It has long been believed that the style of comedy depicted on southern Italian vases of the fourth century BC was a local Italiote form called phylax. A. D. Trendall, the leading authority on the vases, has consistently taken the view that the plays were ‘impromptu’ performances, ‘in which light, movable sets could be used to indicate the required background’. It is not surprising that this has become accepted history: the vases, it is believed, represent improvised farce performed on makeshift stages by strolling actors, also called phlyakes.

In the wake of French colonization, exploration and trade throughout the world, the French language permeated cultures on five continents. Depending on the source of the statistics, today's world-wide French-speaking population numbers anywhere from 67 to 450 million people. It is estimated that in the year 2000 there will be 500 million French speakers. French is the world's twelfth language, but next to English, the only language to be spoken on all five major continents. From such statistics we might project a community, but do these figures represent a genuinely united people? And, why, if the francophone community is growing should French governmental and cultural organizations be so concerned about the preservation of French? Before examining these questions, let us briefly outline the evolution of ‘la francophonie’.

The French colonists (‘habitants’) who began settling Canada in the early seventeenth century brought with them the French language, the Catholic religion, and French cultural traditions. These basic elements of ‘le patrimoine’ continued to evolve in the North American context after France abandoned the colony in 1760. Under the influence of a conservative political establishment and the Catholic Church for two centuries, French Canadians perceived themselves as an isolated minority whose duty was to preserve their language, religion, culture, and agrarian traditions. A collective identity crisis during the 1960s led to the conclusion that the old social, educational, and religious institutions had failed to keep up with the forces of modernization, industrialization, and urbanization which had transformed the province. During the period known as the ‘Révolution tranquille’, political reforms gave Quebec greater autonomy within the Canadian confederation, economic reforms improved material conditions, and educational reforms began preparing future generations for productive careers. Rejecting the term ‘Canadien français’ because it connoted colonial status, Quebec intellectuals adopted the term ‘Québécois’ and called for the creation of a national literature, independent from its French roots and its Anglo-American connections. This distinctive Québécois literature would reflect the reality of their lives and speak to them in the language of Quebec.

The group of actors from whom the Gelosi company arose are thought to have first come together in 1568, with the amalgamation of two troupes led by the prima donnas Vincenza and Flaminia. They were already known by the name Gelosi when they toured France in 1571; by 1572 they were popular enough to be able to complain that the stanze in Genoa could only hold an audience of 150; in 1574 their performance, and that of their leading lady, Vittoria Piisimi, were the highlight of Henri III's visit to Venice, and their reputation as the foremost com-media dell'arte troupe was fully established. Por-cacchi's pamphlet of 1574 notes some of the Gelosi actors of the time as Simon of Bologna, who played a facchino Bergamasco, Giulio Pas-quati as the Magnifico and Rinaldo. A Mantuan decree of 5 May 1579 names as Gelosi actors Simon the Bergamasco, Orazio and Adriano the innamorati, and Gabriele their friend.

In 1932 Terence Gray, the innovative director of Cambridge's Festival Theatre, was invited by the monthly journal of the British Drama League to contribute to a series exploring the possible modernization of British theatre. Gray's article was caustic and typically heretical. ‘Let the gangrenous old thing die’, he urged, denying the possibility of revitalizing something so riddled with sickness and already ‘sitting on its long-overdue coffin… waiting for the undertaker’. Within a year, Gray had abandoned not only the Festival theatre, which he had created in 1926, but all theatre.

For the French speaking minorities of Manitoba, the struggle against oppression has often meshed with battles for justice and human rights waged by other Canadian minority groups. Over the past two decades, plays by English and French speaking playwrights have echoed theatrical themes of the nineteenth century by centring on the plight of the Métisse. Being of Amer-Indian and Franco-Canadian descent, the history of the Métisse offers a fascinating perspective on Anglo-French and Anglo-Indian relations. In many of the plays, much attention is paid to the legendary story of Louis Riel, a Métisse chief who led the fight against British expansion into Western Canada and who was executed by the Crown for the murder of Thomas Scott, a British officer. With Riel as an emblem, anglophone and francophone playwrights have forged new outlooks on the historical struggle for control of Western Canada. Furthermore, while investigating the past playwrights have uncovered ways in which conflicting interpretations of history throw light upon present-day Canadian cultural complexities.

