bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Doing worse but knowing better: An exploration of the relationship between HIV/AIDS knowledge and sexual behavior among adolescents in Flemish secondary schools
Authors: Berten Hans , Van Rossem Ronan
Published: January 2009

Most studies on sexual behavior have approached the relationship between AIDS knowledge and sexual behavior unidirectionally. This paper sets out to examine a reciprocal relationship between AIDS knowledge and sexual behavior, in which it is possible that adolescents who enter into sexuality may start to actively seek out information on sex. Additionally, the effects of various sources for AIDS‐related information and condom use are analyzed. Data from the Flemish Educational Assessment project, which surveyed a sample of adolescents from the 3rd and 5th years of secondary school, were used. Results indicate that the relationship between AIDS knowledge and sexual behavior is quite complex. On one hand, we find that better knowledge leads to a later onset of sexuality and more consistent condom use; on the other hand, we find that adolescents who start sex earlier and use condoms inconsistently tend to be more knowledgeable about AIDS.
Parameterization of EPIC crop model for simulation of cotton growth in South Texas
Authors: KO J. , PICCINNI G. , GUO W. , STEGLICH E.
Published: January 2009

Parameterization in crop simulation modelling is a general procedure to calibrate a crop model to explore the best fit for a certain regional environment of interest. The parameters of radiation use efficiency (RUE) and light interception coefficient (k) of cotton (Gossypium hirsutum) for different cultivars were estimated under various irrigation conditions in South Texas in 2006 and 2007. A calibration procedure was then performed for determination of RUE using the environmental policy impact calculator (EPIC) crop model (Williams et al.1984). This was carried out using data sets obtained separately from the data for parameter estimation. The estimates of k and RUE were 0·63 and 2·5 g/MJ, respectively, which were determined based on the field experiment and variation of simulated lint yield. When the parameters were used with EPIC to simulate the variability in lint yields, a correlation coefficient of 0·86 and root mean square error (RMSE) of 0·22 t/ha were obtained, presenting no significant differences (paired t-test: P=0·282) between simulation and measurement. The results demonstrate that an appropriate estimate of the model parameters including RUE is essential in order to make crop models reproduce field conditions properly in simulating crop growth, yield and other variables.
A prioriassessment of language learning tasks by practitioners
Authors: Westhoff Gerard J.
Published: January 2009

Teachers' competence to estimate the effectiveness of learning materials is important and often neglected in programmes for teacher education. In this lecture I will try to explore the possibilities of designing scaffolding instruments fora prioriassessment of language learning tasks, based on insights from SLA and cognitive psychology, more specifically connectionist theory. I will subsequently outline the development and evaluation of a ‘yardstick’ to judge complex, integrated, life-like tasks, such as WebQuests. The possibilities will be explored of performing in-deptha prioritask analyses as a learning task for teachers in order to enhance their competence in making ‘educated guesses’ about task effectiveness. Finally, an experiment will be described to determine the reliability and validity of an instrument for in-depth analysis of language learning tasks based on the theoretical framework previously described.
Study on strip spiral Blumlein line for the pulsed forming line of intense electron-beam accelerators
Authors: Liu J.L. , Cheng X.B. , Qian B.L. , Ge B. , Zhang J.D. , Wang X.X.
Published: January 2009

The pulse forming line (PFL) is the key part of the intense electron-beam accelerators (IEBA), which determines the quality and characteristic of the output beam current of the IEBA. Compared with the accelerator with traditional Blumlein line, an IEBA based on strip spiral Blumlein line (SSBL) can increase the duration of the output pulse in the same geometrical dimension. But the disadvantage of the SSBL is that the output voltage waveform at the matched load may be distorted, which influences the electron beam quality. In this paper, according to the electromagnetic theory, formulas for calculating the main electric parameters of SSBL (inductance, capacitance, transmission time, and characteristic impedance) are deduced. The effect of the geometric parameters of SSBL on the slowing coefficient is analyzed. The designed condition of SSBL for the output ideal voltage pulse in the matched load is obtained by theoretical analysis. Furthermore, the Karat code is used to simulate the output voltage waveform of SSBL on the matched load for different spiral angels. At last, a couple of contrastive experiments are performed on an electron-beam accelerator based on the SSBL with water dielectric. The experimental results agree with the theoretical and simulated results.
All about Eve: Apple Island and the Fictions of Lesbian Community
Authors: Wolf Stacy
Published: January 2009

We continue our occasional series on the actuality and the ideology of lesbian performance with a study of Apple Island, a performance space in Madison, Wisconsin. Many of the productions of this ‘women's cultural and art space’ could, suggests Stacy Wolf, be categorized as performance art: she looks at these in the context of other modes and definitions of cultural production, and at the ‘complex interplay of identity and knowledge’ which constructs Apple Island's potential spectators. Looking at both positive negative critiques of its work, she concludes that the activity through which its refusal of political and performative divisions is best exemplified is the weekly class-cumperformance of country western line dancing, and suggests through folkloric analogy how this helps to define or redefine the meaning of cultural feminism. Stacy Wolf is a doctoral candidate in Theatre and Drama and a lecturer in Women's Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She has also published articles inTheatre Studies, Women and Performance, and theJournal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism.
Trevor Griffiths's Political Theatre: from ‘Oi for England’ to ‘The Gulf between Us’
Authors: Bignell Jonathan
Published: January 2009

