Between 1947 and 1960, choreographer Katherine Dunham spent over 5,000 days in hundreds of cities on six continents. During that time, almost 200 dancers, drummers, and singers traveled with her, performing 166 repertory pieces. Dunham’s expansive work lends itself to digital approaches that illuminate the complex ways history is iterated across bodies, and how the specific questions raised by dance history underpin a visceral approach to the digital humanities.

In 1948, before writing my first play, The Bald Soprano, I had no idea of becoming a playwright. My only ambition, quite simply, was to learn English. The study of English does not necessarily lead to playwriting. On the contrary, it was because I had no luck with English that I turned to the stage. Nor did I write these plays to avenge my failure, although some have said that my Bald Soprano was a satire of the English bourgeoisie. If I had wanted to learn Italian, Russian or Turkish and not succeeded, they would have claimed, by the same token, that the play resulting from that futile effort was a satire of Italian, Russian or Turkish society. Perhaps I ought to explain. Here is what happened: nine or ten years ago, in order to learn English conversation, I bought a French-English Primer. I set to work. Conscientiously, I copied whole sentences from my Primer with the purpose of memorizing them.

El Teatro de la Esperanza began as a student group composed of Chicanos attending the University of California at Santa Barbara in 1969. Then known as Teatro Mecha, the Teatro left the ranks of a student organization, called M.E.Ch.A., in order to get more fully involved in Santa Barbara's Chicano community, in the summer of 1971. This move proved to be an asset for both the community and the Teatro, for the group took part in the acquisition and remodeling of a 22,000 square foot warehouse which soon became La Casa de la Raza (The House of the People).

Prior to 1965, there was little unity of sociopolitical direction among Chicanos and Mexicans in the United States, and the Casa was a symbol of the effort to address the problems of this bilingual minority. The Casa maintains a line of communication with the barrio by offering over thirty programs ranging from a free health clinic to an office of information for undocumented workers, otherwise known as illegal aliens.

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).

“Theatre in the Corridor” was written, in Czech, in December 1939; that explains why the first paragraph sounds rather anachronistic. It has remained unpublished for nearly forty years.

This was my third attempt to write a theoretical paper, after “Man and Object in the Theatre,” published in 1940 (English translation in: Paul L. Garvin, ed., A Prague School Reader on Esthetics, Literary Structure, and Style, Washington, D.C., 1964) and “Mácha's Conception of the World,” published the same year.

My approach followed the general theory of the Prague Linguistic Circle, focusing on the concepts of structure and sign. But I was much more influenced by the Prague School's poetics, linguistics, and general esthetics than by its sporadic studies about the theatre, which I found somewhat loose in their reasoning.

Although we can conjecture about commedia in a historical framework, we cannot know what it was like. There are no existing scripts, no photos. There are only a few paintings, a few sparse descriptions, and a horde of mostly untranslated scenarios. Yet, a great interest in commedia continues. Anyone can open the drawer marked commedia dell'arte, but, having opened it, how does one know what to choose from it? For some, commedia means a dusty reincarnation of the postures and poses of a Callot, charming in print, but deadly on the stage. The magnetic appeal of commedia, for me, has been to rediscover the magic of the performer: how he worked, what he did, and to some extent, why he did it, consciously or not. The only possible approach is an inductive one. We must begin where we are.

I remember thinking it strange, when I first started working in the Southern Student Movement in 1962, that there were so many people who, like me, thought of themselves as poets. I wrote a letter (to someone) describing them as poets who had come to the conclusion that the most profound poetry is the poetry of action and movement. When the problem becomes unspeakable then there is simply nothing to say—something must be done.

I was in the third wave of “students” who swept through the South with a dream in the early ‘60's. Sit-ins in ‘60, Freedom Rides in ‘61, and in ‘62 the forces gathered around the right to vote. After each wave there was a period of uncertainty while the new motion was in the making. That was a time to survey the damage and chaos which often seem to follow in the wake of dreams.

Women's theatre groups in the United States have developed during the last five years as a means of exploring and expressing women's identity, potentialities, and the nature of oppression. By dramatizing their conflicts and joys, the women in these groups seek to make other women feel good about being female and to experience outrage at what they consider to be the gross injustices in the relationship between the sexes.

Feminists began forming their own theatre groups because they felt stifled by male domination in both the traditional and experimental theatre worlds. The groups, most in the New York area, vary in performing style, intent and internal structure from the traditional mode of The New Feminist Theatre, a group with a well-defined leader, to the collective arrangement of the It's All Right to be Woman Theatre, where feminism is expressed through the structure of the group and theatre pieces.

Many think that because participation is new to them, it is new to the theatre. These same people automatically participate in responsive readings at church, flag saluting, standing for the national anthem at sporting matches, cheering, and agreeing to umpire a few innings of sandlot baseball. In fact, participation in theatrical events is a very old, widespread practice. It has been limited in our culture for several hundred years for a variety of reasons. Chief among these is “professionalism.” Because trained, skilled performers have come to be expected, there are those who grow uneasy contemplating direct interaction between performers and the unskilled audience. The audience, by and large, expects a show to begin and end on time, to be “finished” and “packaged” like other products of the Ameriaan culture. Therefore, many in the theatre are loath to risk a process that may upend these anticipations, such as accepting a rough or long performance, or not being sure how something is going to work.

That's typical Pinter dialogue. The form is standard English, but the conversation doesn't get anywhere. Davies can see what Aston is doing, but Aston is careful not to tell Davies any more than what he can see. Sometimes, as in A Slight Ache or The Collection, the whole play is built around non-exchange of information. Pinter's goal in these plays is to mystify us. He does it through a special brand of dramatic irony in which both character and audience are unable to solve basic riddles. The game is called “put on,” and it is Pinter's favorite. Edward is put on by the Matchseller, James is put on by Stella and Bill. Davies is put on by Mick and Aston. Stanley is put on by McCann and Goldberg. None of these victims knows what the others intend for them; nor are they able to find out until it is too late.

In a concert of two sound worlds, one acoustic and the other electroacoustic, it is difficult to balance both sonically. When texts, lights, gestures, and movements from different artistic domains such as theatre, dance, or cinema combine with the music this coexistence creates, the result is a new language: the language of Constança Capdeville.

Winnie is buried up to her waist. Happy Days opens with the terrifying sound of a bell. A moment later the bell rings once again. Winnie wakes up, raises her head, opens her eyes. What does this bell mean? Winnie talks about it often, and throughout the entire first act she waits for it to ring. The bell rings when it is time to get up and when it is time to go to sleep. When I was in the hospital, there was no bell; the nurses woke us up and turned out the lights at night. But there was a bell when I stayed in a nursing home. The bell had a horrifying sound and woke us up every morning. The bell rang also at night, and when it had rung, we were not allowed to have the light on.