. The attempt failed, but Giuliano remained linked to the Mafia and was subsequently hired by them to massacre striking farm workers in Portella della Ginestra. The story is treated as a popular myth by Spazio Zero.
Organic Analysis
Authors: Carroll Noël
Published: April 2006

The number of methodological options available to the contemporary critic of any art is quite intimidating: Marxism, Psychoanalysis, Feminism, Structuralism, Hermeneutics, Phenomenology, etc. Of course, the situation is even more complicated than this list suggests because on the one hand, each of these headings can be subdivided into more specific, often warring, camps, while on the other hand, some of these headings can be conjoined by hyphens, generating newer positions, like Marxist-Psychoanalytic-Structuralism. You could devote an entire career to mastering all these methods without ever applying one of them.

In this essay, I don't want to invent another perspective. Instead I hope to clarify what I take to-be our ordinary approach to theatrical analysis when it is unaided by the explicitly formulated philosophical or scientific categories of schools of thought like Freudianism or Critical Theory. By divorcing criticism from these larger enterprises, I don't think it ceases to be a cognitive activity.
Patterning in the Five Shaggy-Dog Operas
Authors: Johnson Tom
Published: April 2006

This. This is. This is a. This is a simple. This is a simple additive. This is a simple additive process. Obviously patterns of this sort can also be employed with visual or musical elements, but since we are dealing here with typeface on paper, it seems most appropriate to begin with words.

Then there are. Rotations then there. Are rotations then. There are rotations. Or at least “rotations” is the term I like to use for patterns of this sort. We could also consider this a type of phasing. Since there are four words but only three are permitted in each sentence, the word pattern falls out of phase with the syntactical pattern and the two do not come back in sync until the word pattern has been repeated three times and the syntactical pattern four times. Again, this is a device that can be easily applied to nonverbal materials.
About Three Places in Rhode Island
Authors: Gray Spalding
Published: April 2006

But time is too large, it can't be filled up. Everything you plunge into it is stretched and disintegrates. That gesture, for instance, the red hand picking up the cards and fumbling: it is all flabby. It would have to be ripped apart and tailored inside.

Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

My aim was to show that delusions and hallucinations were not just specific symptoms of mental disease but also had a human meaning.

C.G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections

My first moment of theatre, the moment most powerful for me and my first step away from life in the direction of art, occurred in 1961 the first time I was in front of an audience. The play was The Curious Savage. (Ironically enough, it was a romantic play about an insane asylum and its inmates of which I was one.) It was our senior play at a small boarding school I was attending in Maine.
Ermione
Authors: Prosperi Mario
Published: April 2006

Ermione, the title of my play, was also the name of the monkey who performed with me in it. It was originally the name of a mythical character, the daughter of Helen and Menelaos; more recently, It was used by Gabriele D'Annunzio in his poem “The Rain in the Pine Forest.” In my play, the monkey corresponded to D'Annunzio's “nymph with the sylvan face” who accompanied him through the metaphorical wood of life.

The text of Ermione was comprised of poetry that I had written from the age of sixteen to thirty; the action consisted of experimenting with ideas for a eventual reading of it. The first thing I wanted to test was the actual selection of verses. I read from a notebook, then provided a running commentary in order to create a distance between the time when the poems were written and the time when they were read. By so doing, I was able, at the same time, to minimize this distance by connecting the old poems to a “live” situation, thus making the link between poetry and life explicit. Next, I wanted to test the actions—the theatrical renderings of the poetry that corresponded to the different stages of life.