This paper examines two plays by Trevor Griffiths, ten years apart in the writing, which responded in different ways to burning contemporary issues. The first, Oi for England, though originally seen on television in 1982, was conceived as a theatre text, and was eventually toured to audiences closer to the age (and perhaps to some of the beliefs) of its racist rock-band central characters. The Gulf between Us, written in the aftermath of the Gulf War, was staged in Leeds in 1992 as a local theatrical ‘event’ at the West Yorkshire Playhouse, under Griffiths's own direction. Jonathan Bignell looks at the ways in which the different nature of these occasions and audiences, and the different ways in which the plays can be viewed as ‘political theatre’ – in particular, the new demands made by The Gulf upon critics who arrived with a type-cast view of its author – in both cases militated against a successful political statement being conveyed. Jonathan Bignell completed a PhD on narrative in film and television fictions in 1989, and since then has lectured in English and Media Studies in the English Department of the University of Reading. His research interests are in literary theory, and film and television analysis.
Seventeen Ideograms and the Search for the Wandering Word
Authors: Gatti Armand , Châtelain Hélène , Hutchinson Wesley
Published: January 2009

In NTQ 30 (1992) Dorothy Knowles provided a description and explication of the recent work of the visionary French director Armand Gatti. For what he calls his ‘plural writing’ projects, Gatti has increasingly come to recruit not actors but ‘actors’: those exclus or rejects who have been marginalized by society, but whose histories need both to be reclaimed and, in the process, given back to them – together with the dignity of which they have so often been stripped. Whether developing a performance within the close confines of a prison, or accommodating the constraints of ‘the system’ at the Avignon Festival, Gatti's voice and theatre are entirely distinctive – as also, paradoxically, is his ability to speak with and for the unheard voices of others. Here, he speaks for himself, describing both the inspiration and the evolution of his work in a style which characteristically combines pragmatism with lyricism. The article derives from a series of interviews conducted in 1991 by Hélène Châtelain – an actress who has worked with Gatti since 1966 – and first published in Le Monde Diplomatique for February 1992. The translator for NTQ, Wesley Hutchinson, wrote his doctoral thesis on Gatti at Trinity College, Dublin, and now lectures in the English Department of the University of Paris, Nanterre.
The Kott-Marowitz Dialogues: ‘Measure for Measure’
Authors: Kott Jan , Marowitz Charles
Published: January 2009

Although included among the comedies in the First Folio of Shakespeare's plays, Measure for Measure long found itself disapproved on grounds of moral impropriety, and was restored to critical favour only to enjoy the dubious dignity of becoming a ‘problem’ play – which left open the question of whether the ‘problem’ was Shakespeare's, as man or craftsman, his society's, or perhaps even our own. In the theatre, too, the pendulum has swung from the easy contempt of the recent ‘permissive’ past for the value placed by Isabella upon her virginity to the renewed respect of feminist critics for her right to control her own body. Still, her silence in response to the Duke's marriage proposal permits actors and directors to make their own climactic meaning. Jan Kott's essay on the play, ‘Head for Maidenhead, Maidenhead for Head’, first appeared in the old Theatre Quarterly, and was subsequently reprinted in his The Gender of Rosalind. Here, Kott reconsiders the play, in discussion with Charles Marowitz, who has himself directed Measure for Measure, and also written about it in his Recycling Shakespeare (1991).
‘Materialism’, Dialectics, and Editing Shakespeare
Authors: Posener Alan
Published: January 2009

Over the past few years we have encouraged the simmering in these pages of a continuing debate about the relationship between the bibliographical and scholarly problems of editing Elizabethan texts, changing perceptions of ‘authority’, and the theatrical and political conceptions, old and new, which may affect all these. Brian Parker, in NTQ24 (1990), and Stanley Wells, in NTQ26 (1991), were early contributors, and in NTQ34 (1992) Graham Holderness and Bryan Loughrey took up the argument, specifically questioning the editorial principles of the recent Oxford Shakespeare. Here, Alan Posener takes up the debate, criticizing the methodology and terminology adopted by Holderness and Loughrey, and some of the conclusions to which these led. Alan Posener is a British expatriate living in Berlin who – after stints in radical left-wing politics and teaching – became a writer, specializing in popular biography. He is currently rewriting one of the standard German biographies of William Shakespeare.
Young People's Theatre and the New Ideology of State Education
Authors: Whybrow Nicolas
Published: January 2009

In NTQ38 (May 1994) Nicolas Whybrow offered a brief account of the immediate threat facing theatre in education (TIE) in England and Wales. In the first of two articles in which he examines the general state of theatre produced for both the formal and the informal education sectors, he goes on to provide a more searching contextualization of some of the changes now taking place. Here, he analyzes the implications for TIE of the Education Reform Act of 1988, and the effect of Youth Service policies on theatre for youth work. Nicolas Whybrow recently completed a PhD based on the practices of Red Ladder, Blah Blah Blah, and Leeds TIE, and is about to take up a lecturing appointment at the Workshop Theatre (School of English), Leeds University.
Lyrics for a Wedekind Cabaret
Authors: Bentley Eric
Published: January 2009

