This article explores images of the Jewish actor in modernist German theatre. It deals with the question of theatrical identities on the stages of the Weimar period and discusses the complexities of cultural stereotyping applied to actors of Jewish origin. Special attention will be devoted to the perspectives of the avant-garde used here in the historical sense of the term. In the second part of the article, individual actors such as Max Pallenberg, Alexander Granach and Fritz Kortner will be analysed with respect to certain physical or vocal characteristics deemed to be typically ‘Jewish’. In the final section Kafka's reactions to visiting Yiddish performers will be examined as an example of aesthetic (self)reflection on the question of Jewish identity and modernism.

Hone Kouka's historical plays Nga Tangata Toa and Waiora, created and produced in Aotearoa/New Zealand, one set in the immediate aftermath of World War I, and the other during the great Māori urban migrations of the 1960s, provide fresh insights into the way in which individual Māori responded to the tremendous social disruptions they experienced during the twentieth century. Much like the Māori orator who prefaces his formal interactions with a statement of his whakapapa (genealogy), Kouka reassembles the bones of both his ancestors, and those of other Māori, by demonstrating how the present is constructed by the past, offering a view of contemporary Māori identity that is traditional and modern, rural and urban, respectful of the past and open to the future.

The cinema's developments in lighting, sound and image technology have helped the theatre, and have also allowed its aesthetics to become lighter (Strehler) as well as more complex (Langhoff). Films have originated in plays (not least Louis Malle's Vanya on 42nd Street, which has been accused of wiping away all traces of the theatre, when, in fact, this eradication was part of the staged work itself); and films have passed into plays (for example, Miracle in Milan staged by Zadek in 1993 after De Sica's film). The distinction between text and image, which defined the theatre/cinema split, is far less useful than distinctions between different types of images. The flux of audiovisual, informational and advertising images today has put the relationship between image and truth, as conceived by Bazin in the 1950s, into deep crisis. The theatre film transfers the dialogue between the stage and the audience into a dialogue between theatre and cinema, and is a meeting, rather than a fusion, between these two arts.

This article considers the uncanny action by three Slovenian artists in 2007 to rename themselves Janez Janša, the name of the right-wing prime minister of Slovenia. It assesses specific performances by the artists, including the Slovene National Theatre, a postdramatic verbatim piece about a Roma family evicted from their homes by Janša's government in response to the mob action of Slovenian villagers. It also interrogates their performance event for the Transmediale Festival at the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin in 2008, first banned and then reinstated by the festival organizers, where they created a virtual signature of their new name on the memorial. Theoretically, the importance of naming and renaming as practised by the artists is examined in relation to concepts of subversive affirmation, the author-function in society and postdramatic theatre.

20 October 1986: the Rukun Kemala troupe is hired to perform at a wedding in Kalianget Barat, its home village from 8.30 p.m. to 2.30 a.m. In a courtyard between two houses, the stage is erected on poles, with a floor of woven bamboo panelling; one whole side will collapse in the middle of the night under the strain of the actors' entrances and exits, without so much as the performance being interrupted. The gamelan orchestra begins to play at 8.30 p.m. exactly, as contracted. Fifty minutes later, slides are projected onto the lowered stage curtain depicting names of the head and leading members of the troupe together with words of welcome to the audience. At 9.30 p.m. the curtain is raised for the first time to reveal a ten-minute dance number: four female dancers appear before the monumental split gates of a Hindu kingdom bathed in red light and strobe effects with Catherine wheels whirling. Next, photos of clowns are projected while the public is harangued to take an active participation in the forthcoming elections, family planning and family education organizations. The curtain rises again to reveal a painted backdrop depicting a street scene in an imaginary modern town, to accompany the clown programme which lasts forty minutes. A final set of slides, ten minutes long, this time shows the actors dressed in the costumes of the characters they are about to portray, with a brief introduction to the story by the scriptwriter. At 10.30 p.m. the curtain opens on the first scene of the play which will last four hours without an interval: ‘Black Mask, in the Story of Yuliati Awaiting Happiness’ (Topeng Hitam dalam kisah Yuliati menanti bahagia).

Much contemporary experimental theatre and many performance practitioners in Germany and Austria share an interest in what one might call the material conditions or the medium of their performances. The article discusses different examples where the sharing of space, language and time in performance and thereby the ‘communicability’ (W. Benjamin) of communication is explored. Directors and writers discussed include H.J. Kapp, W. Golonka, L. Chetouane, R. Pollesch, C. Bosse, J. Szeiler. It is argued that in these cases theatre is done in a political way, because it allows the experience of alterity and opens up a space of potentiality.

While anti-apartheid theatre was known worldwide for dramatizing the struggle against apartheid, theatre in South Africa today is hampered by the loss of a focused movement for change and by inefficient and compromised institutions of patronage and development. Well-placed administrators and stakeholders channel limited subsidy to large institutions such as the Market and the State Theatre, whose repertoires are dominated by nostalgic revivals, while cutting-edge performance must rely on corporate or international support. Under these conditions, theatre that is innovative in seeking new audiences and functions, as well as forms, happens often outside theatres: in film and radio, in education, and as an informal legacy of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's project of personal and national healing.

