bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Ronald Tavel: Ridiculous Playwright
Authors: Isaac Dan
Published: April 2006

PAULETTE. What a situation! Hey, are you a real gibbon?

MAIS OUI. That's my God-gibbon destiny, dearie.

Gorilla Queen

A genuine work of art will, by necessity, undermine the social structure and the moral cadre on which our existences are postulated. For a real work of art is, by definition, an act of truth, and our social structure is a lie.

Ron Tavel, “The Theatre of the Ridiculous”

Some of the youngest wave of playwrights, who are not quite as young as they at times pretend to be, find fun in exploring and exploiting the fantasies that fed their parents—movies of the thirties and forties—an entire folk culture of false values—a set of malfunctioning myths rewoven into wildly comic metaphors.
Revolution at the Brooklyn
Academy of Music
Authors: Brecht Stefan
Published: April 2006

The Living Theatre's four splendid spectacles were a great event. Like an astonishing portion of the country's popular music, they proved to be in content form outside the social system, not structured by it nor, except as outlet, implementing it: liberated territory. The tribe of disdainers of the money-job-marriage game came to celebrate, greeted the Company with the frivolous cynicism of the stray salesmen present & made a closed party of it, perfuming the air of liberty that they polluted. But the word was Revolution, it was posed in fundamental terms & urgent tones—in the most radical sense possible. Even the attending communists, finding the affair objectively counter-revolutionary, could hardly deny the validity of the ultimate ideal: “eine Assoziation, worin die freie Entwicklung eines jeden die Bedingung für die freie Entwicklung aller ist” (an association in which the free development of each is the condition of the free development of all).
Speculations on Radicalism, Sexuality, & Performance
Authors: Schechner Richard
Published: April 2006

Feelings kicked up thinking about relationships among (student) radicalism, (Freudian) sexual theory, and (new) theatre are tangled. I want to map those feelings—which I think are not peculiar to me. They are tied to a revulsion against the mass media, which—as Kelly Morris puts it—play Sioux to youthful Custers. Identifying “what's new,” journalists draw the innovators out, encourage (even demand) exaggerated claims and premature conclusions, encircle nascent ideas with stolid values, and annihilate experiments by marketing distorted replicas. The “news” is a deadly enemy of what is new, and premature identification may ruin for a lifetime authentic identity.

My first thoughts revealed that I was not very precise or concrete about politics. I turned up some hard prejudices against student radicals. I believed student leaders to be deeper into revolutionary rhetoric than radical action. I dismissed many actions on American campuses as either “escalated panty raids” or “senseless disruption.”
Peking Drama with Contemporary Themes
Authors: Yang Daniel S. P.
Published: April 2006

“Peking drama with contemporary themes” is an English translation of Ching-ch hsien-tai bsi—a new phenomenon in Communist Chinese theatre which began in 1958 and was fully developed by 1964. In the Western world it has also been called “modern Peking opera” or “new-style Peking drama.” It is difficult to place this form in any of the theatrical genres of China, for it combines the qualities of a number of Chinese dramatic styles, most notably those of the traditional Peking opera and the “spoken drama”—that is, the Western-style drama which appeared in China in the late 1900's; the word “spoken” emphasizes the fact that the new form is essentially conversational while the traditional drama is mainly sung. Many old conventions of the Peking theatre have been kept; for instance, singing and movement patterns are still largely based on traditional Peking drama. As a general principle, however, the conventions are manipulated to achieve something new.
Genet's Theatre of Possession
Authors: Francovich Allan
Published: April 2006

The time has not yet come for presenting dramas about noble matters. But perhaps they suspect what lies behind this architecture of emptiness and words. We are what they want us to be. We shall therefore be it to the very end and absurdly.

Archibald in The Blacks

The white man is buried in his whiteness.

The black man in his blackness.

We shall seek to determine the directions of this dual narcissism and the motivations which inspire it.

Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks

…listen… oh I was forgetting, thieves that we are, we have tried to filch your fine language. Liars that we are, the names I have mentioned to you are false. Listen…

Archibald in The Blacks
Funeral Rites: Eugenio Barba's Feraï
Authors: Fumaroli Marc
Published: April 2006

In an earlier article [T41] I described Kaspariana, performed by Eugenio Barba's Odin Teatret in Holstebro, Denmark in September 1967. Two years later the Odin Teatret presented another spectacle, Feraï, at the Théâtre des Nations. Feraï enjoyed as much success in Paris, before an audience mostly of students and theatre professionals, as it had several weeks earlier before the audiences of the small towns of Jutland.