In 1993–94 Eric Bentley prepared an entertainment entitled Tingle Tangle: a Wedekind Cabaret, with music by William Bolcom, Peter Winkler, and Arnold Black. This contained many Wedekind lyrics in [approximations] by Bentley, and also the four original lyrics by Bentley which are printed below, as a tribute to Jan Kott – and a [thank you] for the essay on Wedekind which Kott contributed to The Play and Its Critic, the Festschrift assembled for Bentley's seventieth birthday in 1976. One of the lyrics below, [Lulu], was included in The First Lulu in 1993: the others are published here for the first time. All four lyrics are copyright 1993, 1994, by Eric Bentley.
Jatra Theatre and Elizabethan Dramaturgy
Authors: Brown John Russell
Published: January 2009

I could not have written this essay without the help of friends and counsellors in Calcutta, Bhubaneswar, and Puri. They listened carefully to my questions and took time to help me appreciate what I was encountering for the first time on stage and in life around me. This indebtedness makes this essay a fitting contribution to an issue in honour of Jan Kott, for he has offered encouragement of the same kind on many occasions. First I had read his Shakespeare Our Contemporary, and then I was able to enjoy his company, at Brighton, Vancouver, and for over two years at Stony Brook, Long Island. He helped me to think adventurously and showed me how to be watchful. I owe him a great debt and this essay is offered in token of my gratitude, pleasure, and admiration.
‘Reading’ the Actor: Performance, Presence, and the Synesthetic
Authors: Watson Ian
Published: January 2009

Despite the recognized value of semiotics in opening-out our perceptions of what constitutes the text of a performance, its literary associations have meant that most theatre semioticians concerned with reception cling to analogies between the literary reading act and the spectator's reception of a theatrical performance. For them, there is a conceptual as well as a metaphorical relationship between a literary text and what they term the performance text — and so, by implication, a similar relationship between how both are ‘read’. Taking these semioticians at their word, in the following article Ian Watson isolates the actor in the performance text, examines how s/he is read, and questions the attempts of scholars to ignore quality as an important component of this reading.
‘Best Betrayal’: the Documentation of performance on Video and Film, Part 1
Authors: Melzer Annabelle
Published: January 2009

Whether described as adaptations, documentations, translations, or transcriptions, the video cassettes which allow us to see performances on video are proliferating. Not always easily available for begging, borrowing, or buying, not always willingly turned over by the theatre companies who hold them for in-house use, often lost or erased by television channels, and always beleaguered with copyright problems, these electronic arts ‘documents’ are none the less causing a revolution in teaching, rehearsal methods, and research. In what constitutes a first detailed mapping of the territory, Annabelle Melzer's two-part article deals with the theoretical and aesthetic questions surrounding performance documentation, with some of the hands-on issues of such filming – and with her own journey to seek out the documents themselves. Annabelle Melzer, Associate Professor of Theatre at the University of Tel Aviv, is completing ten years of research on the adaptation and documentation of theatre through moving image documents. Shakespeare on Screen, the first volume of her multi-volume filmography,Theatre on Screen, appeared in 1991, receiving theChoiceand American Library Association awards as outstanding reference book of 1991. Her articles on avant-garde performance have appeared inArtforum,Theatre Research International, andComparative Drama, and her Hazan Prize-winning bookDada and Surrealist Performancehas just been reissued by Johns Hopkins University Press. She is at present writing a book on the theatricality of war.
‘Thinking with Chekhov’: the Evidence of Stanislavsky's Notebooks
Authors: Hristić Jovan
Published: January 2009

In the second and third volumes of the Russian edition of Stanislavsky's notebooks, Rezhisserskie Egzemplary (Moscow, 1981 and 1983), are to be found Stanislavsky's own notes on his productions of Chekhov's plays for the Moscow Art Theatre – The Seagull, Three Sisters, and The Cherry Orchard. Questioning the received wisdom that in many ways his first director served Chekhov ill, with over-elaborate productions which failed to bring out the humour and ambiguity of the plays, Jovan Hristić here draws deeply upon the notebooks to contrast their instructions and descriptions with the directions and stated or presumed intentions of Chekhov himself. He illuminatingly reveals that, while some of Stanislavsky's solutions understandably appear over-the-top to more minimalist modern tastes, they are almost invariably complementary rather than contradictory to Chekhov, and designed to serve the plays rather than to subject them to directorial whim.
Theatre Practice, Theatre Studies, and ‘New Theatre Quarterly’
Authors: Trussler Simon
Published: January 2009

