bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
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.
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 prizeIn the rich years of youthIs 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.)
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 ParisMouchoir 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.
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.
Festival Mondial du Theatre
Authors: Kirby Victoria Nes 
Published: April 2006

Nancy, a historic city of 150,000 inhabitants, lies near the Meurthe River in the Northeast corner of France. One hundred and ninety miles from Paris and ninetythree from Strasbourg, Nancy is the capital and cultural, commercial, and university center of Lorraine.Nancy became a model of eighteenth-century urban planning under Stanislas I, the last duke of Lorraine. The former king of Poland, Stanislas was given the dukedom in 1737 after his daughter married Louis XV of France. Under his patronage, Nancy was transformed into a city of wide avenues, imposing squares, a large public park, and many buildings that were considered by many to be among the finest architectural accomplishments of the eighteenth century. Nancy's center is still Place Stanislas, which contains a statue of its favorite duke.
Eisenstein's Wiseman
Authors: Gerould Daniel 
Published: April 2006

Throughout the first decade of its existence, Soviet theatre sought inspiration and new directions in the popular arts. In the period after the Revolution, the most innovative Russian directors and writers, by turning to the clowning and novelty acts of circus and music hall attempted a complete break with the traditions of bourgeois drama—its plotting, psychology, and domestic themes—in order to create a vital new political and propagandistic theatre with, they hoped, broad appeal to the masses.The painter Yuri Annenkov, in his version of Tolstoy's The First Distiller at the Hermitage Theatre, Petrograd, in 1919, added clowns and variety acts, made hell into a circus, and turned the devils into acrobats. Vladimir Mayakovsky collaborated with the professional clown Vitaly Lazarenko in staging his circus scenario The Championship of the Universal Class Struggle (See T-57) at the Second State Circus in Moscow.
Political Theatre as Popular Entertainment: The San Francisco Mime Troupe
Authors: Shank Theodore 
Published: April 2006

In the exuberance of revolutionary zeal, it is natural that certain political theatre groups should turn to forms of entertainment associated with fun, with the common man, with people in general regardless of social, economic, or educational status, in contrast with the traditional aristocratic forms that have “artistic” pretensions and tend to be more contemplative than energetic. It is also predictable that such groups should shun ballet, opera, the symphony, and literary theatre, and use instead techniques from commedia dell'arte, circus, puppet shows, music hall, vaudeville, parades, magicians, carnival side shows, buskers, brass bands, comic strips, striptease, melodrama, minstrel shows, and other means of exhilarating celebration.Since the present seemed to hold no answers, it was inevitable that the search by these groups for political theatre forms would turn to the past, a past which, through education and television, had become more accessible than ever before. Such breaks with the present served another purpose as well—they demonstrated a disassociation with the Establishment and its theatre.
Performance in Polish Villages
Authors: Young Marjorie 
Published: April 2006

An unusually rich variety of forms of performance linked to seasonal, religious, and rural celebrations still survive in certain Polish villages, especially in the southern region. These performances are not staged for tourists as “folk theater” but are part of an authentic, on-going peasant tradition. They survive in surprising strength. Their existence does not seem to be well known among Poland's urban populace, perhaps due in part to the centuries-old schism between peasant and non-peasant classes in Polish culture.Two examples of such performance are the King Herod Play, a short folk piece about the fall of King Herod performed by village school boys from door to door on Christmas Eve, and the mountain “Vagabonds”—groups of miners and farmers who dress up as gypsies, goats, horses, shepherds, Jews, Death, clowns, old men, devils and so forth, and run rhythmically through their village at New Year's, pausing occasionally to engage onlookers in improvised scenes, to play pranks, and to act out pantomime scenarios of probably pre-Christian origin.The people involved in these events do not label their activity “theatre.” Nor do they use a theatre vocabulary to describe what they do.
The Teatro Campesino
Authors: Morton Carlos 
Published: April 2006