This article asks how theatre shapes civic space by examining the emergence of racial divides in the city of Grahamstown, South Africa, during the annual National Arts Festival (NAF). I track how decision making by festival organizers has relied on economic research and implicit artistic preferences that have resulted in the steady exclusion of artists from local townships. I argue that the presence of the NAF in Grahamstown creates fault lines that are not physical, but aesthetic, in nature, creating invisible boundaries that reward stage performances at the expense of street performances. I track a history of street performance at the NAF, with particular attention to its local mime tradition, to demonstrate how this axis of festivity was integral to developing the NAF's cultural cachet, but was systematically managed, policed or appropriated to fit organizers’ image for Grahamstown at festival time. This work troubles aspirational narratives of creative and cultural industries that South Africa and other African countries have come to rely upon as inclusive and sustainable routes of economic development.

All became data during the pandemic. Lockdowns made manifest what had developed for some time: that theatre has become inextricably entangled with digital cultures, the performing arts being increasingly encountered as a growing stock of multimodal fragments, textual discourses and networked communications. And, it is argued, it is precisely this appearance of theatre as (big) data that might prove to be the game-changer post-pandemic, and that this game-changer might be solely an epistemological one: what is known about theatre, how that knowledge is organized, and who is involved in organizing this knowledge, are rapidly changing. Based on an exemplary analysis of the discourses of legitimation that compensated for the loss of presence in German theatres, and the associated imperative to innovate production, this article estimates the epistemological consequences of theatre returns as data to advocate for a reconceptualization of theatre beyond performance.

Grounded on personal experience in Augusto Boal's workshop, this article explores his essential and radical concept of the spect-actor and its limitation. When he conceptualized the term, Boal seemed to ignore diversities and differences of subject in the grid of power relations such as class, gender, ethnicity, sexual preference and race. Furthermore, a silence that most of the workshop participants maintained needs to be examined critically, instead of unquestioningly, regarding their ‘democratic’ choices. In order to effectively discuss the limitations of the spect-actor concept, as well as the silence that was ignored in the workshop space, I speculate on similar relationships that occurr both in theatre workshop and classroom settings. Drawing the conclusion that both educators and theatre practitioners require self-reflexive attitudes, I expect a greater contribution of Theatre of the Oppressed to globalized societies.

7:84 (Scotland) Theatre Company was launched in 1973 through an epoch-making tour of The Cheviot, The Stag and The Black, Black Oil, pioneering small-scale touring theatre in Scotland. The arrival of the company coincided with a more general resurgence in indigenous theatre and its success heralded the rise of touring companies as an integral part of the theatrical scene. During the 1970s, its reputation was established as a campaigning left-wing company which combined music and documentary in shows touring to popular audiences throughout Scotland. Although 7:84 had been a revenue-funded client of the Scottish Arts Council (SAC) since 1976, in January 1988 SAC announced that it was to withdraw the company from the list of revenue-funded clients from April 1989. On 22 July 1988 John McGrath, writer, director and co-founder of the company resigned as Artistic Director, levelling allegations of political interference at SAC because of this proposal. The company was taken over by David Hayman, Gerard Kelly, and Jo Beddoe. By the beginning of 1992, Jo Beddoe had left the company and the intention of Kelly and Hayman to resign had been made public.

Margaretta D'Arcy and John Arden's six part cycle, The Non-Stop Connolly Show (1975), is probably the most ambitious attempt in English to dramatize working-class and socialist history. However, productions have been remarkably few even in the ‘alternative’ theatre, so that the work has seldom been seen, even by its critics. Arguably, it is as important as anything in the Arden canon and is certainly the major achievement of the D'Arcy/Arden one. But to say so is to challenge a widely-held view that the D'Arcy/Arden collaborations of the 1970s are significant only in so far as they illustrate a decline in Arden's career. Even when admired, the Connolly plays are usually discussed primarily as an aspect of Arden's development. When not, they are perceived as the clearest indication of his supposed demise as a major playwright, a fall from favour which is often attributed to D'Arcy's influence. Perversely, such discussions may simultaneously fail to acknowledge D'Arcy's role as senior partner in The Non-Stop Connolly Show.

In October, 1774, the Continental Congress, meeting in Philadelphia, passed a resolution designed to ‘discountenance and discourage every species of extravagance and dissipation’, including the ‘exhibition of shews, plays, and other expensive diversions and entertainments’. The Revolution would begin within six months, and Congress was clearly attempting to prepare Americans for a period of austerity. But if Congress intended to eliminate all theatrical activities for the duration of the hostilities, it could not have failed more completely. Indeed, the American Revolution saw more theatrical activity on American soil than had ever taken place there before. British military officers – who brought with them a strong theatre-going tradition – sponsored lavish performances of plays in New York, Philadelphia, and elsewhere between 1775 and 1783. In turn, the remarkable number of British theatrical productions stimulated certain American military officials to countenance performances given by American officers for audiences of soldiers and civilians. This may have been illegal, but it boosted morale and it was intended to demonstrate that Americans could compete with the British on any level, including the theatrical.

