bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Strategies for Avoiding Hip Impact During Sideways Falls
Authors: Robinovitch Stephen N , Inkster Lisa , Maurer Jessica , Warnick Brady
Published: April 2006

During a fall, hip fracture risk increases 30-fold if there is direct impact to the hip. We conducted sideways falling experiments and found that subjects were able to avoid hip impact by rotating forward or by rotating backward during descent. These simple safe-landing strategies should be considered in designing hip fracture prevention programs.

Introduction: Ninety percent of hip fractures in the elderly are caused by falls. During a fall, hip fracture risk is increased 6-fold by falling sideways (instead of backward or forward) and 30-fold if direct impact occurs to the hip. Previous studies suggest that impact to the hip during a sideways fall can be avoided by rotating forward during descent to land on the outstretched hands. Presumably, an alternative strategy for avoiding hip impact is to rotate backward to land on the buttocks. We conducted sideways falling experiments to test the hypothesis that each of these falling strategies is equally effective in allowing one to avoid hip impact.

Materials and Methods: Twenty-two young adult women participated in trials where they were released from an inclined standing position into a sideways fall onto a foam mattress. Subjects were instructed to “land as softly as possible” and to “avoid impacting the hip” by either rotating forward or rotating backward during descent.

Results: We found that absolute values of the hip proximity angle, which described how close the impact site was to the lateral aspect of the pelvis, were not different in forward rotation and backward rotation trials (mean = 55.9 ± 22.4° versus 61.5 ± 15.8°, respectively). However, compared with forward rotation trials, backward rotation trials involved greater pelvis impact velocity (2.95 ± 0.25 versus 2.45 ± 0.77 m/s; p = 0.001) and greater whole-body kinetic energy at impact (238 ± 70 versus 156 ± 90 J; p = 0.001).

Conclusions: These results suggest that, during a sideways fall, individuals can avoid impact to the hip and thereby lower the risk for hip fracture by rotating forward or by rotating backward during descent. These simple yet effective safe-landing strategies should be considered in designing exercise-based hip fracture prevention programs.
Mice Lacking Brain/Kidney Phosphate-Activated Glutaminase Have Impaired Glutamatergic Synaptic Transmission, Altered Breathing, Disorganized Goal-Directed Behavior and Die Shortly after Birth
Authors: Masson Justine , Darmon Michèle , Conjard Agnès , Chuhma Nao , Ropert Nicole , Thoby-Brisson Muriel , Foutz Arthur S. , Parrot Sandrine , Miller Gretchen M. , Jorisch Renée , Polan Jonathan , Hamon Michel , Hen René , Rayport Stephen
Published: April 2006

Neurotransmitter glutamate has been thought to derive mainly from glutamine via the action of glutaminase type 1 (GLS1). To address the importance of this pathway in glutamatergic transmission, we knocked out GLS1 in mice. The insertion of a STOP cassette by homologous recombination produced a null allele that blocked transcription, encoded no immunoreactive protein, and abolished GLS1 enzymatic activity. Null mutants were slightly smaller, were deficient in goal-directed behavior, hypoventilated, and died in the first postnatal day. No gross or microscopic defects were detected in peripheral organs or in the CNS. In cultured neurons from the null mutants, miniature EPSC amplitude and duration were normal; however, the amplitude of evoked EPSCs decayed more rapidly with sustained 10 Hz stimulation, consistent with an observed reduction in depolarization-evoked glutamate release. Because of this activity-dependent impairment in glutamatergic transmission, we surmised that respiratory networks, which require temporal summation of synaptic input, would be particularly affected. We found that the amplitude of inspirations was decreasedin vivo, chemosensitivity to CO2was severely altered, and the frequency of pacemaker activity recorded in the respiratory generator in the pre-Bötzinger complex, a glutamatergic brainstem network that can be isolatedin vitro, was increased. Our results show that although alternate pathways to GLS1 glutamate synthesis support baseline glutamatergic transmission, the GLS1 pathway is essential for maintaining the function of active synapses, and thus the mutation is associated with impaired respiratory function, abnormal goal-directed behavior, and neonatal demise.
Effects of Early Life Stress on [11C]DASB Positron Emission Tomography Imaging of Serotonin Transporters in Adolescent Peer- and Mother-Reared Rhesus Monkeys
Authors: Ichise Masanori , Vines Douglass C. , Gura Tami , Anderson George M. , Suomi Stephen J. , Higley J. Dee , Innis Robert B.
Published: April 2006

