The Grand Union was formed in the Fall of 1970. Founding members of this anarchistic democratic theatre collective were: Becky Arnold, Trisha Brown, Dong, Douglas Dunn, David Gordon, Nancy Green, Barbara Lloyd, Steve Paxton and Yvonne Rainer. Characteristic of the Union, there are nine different answers to how and when it began. The lives of the members have been intertwined for anywhere from five to ten years. In 1970, the members of Yvonne Rainer's Continuous Project Altered Daily (CPAD) conceived of an organization in which they might share choreography. Three other choreographer/performers of similar mind were invited to join. This was the beginning of the organization but not of the concept.

In writing on theatre, various authors have pointed out that circus-type performances have always been more prevalent than performances of literary drama; that circus-type performance has been a deep secondary tradition of the theatre from which the legitimate stage has repeatedly drawn new strength and vitality; and that the circus is looked to by the public “for violent satisfactions, the intentions of which do not deceive them.” I use the term “circus-type” to emphasize an important distinction between the very ancient “circus-type” skills of contortionists, equilibrists, tumblers, jugglers, clowns, etc., and the modern form of “circus,” even though the latter is the most obviously significant depository of the former.

The modem circus is by no means a direct descendant of the ancient Roman circus. Roman circuses, such as Circus Maximus, were architectural structures designed primarily for chariot races.

While theatre groups have been entertaining and conducting workshops in prisons for many years, it is only since 1973 that studies have been made to assess the therapeutic value of theatre programs connected to prison systems. Hard evidence is being amassed that theatre workshops for prisoners and ex-offenders significantly reduce the rate of re-arrest among participants—more so than any other of the many remotivational programs in the correctional systems across the country. Nationally, 85 percent of those released from prison are re-arrested within a year, most within the first four months. The rate of re-arrest among participants in theatre workshops in the New York/New Jersey area is currently 10 to 15 percent.

Zen has been called “the religion of no religion.” It is a branch of Buddhism, both having originated in a single event: the enlightenment of Guatama Siddhartha who, after meditating for six years, is said to have awakened, as if from a dream, to become The Enlightened One, the Buddha. It is significant that the seed of Zen Buddhism was neither a set of scriptures nor a messianic creed, but the dedication of a single man to gain greater perception into his own nature and the nature of reality through meditation. The practice of meditation is at the heart of Zen, and the word “Zen,” derived from the Chinese “Ch'uan,” means “meditation.” Predicated on practice rather than belief, without sacred scriptures, fixed canon, or Divine being, Zen is “no religion.” It is rather a type of training intended to promote a special presence, a particular quality of consciousness with which to meet the world.

That future historians of English drama will describe the period since 1956 as an era of Brechtian influence is quite possible. If so, the phenomenon will be an illustration of the quirks and ironies of cultural diffusion between nations: for that Brechtian era had a great deal of talk and discussion about Brecht and what he was thought to stand for, but few valid productions of Brecht, little genuine knowledge about Brecht, and hence little evidence of any influence of Brecht's actual work and thought. The “Brechtian” era in England stood under the aegis not of Brecht himself but of various second-hand ideas and concepts about Brecht, an image of Brecht created from misunderstandings and misconceptions.

It is true, as Ruth Finnegan has observed, that “with a few possible exceptions, there is no tradition in Africa of artistic performances which includes all the elements which might be demanded in a strict definition of drama—or at least not with the emphases to which we are accustomed (Finnegan, 516).” Drama in the accepted sense of the term, as a situational interaction expressed in dialog between characters, is found in a number of rudimentary forms, in simple comedies, and in puppet plays. However, several African performance modes that verge upon drama may be considered as types or aspects of theatre. To be sure, a concept of theatre might well include dance and almost anything “dramatic” done before an audience. But since there is little sense in applying the term indiscriminately, as certain studies of African theatre have tended to do, it would seem best to focus on what might be called theatre only in its relationship to the concept and definition of drama.