The original series of Theatre Quarterly ran for ten years and forty issues, from 1971 to 1981. The relaunched journal intends to continue the best traditions of the old, while reflecting the changes that have overtaken the English-speaking theatre in the intervening years. Simon Trussler, who was an editor of the old TQ throughout its existence, here offers some personal reflections on the appearance of New Theatre Quarterly, the present mood of the theatre, and the challenges now facing theatre practitioners and researchers alike. Simon Trussler is also author of over twenty books and monographs on theatre, was drama critic of Tribune from 1966 to 1972, and currently teaches in the Drama Departments of Goldsmiths' College, University of London, and the University of Kent. Clive Barker, his associate editor on TQ since 1978, joins him as co-editor of the new journal. Formerly an actor with Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop, and author of the influential guide to actor training Theatre Games, Clive Barker is currently Senior Lecturer in Theatre Studies in the University of Warwick.
Structuralism and After: Trends and Tendencies in Theatre Analysis, Part One
Authors: Bassnett Susan
Published: January 2009

Susan Bassnett's ‘Introduction to Theatre Semiotics’ appeared in TQ38 (1980). reflecting in its very title the need to make theatre people of the English-speaking world better aware of approaches to theatre analysis which had been influential on the Continent since the work of the pioneer Czech semioticians of the 'thirties. But, as she now points out. these early workers in the field were themselves theatre practitioners, while more recent approaches have suffered from a tendency to divorce creators of theatre from the process and the vocabulary of analysis. Developing her account from the papers presented at the Conference on Theatre Analysis held last year at the University of Warwick, where she herself teaches in the Department of Comparative Literature. Susan Bassnett here introduces the corrective work of the new generation of continental theatre analysts, and relates their ideas and approaches to the recent decline of energy felt in British (as in most European) theatre, paralleled as it is by a growth in the influence of non-western theatre forms.
‘Understand Me by My Signs’: on Shakespeare's Semiotics
Authors: Elam Keir
Published: January 2009

Keir Elam's study The Semiotics of Drama and Theatre, published in 1980. was the firstfull– length account of its subject in English. Here, he argues not only that semiotics canvaluably be employed in the study of Shakespeare, but that the playwright himself displays a sophisticated sense of the significance of signs– indeed, that Elizabethan culture was highly self-conscious, sometimes to the point of obsession, with the nature and practice of signification, both verbal and visual. Keir Elam illustrates his argument with examples from a wide range of Shakespeare's plays, also suggesting some tentative distinctions between the way in which signsare utilized in the various genres. Keir Elam. who teaches English in the University of Florence, delivered an earlier version of this paper at the Conference on Theatre Analysis held at Warwick University in May 1984
‘A Programme for the Progressive Conscience’: the Royal Court in the 'Eighties
Authors: Stafford-Clark Max
Published: January 2009

This year will see the completion of Max Stafford-Clark's fifth year as Artistic Director of the English Stage Company – and the thirtieth year of that company's tenure of the Royal Court Theatre, where its arrival under George Devine back in 1956 was to prove so seminal for the British theatre. Recently under threat of losing a major portion of its Arts Council grant, the company has had to struggle to maintain its reputation as the natural home for new writing in conditions where its ability to mount regular new productions has been severely curtailed: but in spite of this it has premiered some of the most important new work and writers of the past few years. Tony Dunn, who is senior lecturer in literature and drama at Portsmouth Polytechnic, and was recently appointed editor of Gambit, talked to Max Stafford-Clark about the problems and policy of the company, in the perspective of its past history. Before joining the Court, Max Stafford-Clark directed the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, in its vintage years from 1968, and was a founding member of the Joint Stock Company in 1974.
‘Theatre for Development’: Diary of a Zimbabwe Workshop
Authors: Kidd Ross
Published: January 2009

The years since independence have seen a remarkable range of work in experimental forms of theatre in the nations of Africa – ‘experimental’, that is, in their shared rejection of the imposed colonial heritage of westernized forms, and the common attempt to revitalize indigenous cultural traditions while making them relevant to present and future development priorities. Ross Kidd, who has worked and written widely in this field, here provides a case study of just one ‘Theatre for Development’ workshop, held in a small Zimbabwe village in August 1983. A member of the secretariat of the International Popular Theatre Alliance. Ross Kidd is also an advisory editor of NTQ, and will be contributing a full survey of the range of popular theatre activity in the Third World to a forthcoming issue.
Adding Style to Substance: the American Actor Finds a Voice
Authors: Harrop John
Published: January 2009

Slowly, the focus of creative and critical interest in American theatre has shifted from Broadway ‘product’ to the work presented by the non-profit theatres of the regional centres – work which has not only continued and developed the native naturalistic tradition, but embraced the best of the world repertoire, past and present. Method acting, adapted from Stanislavski to produce a distinctive but limited school of interiorized performance, proved inadequate to meet the increased demands of this range of work; and in this essay John Harrop examines the process by which university and conservatory training has come to accept that ‘style’ is not a sort of applied veneer, but a matter of finding the appropriate response to the linguistic and physical requirements of any play. Presently Head of the Professional Training Programme for the BFA in Drama at the University of California, Santa Barbara, John Harrop is himself a professional actor on the regional theatre circuit. An advisory editor of NTQ, and a frequent contributor to the old Theatre Quarterly, he is also the author (with Robert Cohen) of Creative Play Direction and (with Sabin Epstein) of Acting with Style.
Audience Disruption in the Theatre of the Weimar Republic
Authors: Jordan James
Published: January 2009