Peer-reared (PR) rhesus monkeys with early maternal separation later exhibit aggressiveness, impaired impulse control, alcohol abuse, and low CSF 5-hydroxyindoleacetic acid. This study compared regional brain serotonin transporter (SERT) binding between nine PR and seven mother-reared rhesus monkeys with [11C]DASB positron emission tomography (PET) imaging. Parametric images of binding potential (BP) (which is proportional toBmax/KD, in whichBmaxis transporter density andKDis dissociation constant) and relative blood flow (R1) were generated by the two-parameter multilinear reference tissue model.R1images were used for coregistration and normalization of PET parametric data to the magnetic resonance imaging template space. Group BP differences were analyzed voxelwise by Student'sttest in SPM2. Region of interest-based parameter values were also calculated to obtain the magnitude of regional BP differences between the two groups. For the PR group, SERT BP was decreased by 10–23% across a range of brain areas consisting of the raphe, thalamus, hypothalamus, caudate and putamen, globus pallidum, anterior cingulate gyrus, and medial temporal regions, including amygdala and hippocampus (cluster-level correctedp= 0.002). For the latter three regions, BP was decreased in the right hemisphere. These results agree with the hypothesis that early maternal deprivation affects the development of the serotonergic system and suggest that decreased serotonergic innervations in the critical brain regions may explain some of the behavioral and biochemical abnormalities in PR monkeys.
Hippocampal Lesion Prevents Spatial Relational Learning in Adult Macaque Monkeys
Authors: Banta Lavenex Pamela , Amaral David G. , Lavenex Pierre
Published: April 2006

The role of the hippocampus in spatial learning and memory has been extensively studied in rodents. Comparable studies in nonhuman primates, however, are few, and findings are often contradictory. This may be attributable to the failure to distinguish between allocentric and egocentric spatial representations in experimental designs. For this experiment, six adult monkeys received bilateral hippocampal ibotenic acid lesions, and six control subjects underwent sham surgery. Freely moving monkeys then foraged for food located in two arrays of three distinct locations among 18 locations distributed in an open-field arena. Multiple goals and four pseudorandomly chosen entrance points precluded the monkeys' ability to rely on an egocentric strategy to identify food locations. Monkeys were tested in two conditions. First, local visual cues marked the food locations. Second, no local cues marked the food locations, so that monkeys had to rely on an allocentric (spatial relational) representation of the environment to discriminate these locations. Both hippocampal-lesioned and control monkeys discriminated the food locations in the presence of local cues. However, in the absence of local cues, control subjects discriminated the food locations, whereas hippocampal-lesioned monkeys were unable to do so. Interestingly, histological analysis of the brain of one control monkey whose behavior was identical to that of the experimentally lesioned animals revealed a bilateral ischemic lesion restricted to the hippocampus. These findings demonstrate that the adult monkey hippocampal formation is critical for the establishment or use of allocentric spatial representations and that selective damage of the hippocampus prevents spatial relational learning in adult nonhuman primates.
The Precinematic Novel: Zola's La Beête humaine
Authors: BLOOD SUSAN
Published: April 2006

ABSTRACT This essay is a study of Zola's 1890 crime novel as it anticipates the aesthetics of cinema. Theoretical reflections on technology and violence are drawn from the works of Walter Benjamin and Reneé Girard.
Pay Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain: The Importance of Identity in Academic Writing
Authors: Williams Bronwyn T.
Published: April 2006

It is often believed that objective, rationalist, academic literacy leaves no room for issues of identity, and that anything remotely personal has, at best, a limited role to play in school. This belief reflects a clear and often widely accepted binary set of definitions: There is personal writing; there is academic writing. The two forms exist on their own, separate and identifiable. Issues of identity belong with personal writing but have no influence on academic writing, which is objective, detached, and analytic.

The author argues that the ease with which readers often construct these categories and boundaries of writing conceals the actual permeability of them. Just as writing that is traditionally considered personal can be rigorous and analytic, academic writing is always enmeshed in issues of identity.
Selection for Establishment Capacity in Reed Canarygrass
Authors: Casler M. D. , Undersander D. J.
Published: April 2006

Establishment of reed canarygrass (Phalaris arundinacea L.) is seriously impaired by relatively low seeding vigor and growth rate. Poor soil–seed contact, intense competition from annual weeds, and infrequent clipping during the establishment year exacerbate this problem. The objectives of this study were (i) to select reed canarygrass populations for establishment capacity in the presence of annual weeds, (ii) to evaluate progeny for progress from selection, and (iii) to determine mechanisms for improved establishment potential in selected populations. Two cycles of selection for survival under clipping and weed competition were completed, the first involving selection among spaced plants and the second involving selection within seeded plots. Selection for increased establishment capacity increased ground cover in October of the seeding year by 29% and tiller density in May of the following year by 36%, averaged over five cultivars. Seed mass consistently decreased with selection for increased establishment capacity, but emergence rate increased in all cultivars by an average of 18.1%. Three of the five cultivars (Palaton, Vantage, and Venture) responded to selection with increased shoot and/or root fresh mass, with shoot‐mass responses generally larger than root‐mass responses. Selected populations of Vantage and Venture also had small decreases in the time required for tiller initiation. Bellevue and Rival showed no responses of seedling traits to selection. Seedling fresh mass was the most important factor regulating genetic variability for establishment capacity, but there was some variation in the mechanism of improved establishment capacity among populations.
Genetic Variation for Agronomic and Fiber Properties in an Introgressed Recombinant Inbred Population of Cotton
Authors: Percy Richard G. , Cantrell Roy G. , Zhang Jinfa
Published: April 2006