The genesis of the play reveals some of the differences between Barba's work and Grotowski's, as well as Barba's special use of the resources of his Jutland province. It was the resident literary advisor of the Odin Teatret, Christian Ludvigsen, the Danish translator of Ionesco and Beckett, who suggested that Barba treat the subject of Euripides’ Alcestis, the sacrifice of a woman who agrees to die in place of her husband, the King of Pherai in Thessaly.
On Stage Fright
Authors: Kaplan Donald M.
Published: April 2006

Stage fright is a state of morbid anxiety disturbing the sense of poise. This, at least, is how it makes its appearance at a certain point; for, like all morbid states, stage fright proceeds through various phases. Thus I shall try to describe it longitudinally. Also, since not all anxiety states lay claim to the sense of poise, stage fright is a particular species of anxiety, and a psychological study of stage fright will involve more than an inquiry into the general nature of anxiety. We shall have to look into, for example, a psychology of poise. And as poise depends upon our anticipations of others’ receptions of how we are hoping to represent ourselves, we shall have occasion to account for feelings of personal fraudulence and the dread of exposure and to refer to a psychology of imposture.
Rock Theatricality
Authors: Somma Robert
Published: April 2006

The appeal made to an audience by a theatre piece has always seemed to me primarily visceral. Even in periods of elevated verbal device and stringent academic rule, the spectator's real impulse was toward the flesh and blood. In an era when this impulse is obstructed by production techniques, habits of delivery, and domination by theme and character, a concrete, approachable personality still persists. Especially now, when we aren't in a context of observed tradition and literacy, we find this personality—a compound of the audience's desires for fiction, for fantasy situations, for the offertories of individual performers. It can control, gratify, outrage, and exhaust an audience in much the same way that any other publicly-met personality touches our private needs, our unacknowledged inhibitions, our unconscious animosities and loves. As long as its actors appear alive, the theatre can avoid the static existence of a thing and retain vitality.
National or Community Theatre?
Authors: Corti Victor
Published: April 2006

This year, bids will be submitted for the construction and equipping of Britain's National Theatre. It is ironic that after sixtyfive years of planning and four major attempts to actualize this dream, that its reality will fall so short of meeting the needs of the present circumstances. Drama will be presented there in the evening to a restricted audience in a prestige building costing twenty-four million dollars.

Seating only two thousand people in its two theatres, and with a subscription system for reserving places, the new National Theatre will not be open to all citizens of the nation. “The first four rows of seating in each auditorium, which some might consider uncomfortably close to the stage, are spaced more closely than the seating in the main body of the auditorium so that they can be sold to younger theatregoers on the day of performance.” (National Theatre. Detailed Design Proposals, Nov. 1967.) So much for the building committee's attitude toward poorer spectators, but what about its rich patrons?
A Note on Brazilian Agitprop
Authors: Boal Augusto
Published: April 2006

In 1963, during the Cuban crisis, several playwrights in Rio de Janeiro called a meeting to write a script: The Blockade of Intervention: An Indictment. The following afternoon some students, workers, and artists from the Popular Center of Culture of the National Student Union rehearsed the script hurriedly, and performed it that night before a large crowd gathered in front of the Municipal Theatre in the heart of the city. The play opened twenty-four hours after it was written.

The Blockade of Intervention: An Indictment was one of the most important manifestations of popular theatre—Brazil's “theatre of agitation.” It belongs to a large repertory of plays, which include Patria o muerte, Cuba s, Yankee no, and others which deal with international politics. This theatre of agitation also includes small “raids” made by theatrical brigades during special occasions. For example, during, a political campaign a group of actors meet on a corner and begin arguing about politics to the point of threatening physical violence; people gather around them and the group suddenly begins an improvised performance that deals with the most urgent political issues.
Entfremdung, Verfremdung: Alienation, Estrangement
Authors: Bloch Ernst
Published: April 2006

In German one says a child is “strange” with adults it does not know, or does not know well: the child may speak little or not at all, will probably stand sucking a finger. But when children are strange in this way they are still at home within themselves, not alienated from their own lives. An adult in a wholly strange environment also may still be at home within himself; indeed, he may depend more on himself, the less a strange environment welcomes him. Alienation from oneself is something quite different, and estrangement is different again (which is what we will have to show in a roundabout way).

It is easy to hear where some sounds come from. The word entfremden (“to alienate”) is an old one, originally used in business. Abalienare in Latin means to rid oneself of a thing, to sell something.
Happenings: An Exchange
Authors: Baxandall Lee , Suvin Darko
Published: April 2006

The analysis by Darko Suvin in regard to happenings (T47) has much in it of interest—but much also, I fear, which obfuscates the last few years of theatrical experiment, and which wrongly discredits the happenings tendency. Since Professor Suvin paid considerable attention to an article of mine on this topic in formulating his view, perhaps you will permit me to respond.

Foremostly, the Suvin piece smacks of remoteness from an adequate experience of happenings and related theatre pieces. To found this suspicion, one need not have picked up on the statement that his theorizing about this mode of theatre proceeded “basically from scenarios and descriptions” rather than from firsthand contact.
Kabuki from the Outside
Authors: Goodman David
Published: April 2006

One recently published book on Kabuki is called Kabuki: The Popular Theatre. But today Kabuki supports its claim to popularity mainly with body counts: each year Kabuki audiences are six times larger than those for all modern theatre (Shingeki) productions combined. Kabuki's devotees claim that Kabuki audiences enjoy and appreciate what they see, while Shingeki's adherents are firmly convinced that they do not. Whatever the case, we can be sure that large numbers of people do not go spontaneously to a Kabuki theatre for a good night's entertainment, that Kabuki is not supported by revenue from individual ticket sales, and that the scions of Kabuki themselves are worried that their audiences do not understand what goes on onstage.