Disruption of plays by their audiences has not been an uncommon occurrence in theatre history, but the received wisdom has it that rioting more or less went out of fashion once the house lights could be lowered for the performance. But the combination in the theatre of the Weimar Republic of the politically radical and artistically experimental drama of inter-war Germany with the high political tensions of the times proved an explosive one. The frequent audience disturbances of the period were, however, less the spontaneous expression of genuine indignation than a carefully planned and orchestrated attempt to suppress radical art and opinion. In this article, James Jordan, a member of the Department of German at the University of Warwick, traces the course of theatrical disruption as a tactic of emergent Nazism – and the reactions to it of the theatres, the playwrights, and a too-often-myopic judiciary.
Soul in the System: on Meaning and Mystique in Stanislavski and A. C. Bradley
Authors: Rayner Alice
Published: January 2009

Although literary criticism has moved on since the work of A. C. Bradley, his Shakespearian Tragedy (1904) is still regarded as the greatest achievement of the ‘biographical’ approach to dramatic characterization – and a reprint of that classic work, with a new introduction by John Russell Brown, has just appeared from Macmillan. But the teachings of his close contemporary Stanislavski remain more widely disseminated than disputed, though they spring from very similar assumptions and concerns. Alice Rayner, an assistant professor at University of California, Irvine, investigates what the writings of the two men had in common, how their insights and approaches can be mutually revealing – and how some of their underlying beliefs can be the cause of mystification.
Broadway and the Necessity for ‘Bad Theatre’
Authors: Kauffmann Stanley
Published: January 2009

Is Broadway necessary? As the focus for new writing and major experimental work in the USA shifts ever further from the old theatre district around Times Square – first to off- and then to off-off-Broadway, more recently to the flourishing regional theatres – many critics have come to regard Broadway either as an economic anachronism, failing to perpetuate past glories, or simply as an irrelevance to ‘real’ theatre. Yet Stanley Kauffmann argues that a focal point for a nation's theatre is more than the sum of sometimes fraying parts, and works on the imagination in ways that cannot be evaluated by the fragmentary assessment of succeeding productions; and here he analyses the ‘organism’ that Broadway remains, and the function it performs. Stanley Kauffmann has been theatre critic for the New York Times, the New Republic, and the Saturday Review, while the most recent of his full-length works is Theater Criticisms (1984).
‘A Faithful Betrayal of Performance’: Notes on the Use of Video in Theatre
Authors: de Marinis Marco
Published: January 2009

Video recording has recently become an accessible, unobtrusive, and increasingly inexpensive way of making a permanent record of theatrical performances. This might seem to anticipate a revolution in theatre studies, once the theatre of the present has become the object of study by future generations: yet little thought has been given to the dramaturgical or the pedagogic implications of this new tool. How, for example, will the medium affect the message it transmits, by the way in which it makes permanent what is in essence ephemeral, and ‘fixes’ what is constantly changing? Marco de Marinis here offers some tentative thoughts about the ‘how’ and ‘why’ of the audiovisual recording of theatre, intended not so much to present a definitive methodology as to clear the ground of some prevailing mistakes and misconceptions. His paper was first presented to a round-table at the Prato Centre for Theatre Semiotics in February 1983.
NTQ Checklist No. 1: John McGrath
Authors: Page Malcolm
Published: January 2009

A series of nearly two dozen ‘Theatre Checklists’ appeared as supplements to the old series of Theatre Quarterly, recording biographical, performance, and bibliographical information in accessible form about a wide range of mainly living playwrights. The format was subsequently extended by Simon Trussler for the ‘Writers on File’ series he now edits for Methuen London, of which the first six titles have recently appeared. However, it was felt that the former style of checklist would still provide a valuable source of information for writers not scheduled for early inclusion in the new series, expecially when this complemented other forms of documentation in the journal: and this first ‘NTQ Checklist’ on the work of John McGrath thus appears alongside Tony Mitchell's interview with the playwright. Its compiler, Malcolm Page, teaches in the English Department of Simon Fraser University, British Columbia. Besides contributing several of the earlier series of ‘Theatre Checklists’. Malcolm Page has published widely in the field of modern British drama: his study of John Arden appeared last year from Twayne, and his volume on Arden was among the first of the ‘Writers on File’ from Methuen.
Zen and the Art of Acting
Authors: Cairns Adrian
Published: January 2009

As a philosophy which is in effect a way of life. Zen has offered insights into most aspects of human activity from the martial arts to motorcycle maintenance. Here, Adrian Cairns, associate principal of the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, analyzes the ways in which, despite their widely different origins, development, and purposes, the tenets of an eastern philosophy actually mesh with the principles common to most western styles of acting.
After the Wave: Australian Drama since 1975
Authors: Fitzpatrick Peter
Published: January 2009