To speak of placing any theatre work within its ‘social and political context’ has become almost a matter of course, but, at the same time, the epistemological problems presented by the proliferation of critical theory based on fragmented views of society (or society as fragments), proposing tentative opinions and ‘open readings’, makes this a difficult task and expresses the insecurity of the age. The pluralistic accommodations demanded by theories based on identity, for example, can add to this insecurity. It may become ‘safer’ and considered virtuous to offer ‘partial readings’, thus suggesting a democratization of thought which I would argue is frequently spurious. What often results is a disjunction between theory and materiality. Life is experienced through materiality, action cannot be indeterminate, though it may imply indeterminacy. When the actors appear in the performance space to create a relationship with their audience, this action is predicated by material decisions. The size of the space, positioning of the audience, spatial relationships beween actors and set, textures and colours, and when to turn the lights on and off are all the subject of prior consideration conditioned by the intentions of the play's producers. What do they want the play to do? Why are they doing it? They seek an audience in order to expose ideas and to create a theatrical experience. These ideas may be confused or contradictory but they exist. Moreover since all creative work is derivative in some sense (in that it is based on pre-existent tradition), theatre makers cannot claim to be innocent observers. It is naive to suggest that theatre may be somehow ‘neutral’ or ‘open’ since all meaning is constructed on the basis of prior knowledge. Thus I am proposing that there is a crucial dialectical relationship between theory and practice.

The Central African sub-region has a well developed literary history. Although such countries as Cameroon and Zaire have been the region's literary vanguard, the Congo presents a rather fascinating case study given its size, population and its incredible contribution to national and African literature. Roger Chemain insightfully notes: ‘De toute l'Afrique dite “francophone”, le Congo compte le plus fort pourcentage d'écrivains par rapport à l'ensemble de la population au point qu'il peut prétendre à être l'un des “poles” culturels de cette partie de l'Afrique, au même titre que le Sénégal ou le Cameroun, pourtant beaucoup plus peuplés.’ Indeed, the Congo has produced some of the continent's most innovative and daring political writings. In the theatre, a number of playwrights have attempted to take issue with post-colonial dictatorships and cultural assumptions inherited from African traditions and colonialism.

In 1855, the first ‘coloured’ minstrel troupe, the Mocking Bird Minstrels, appeared on a Philadelphia stage. While this company did not stay together long, it heralded a change in the ‘face’ of minstrelsy in the United States. Many other black minstrel troupes would quickly follow, drawing attention away from the white minstrels who had until then dominated the scene. However, the white minstrel show had already iconized a particular representation of the ‘Negro’, which ultimately paved the way for black anti-minstrel attitudes at the end of the nineteenth century. The minstrel show existed in two guises: the white-in-blackface, and the black-in-blackface. The form and content of the minstrel shows changed over time, as well as audience perception of the two different types of performance. The black minstrel show has come to be regarded as a ‘reclaiming’ of slave dance and performance. It differs from white minstrelsy in that it gave theatrical form to ‘signifyin” on white minstrelsy in the manner in which slaves practised ‘signifyin” on whites in real life.

I begin with two images of African actors. The first, from Asinamali by the South African playwright Mbongeni Ngema (1985; Plate 23), shows a group pose drawn directly from protest theatre—angry men in prison khaki, with fists clenched, bodies tensed in readiness and, one can assume, voices raised against the invisible but all too palpable forces of apartheid. The second, from the centenary celebrations of the American Board Mission in South Africa (1935; Plate 24), portrays the ‘smelling-out of a fraudulent umthakathi’ (which can be translated as diviner or trickster), which were followed, on this occasion, by other scenes portraying the civilizing influence of European settlers. While the first offers an image of African agency and modernity in the face of oppression, the second, with its apparently un-mediated reconstruction of pre-colonial ritual and, in its teleological juxtaposition of ‘tribal’ and ‘civilized’ custom, seems to respond to the quite different terms set by a long history of displays, along the lines of the Savage South Africa Show (1900), in which the authenticity of the Africans on stage was derived not from their agency but by their incorporation into the representation of colonial authority.

The first phase of a long and complex process of the Polish reception of William Shakespeare's oeuvre ended in the middle of the nineteenth century with the popularization of new translations and the gradual elimination of French and German classicist adaptations. Vilna, vital centre of Polish culture, science and art, was the birthplace of Polish Romanticism and a hotbed of theatrical innovation. Vilna was also, at the turn of the eighteenth century, the capital of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and one of the major cities of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The school stage of Vilna Academy, established by Stefan Batory in 1578, had been active since 1582. In 1639, English actors belonging to Robert Archer's company may have visited the town; though the performances planned by King Wladyslaw IV did not take place. A permanent professional theatre was opened in 1785, when Wojciech Boguslawski, the greatest personality of the theatre of the Polish Enlightenment, came up from Warsaw with his troupe.

