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

In Kaspar, Peter Handke's protagonist learns to master language only to become the victim of language: a man destroyed by his instrument of communication. “The last thought I had on Kaspar became the first thought to The Ride Across Lake Constance,” Handke wrote in his notes for the Berlin premiere of his last play. This thought was “to demonstrate the modes of human interchange in our society by means of precise observation.—The first attempts to define these observations were the plays My Foot My Tutor and Quodlibet, in which theatre forms appeared isolated from plots, so that these forms became poses and could become identical with poses in daily life: the representation of the theatre poses was, among other things, an attempt to present the modes of everyday behavior as poses, too.”

For the last two years the San Francisco Dancers’ Workshop has concentrated on the workshop process rather than on public performance. This change of emphasis is closely connected to Anna Halprin's concern with therapy (a means and an end in itself) as the focal point of artistic activity rather than with the esthetic or formal elements of dance or theatre.

In a broad sense, the theatre experience—through empathy, for example—can be considered in terms of therapy. In the same way, therapy, especially group therapy, has “theatrical elements,” such as role-playing, acting-out emotions, self-revealing monologs, etc. But usually theatre and therapy, in their conventional contexts, remain two separate areas with only minimal overlapping.

Anna Halprin bridges the gap between therapy and theatre first by being a performer (a dancer with a long history of innovative approach to dance) and a dance therapist; and secondly by devising workshops in which the function of theatre and therapy are identical.

Since his death eighteen years ago, Artaud's fame has steadily increased. Everyone claims him as predecessor; literary magazines and theatre programs propagate his name; he is quoted as having said things which he never said and he is used as a front for the worst eccentricities. After the Rimbaud myth we have the Artaud myth; to expose the hoax we need a new Etiemble.

In the meantime, Gallimard's careful publication of Artaud's complete works puts into our hands an objective tool to evaluate texts which have been distorted by faddism. The six volumes published so far have already set straight a number of wrong judgments. Volume III revealed Artaud's creativity in cinema; until then, film historians knew Artaud only as an actor. They barely mentioned the one film he had directly inspired, The Shell and the Clergyman [see p. 173], and dismissed it as unimportant.

It has become common to view drama in the post-Ibsen period as falling into two broad categories. On the one hand there was a strong and persistent tradition of the A Doll's House type of play, called for convenience “social problem plays,” and on the other a number of diverse styles of drama that represent counter-realism; plays in verse, expressionism, formalistic styles as in Yeats’ plays, revivals of myths, fantastic drama, surrealism, plays of Freudian psychology, Cocteau-ish poésie de théâtre, and so on, all of which, however different from each other, have in common that they turn away both from social problems and from the dramatic style associated with them. They do not necessarily, however, renounce realism for “romance,” or for something “poetic” in the escapist sense. Neither are the themes they treat always without relevance to the social situation.

Modern drama resembles a child half wise, in both knowing and not knowing its own father. By familiar usage, consecrated in the textbooks, Ibsen is “the father of modern drama”; the phrase instantly evokes the companion term “naturalism,” followed perhaps by a dim after-image of A Doll House, the consensual firstborn of our present theatrical age. This familiar view of the father has its partial truth, yielding certain academic rewards. It invites the editing of anthologies laid out on a taut straight line from Ibsen to Arthur Miller, with occasional detours into the essential non-realistic styles; or, if the anthologist is less sympathetic to Naturalism, it allows a backward glance at Hedda Gabler before one takes off for the real beginnings of modern drama somewhere in the volcanic foothills of Strindberg, finally to disappear in the farthest out thickets of the Grove Press.

What is particularly Italian about the theatre that is produced in Italy? What characteristics make it different—recognizable—to the foreign spectator?

After the war, Italian theatre was scarcely significant for its innovations. An effort to restore tradition in theatre absorbed most creative energies. Three outstanding influences belong to this period. The first is that of the Academy of Dramatic Arts, founded in 1936 by Silvio D'Amico with the purpose of raising the cultural level of Italian theatre. The Academy concentrated on the critical analysis of texts. Orazio Costa and his students, Luigi Squarzina and Vittorio Gassman, were the main exponents of this concern for tradition. The institution was a profound influence on the generation of postwar actors.