Among the ancient Aztecs and Mayans, the sign of the serpent was often one of rebirth and transfiguration. So it is with the Mexican and Chicano of today—heirs of those moss-covered symbols etched on stone—who are using La Serpiente to signify change. Like the serpent that sheds its old skin, The Teatro Campesino of San Juan Bautista, California, is growing into a new way of life that revolves around the spiritual and material reconquest of their Indian origins.Luis Valdez and his gente (people) have expanded into El Centro CampesinoCultural (Farmworkers Cultural Center), which is situated on forty acres of land. The center includes, besides the Teatro, facilities for creating music, publications, paintings, videotapes, and films. It also will house the more than thirty members (ranging in age from a year to thirty-four) of the Teatro as well as sheep, cows, chickens, and horses.
Charles Ludlam's Ridiculous Theatrical Co.
Authors: Argelander Ronald 
Published: April 2006

When I was in conventional theatre, even when I was going to school, people thought my acting was too broad, too pasty.So I had to create a theatre where I could exist.I had to create, for my own survival,a world where I could take advantage of my talents.Charles LudlamIn 1967, Charles Ludlam organized the Ridiculous Theatrical Company, patterning it after modern dance companies where composer and choreographer perform with the group. It was an actors’ company, primarily composed of untrained actors, non-actors, and filmmakers. Most had experience working in “underground“ films, but few had any professional training. Ludlam was the only one of the group with extensive schooling and experience in acting, directing, and playwriting.
Dada Berlin
Authors: Gordon Mel 
Published: April 2006

During recitals of simultaneous poetry of the most incomprehensible kind, we attacked the art-loving, Boulevard public with toy guns, toilet paper, false beards, and the poetry of Wolfgang Goethe and Rudolf Presber … Under the motto “Art is shit!”, the Dadas began their demolition … (of bourgeois culture).Erwin PiscatorIn the years 1918, 1919, and 1920, the Berlin Dada movement, mounting less than thirty productions, exerted a formidable, if indirect, influence over the development of the German theatre. This influence would later lead to the dismantling of Expressionism as the dominant theatrical force in Central Europe. Retooling the theories and performance techniques that they inherited from the Futurists and the Zurich Dadas to their own specifications, the Berlin Dadas introduced the use of pure—onomatopoetic or vowel—sound and abstract movement, improvisation, simultaneous and illogical actions, verbal and physical assault on the spectator, antiillusionist scenic design, and the incorporation of popular entertainments, such as cabaret acts and cinema, into German performance.
Feminist Criticism
Authors: Lamb Margaret 
Published: April 2006

In a review for Ms. (December 1973), the poet Yvonne contrasted the musical Raisin with Lorraine Hansberry's original play, in which theThree Younger women formed the most complex, thoroughly honest portrait of the archetypal black woman to have appeared on the American stage…. The spine of Hansberry's original plot was provocative and clear-cut. It was the conflict between life and the profit motive, a conflict in which a black man, Walter Lee Younger (Mama's son, Ruth's husband, Beneatha's brother), having chosen money as his god, becomes his family's moral antagonist. In the new musical, the dramatic focus is switched from the women to the man. The total production—script, music, lyrics, direction, choreography, sets—is created by everybody but the black woman. The women's most intense speeches are cut, their stage movements made awkward and their personalities made shallow or reversed. Many of their lines and dramatic gestures, particularly those showing warmth and depth, are given to Walter to make him a less vindictive and more likeable character.
The Meyerhold Centennial
Authors: Hoover Marjorie 
Published: April 2006

Where is your grave—Or maybe even just a mound-Vsevolod EmilyevichMeyerhold?Where can we put a monument?There is no grave.You cannot be frozen into a statue,Like some docile teacher's pet.You blazeFrom the pedestals of the world stage,Vsevolod EmilyevichMeyerhold.The 100th anniversary of Vsevolod Meyerhold's birth on February 9, 1874, was celebrated this year in the Soviet Union. The centennial celebrations honoring the great Russian theatre director began in January and continued well past the actual birth date. The recognition extended throughout the Soviet Union, including Leningrad, where Meyerhold began his career as director more than a decade before the Revolution. As a result of these celebrations, his rehabilitation is openly recognized now and his influence widely acknowledged.