In 1939 the Chicago and New York City dance units of the Works Progress Administration's Federal Theatre Project premiered two works inspired by the events of the Spanish Civil War. This paper offers an examination of the conflicts that arose in presenting dances about a war in which the US government adopted a position of neutrality, but about which many artists took a profoundly partisan stance. Further, this research unveils how internal censorship at the Federal Theatre Project affected the creation and presentation of these dances as well as ways in which the choreographers (Ruth Page/Bentley Stone and Helen Tamiris) subverted requests for alterations to their scenarios and choreography.

When Homi Bhabha discusses the problematics of signification and coding in intercultural interpretation, he questions the relationship between practices and the experience of culture. By questioning the power of codes and signifiers to fix cultural identity, Bhabha allows that the stable object of culture might be caught ‘in the disturbed artifice of its signification’, that is, ‘at the edge of experience’. This suggests to theatre and performance studies that the culturally inscribed body need not be viewed as a stable repository of displaced and deferred codes. The body may be intercepted in situations, or at moments, when signification dissolves and is reconfigured.

Drawing on an idea of the theatrical event, this article sets out to analyse the interactions between the housed (audiences) and the homeless (performers), in order to understand the theatrical conventions, performance contexts and sociocultural conditions that make it possible to narrow the gap between the housed and homeless. Focusing on three performances of zAmya Theater Project's Housed and Homeless (From the Very Same Cup), I analyse theatre's capacity and its limits to build community and examine why different interpretive communities respond differently to the same staged moments.

There have been few systematic studies in English of the signs of the theatre. I hope in this essay to indicate something of the range and interest of the topic. The focus of attention, clearly, will be the theatrical act of representation or performance rather than the dramatic text or script. The dramatic text has a life of its own, independent of all performances of it: on the one hand, as Gordon Craig, one of the great champions of the theatre over the text, recognized, it overflows all performances and is exhausted by none; on the other, any performance overflows the literary text that it purports to be a performance of, and is not reducible to it. A clear distinction must therefore be made between theatrical representation and literary text. As most theatrical performances are based on dramatic texts, however, some consideration of the nature of the relation between the two is desirable. Before broaching the subject of signs in the theatre directly, therefore, I propose to say a word or two about this question.

One of the surest ways of registering disapproval of a play or a performance is to dismiss it as ‘melodramatic’, thus invoking a whole network of mistaken dramatic values and improper practice. In arts reviews, classrooms and text books, ‘melodrama’ recurs as the ‘other’ of ‘proper’ realist drama. In English Drama: A Cultural History, we describe the critical history of melodrama as ‘The Unacceptable Face of Theatre's importance and seriousness. One of the most influential interventions came from Peter Brooks, whose Melodramatic Imagination propounds two arguments in favour of melodrama'scultural centrality: first, Brooks shows how Diderot and Rousseau anticipated the French form of melodrama, then he makes connections between melodramatic gesture or sign and the work of Saussure or Barthes. My aim here is to develop the case further by suggesting that, in the case of English melodrama, the practice of the form as it emerged was very far from being non-intellectual, out of control or stupid. Indeed the dramatists themselves were well conscious of what they were doing formally: not only intelligence but also self-reflection were there from the start.

In the autumn of 1995 the Haymarket Theatre, Leicester, UK, staged two plays which offer a dramatic treatment of the politics of motherhood: Timberlake Wertenbaker's The Break of Day (Haymarket Mainhouse, first performance 26 October 1995) and Ruth Carter's A Yearning (Haymarket Studio, 31 October to 4 November 1995). Neither play had significant box-office success, and The Break of Day received poor and hostile reviews from (male) critics, many of whom, like Paul Taylor for The Independent, commented on the play as a dramatization of ‘how the maternal drive can cause women to betray orthodox feminism’. My counter argument is that by addressing infertility as a feminist issue for the 1990s, both plays index the need to re-conceive a politics of motherhood in an international arena, highlighting the ways in which the biological contours of women's lives are globally mapped with the specificities of social, material and cultural geographies.

The importance of scene painters to English theatre increased markedly toward the end of the eighteenth century—in part a response to the contributions of Philip James De Loutherbourg at Drury Lane in the 1770s. Advertisements began routinely to record the name of what we would now call the scene designer. Gaetano Marinari was identified as principal painter and machinist at the King's Theatre in the Haymarket between 1785 and 1789, when the old opera house burned. Thomas Greenwood held the equivalent position at Drury Lane, John Inigo Richards at Covent Garden, and Michael Angelo Rooker at the Little Theatre in the Haymarket. For particular productions the names of assistant painters might also be advertised. On 20 December 1785, for example, Covent Garden listed Richards, Carver, Hodgins, Catton Jun., and Turner as the crew that executed scenery for the travelogue Omai, which turned out to be De Loutherbourg's last designs for the London theatre.