In 1969 Tokyo's National Theatre raised the price of tickets sold at the box office from 1,800 yen ($5.00) to 2,000 yen ($5.56) while at the same time giving considerable discounts, sometimes more than fifty percent, to package audiences.
Politicians as Players
Authors: Sivathamby Karthigesu
Published: April 2006

Until a hundred years ago, the Tamil theatre of South India was devoted exclusively to the presentation of stories derived from Indian epics and other religious sources. The first plays focusing on contemporary social problems were written in the 1870s. Although the bulk of Tamil drama continued to be primarily religious in content, this newly articulated concern with social problems introduced a separate line of development which was to become a major factor in the political evolution of Madras in the second quarter of this century.

Starting in the twenties, the Indian independence movement began to draw the Tamil theatre into direct involvement with social and political reform. The theatre was used to propagandize the activities of the Congress party, which led the struggle against British rule. Plays were written to urge the people to unite and fight colonial oppression.
Censorship: 8 Model Works
Authors: Yang Daniel S. P.
Published: April 2006

Communist China now exercises probably the most rigid form of theatre censorship in the world. Today, five years after the start of the Cultural Revolution, the traditional Chinese drama is still forbidden on the stage, as are all Western works in dance, drama, and music. Since 1966 not a single nonrevolutionary play or song has been published, and the main Chinese theatre journal, Hsi chu pao, was discontinued after the February 1966 issue. At the end of 1970, only eight stage works had been approved for presentation—five “Peking dramas with contemporary themes” (modernized Peking Operas [see T44]), two ballets, and a symphony.

Chinese Communist theatre policy has consistently reflected the principles spelled out by Mao Tse-tung at the Yenan Forum in 1942.
The People Show 39
Authors: Kirby Victoria Nes
Published: April 2006

The People Show 39 was presented for two weeks (from August 19 to September 4, 1971) at the Open Space Theatre on Tottingham Court Road in London, England.

The members of The People Show did not rehearse this particular show before the opening. They met together, however, and discussed what images and general dialogue each wanted to perform, as well as the over-all structure and timing of these images in relationship to each other. This resulted, of course, in a slightly different performance each night as the four young actors explored, changed and improvised the separate parts. The dialogues recorded below are unique for that one performance, but, nevertheless, give a good idea of all the performances.

The following description is of a performance on the 25th of August. The members performing were Laura Gilbert, Michael Figgis, Mark Long, and Jose Nava. There were less than fifty people in the audience.
On Acting and Not-Acting
Authors: Kirby Michael
Published: April 2006

Acting means to feign, to simulate, to represent, to impersonate. As Happenings demonstrated, not all performing is acting. Although acting was sometimes used, the performers in Happenings generally tended to “be” nobody or nothing other than themselves; nor did they represent, or pretend to be in, a time or place different than that of the spectator. They walked, ran, said words, sang, washed dishes, swept, operated machines and stage devices, and so forth, but they did not feign or impersonate.

In most cases, acting and not-acting are relatively easy to recognize and identify. In a performance, we usually know when a person is acting and when he is not. But there is a scale or continuum of behavior involved, and the differences between acting and not-acting may be quite small. In such cases categorization may not be easy. Perhaps some would say it is unimportant, but, in fact, it is precisely these borderline cases that can provide insights into acting theory and into the nature of the art.
Words or Presence
Authors: Barba Eugenio
Published: April 2006

Training does not teach how to act, how to be clever, does not prepare one for creation. Training is a process of self-definition, a process of self-discipline which manifests itself indissolubly through physical reactions. It is not the exercise in itself that counts—for example, bending or somersaults—but the individual's justification for his own work, a justification which although perhaps banal or difficult to explain through words, is physiologically perceptible, evident to the observer. This approach, this personal justification decides the meaning of the training, the surpassing of the particular exercises which, in reality, are stereotyped gymnastic movements.

This inner necessity determines the quality of the energy which allows work without a pause, without noticing tiredness, continuing even when exhausted and at that very moment going forward without surrendering.
A White Folks Guide to 200 Years of Black & White Drama
Authors: Hatch James V.
Published: April 2006

Black folks have grown weary of trying to educate white folks about racism. Aside from those black people who consider it a waste of time, others are suspicious that Whitey is seeking power, which, in the motto of the military, is “Know your enemy.”

As a member of that discredited class, the white liberals, I harbor the droll notion that a proper education may correct human error and, further, that it is the white man's burden to educate himself about himself. One of th,e best mirrors a white man can find is the glass of black-and-white theatre history. The misshapen images found in this cracked mirror makes it all the more valuable. White people can see themselves clearly awry, distorting the image of the black man into grotesqueries.
On the Marionette Theatre
Authors: von Kleist Heinrich
Published: April 2006

While spending some time during the winter of 1801 in M., one evening in the public gardens I chanced upon Herr C, who had been recently engaged as the leading dancer at the opera house and who had found exceptional success with the public there.