Genetic variation available for the improvement of fiber properties is restricted in commercial upland cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L.). Resources for fiber improvement exist in G. barbadense L., but introgression of traits has been a limited success. The objectives of this study were to investigate the genetic variation and heritability of agronomic and fiber traits within a diverse recombinant inbred line (RIL) population created with a stable introgressed parent. The population (n = 98 lines) had as its parents NM24016, a stable G. hirsutum line with significant introgression from G. barbadense, and TM1, the G. hirsutum genetic standard. Yield, plant height, boll size, lint percentage, and fiber length, strength, micronaire, and elongation were measured in randomized, complete block tests at Las Cruces, NM, and Maricopa, AZ, in 2001 and 2002. Genotype coefficients of variation (CV) were highest for plant height and boll size. Among fiber traits, fiber length and micronaire produced the highest genotype CVs. Most traits (fiber elongation excepted) exhibited high broadsense heritability, ranging from 0.69 for lint yield to 0.92 for 2.5% span length. Transgressive segregants were identified for most traits. Fiber strength and 2.5% span length were favorably correlated (r = 0.59, P = 0.001) as were 2.5% span length and micronaire (r = −0.47, P = 0.001). The NM24016/TM1 RIL population presents valuable genetic variation for fiber quality improvement efforts in G. hirsutum.
Partial Dominance, Pleiotropism, and Epistasis in the Inheritance of the High‐Oleate Trait in Peanut
Authors: Isleib T. G. , Wilson R. F. , Novitzky W. P.
Published: April 2006

Earlier reports of the high‐oleate (low‐linoleate) trait in peanut (Arachis hypogaea L.) indicated that it was controlled by completely dominant gene action. However, linoleate content intermediate to that in low‐ and normal‐linoleate seeds was found among progeny when the trait was backcrossed into five virginia‐type cultivars, suggesting partial dominance of the gene controlling the trait. Although BC1F2 results were inconsistent across recurrent parents, data from the BC2F2 and BC3F2 populations of all crosses conformed to the 1:2:1 ratio expected under partial dominance. Quantitative analysis showed that fatty acid levels were affected by the background genotypes of the recurrent parents, suggesting that there are other genes that influence fatty acid. The ol gene exhibited pleiotropism by influencing not only oleate and linoleate, but also levels of palmitate, total C18 fatty acids, gadoleate, and total saturated fatty acids. The effects of the ol gene interacted with background genotype, particularly with the additive genetic contrast, suggesting epistasis in the general sense. Progeny testing of 59 putatively heterozygous and 41 homozygous normal BC2F2 plants indicated that the two genotypes could be distinguished accurately on the basis of linoleate level, suggesting that the ol gene can be moved by backcrossing using techniques appropriate for a dominant trait rather than a recessive trait.
Naturalism in Context
Authors: Esslin Martin
Published: April 2006

Nothing tastes staler than the revolutions of the day before yesterday; the bitter flavor of great expectations disappointed clings to them; they make us feel superior for having seen through their ridiculous pretensions and sorry for our. fathers and grandfathers for having been taken in by them. That Naturalism in the novel and in the theatre still leaves such an aftertaste on our own palates is, in a way, a tribute to the intensity of emotion it aroused in its day and the length of time during which it acquired and held a dominant position. After all: it was in the 1870's that Zola shocked the world with his new concept of Naturalism; Ibsen's Ghosts was first published in 1881; Strindberg's Father in 1887, Miss Julie in 1888; Hauptmann's Before Sunrise had its first performance in 1889; Chekhov's Seagull in 1896.
Film: The Illusion of Naturalism
Authors: Sarris Andrew
Published: April 2006

Jean-Luc Godard, that paragon of paradox, takes time out in La Chinoise to rewrite film history by challenging traditional notions of what is real and what is not real. Lumière, Godard argues through a mouthpiece character, was no more a pioneering realist than Méliès was a mere magician. Lumière did photograph the reality of trains steaming into a station or of workers filing out of a factory, but these were painterly subjects fashionable with the Impressionists of the late 19th century. By contrast, Méliès may have staged the state visit of a Balkan monarch to France with actors and fake sets, but nonetheless he transformed the cinema into a kind of Brechtian newsreel. Hence, Méliès came closer to reality and modernity through artifice than Lumière did through literal reproduction.
Strindberg and the Greater Naturalism
Authors: Sprinchorn Evert
Published: April 2006

How much of a Naturalist was Strindberg? It is true that he first made international reputation as one, but a few years later he turned to symbolism and created the proto-expressionistic works that won him another and perhaps greater reputation. And though The Father and Miss Julie are generally regarded as masterpieces of Naturalism, Zola, the chief apostle of the movement, found fault with The Father; and Miss Julie is less naturalistic than the preface Strindberg affixed to it would indicate. Miss Julie is the play that most nearly satisfies the requirements of Zola's naturalism. Strindberg labelled The Father simply “a tragedy,” but he gave Miss Julie the subtitle “a naturalistic tragedy.” This subtitle and the play's greater attention to physical detail are probably due to Zola's criticism of The Father.
Family of the f.p.: Notes on the Theatre of the Ridiculous
Authors: Brecht Stefan
Published: April 2006

This theatre has attracted little but unfavorable notice: it is slovenly, amateurish, silly, just boring; a put-on, really an actors’ lark; not art, certainly not serious art; a coterie occasion for a pariah in-group; by & for queers (not the nice kind, but drag queens & dykes & leather/motorbike/S&M hard trade); a display case for transvestites, pure camp, devoted to movie fetishism; anyhow just adolescent pornography; ritual enactment of an impotent humiliation of women (vicious, loveless); pointless, emotionally impactless, untheatrical; certainly devoid of social relevance; in sum, stupid & immoral.