THE PUBLICATION of Theatre Quarterly's feature on Australian theatre in its Summer 1977 number seemed at the time one of a number of tokens of the coming of age of ‘the new Australian drama’. It is probably a truer sign of maturity that the present revisiting of the subject offers a form of international recognition which, though still very welcome, seems now a less important and alluring prospect. Australia's cultural cringe – the over-dependence on the models and approval of the parent country which was one of our more notorious legacies of colonialism – is not as noticeable in the theatre these days as it was even in the mood of heady self-conscious nationalism of the early 'seventies.
Sidetrack: Discovering the Theatricality of Community
Authors: Burvill Tom
Published: January 2009

In the interview above, Malcolm Blaylock referred to Sidetrack, a community theatre company in the inner-western suburbs of Sydney, as ‘arguably the best company in Australia’. Here, Tom Burvill examines some of the company's recent work, and sets it in the context of an understanding of community theatre which he traces back to Brecht and Walter Benjamin. Tom Burvill, who has himself acted as a dramaturg for Sidetrack, lectures in English and linguistics at Macquarie University.
A Pictorial Retrospective, 1949–84
Authors: Ensemble Berliner
Published: January 2009

On 7 October 1949 the German Democratic Republic came into being, and on the same day the Berliner Ensemble was founded. The fortieth anniversary celebrations, held in October 1984, thus coincided with the anniversary celebrations of the world-famous theatre company, the jewel in the crown of the new state. To commemorate that anniversary. NTQ has assembled a panoramic montage that traces the development of the Berliner Ensemble from its beginnings to the present day.
Edward Bond Directs ‘Summer’ at the Cottesloe, 1982
Authors: Mathers Pete
Published: January 2009

The early issues of the original Theatre Quarterly carried extensive coverage of the work of Edward Bond – a conscious editorial emphasis, which it became less important to maintain as Bond's work acquired its present international recognition and a corresponding share of critical attention. Yet the very distinctiveness of Bond's dramaturgy demands a no less distinctive approach from its critics – notably, a recognition and evaluation of the many non-literary strands of the ‘text’ as performed, especially when under the author's own direction. Pete Mathers, who teaches in the Film and Drama Division of Bulmershe College, here attempts to assess one of Bond's most recent plays, Summer, in close relationship to its original production by Bond himself, at the National's Cottesloe Theatre in 1982, examining every element through which its audiences experienced that production – including the poster and programme, as well as the more clearly crucial ingredients of design, performance, and the ‘gests’ through which they interconnect.
‘Othello’ in Poland: Notes from a Director's Diary
Authors: Harrison Wilfred
Published: January 2009

In 1980 Wilfred Harrison was invited to Poland to direct Shakespeare's Othello, of which the Polish playwright Bohdan Drozdowski had prepared a translation. The following account. taken from the diary Harrison kept of rehearsals at the Wilama Horzycy Theatre in Tourn, decribes the encounter between an experienced British director and his Polish company from the first reading on 29 January to the opening night on 2 March, reveating some intriguing differences between two cultures andtwo conceptions of theatrical converntion. Wilfred Harrison was director for thirteen years of the Octagon Theatre, Botton, having earlier been founding-director of the moblie Century Theatre. Now a freeiance, he was awarded a Churchill Fellowship in 1974, and has continued to travel Widely: his Othello earned him the Amicus Poloniae award in 1981, and also an invitation to direct in Bulgaria, where the production tourned.
The Théâtre du Soleil, Part Two: the Road to Cambodia
Authors: Kiernander Adrian
Published: January 2009

One theatre company alone in France, since the end of Vilar's Théâtre National Populaire, continues to make us consider the relationships between theatre and life, the place of theatre in society, its ability to modify the order of things in some way. It is the Théâtre du Soleil, guided by Ariane Mnouchkine.

THE SEARCH for a contemporary popular theatre which has occupied the Théâtre du Soleil almost since its foundation 22 years ago has led the company at various times into innovations in both subject matter and performance style. Their latest production,The Terrible but Unfinished History of Norodom Sihanouk, King of Combodia, breaks new ground in both areas.
Czech Theatre from the National Revival to the Present Day
Authors: Day Barbara
Published: January 2009

Our knowledge (or pervasive ignorance) of theatre in Czechoslovakia is. sadly, still shaped in part by its being perceived as a faraway country of which we know little – almost as little as when Chamberlain thus identified it at the time of Munich. But there is also the fact that its theatre has been distinguished less by the work of individual dramatists than through collective creation, through ‘small forms’ such as cabaret, and through scenography and other aspects of technical innovation. While fully analyzing such features of Czech theatre, Barbara Day relates them to the political and social conditions of a country in which various forms of repression and censorship have made it difficult for the all-too-identifiable dramatist to become spokesperson for a national theatre. Having herself lived in Czechoslovakia for several periods between 1965 and 1969, Barbara Day returned to the study of Czech theatre in 1980, when she read for a research degree at Bristol University, also collaborating with the University's drama department in staging a Czechoslovak Festival in Bristol during October 1985.
Abraham and Human Sacrifice: the Exfoliation of Medieval Drama in Aztec Mexico
Authors: Potter Robert
Published: January 2009