I mentioned how surprised I had been to notice him on several occasions attending a marionette theatre that had been set up in the local market place, which entertained the masses with short dramatic burlesques interspersed with song and dance.

He assured me that the performance of these puppets was a source of great pleasure to him, and he made it quite clear that a dancer who wished to improve himself could learn a great deal from observing them.

Because his remarks were obviously not to be taken lightly, I sat down with him so that we might discuss his reasons for such a remarkable statement.
Dario Fo: Puppets for Proletarian Revolution
Authors: Sogliuzzo A.Richard
Published: April 2006

Dario Fo, Italy's foremost practitioner of AgitProp theatre, is one of the world's most versatile theatrical talents: actor, director, playwright, scene and costume designer, dancer, mime, mimic, and political clown. Because of his extensive use of mimicry, masks, and puppets, Fo's theatre is mistakenly characterized as stemming primarily from commedia dell'arte.But commedia satirized social stereotypes, whereas Fo's political satire (broad comedy and highly presentational), originated in the period between the tenth and twelfth centuries, the post-feudal age when the Italian peninsula experienced a burst of political freedom; jesters roamed the land with a repertoire of gags and skits celebrating the end of feudalism, and ridiculing the remaining feudal overlords and the Church. Performing in streets and market places, presenting comic routines consisting of simple language, mime arid mimicry, the feudal jester delighted the common people while awakening them to the tyranny of the nobility.
Equipment Dances: Trisha Brown
Authors: Sommer Sally
Published: April 2006

Trisha Brown began studying dance when she was thirteen—“ballet, tap, acrobatics and modern jazz, as it was interpreted by my dance teacher in Aberdeen, Washington.” She also was involved in another physical discipline. “My older brother was an athlete and he was training me to be an Olympic star when I was ten or eleven. I played basketball, football, did tackling, and ran out for passes all the time I was growing up. He trained me in pole vaulting and running. He tapped my physicality when I was very young and pushed me a lot.”

She attended Mills College in California where she majored in dance and studied traditional modern dance techniques. “At that time the mode of teaching choreography was to use the Louis Horst forms of theme and development. I never understood it. I always had difficulty because I hadn't developed my own source of movement, so the restrictions of the choreographic forms just got in my way.”
Russian Theatre in the 20th Century
Authors: Houghton Norris
Published: April 2006

Russia could hardly be said to have entered the 20th Century with all flags flying. Indeed, all was not as gold as the glitter of her domes. A scant five years later she became embroiled in a bloody civil war, and while that insurrection was put down and relative calm ensued for the next decade, it should have been clear to any sensitive observer that the old order was on the brink of collapse, that horrendous violence was seething just beneath the surface.

All the more astonishing is it, then, that those years can be—and frequently are—referred to as Russia's “silver age” of arts and letters.
The Championship of the Universal Class Struggle
Authors: Deák František , Mayakovsky Vladimir
Published: April 2006

The Championship of the Universal Class Struggle, a circus scenario, was written in the Fall of 1920 during Mayakovsky's work at Window ROSTA. It is possible to establish almost the exact date from the text. The line stating that Pilsudski, the Polish Champion, “doesn't want to fight anymore” refers to the armistice at the Polish front concluded on Oct 20, 1920. In the last lines, the Referee urges spectators to join the Red Army in the fight against Wrangel; the Red Army defeated Wrangel on Nov. 15, 1920. Thus, “The Championship” must have been written between Oct. 20 and Nov. 15, 1920.

The propaganda themes and characters from “Championship” are also present in other works written by Mayakovsky in the Fall of 1920. The title, The Championship of the Universal Class Struggle, is a line in the poem “150,000,000” written in 1919-20.
The Nikolais Dance Theatre's Uses of Light
Authors: Nickolich Barbara E.
Published: April 2006

Unlike many other dance events in which setting is background for choreography, Nikolais dancers are immediately involved in a visual matrix. The relationship of dance motion to the total environment is established largely through the use of light. A solo may be illuminated as a major protagonist in the dance event and then instantly be absorbed as a minor element in the matrix. A duet may be performed down center, but the concern with the total environment is always present.