The theatre of the ridiculous is an important theatre and theatre form.

I want to interpret here my impression of the theatre's theatrical impact, in the light of interviews with John Vaccaro, Charles Ludlam, Mary Woronow & some written pieces of Ronald Tavel's & Jack Smith's—keeping Freud, Sartre, Artaud, de Sade, Genet, Warhol & la pataphysique out of it.
“I Can't Get No Satisfaction”
Authors: Kott Jan
Published: April 2006

Clytaemnestra was murdered six days ago; the pyre on which her body burned is still warm. She murdered Agamemnon in the first year of the war; his tomb is some hundred yards from the palace, next to her tomb. Euripides’ Orestes begins at this moment. The war is over, at least onedirty and hateful war is over. Yesterday Menelaus disembarked in Nauplia and today, at dawn, Helen sneaked into the palace. “Home from Troy at last,” Menelaus says. “How happy I am to see this house once more.” I was astounded when, at the opening night of Orestes and at all following performances, the audience received this line, Menelaus’ first, with jeering laughter.

In his introduction to the translation, William Arrowsmith has underlined the most striking aspect of Orestes: in no other Greek plays, with the possible exception of Aristophanes, has anachronism as a method of political and artistic provocation been carried so far.
The New Playwrights’ Scene of the Sixties: Jerome Max is Alive and Well and Living in Rome…
Authors: Pasolli Robert
Published: April 2006

Late in 1960, soon after I came to New York to work in the theatre, I met my first disprized playwright, Jerome Max—26, largely self-educated, witty, poor, and unhappy. He had actually written something, unlike the neglected young novelists I had known, and when he finally allowed me to read his play, I thought it eccentric and very good. Max didn't think it was good at all, however, and he was full of pessimism about his prospects. But he was working on two new plays. When he finished them some months later and showed them to agents, producers, and directors, people started telling him that he was a good writer, and when a producer took an option on the new plays the point got through to him. Max took a leave from his job and lived on the option money.
Portrait of an Actor, Watching antiphonal feedback to the Living Theatre
Authors: McDermott Patrick
Published: April 2006

This is a recording. A man comes out on stage, stands down-center and begins to breathe. He stands there for a long time. His head is tilted slightly up, his eyes seeming to fix on a point in the balcony. His shoulders are down and his chest is not blown up, but his elbows ride high to the rear as if to suggest a soldier at attention. He wears a white sleeveless undershirt and untapered dungarees. And he doesn't move. Once or twice he wobbles an inch. Perhaps he does this deliberately: homing, by approximation, on the dead center of his gravity. For the rest, the only movement you see on stage is the occasional rippling and stretching of his undershirt across the bellows of his breath. No one can say this man's presence is sympathetic; and no one can say it is hostile.
Dionysus in 69, from Euripides’ The Bacchae
Authors: Brecht Stefan ,   The Performance Group
Published: April 2006

The Performing Garage: a beautiful cube of space, sprinkled with high platforms & towers made of raw two by-fours which but for their air of negligence would announce an acrobatic show. Individual gymnastics, each gymnast sole, randomly distributed. Their relentless contortions get them into a sweat—physical translations of introspection. Here & there a little acrobatics, action.

From this laborious anarchy the play powerfully emerges on a natural free rhythm. Couples form, the chance proximities of gymnasts turn into the interaction of performers. The timing of several trigger actions cuing others. Progressively assembling the play has been left up to the individual performers. Barely audible, mumbled chanted lines from a translation of Euripides sound out here & there, are repeated, taken over by others. Though they belong to parts they are not the property of any individual actor. The lines are metric, their delivery is amateurish & affected—false speech.
Theatre in Chile: A Middle-Class Conundrum
Authors: Ehrmann Hans
Published: April 2006

The basic development of Chilean theatre has been from amateur to professional. In this there are strong similarities to the theatrical movements of Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil in the last thirty to forty years, but with one main difference: the renewal of modern Chilean theatre began in the universities, and these student groups in time became the theatrical establishment. This process, its initial aims accomplished, has now reached a dead end. And once again there is a search for new approaches and objectives.

The evolution of our contemporary theatre began in 1941 with Cervantes’ La guarda cuidadosa and Valle Inclán's Ligazón, presented by a group of University of Chile students which became the Experimental Theatre; in 1943 the Catholic University began a similar venture: the Teatro de Ensayo under the direction of Pedro de la Barra. Commercial theatre in this country, however, goes back to the nineteenth century.
The Joker System: An Experiment by the Arena Theatre of São Paulo
Authors: Boal Augusto
Published: April 2006

After World War II, United States businessmen found it cheaper to run their own factories in Brazil, rather than ship goods from the U.S. They could profit from a low standard wage, and the factories would be closer to both the markets and the raw materials needed: steel, minerals, oil, etc. So it was decided to make São Paulo the largest industrial city in South America. U.S. money started pouring in, U.S. companies were granted enormous loans from Brazilian banks at low interest, and São Paulo soon became a prosperous city.