Among the least expected (and least examined) aspects of the Spanish conquest of the Aztec empire in Mexico was its ‘export’ of a neo-medieval form of religious drama. The devastation wrought by the conquistadores upon an ancient civilization should not, however, blind us to the extreme cruelty involved in Aztec forms of worship; and in the following article, Robert Potter both outlines the ‘dramatic’ qualities of such sacrificial spectacles, and shows how the Spaniards, in their attempts to convert the Aztecs to Christianity, employed their own forms of ‘sacrificial drama’ for the purpose – utilizing, for example.The Sacrifice of Abrahamfor their didactic ends, while also assimilating some elements from the supplanted cultural forms. Robert Potter, who teaches in the Department of Dramatic Art in the University of California, Santa Barbara, is author ofThe English Morality Play(1975), and of many articles on medieval and renaissance drama. He prepared the present paper for the colloquium of the Societe Internationale pour I'Etude du Théâtre Médiéval at Perpignan in July 1986.
Seven Anarchists I Have Known: American Approaches to Dario Fo
Authors: Davis R. G.
Published: January 2009

In the final issue of the original series of Theatre Quarterly, TQ40 (1981), R. G. Davis described his experiences directing the plays of Dario Fo in Canada and the USA, focusing mainly on his work with We Won't Pay! We Won't Pay! Here, he looks not only at his own but at the half-dozen other productions of Fo's Accidental Death of an Anarchist which have so far been presented in North America – and finds himself, in retrospect, critical of his own work, as well as that of others. He concludes that it is impossible to attempt Fo's plays properly without at least an understanding of the political point of view he sums up as ‘anarcho-communist’ – a point of view which must communicate through the leading players. A regular contributor to the present and its predecessor journal, R. G. Davis, who founded the San Francisco Mime Troupe in the sixties, is presently teaching at San Francisco State University, reviewing for the magazine of the California Confederation of the Arts (by whose kind permission the following article is reprinted), and is now engaged in staging his own adaptation of llya Ehrenburg's The Life of an Automobile, as an ‘imagistic theatre’ production.
Exploring the Limitless Depths: Mike Alfreds Directs Chekhov
Authors: Allen David
Published: January 2009

‘Deadly British productions of Chekhov remain all too common.’ Or so suggests David Allen, who finds in the Chekhov productions of Mike Alfreds a refreshing recognition of the distinctively ‘Russian’ qualities of the plays, and an ability to render these in terms of the choices available to British actors. Mike Alfreds founded the Shared Experience company in 1975, and in Theatre Quarterly No. 39 (1981). Clive Barker interviewed him and members of the company on the processes of collective creation through which most of their productions then evolved: the present feature thus in part reflects Alfreds's own developing interest in working on ‘fixed’ scripts, both with Shared Experience, for whom he directed Three Sisters earlier this year, and in his work as guest director of The Cherry Orchard, first for Oxford Playhouse in 1982, and subsequently for the National Theatre at the Cottesloe, in 1985. In the following interview, Mike Alfreds's own perceptions of his work are intercut with author David Allen's observations during rehearsals, and the subsequent reactions of the critics.
Stanislavski, Creativity, and the Unconscious
Authors: Schmitt Natalie Crohn
Published: January 2009

As Alice Reyner's paper on Stanislavski and Bradley in NTQ 4 illustrated, Stanislavski remained very much a man of his own time, however enduring his approach to acting has proved. Here, Natalie Crohn Schmitt examines one of the concepts most crucial to ‘the system’ – a concept which is in its essentials, however, derived from nineteenth-century ideas, now being challenged, about the relationship between creativity and the unconscious. Pointing out that Stanislavski himself believed that his ‘system’ was simply the application of natural laws to acting technique, the author shows Stanislavski's indebtedness to the psychological theories of Théodule Armand Ribot, which interpreted all human behaviour in terms of ‘an aim towards fixed ends’. One of the reasons for the decline in influence of Stanislavski's system thus reflects, she argues, the growing belief that creativity is ‘process’, its ends ‘continually redefined by the actions, and vice-versa’ – and the author suggests examples of such a non-Stanislavskian approach among contemporary theatre companies. Natalie Crohn Schmitt is associate professor of theatre in the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her earlier essays have appeared in a wide range of journals, and she has just completed a full-length study,Actors on the Stage of Life. The present paper was written under a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
The Benefits of ‘Marginalization’
Authors: Dobson Warwick
Published: January 2009

DAVID HORNBROOK'S intelligent and lucid account of the problems which have beset the drama in education community during the last thirty years has a compelling look to it. In Part One of ‘Drama, Education and the Politics of Change’ (NTQ 4), the historical analysis is astute and the questions posed at the end are important and pressing ones. I should lik, however, to confine my own obsrevations to the issues raised in Part Two of the paper (NTQ 5), where of offers specific proposals for future developments, because it is here that the argument falters.
‘Verbatim Theatre’: Oral History and Documentary Techniques
Authors: Paget Derek
Published: January 2009