Directly related to Nikolais’ treatment of the entire stage space are his view of man and his theory of decentralization. Alwin Nikolais sees man as a minute, though important, mechanism in the universe. Sometimes man has a major relationship to other elements; other times the relationship is a minor one in which he is obscured by the mechanistic workings of the universe. He is not dominant.
Christopher Columbus at the Dubrovnik Festival
Authors: Shank Theodore
Published: April 2006

Among the productions at the 1973 Dubrovnik Festival, the one which elicited the greatest interest from the tourists, including vacationing governmental leaders, was actually an implicit deprecation of the exploitation of and by tourists. The performances of Christopher Columbus were presented this past summer on board an oversized replica of the Santa Maria, as it sailed with crew and audience out of the Dubrovnik harbor, continued through the night in search of the new world, and came into port to discover a new land exactly like the old one from which they had departed two hours earlier—a waterfront lined with restaurants, souvenir stands, and tour boats.
Theatre in the Desert: The Yaqui Easter
Authors: Litvinoff Valentina
Published: April 2006

The Easter ritual of the Yaqui Indians in Arizona is nearer than most other Indian ceremonials, in concept and impact, to the ritual of the theatre. Even that celebrated paradigm of American Indian observances, the Corn Dance of Santo Domingo Pueblo in New Mexico, whose power to move the spectator has been lauded by artists and anthropologists alike, must, in several elements of theatre, allow precedence to the Yaquis.

A progression of action, from a beginning situation to a development of forces and finally to an inevitable resolution, is implemented by the Yaquis, while this dramatic progression neither prevails nor is it called for in the Pueblo. Besides, an interweaving of several themes and of group and individual characters is masterfully demonstrated in the Yaqui ceremonies. A distinctive style also emerges; and it is based in unique ways upon features of the Indian and the Spanish styles.
Scott Burton's Behavior Tableaux (1970-72)
Authors: Argelander Ronald
Published: April 2006

Kinesic and proxemic behaviors are only two of many cross-referenced expressive means that convey information about situations. Because of this, communicative aspects of movement and position, like rules of language structure (grammar, syntax, etc.), have tended to remain “invisible,”overshadowed by subject matter and other expressive means. This is not the case in Scott Burton's Behavior Tableaux, a five-part performance piece composed of approximately 80 silent tableaux vivants. Some tableaux, lasting only a few seconds, are static pictures exhibiting proxemic (spatial) relationships between interactants; others, lasting as long as five minutes, offer isolated elements of kinesic behavior (movement), which develop the scene beyond what could be conveyed by spatial relationships alone.

Behavior Tableaux is about how males relate to each other through “body language” and manipulations of “personal space” within five distinct group situations: the harmonious peer-group; the discordant peer-group; the group and leader; the group and outsider; and the “non-group.”
Montage of Attractions: For Enough Stupidity in Every Wiseman
Authors: Eisenstein Sergei
Published: April 2006

Just a few words. The theatrical program of the Proletkult does not involve the “utilization of the values of the past” or the “invention of new forms of theatre” but the abolition of the very institution of the theatre as such, replacing it with a showplace for achievements in the theatre or with an instrument for raising the standard of training of the masses in their day-to-day life. The real task of the scientific section of the Proletkult in the field of the theatre is to organize theatre studios and to work out a scientific system for raising this standard.

All the rest that is being done is “provisional”; to fulfill secondary, not basic, aims of the Proletkult. The “provisional” runs along two lines under the general heading of revolutionary content.

1. Representational-narrative theatre (static, real-life—the right wing): the Proletkult's Zori, Lena, and a series of not fully realized productions of the same type—this being the direction of the former Workers Theatre with the Central Committee of Proletkult.
Karl Valentin and Bertolt Brecht
Authors: Calandra Denis
Published: April 2006

On March 14, 1920, Bertolt Brecht wrote to Doris Hasenfratz (Doris Manheim) that he had just returned to Munich at midday after a fifteen-hour train ride from Berlin and had gone directly to the cabaret Charivari where the comedian Karl Valentin was playing; Brecht sat “convulsed with laughter until 11 o'clock.” Bernhard Reich, a director closely associated with Brecht during the twenties, describes the fascination Brecht had with these performances:

We often discussed how one could regenerate the stagnant theatre … The Munich folk comedian Karl Valentin and his ensemble were giving a guest performance at the Kammerspiele. Brecht, the ‘enemy of the theatre,’ came to every Valentin premiere, and he prevailed upon me to go and see the sketch. The Musicians Rehearse (Die Musikprobe) … It was wildly funny. Brecht shrieked with laughter … (He) enjoyed Valentin enormously, and I suspect he saw particular Valentin scenes so often because he was collecting observations and studying the plays as well as the acting technique of this extraordinary man.
The Scenography of the Traditional Theatre of India
Authors: Awasthi Suresh
Published: April 2006

Indian traditional theatre, like all Asian theatre, is a participative theatre, aiming at the closest possible relationship between the actor and the audience; it is this objective that determines in many ways the principles and practices of the scenography.

Most of the traditional theatre performances are open-air events, organized on the level ground, a platform stage, or as a mobile processional spectacle. They are presented in fields after the harvest, streets, open spaces outside town (often permanently designated for performances), fairs, markets, and—especially for the Ramayana and the Krishna legend shows—temple gardens, riverbanks, market squares, and courtyards. The idea of dramatic performs being an open-air street show is so basic that the very name of some of these presentation denotes this. The therrukkuthu of Tamilnadu is one such form: Terru means “street” and kultu means “play.” Another form is Veethinatakam: Veethi means “street”; natakam is “play.” The performances are social events not separated from the community activity.
Meyerhold's Woe to Wit (1928)
Authors: Law Alma H.
Published: April 2006

Vsevolod Meyerhold first considered producing Alexandr Griboyedov's Woe from Wit in 1924, the year of its centennial, but because of other demands, he dropped his plans. Then following the premiere of The Inspector General in December 1926, again faced with a serious repertory crisis, he turned to Griboyedov's comedy once more.