The nouveau-riche bourgeoisie, created by this boom, invited important European theatre companies and artists to perform in São Paulo. Brazilian artists began to imitate them and imported directors, mainly from Italy, to build and train theatre companies in São Paulo. As a result, actors began to resemble Italian actors and playwrights European playwrights.
Imagen de Caracas
Authors: Palacios Inocente , León Adriano González
Published: April 2006

Imagen de Caracas was presented in the east central part of the city at the specially constructed production/exhibition site, the Dispositivo Cuidad (Mechanical City). The project was the most ambitious effort made in Venezuela to integrate the arts, combining image, colors, forms, various stages and kinds of architecture, movement, music, sound, light, the spoken and written word: everything available in the new world of audio-visual expression. The work took two years of continuous labor to complete.

The principal objective was to tell the violent four-hundred-year history of our city. The film about Caracas’ history was divided in two parts: the first part, from the founding of Caracas through the beginning of the last century; the second, from 1800 until the present.
Fire
Authors: Dennison George
Published: April 2006

Peter Schumann's Fire(which I count among the finest plays I have seen), more than any play I have seen has the quality of prayer.

Prayer (for me) is a childhood memory, but I remember things like these: a peopling of death with human forms; a vague yet affecting sense of the scale of things; a notion of the preciousness of life, and of its vulnerability; a touch of fear, since fate is everywhere and has little to do with one's wishes.

I have tended to think of prayer under its aspects of supplication and faith. I am more impressed now by the rationality of prayer. To kneel, to bow one's head, and then to rise is to affirm, in a profoundly rational spirit, one's human place in a world only in small part human. If prayers are addressed to God or to gods they nevertheless signify to other men that we have arrived at some sort of outer limit.
The Censor in the Ivy
Authors: Oliver William I.
Published: April 2006

Today many states have no theatre censorship laws. When laws governing propriety in the arts were enacted (for example, in California in 1872), they anticipated censorable activity in literature, sculpture, and the visual arts, but never in theatre: such was the powerful, silent entente of gentility between audience and performer which bound theatre to its middle-class audiences. But today, even in much popular theatre, a measure of conflict is expected as part of the theatrical experience. Playwrights and theatre people, as never before in this country, are outspoken morally, philosophically, sexually, and politically. With neither tradition nor legal precedent to act as a guide, American theatre faces the possibility of powerful and unreasoned censorship.

Professional theatre in New York has had few censorship problems, most of them on grounds of obscenity, not politics or morality. A greater threat is censorship on campus.
On Bunraku
Authors: Barthes Roland
Published: April 2006

Bunraku puppets are up to three feet tall. They are little men or women with mobile limbs, hands, and mouths; each puppet is moved by three visible men, who surround it, support it, accompany it. The master puppeteer controls the puppet's upper body and right arm; his face is uncovered, smooth, light, impassive, cold as “a white onion which has just been washed” (Basho). His two assistants are dressed in black; cloths cover their faces. One, gloved but with his thumb left uncovered, holds a large, stringed, scissors-like extension, with which he moves the puppet's left arm and hand; the other, crouching, supports the puppet's body and steadies its course. These men move along a shallow trench, which leaves their bodies visible. The scenery is behind them, as in the theatre. On a platform to one side are the musicians and narrators; their role is to express the text (the way one squeezes a fruit).
Theatre after 1949
Authors: Jun Uchiyama
Published: April 2006

The “modernization” of Chinese culture began with the literary revolution of 1917 and the consequent May Fourth Movement of 1919. This first great cultural revolution in modern China, aimed at making Chinese culture more international, was led by men like Hu Shi, who had studied in the United States and Japan. Traditional Chinese drama came under attack as an “entertainment” representing the conventional culture. Peking Opera in particular was regarded as a stronghold of such culture, despite the experiments of Mei Lan-fang, who tried vigorously to modernize Peking Opera un productions using modern costumes and to reevaluate the Peking Opera from a modern viewpoint.

Traditional Chinese drama, which was usually sung, was to be replaced by a “spoken drama” (Hua-chu), based on the naturalistic Western plays introduced into China in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Commune The Performance Group
Authors: Gilman Richard
Published: April 2006

In the commentary which accompanies the recently published book of photographs of Dionysus in 69. Richard Schechner writes: “Most important by far is our struggle to expose our feelings, to reveal ourselves, to be open, receptive, vulnerable; to use impulse and feeling in our work. And to believe that excellence in art is, ultimately, a function of wholeness as a human being.” Although the members of the company have mostly changed from those of the earlier production, there isn't any reason to suppose that the Performance Group doesn't want its new work, Commune, to exemplify the same qualities and live in the same spirit.