The second influence was that of foreign theatre. After the war, there was a consumer attitude toward French, English and American “hit shows.”

Ever since John Osborne dropped his dramatic H-bomb on the complacent British middle-class theatregoer in April 1956 in the shape of Look Back in Anger, critics and public alike have been looking to London for a steady flow of new plays of revolt, plays that would be leavened with the yeast of a new social criticism and rooted in the new post-war realism. This new realism is, to my mind, best described as a compound of two elements. The first represents an involuntary and instinctive resistance to the irksome class structure of British society and the other, in one form or another, the universal dilemma which has split the world down the middle in an age of threatening nuclear destruction and exacerbated the rivalries inherent in class, in nation, or in industrial or commercial power. The technological complexities of our new era are hardly touched on in the new drama.

Women's theatre groups are seeking new forms—forms that have not been derived from the male-oriented and male-dominated theatre that now exists. A search for new content also characterizes these groups, but their most important aspect is their relationship with their audiences. The theatre done by these groups is aimed at a specialized audience and often is performed exclusively for that audience—women. Almost all of the women's theatre groups reserve at least one of their performances for women only, and most prefer to play only for women, even when they admit men.

While women's theatre groups exist in many cities throughout the country, New York provides a base for a large number of troupes. Many of these groups maintain themselves by touring colleges, universities, and women's centers throughout the United States and Canada.

Indian civilization is made up of many strands, woven together by the invasions, assimilations, and proselytizings which have characterized its history and prehistory. Generally, however, elements of the Sanskritic culture brought in by Aryan invaders (conjecturally from the Middle East) around 1500 B.C. are dominant, though the farther one gets from the northern regions of India, the less apparent this dominance becomes. The question whether the culture of southern India is a remnant of the pre-Aryan civilization of India or also was imported has never been resolved. However, regional differences in culture within the framework of a Sanskritic civilization are not disputed, nor is the fact that southern India is less Sanskritic in culture than northern India.

Such differences manifest themselves in a variety of customs, artifacts, arts, languages, and rituals.

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

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

Roberta Sklar is one of the three artistic directors of The Women's Experimental Theatre and a co-author with Clare Coss and Sondra Segal of The Daughters Cycle Trilogy: Daughters, Sister/Sister, and Electra Speaks.

Sklar began her work as a student-director at Hunter College in 1960. She was active in the off-Off-Broadway theatre movement at its inception in the early sixties and frequently directed new plays at the Caffe Cino. In the mid-1960s she joined The Open Theatre and was the co-director of the major ensemble works The Serpent, Terminal and The Mutation Show and directed Beckett's Endgame. These works toured both the United States and Europe and have been widely acclaimed. Throughout the sixties she worked extensively with playwrights and actors in the creation of new works and new work methods.

In the 1970s she began an ongoing research into the development of a feminist esthetic for the theatre.

So you need a foreword. But what is there to say about a play from which I felt detached even before it was finished? To speak of its composition would be to evoke a world and climate without grandeur. But I would rather say a few words about the theatre in general. I dislike it. One will gather as much from reading this play .What I have been told about Japanese, Chinese, and Balinese revels and the perhaps magnified idea that persists in my brain make the formula of the Western theatre seem to me too coarse. One can only dream of an art that would be a profound web of active symbols capable of speaking to the audience a language in which nothing is said but everything portended.

But any poet who tried to realize this dream would see the haughty stupidity of actors and theatre people rise up in arms.

A concept of the theatre has been lost. And in direct proportion to the manner in which the theatre limits itself only to allowing us to penetrate into the intimacy of some puppet or to transforming the spectator into a Peeping Tom, it is to be expected that the elite will turn away from it and the crowds will go to the movies, the music halls, or the circuses, in search of violent satisfactions which at least have no false pretenses.

After the wear and tear to which our ensibilities have been subjected, it is certain that, before all, we have need of a theatre that will awaken us: heart and nerves.

The misdeeds of the psychological theatre since Racine have made us unaccustomed to that violent and immediate action which the theatre must possess.