Meyerhold continually stressed that the classics should not be treated as museum pieces—something to admire but not touch. He believed that the only way to make these plays meaningful for a modern audience was to chip away the thick encrustation of false tradition and find new interpretations that would be closer to the genuine intent of the authors. “A play,” he wrote, “is simply the excuse for the revelation of its theme on the level at which that revelation may appear vital today.”

For his interpretation of Griboyedov's comedy, Meyerhold decided to go back to the author's earliest plan, even changing the title to Griboyedov's original and more personal Woe to Wit.
Russian Mass Spectacles
Authors: Deák František
Published: April 2006

One of the forms of theatre to emerge after the October, 1917, revolution in Russia was monumental open air spectacles involving thousands of performers and tens of thousands of spectators. These mass spectacles were characterized by collective authorship (script and raise en scène), military-like organization, and the participation of different segments of society: workers; soldiers of the Red Army; drama students and artists of different orientations, including those of the avant-garde.

Thematically, mass spectacles were connected with the events of the Revolution and the civil war. They were not isolated performances but were a part of a more complex event, such as the celebration of the anniversary of the Revolution, May First, the Third International, or any other holiday of the Red calendar. The mass spectacles were not only conscious attempts to create a new distinctly proletarian theatre but also an attempt to establish a new social ritual by collectively reenacting and celebrating the events of the revolution.
Soviet Theater Censorship
Authors: Zaitsev Mark
Published: April 2006

Stanislavsky once observed that “One theatrical production can tell you incomparably more about a foreign country than a whole series of lectures, libraries, books, or years of theoretical study.” This is particularly true in the Soviet Union today, where the theatre, in addition to its official role as a major tool of education and indoctrination, serves as an increasingly important outlet for the expression of ideas and the airing of dissatisfactions still largely excluded from the printed page.

And given the present social and political climate, it surely is no coincidence that one of the major unofficial themes in the Soviet theatre today is that of censorship and freedom of expression. As the chant goes in Yuri Lyubimov's production Under the Skin of the Statue of Liberty (see T57), “If only three minutes of truth! If only three minutes of truth!” Although sung by a chorus of American students, the message's real target is hardly lost on those sitting in the audience at the Taganka Theatre in Moscow.
Contact Improvisation
Authors: Paxton Steve
Published: April 2006

The work is ongoing. It is still, in Johnston's phrase, about “any old people,” but it is no longer focused on personal incidents within pedestrian forms. Personal incidents happen now in the context of a duet system that has been named Contact Improvisation.

Each party of the duet freely improvises with an aim to working along the easiest pathways available to their mutually moving, masses. These pathways are best perceived when the muscular tone is lightly stretched to extend the limbs, although not to a degree that obscures the sensations of momentum and inertia. Within this flexible framework, the shape, speed, orientation, and personal details of the relationship are left to the dancers who, however, hold to the ideal of active, reflexive, harmonic, spontaneous, mutual forms. The ideal creates the attitude, which is manifest in the quality of energy-use.

This system is based in the senses of touch and balance.
Murderer, the Women's Hope
Authors: Pam Dorothy
Published: April 2006

The production of the first German Expressionist play, Murderer, the Women's Hope (Mörder, Hoffnung der Frauen), broke upon the staid Vienna art scene with the force of scandal in 1909. (Although Kokoschka is credited with having written and performed Murderer, The Women's Hope in 1907 and 1908, his own accounts of the improvised rehearsal for the July 4, 1909 production at the Kunstschau make it doubtful that an earlier script or production could have existed.) Oskar Kokoschka angered the public and most of the critics with his play, which they considered dangerous to the public morals and offensive to esthetics. Reviewers called him a “degenerate artist,” “bourgeoise-baiter (Bürgerschreck),” “corrupter of youth,” and “common criminal.” The savage attacks in the press caused, the Minister of Education to suggest that the twenty-two year old artist and teacher end his association with the Vienna School of Arts and Crafts.
Memé Perlini's “Yellow Whiteness” (with sounds of the sea)
Authors: Mele Rino
Published: April 2006

Memé Perlini has created four works in four years (1972-75): Pirandello Chi? (Pirandello Who?); Tarzan; Yellow Whiteness (with sounds of the sea); and Otello (Othello). Perlini works with lights. At the beginning (in Pirandello Chi?), Perlini used small projectors to quickly extract a series of images from the darkness and then immediately replace them with others, in a very rapid montage. He created many views of the same object by alternating the turning on and off of projectors that were placed in different positions. The object was often a performer (for example, a man on a swing was lit by two lights, one above and one below him, that were turned on and off, alternating frenetically).
Yoshi and Company
Authors: Flakes Susan
Published: April 2006

Katsuhiro Oida, better known as “Yoshi,” and six of his countrymen, each skilled in a different Japanese discipline, performed their synthesis of those disciplines, Hannya Shingyo (Beyond Wisdom), on the Anspacher stage at the Public Theater in New York. There were two weekend performances, September 27 and 28, after five days of workshops (the first four workshops devoted to a particular discipline and conducted by the expert of that discipline, assisted by the six other members of the company). The next weekend, October 3 and 4, 1975, there were two more performances, preceded by a repeat of the first four days of the workshops.