For the most part it does live this way, or at least tries to mount such an existence. And so it directly raises all the questions which would only be present in a negative form if the wofk were cold, inhibited, aloof, and protected—the qualities, presumably, of the kind of formal, institutionalized theatre the Performance Group has set itself to oppose.
Little Trips: Documentation
Authors: Kirby Victoria Nes
Published: April 2006

Norman Taffel's Little Trips was presented at 70 Grand Street in New York City on the ground floor of a loft building. Passing through a narrow hallway, one entered a small room where some people sat on cots and benches; others stood. Everyone was asked to pay a contribution. At approximately 9 p.m., a young girl in leotard and tights (or a boy in dungarees, depending on who was playing the role that evening) entered from the adjoining room and addressed the waiting audience. “Good evening. Would you please come inside.” (Note: The dialogue quoted in this description is only approximate, since the exact words changed at each performance. This description is written about performances when the Guide was played by a girl; performances did not change significantly when a boy played the part.)

The audience followed her through the door into a large, well-lit room. The high ceiling was supported by three pillars making a line across the center of the space.
About Little Trips
Authors: Taffel Norman
Published: April 2006

The premise for developing Little Trips was an actress “tripping out” while working with an audience. Her age: 19. The stress of performing and the acid would combine and cause her to stop the ritual “montage” based on “the life of Cassandra, prophetess of the Trojan War.” What fascinated me was the dissolution of hard, ritualistic theatre into something loose and spontaneous, with people really responding to each other in the immediacy of the present moment.

In Dionysus in 69, the actors acted at the audience. The two times that I saw it, the audience participation was an effect. There was no real place for the audience within the structure of the play. What is the point of getting an audience to participate if the actor cannot or will not incorporate the audience's response? If the actor never lets this response affect his next action?
Mise au Centre
Authors: Baal Frédéric
Published: April 2006

If one could represent in space the vision of a Zen garden, it would be the Arizona desert. But one cannot represent in space the vision of a Zen garden. Thus, the Arizona desert is neither a Zen garden nor the vision one could have of it.

Within the last 10 years, many directors of “gestural theatre” have attempted to dispense with the author. As a result, the theatre is used as a vehicle for conveying a “message.” That is the job of newspapers, theses, political speeches, and this very text. But art finds its essence only in the ambivalence of all things and their signs, in their unfathomable ambiguity.

Some directors rely on classical culture. We expect from a true creator an exploration of the unknown that opens up into the infinite, not a rehashing of mummified mythologies.

Directors appear unwilling to accept their dependence upon the author, who is bound by everything written before his time, by the state of the language in his time.
A Myth Vivisected
Authors: Puzyna Konstanty
Published: April 2006

An account of Apocalypsis cum figuris has long been overdue. It is total theatre, collectively created, no sooner thought through than orchestrated for the proper instruments, for the specific members of the company. It is the most mature fruit so far produced by the ascetic labors of the Wroclaw Theatre Laboratory. In any case, it is an event, one of more than local interest, and we don't get those every day of the week. It needs, therefore, to be recorded as accurately as possible before it slips out of focus. Fair enough, only how? Seldom does something so straightforward prove so baffling.

Ordinarily in describing a play we can always fall back on the script, on the lines and the plot. In Apocalypsis there are only the bare bones of a scenario. In the reading, the text is a haphazard jumble of quotations from the Bible, liturgical chants, Dostoevski, T. S. Eliot, Simone Weil.
About the People Show
Authors: Long Mark
Published: April 2006

When The People Show began in 1966, there was no experimental theatre in Britain, not any. There were no groups. The only theatre in London was the West End, and that was it. There was only one theatre-in-the-round in Britain, the Victoria at Stoke-on-Trent, run by a guy called Stephen Joseph, who was a beautiful guy, but who later died. He was the only one really. So when we started, it was very exciting.

I had studied theatre at a teachers’ training college called Trent Park. We didn't study much acting technique, but we studied a lot of improvisation technique, because that is what you need with children. It was a very useful thing to have done. Trent Park was a music, art and drama college, and we found ourselves, while there, working all the time with music students and art students. From those days onward a lot of values, in a way, were knocked down for us.
Victory Over the Sun
Authors: Tomashevsky K.
Published: April 2006

Victory Over the Sun was a very important performance in the early history of the avant-garde. Produced in December, 1913, in St. Petersburg, Russia, it was primarily the work of the three men pictured above: the composer Mikhail Matyushin (seated left), the designer Kazimir Malevich (seated right) and the playwright Alexei (Alexander) Kruchenykh (lying down). (Note the setting, which appears to consist of unmatched drop and wings hung upside down. It is not known whether this arrangement was actually used in Victory Over the Sun, but in the sixth scene of the opera, there is the unusual stage direction: “[the Fat Man] peeps inside the watch: the tower the sky the streets are upside down—as in a mirror.”

One significant aspect of the production is that it was to this work that Malevich attributed the origin of Suprematism. Apparently he painted at least one extremely simplified non-objective backdrop for the performance: his sketch for the black and white square divided diagonally is reproduced at the right.
Directing Handke
Authors: Peymann Claus
Published: April 2006

I would like to explain a few aspects of Peter Handke's plays, not from the critic's point of view, but from that of direct practical work. By way of introducing my credentials for this task, let me say that I directed the world premiere in West Germany of Offending the Audience in 1966 and subsequent world premieres up to and including The Ride Across Lake Constance.