The figure of Pan escapes definition. Should one even attempt to ascribe a gender? Try to seize him (or her) as the forest god and Pan will turn up as the spirit of fertile fields. Imagine Pan as an impish charmer and Pan transforms into a wily adversary. Pan is multiple and everywhere, englobing but also electrifying. Used as prefix, ‘pan’ imparts to political movements and aesthetic projects a Utopian vision, the progressive notion of broad-based co-operation and community. Yet ‘pan’ can also evoke a potentially discordant assembly.

Current productions written, directed, and/or performed by First Nations Canadians are often characterized by a complex layering of myth and iconography operating simultaneously in more than one cultural system. The effect is richly visual and auditory theatre, but, more important, such performances highlight the essentially indexical and iconographic nature of theatre itself by writing text at the intersection of discourses with quite different political and historical markers and, in the process, bringing those discourses together to form a new typology of signs. What is problematic is the effect of such signs.

‘Shakespeare in our theatres is nothing but a lie. As we know, his plays are staged to be mentioned in the paper list to blind people's eyes with great repertory’, wrote Stefan Jaracz in 1936, one of the most famous Polish actors in the inter-war period. This bitter statement made by the performer of, among other parts, Caliban and Shylock sounds exaggerated. After the First World War Shakespeare remained one of the most appreciated ‘classics’ in our theatre. There was no stage, including those of minor importance, which would not have Shakespeare in its repertory, on many he was the most frequently performed foreign author.

The craze for amateur theatricals among the higher orders in late Georgian England is notorious. It was a passion that was given vent not only in Britain itself, but throughout the Empire, where military officers and civilian gentlefolk trod the boards in centres as far apart as Montreal and Cape Town, Jamaica and Calcutta. One colony that conspicuously lacked such genteel pleasures was convict settlement in New South Wales. The rigours of the posting, the minute numbers constituting the social elite, their geographic dispersal, and the bitter factionalism of their community effectively killed off any possibility of such theatre for the first twenty-five years or so of the outpost's existence. For the next fifteen years the positive influence of a growing population was negated by the continuance of the factionalism, by the deep suspicions of a succession of governors, and by the growing influence of the clergy, most of whom were bitterly hostile to theatre.

Juxtaposed these quotations, which are separated by three centuries and two continents, suggest that seventeenth-century classical French drama serves as a model for African theatre of the early post-colonial period. The first quotation is, of course, from Moliere, the Old Regime's brilliant comic writer. The second is taken from a play by Oyônô-Mbia, a contemporary dramatist from Cameroon. Given the powerful grip France held over its colonies, it is not surprising to find residual influence of France's theatrical culture on African drama. By the end of World War One, French authority in sub-Saharan Africa extended from Cape Verde to the Congo river. The Third Republic established French schools in the larger colonial towns which attracted the children of well-to-do urban families. France therefore held strong political and cultural sway over the development of African leaders and writers.

The first night of Konrad Swinarski's A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Stary Teatr in Cracow took place on 22 July 1970, then a national holiday commemorating the establishment of the People's Republic of Poland. Thanks to Swinarski the Stary Teatr was one of the best companies in Poland; he expected the actors to engage fully with their work, and he had a great gift for inspiring their imagination and emotions. Actors of great personalities belonged to the cast of this Midsummer Night's Dream: Wojciech Pszoniak (Puck), Anna Polony (Helena), Wiktor Sadecki (Oberon), Wojciech Ruszkowski (Quince), yet the main quality of the production resided in the high standard of acting of the ensemble. Swinarski set his actors a difficult task—he wanted them to act both comedy and quite serious drama at the same time. His idea was to search for and enlarge analogies among the threads of the drama, accentuating the oppositions and contrasts in order to stress the internal contradictions of the fictional world. Moreover, he wanted to show all the events of the play in two different, contradictory perspectives: the fairy-tale perspective and the court perspective.

Canada became a country in 1867 through the Confederation of the two small eastern (Maritime) colonies of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick with the larger, more inland colonies of Upper and Lower Canada (Ontario and Quebec). Yet the flag remained the British Union Jack and the constitution resided in London. Canada's own flag was raised only in 1965, and the constitution repatriated only in 1982, both events accompanied by considerable controversy within the nation. The political controversy then (and now) reflects a constantly ambivalent attitude of Canadians towards the relationship between identity and nationalism, an ambivalence that encompasses protean forms of nationalism, including essentialist nationalism and a more elastic concept which recognizes the legitimacy of emotional and cultural ties beyond the national borders.