The disciplines selected represent those elements from ancient Japanese life that are now inseparably the basis of modern Japanese thought: Shintoism, Buddhism, Budo (the martial arts), and—less a part of modern thought and more a literal expression of ancient life—the Noh theatre.
Drama Therapies in Hospitals
Authors: Goodman Judith , Prosperi Mario
Published: April 2006

The use of the arts as a therapeutic tool is widespread today. Hospitals all over the country employ music, dance, and art therapies, as well as “psychodramatists” as an adjunct to more traditional methods of treatment. In addition, a small number of institutions have recently begun programs of “theatre therapy” in which patients work collectively on a performance under the supervision of trained theatre practitioners.

Psychodrama, the oldest of the therapies utilizing theatrical techniques, and the only one to possess an articulated theoretical framework, was first practiced in Vienna in 1920. Dr. J.L. Moreno, who originated the concept, writes that psychodrama developed out of what he called the “impromptu play,” which he first used with children in 1911:

I began my work with children at a time when there was only one alternative to allowing children to play spontaneously by themselves: an imitation, on the children's level, of the conventional, conserved drama [scripted works], A therapist could either watch the children at their games and interpret their behavior in terms of some ideology, like psychoanalysis, for instance, or he could teach them to rehearse and act out, like adults, a play made from, shall we say, the story of “Little Red Riding Hood.”
The Renaissance Pleasure Faire
Authors: Blazer Sam
Published: April 2006

The Renaissance Pleasure Faire, a “living history environment,” has been an annual event in California since 1963, beginning in Los Angeles, where it is held in April and May, and then traveling to Marin County where since 1967 it has been open in August and September.

The Marin Renaissance Pleasure Faire, which lasts six weekends, as does its Los Angeles counterpart, has sprawled over a mile and a half of the Oak Forest near Novato, which is near San Rafael. “Renaissance,” in this case, means medieval and Elizabethan England with a convenient recognition of falafel, Turkish coffee, and Italian delicacies, which may or may not have been known to the British during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I.

Peg Long, the fair's entertainment coordinator, auditions potential Pleasure Faire performers two or three months before each event. Once chosen, they participate in a month-long series of preparatory workshops on diction, scenarios, historical background, and the general ambience of the Pleasure Faire.
Jeff Sheridan's Street Magic
Authors: Condos Susan
Published: April 2006

It is not unprecedented for street magicians to annex a given area of the city and make it their own. “The magician of the Chateau d'Eau,” who performed in Paris during the 1820's, could always be found in front of a certain fountain. The spot that Jeff Sheridan has chosen as his is the Walter Scott statue in Central Park.

I think of it as my own personal outdoor theatre, and I don't pay rent, which is nice. I chose it for practical reasons. I felt I had to work in a proscenium space because all the technique I use requires having my back covered. Also, the base of it provides a natural platform which is important because you can be more easily seen and consequently draw a larger audience.

Sheridan's form of conjuring is traditional but in many ways his execution of it is not. He works as minimally as possible, using few props, rejecting a costume for the simplicity of a black turtleneck sweater and trousers.
The Mabou Mines The Lost Ones
Authors: Cohen Debra
Published: April 2006

The Mabou Mines staged Samuel Beckett's short novel The Lost Ones at the Theatre for the New City in New York in October, 1975. The piece, lasting about 45 minutes, was part of an evening of three Beckett works, which included Play and Come and Go. Play, the first of the three works to be performed, was presented on a proscenium stage. Come and Go, the second piece, was performed in a balcony above the audience and was reflected by a mirror to appear as though it was taking place in an area beneath the stage, such as an orchestra pit. For The Lost Ones, directed by Lee Breuer, spectators were asked to remove their shoes and then were led to a small rectangular room off the main theatre area. Upon entering, they stepped on a thick, foam rubber flooring; this gave the feeling of sinking downward.
Actress from Iowa: Sue Sheehy
Authors: Simmer Bill
Published: April 2006

Sue Sheehy was a waitress in a small restaurant when Robert Wilson created Deafman Glance at the University of Iowa in 1970. She had lived in Iowa all her life and had never seriously considered leaving it until she met Wilson. “Robert Wilson and John D'Arcangelo came into the restaurant where I was working,” she recalls, “and Bob said, ‘I want that girl to be in my play.’” Up to that time, she had never given much thought to becoming an actress. “Sure, they've got theatre groups in Iowa,” she says, “but you have to know somebody in order to do it, or have a background… It never really turned me on. I was always told I could never do it, there was no sense in trying.”