For those unfamiliar with the German theatre scene, it can be stated that Handke's works are played today on stages all over the country. Their premieres are the highlights of the season. This has given the critic cause to reflect on the theatre in general and the phenomenon of Handke in particular. For some of Handke's plays are being performed in numbers similiar to the musical successes on Broadway, and his books and essays can be found at the top of best-seller lists. And then, too, his works are just beginning to reach the stages of other countries in Europe, not to mention America.
The Delsarte Method: 3 Frontiers of Actor Training
Authors: Kirby E. T.
Published: April 2006

Francois Delsarte (1811-1871) was the founder of a system of “Applied Aesthetics” in which physical and vocal gestures for the orator were codified in terms of a simple, extensive, highly unified pattern. His influence on the theatre was augmented by his only American pupil, Steele Mackaye, who introduced the system to the United States. It became the basic actor-training method and was extremely popular in various social uses in the twenty five years after 1870. Mackaye's own contribution to the system, its development in terms of “Harmonic Gymnastics,” played a significant part in the actor training and in the related application of these principles to physical culture. From 1870 to 1920, the Delsarte System of Oratory was perhaps the most popular single method for speech training in the United States.
Black Theatre in California
Authors: Wilkerson Margaret
Published: April 2006

For many years California has been considered a land of Canaan for black people. As one of the last frontiers in this country, the Golden State has been viewed as a place of unending sunshine, opportunity, and material fulfillment. The use of blacks in the Hollywood-based film centers was frequently viewed as opportunity rather than exploitation. It took the social turmoil of the 1960's to awaken many blacks in California to the fact that their plight was little different from that of their Southern relative or Eastern brother, that their sunlit cities were becoming crumbling ghettos ringed by white suburbs.

Black-run theatres were the answer of some, as the arts became a vehicle for informing, unifying and inspiring black people. Between the years 1964 and 1968, a number of groups were established, many still functioning today. This report is based on eight of these groups, all originally located in the Los Angeles and San Francisco Bay areas during the late sixties and early seventies.
The New Lafayette Theatre: Anatomy of a Community Art Institution
Authors: Gant Lisbeth
Published: April 2006

Black theatre ain't no easy thing. That's the first problem. Mainly because it means a whole group of black people coming together for a long time to decide on what a black theatre is and then to get one going. And to keep it going. Now I'm not trying to come down on any of the myriad number of small groups that are no longer with us today, but let's face it, the reality of black theatre has got to be more than a gleam in some director's eye.

It's people. Simple as that. It can't be the sets, because street theatre takes place virtually without any. It can't be the plays because some of the new rituals have a decidedly impromptu and spontaneous nature. It can't be the foundation grants—if it were that, we'd really be in trouble! It's people.
Black Movies/Black Theatre
Authors: Murray James P.
Published: April 2006

Film has become a threat to small community theatre groups, such as those in Harlem. Even a group like the New Lafayette, which has an international reputation and presents three to four major plays a year, has found its best productions playing to half-empty houses. Despite maintaining high artistic standards, black theatre groups have encountered tremendous frustration in trying to develop a large, black audience that will come back show after show. The fact is that black theatre today is not thriving—only surviving. And movies can assume a great deal of the blame.

It is estimated that blacks spend $120 million annually at the film box offices in the United States. Some 50 feature films aimed at a black audience were produced between 1970 and 1972. And an average of four a month were released over this past summer. Down the street from the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, where Don't Play us Cheap spent three months, the effect of the so-called “black film boom“ on Broadway was overwhelming.
Thing of a Day
Authors: Ryan Paul Ryder
Published: April 2006

He who wins, of a sudden, some noble prize

In the rich years of youth

Is raised high with hope; his manhood takes wings;

He has in his heart what is better than wealth.

But brief is the season of man's delight.

Soon it falls to the ground; some dire decision uproots it.

—Thing of a day! such is man; a shadow in a dream.

Pindar (Part of a Fifth Century ode written to celebrate a boy's victory in an Olympic wrestling match at Delphi.)
Toward Abstraction: The Vicinal's Tramp
Authors:   The Théâtre Laboratoire Vicinal, Kirby Michael
Published: April 2006

Tramp, one of the recent productions of the Théâtre Laboratoire Vicinal of Brussels, clearly exemplifies the main concern of the group: a tendency toward abstraction embodied in a nonexplicit use of language/sound and an emphasis on objects and the physicality of the actor. Although related to the work of Grotowski in the austere “poverty” of its means and its attempt to exploit as fully as possible the physical presence of the performer, Tramp is quite different in its approach to literary content. While story and character have provided a core or focus for Grotowski's Polish Laboratory Theatre presentations, the Vicinal has abandoned these elements almost totally. According to Frédéric Flamand, the director of Tramp and an actor in it, “the strength and magic of the play come from the concentration into a unified energy of almost-abstract scenic moments ….”
Tristan Tzara's Handkerchief of Clouds
Authors: Robbins Aileen
Published: April 2006

There exists, after Dada, quite a “Dada sequel” of which Relâche and 391 (the last series), like Handkerchief of Clouds, constitute the first manifestations, and which extends to the present day.

