Right now, the East European theatre is the most exciting in the world. (When I say East Europe, I refer to the Soviet Union, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Rumania, Bulgaria, East Germany, and Yugoslavia.) This theatre is not necessarily the most accomplished, although that is a defensible claim. I mean that theatrical creativity is blooming there, and that, in the theatre, encouragements and incitements outweigh efforts to keep creative people in check.

The most important single element is the existence of a cheap, subsidized theatre that has mass appeal. Of course, subsidies encourage the continued popularity of a great deal of junk, but they protect quality as well, and sometimes theatre of the highest standards is popular, too. If subsidy is one secret, the other is the relative absence of competition. Television is generally confined to a single channel and only to certain hours of the day.

I am a bit impatient when asked, “What is the origin of your experimental theatre productions?” The assumption seems to be that “experimental” work is tangential (toying with some “new” technique each time) and tributary. The result is supposed to be a contribution to modern staging—scenography using current sculptural or electronic ideas, contemporary music, actors independently projecting clownish or cabaret stereotypes. I know that scene: I used to be part of it. Our Theatre Lab productions are going in another direction. In the first place, we are trying to avoid eclecticism, trying to resist thinking of theatre as a composite of disciplines. We are seeking to define what is distinctively theatre, what separates this activity from other categories of performance and spectacle. Secondly, our productions are detailed investigations of the actor-audience relationship. That is, we consider the spiritual and scenic technique of the actor as the core of theatre art.

Although the Soviet theatre is gigantic in extent and past achievements, its exact lineaments are often hard to discern from the West. Because of a distance which is linguistic, cultural, and political as well as geographical, balanced news does not filter through to us with any regularity; for many the Russian theatre is still summed up by one man—Stanislavski. Others are impressed by the Soviet system of permanent theatre companies but are unaware of their disadvantages and the pressures to which they are subject. Except on a few festival occasions, such as Edinburgh, London's “World Theatre Season,” or Aix-en-Provence, the theatre is not a very exportable commodity, and on the rare tours by Soviet theatre companies outside Eastern Europe, critical reaction has usually differed sharply.

In a Tunisian production of L'Ecole des Femmes, Arnolphe wore a red tarboosh with a green band around it. The green band meant he had made a pilgrimage to Mecca. Arnolphe was full of dignity and refinement, rarely flew into a rage, and only on one or two occasions leveled at his servants a long black stick with a bent silver handle. For the most part he was smiling, ironical, had an air of superiority, was certain of his absolute rights. He was a merchant—an honest and experienced merchant. Agnes was his property: he had bought her as a child, was maintaining her and bringing her up to be his wife. She should be obedient. She must not know too much.