Being a part of Deafman Glance, therefore, was a new and fascinating experience. The play itself was unlike any she had seen before.
Priscilla Smith of The Great Jones Repertory Project
Authors: Cartwright Diane
Published: April 2006

I don't know how an actor in this country is supposed to develop an attitude of responsibility to his craft. Actors are immediately caught up in the problem of having a career. I don't know how actors walking around with resumes, committed to the concept of how-am-I-going-to-promote-my-career, develop themselves at all. I don't think it can happen in a three-week rehearsal period. I find this most painful. I don't know what I would do had not accident provided the opportunity for me to work in this situation and had Ellen Stewart not been there to support it.

In 1971 Priscilla Smith, Andrei Serban, Elizabeth Swadosand the other members of what was then the La Mama Repertory Company (now the Great Jones Repertory Project) engaged in a series of workshops, the end-product of which was Medea rendered in the original Greek and Latin.
Symbolist Staging at the Théâtre d'Art
Authors: Deák Frantiŝek
Published: April 2006

Between November 1890 and March 1892. the Théâtre d'Arstaged seven productions. It was during these two years that it became associated with the symbolist poets and finally came to represent the symbolist poetic in theatre. The staging of pierr Quillard's play La Fille aux Mains Coupées (The Girl with Cut-off Hands), the first stage production of Maurice Maeterlinck's plays L'Intruse (The Intruder) and Les Aveugles (The Blind), the recitation of poetry from the stage, and the staging of Song of Songs-all at the Théâtre d'Art—represent four different aspects of symbolist performance.

The Girl with Cut-off Hands, a mystery in two scenes performed on March 19th and 20th, 1891, was the first distinctly symbolist production in regard to its mise-en-scene and design. To a great extent it influenced the staging practice of Théâtre d'Art. The play was performed on a stage separated from the audience by a gauze scrim immediately behind the footlights.
The Romand Popular Theatre
Authors: Duvanel Blaise
Published: April 2006

The Theatre Populaire Romand (Romand Popular Theatre) or TPR celebrated its fifteenth anniversary in 1976. For a professional, completely autonomous troupe whose politics and administration are independent from any control by authorities, this is a record rarely equaled in Switzerland or even in Europe.

This remarkable endurance owes much to the will and determination of the troupe's director, Charles Joris, who has always established and maintained solid and homogeneous groups despite the internal crises and the periodic defections inherent in an enterprise of this sort. But strong will and a coherent theatrical project do not register in a void. The most eminent characteristic of the TPR is precisely its long-term political vision: the concrete insertion of its theatrical activity into the life of the region, of the territory where it has chosen to work.
A Growth of Images
Authors: Kennedy Adrienne
Published: April 2006

Autobiographical work is the only thing that interests me, apparently because that is what I do best. I write about my family. In many ways I would like to break out of that, but I don't know how to break out of it. In fact I would really like to write more about the people who were before my own immediate family, like my grandparents and their family. I have two children, but I've never been able to write about them.

I feel overwhelmed by family problems and family realities. I see my writing as being an outlet for inner, psychological confusion and questions stemming from childhood. I don't know any other way. It's really figuring out the “why” of things—that is, if that is even possible. I'm not sure you can figure out the “why” of anything anymore.
A Reinvention of Form
Authors: van Itallie Jean-Claude
Published: April 2006

When I write a play there's no single sure track to run on. It's different each time I start. Each time is starting from scratch, a reinvention of form. There may be easier ways to do it, but for me, that's how it is. There are no rules that always apply. If I teach a playwriting class, I set up exercises, so people can learn some possible different approaches. I would be loathe to prescribe one single approach.

As you catch me just about to start something—which is always a peculiar time fora writer—I find it even more difficult to tell you how I go about things.
The Theatre of One Will
Authors: Sologub Fyodor
Published: April 2006

On the vessel there is a seal, on the seal there is a name; what is hidden within the vessel is known by the one who places the seal and by the initiated.

E. K. Vizener. The Silence of the First Bride.A Novel.You philosophize like a poet.Dostoevsky. Letters.
The Theatre of the Grotesque
Authors: Calendoli Giovanni
Published: April 2006

In the years after the first World War, two plays unexpectedly achieved a clamorous success in the major capitals of Europe. This phenomenon demonstrated that an important new phase of Italian theatre was replacing the almost exclusive domination of D'Annunzio in the years past. The two plays were: Six Characters in Search of an Author by Luigi Pirandello, staged in Paris in 1923, and The Mask and the Face by Luigi Chiarelli, staged in London in 1924.

The triumphant reception given by the Parisian spectators to Six Characters was the beginning of Pirandello's international success, and it initiated the prodigious dissemination of his work. The London production of The Mask and the Face, on the other hand, was the end of a flowering of plays that had taken place during the war and had been given the rather incorrect name of the Theatre of the Grotesque.