Michel Sanouillet in Dada à Paris

Mouchoir de Nuages (Handkerchief of Clouds) by Tristan Tzara, the leader of the Dada movement, was staged in 1924 as Dada was dying. Perhaps, as Michel Sanouillet suggests, the movement was already dead, but the first manifesto of Surrealism, the movement that replaced Dada, was not to be published until the Autumn of 1924. Handkerchief of Clouds was first performed on May 17, 1924, at the Theatre de la Cigale as part of the “Soirées de Paris,” sponsored by Count Etienne de Beaumont.
David Gordon's The Matter
Authors: Smith Karen
Published: April 2006

David Gordon's The Matter was performed on April 1st and 2nd, 1972, in a large white room at the Merce Cunningham dance studio in New York City. Spectators and performers, indistinguishable from one another except for an occasional nude body, were let in together about twenty minutes before the dance was to begin. The room was empty: mirrors spanned a wall at one end; a stage with steps jutted a little into the space at the other end. The floor was large and well-lighted.

The distinction between performers and nonperformers was noticeable only as individuals found places to sit: spectators sat at what could be considered the front of the performing area on and around church pews facing the dance floor and along the opposite (back) wall on window ledges; performers, most carrying unobtrusive bundles of clothing and shoes, settled along the mirrored wall on the dance floor.
The AgitProp and Circus Plays of Vladimir Mayakovsky
Authors: Deák František
Published: April 2006

The best known of Mayakovsky's plays are Vladimir Mayakovsky, A Tragedy (1913), Mystery-Bouffe (the second version, 1921), The Bedbug (1928-29), and The Bathhouse (1930). These works appeared in 1968 in a book entitled The Complete Plays of Vladimir Mayakovsky. However, between 1920 and 1930 Mayakovsky wrote several other dramatic texts. Among these are And What If?… May First Daydreams in a Bourgeois Armchair, A Small Play About Priests Who Do Not Understand What Is Meant by the Holiday, How Some People Spend Time Celebrating Holidays (all three of these playlets were written in 1920 for May Day), The Championship of the Universal Class Struggle (written in 1920 for the circus), Yesterday's Exploit (playlet, 1921), Radio October (1926), and Moscow Is Burning (written in 1930 for the circus).
Spectator and Spectacle: The Theatre of Okhlopkov
Authors: Lenhoff Gail
Published: April 2006

Few artists have managed to play a leading role in the avant-garde for half a century without taking their share of barbs and innuendos. This holds particularly true for a director working within the sensitive, politicized milieu of Soviet theatre, and Nikolai Okhlopkov is no exception. His colleagues tended to regard him as a dangerous anomaly, someone who, like Kafka's Odradek, does no apparent harm to anyone, but whose mere survival is almost painful.

Western theatregoers are highly suspicious of anyone working in a political theatre that upholds the Establishment. Soviet reviewers, both those who support Okhlopkov and those who deplore his “social irresponsibility,” are obliged to discuss one major question: does his theatre reflect the essence of life in an evolving socialist society? Further complications arise from the fact that any director subsidized by the state is continually called upon to affirm the expectations of both spectator and sponsor.
Lyubimov/Yevtushenko: Under the Skin of the Statue of Liberty
Authors: Shore Rima
Published: April 2006

The following account by Rima Shore of Yevgeny Yevtushenko's Under the Skin of the Statue of Liberty is based on her viewing of the performance in Moscow on January 7, 1973. The production was directed by Yuri Lyubimov. The small Dramatic Theatre on Taganka Square, where the performance was staged, was founded in 1946. A. K. Plotnikov, the Theatre's first director, retired in 1964 and was succeeded by Lyubimov, who at that time was teaching in the studio attached to the Vakhtangov Theatre.

The production of Under the Skin of the Statue of Liberty has raised some debate in the European and American press. As part of this introduction we are reprinting excerpts from an article that appeared in the news columns of The New York Times and Yevtushenko's reply, which appeared in the Letters to the Editor section of that same newspaper.
Richard Foreman's Ontological-Hysteric Theatre
Authors: Kirby Michael
Published: April 2006

For the last decade, the most important workers in experimental theatre have been investigating certain aspects of performance: altered audience-presentation relationships, spontaneity and the physical resources of the actor, group creation, the release of “forbidden” political/sexual material, and so forth. Energetic forms of expressionism have been the main preoccupation. The Ontological-Hysteric Theatre of Richard Foreman is, despite its name, almost diametrically opposed to these tendencies. It uses the traditional viewing arrangement; it extremely reduces and limits the activity of the actor; it does not attempt didactic socio-political statements; and it is quite clear that Foreman is both the playwright and the director of his theatre.

Of course, these differences would not, in themselves, be enough to make Foreman's Ontological-Hysteric Theatre important. If, however, the value of experimental theatre is to mark out new areas of performance for investigation and to develop previously unused techniques, then Foreman's theatre can be seen to have great significance.