‘Verbatim Theatre’ has been the term utilized by Derek Paget during his extensive researches into that form of documentary drama which employs (largely or exclusively) tape-recorded material from the ‘real-life’ originals of the characters and events to which it gives dramatic shape. Though clearly indebted to sources such as the radio ballads of the 'fifties, and to the tradition which culminated in Joan Littlewood's Oh what a Lovely War, most of its practitioners acknowledge Peter Cheeseman's work at Stoke-on-Trent as the direct inspiration - in one case, as first received through the ‘Production Casebook’ on his work published in the first issue of the original Theatre Quarterly (1971). Quite simply, the form owes its present health and exciting potential to the flexibility and unobtrusiveness of the portable cassette recorder - ironically, a technological weapon against which are ranged other mass technological media such as broadcasting and the press, which tend to marginalize the concerns and emphases of popular oral history. Here, Derek Paget, who is currently completing his doctoral thesis on this subject, discusses with leading practitioners their ideas and working methods. Derek Paget teaches English and Drama at Worcester College of Higher Education, and has also had practical theatre experience ranging from community work to the West End, and from Joan Littlewood's final season at Stratford East to the King's Head, Islington.
Kroetz's ‘Request Concert’ in India, Part Two: Bombay
Authors: Bharucha Rustom
Published: January 2009

In the first of this series of three articles, published in NTQ 11, the director Rustom Bharucha – born in India. but living and working mainly in New York – described how he initially became intrigued by the idea of transposing Franz Xaver Kroetz's play without words, Request Concert, concerning the last evening in the life of a very ordinary German woman, into a variety of Asian contexts. His ambition was first realized – in collaboration with fellow-director Manuel Lutgenhorst, and with valued assistance from the International School of Theatre Anthropology – in a production mounted in Calcutta, with the actress Joya Sen. The following account of the second production, in Bombay, illuminates both the varieties of Indian urban life and the varieties of theatrical experience, with fascinating insights into the nature of Bombay's competitive, media-saturated society, and the perceptions of the actress Sulabha Deshpande concerning her role and its technical requirements – and how both shed new light on this play and on the nature of theatricality.
The Politics, Packaging, and Potential of Performance Art
Authors: Davis R. G.
Published: January 2009

Is the ‘Performance art’ whose influence is pervasive in today's American theatre truly in the ‘tradition’ of the avant-garde – or merely modish? In an age where fashions, whether in theatre, clothing. or motor cars. are manufactured to facilitate the turnover necessary for mass-produced obsolescence, does ‘imagist’ theatre serve as a force for social change – or merely titillate palates as jaded by yesterday's art as by yesterday's styles? R. G. Davis looks at the ways in which visually- oriented forms of theatre have been constructed and received in America since the ‘happenings’ of the early ‘sixties – and at the changing political climate since that time, which has itself modified the impact of any artistic statement. He asks whether the progressive theatre worker should in today's reactionary climate regard such forms as suspect, or look for ways of harnessing them to the creation of a ‘dialectical view of pleasure’ through the multi-faceted potential of epic theatre. R. G. Davis, who was founding director of the San Francisco Mime Troupe in the 'sixties, is a leading director of Brecht and, more recently, of Dario Fo in the United States, and is currently directing his adaptation of llya Ehrenburg'sLife of the Automobile as an imagistc theatre piece. He has been a regular contributor to TQ and NTQ.
Spanish Political Theatre under Franco, Suarez, and Gonzalez
Authors: van Erven Eugène
Published: January 2009

In Spain, alone among western nations, political theatre has arguably had a real impact upon the course of social and political change – yet it remains little noticed or assessed in other countries. This article examines the leading Spanish theatre groups which operated first in Franco's declining years, under strict though often incompetent government censorship, then in the period of transition to democracy – and now facing very different challenges under a nominally socialist government. The author. Eugène van Erven, who contributed a study of the popular theatre movement in the Philippines to NTQ 10, focuses in particular on the work of El Joglars (‘The Jesters’) from Barcelona – a company which, under the leadership of Albert Boadella, has been performing almost continuously since 1962. at first subverting the censorship by evolving a style of ‘politicized mime’, then through controversial works on overtly political themes, and more recently in a ‘provocative’ style intended to engage audiences in an active process of questioning the consumerist direction being taken by a democratic Spain.
Kroetz's ‘Request Concert’ in India, Part Three: Madras
Authors: Bharucha Rustom
Published: January 2009

In the earlier instalments of this series of articles, published in NTQ 11 and 12, Rustom Bharucha described. first, how he and fellow director Manuel Lutgenhorst became fascinated with the idea of transposing Franz Xaver Kroetz's play without words. Request Concert, about the last evening in the life of a very ordinary German woman. into a variety of social contexts in his native India. He then provided detailed descriptions of the productions as realized under their direction in Calcutta and Bombay, revealing the very difficult kinds of insight they offered both into the theatrical potential of the play, and the different natures of the urban societies to which it was being adapted. The performances of Usha Ganguli in Calcutta and of Sulabha Deshpande in Bombay – themselves strongly contrasting both in actorly approach and in realization – were followed in Madras, in a production by Lutgenhorst. by the very different interpretation of the dancer Chandralekha, who brought to the play the energies and disciplines of Bharat Natyam. revealing yet other stylistic possibilities and sustaining a creative tension between these possibilities and the surface realism of the play.