In the casinos of Las Vegas the black-jack tables and roulette wheels stand silent from five to seven A.M. Slotmachines alone remain for the stragglers unconquered by night and fatigue. These slotmachines do not give their players even the illusion of control, for the game consists only of throwing in money and moving the metal arms. Fate is blind and completely encased in the mechanism. The player merely sets fate in motion, and fate in turn brings either a loss of the stake or its manifold increase. The slotmachines are closed structures: the player and the mechanism—no one and nothing beyond that. “Others” in this structure do not exist. No one stands between the player and fate. “God,” who arranges the mechanism, repairs it, takes out the money, is invisible. He doesn't exist, at least not for the player.

For Brook, Lear is a series of intellectual strands which only performance can tie together. Far from being an “unactable play,” he believes its full meaning can only be comprehended existentially—on a stage. He sees it mainly as a play about sight and blindness.

Gloucester, who does not see Edmund's villainy, loses his eyes. Edgar, who does not see his brother's covetousness, loses his freedom. Lear, who does not see the corruption and rancor that see the within his family and state, loses his senses and ultimately his life. Everywhere one looks, one sees only the facades and emblems of a world and, ironically, as characters acquire sight, it enables them to see only into a void.

Fable: A blind man, resolved to die, is led up a steep mountainside by one he takes to be a naked lunatic. The steep mountainside is, in reality, a flat field; the naked lunatic, his son.

In his essay on “Emotional Memory” in TDR Summer 1962, and now, I believe, published as a pamphlet by Samuel French, Inc., Mr. Robert Lewis traces the phrase “emotional memory” back as far as 1925 and adds: “During the Group Theatre days, in the Thirties, we called it ‘Affective Memory’ (a term borrowed from an earlier French psychologist). But, by whatever name, it is accomplished, roughly as follows.”

The name is actually given in David Magarshack's Stanislavsky: A Life in these words:

Comedy and its opposite lie in the same disposition of feeling, and they are inside the process which results from it. In its abnormality, this disposition is bitterly comical, the condition of a man who is always out of tune; of a man who is at the same time violin and bass; of a man for whom no thought can come to mind unless suddenly another one, its opposite and contrary, intervenes; of a man for whom any one reason for saying yes is at once joined by two or three others compelling him to say no, so that yes and no keep him suspended and perplexed for all his life; of a man who cannot let himself go in a feeling without suddenly realizing something inside which disturbs him, disarranges him, makes him angry….

Freud defines theatre in America, and Che Guevara tells us what to do about it:

This society, our society—America, U.S.A.—is chock-full o'ennui. Distracted by superficial values, and without a sense of humanness, we let machines rule; it is easier to kill from a B-52 than to choke every Viet Cong.

Since her creation in 2016, Sophia has become the world’s most recognized humanoid social robot. Gendered female by creator David Hanson, she is a harbinger of a tomorrow world that is here. She performs at events around the planet as a messenger, celebrity, and ambassador representing the human-technological future. Sophia is a symbol, and humans are witnesses to an origin story as much hers as it is our own.

A recent trend in Black German theatre engages with fantasy and posthumanism to criticize German racism and nationalism. In Krieg der Hörnchen (War of the Squirrels), Simone Dede Ayivi combines posthumanism and postnationalism, using German fears of invasive gray squirrels taking over the habitat of native red squirrels to reimagine xenophobic and racist debates about migration.

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

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

What was most striking (from the New York perspective) about the Maydays of 1970 was that students were organizing themselves to use facilities and resources, not to destroy them. The nihilism so powerfully present in the Columbia uprising of 1968, and always prominent in “revolutionary” rhetoric within the student movement, was transformed into something more fundamentally revolutionary. “Burn it down,” “trash it,” “shut it down” were not heard so often as “take it,” “use it,” “open it up,” “liberate it.” In either case the work is somewhat symbolic—that is, burnt buildings can be and usually are rebuilt and liberated buildings can be and usually are reoccupied. The establishment is not so weak that it will yield everything at once. But it is not so strong that it will last out the decade.