Famously, the work of the Polish director Tadeusz Kantor drew much on his own past – and specifically on memories of the dead. No less famously, he himself took a ‘part apart’ in his work on stage, manipulating and orchestrating the plays in progress, simultaneously as actor and auteur. In the following article, Eleanor Margolies relates Kantor's dramatic memorializing of the dead and his creative ambivalence towards theatrical illusion to the ‘intersection of mysticism and rationalism’ in his Polish-Jewish background – notably, to the image of the dybbuk, through whom the spirits of the dead speak, as in Anski's play of that name. She relates this ventriloquial habitation by a strange voice with the work of the performance artist Fiona Templeton, whose Recognition interweaves past and present, the living and the dead, in analogous fashion. She suggests that, through very different philosophies and technologies, both Kantor and Templeton ‘transmit a sensual understanding of the past’ to their audiences – through whose own responses the past is ultimately made to speak.

Ancient myth and modern science share a common, cosmic perception of dance as the formulating principle of the universe – whether through metaphor, in the perception of a ‘biodance of life’, or in the closeness to actuality of the ‘dance of the electrons’ at a sub-atomic level. A line of articles in NTQ has explored such connections, with theatrical examples deriving from and illuminating the scientific theory under discussion – but with dance, strangely, relatively neglected as a source of such examples. Here, Cara Gargano takes a number of major modern dance events from the span of the twentieth century to show the interaction between dance and scientific theory, from Loïe Fuller's work at its beginning to Maguy Marin's Coppélia towards its end. The latter, she argues, ‘brings quantum mechanics and chaos theory into the sociological realm’ as it demonstrates ‘how consciousness and social relations are tied to the new physics’. Cara Gargano is Chair of the Department of Theatre, Film, and Dance at the C. W. Post Campus of Long Island University. She has published in Modern Drama, L'Annuaire Théâtrale, and Dance and Research. In New Theatre Quarterly, her earlier contributions on plays which construct their world to reflect the new science were published in NTQ51 and NTQ54.

British theatre between the two world wars has been a neglected area of interest for contemporary scholars and theatre historians, but a growing body of work in this field has of late begun to challenge the orthodoxies. Much of the new work has focused on the reclamation and repositioning of the work of ‘forgotten’ women playwrights and commercially successful gay playwrights such as Noël Coward and Terence Rattigan. Here, John Deeney examines how the Lord Chamberlain's licensing of Christa Winsloe's lesbian-themed Children in Uniform, and the commercial and critical success of its production at the Duchess Theatre in 1932–33, invites a reassessment of the possibilities open to women playwrights for exploring ‘deviancy’; and how contemporary theoretical positions too frequently ignore the challenge of the historically and culturally specific. John Deeney is Lecturer and Course Director in Theatre Studies at the University of Ulster at Coleraine. He is the editor of Writing Live: an Investigation of the Relationship between Writing and Live Art (New Playwrights Trust, 1998) and a contributor to the forthcoming Women, Theatre and Performance: New Histories/New Historiographies (Manchester University Press) and British Theatre between the Wars (Cambridge University Press).

The Burmese zat pwe, an exuberant variety show involving almost every kind of performing art, has fascinated foreign visitors to Myanmar for the past hundred years. It continues today as a vibrant amalgam of singing, dancing, acting, and comic improvisation, still performed annually at pagoda festivals. As Burmese scholars have noted, the Burmese performer is primarily a singer and dancer rather than a dramatic actor, and therefore tends to use plays as frameworks for demonstrating virtuosity in these areas. This is reinforced by the training given at the two State Schools of Music and Dance, and while the Drama Department at the University of Culture does acquaint students with dramatic acting, the emphasis remains on music and dance. Moreover, the scripted drama, especially the classical drama, which reached a peak in the mid-nineteenth century, is increasingly omitted from the pwe programme, having gradually been displaced by the pop music that is considered necessary to attract young audiences. Despite such changes, which alarm traditionalists, the pwe performance has shown a resilient flexibility to adapt to audience preferences and remains a lively highlight at the festivals. Catherine Diamond – who has previously written for NTQ on Vietnamese and Turkish theatre, and on oriental approaches to classical tragedy – is a dancer and drama professor who is currently directing for the Thalie Theatre, the only English-language theatre in Taiwan.

David Mamet's book, True and False: Heresy and Common Sense for the Actor (Faber, 1998), is rapidly becoming recommended reading amongst the acting fraternity. In this article Bella Merlin offers a critical dissection of Mamet's approach, drawing on the working knowledge of Stanislavsky's Method of Physical Actions, or Active Analysis, which she acquired at the State Institute of Cinematography in Moscow. She underlines the fragility of Mamet's dismissal of Stanislavsky, and illustrates how much of his ‘common sense’ actually derives from the principles underlying the Method of Physical Actions. Bella Merlin is an actor and lectures in Drama and Theatre Arts at Birmingham University.

How can computer intelligence best be employed in the theatre? Imagine that a computer is given the ability to control electronically all the media of the stage, and is able to sense and understand in an abstract way what is happening in that space. Furthermore, suppose that the computer is given the ability to reason about what is happening and could construct abstract responses through media. What would it be possible for the computer to do? The theatrical space is the computer's body, the electronic media the limbs, cameras and microphones used as sensors are the eyes and ears, a speech generation program the mouth, and the CPUs and internal programming are the brains, used to interact with the physical world. The space that holds the performance becomes an environment generated from behaviours of the computer, responding to and shaped by performers, designers, and technicians. Robb E. Lovell describes how this kind of intelligent environment can expand the expressive potential of traditional theatre in many ways, and considers how this will affect the viewers' and performers' perceptions, setting out some of the pros and cons of the involvement of computer intelligence in performance settings. Computer involvement is not, he argues, about the death of traditional theatre forms, but rather about their growth into new realms of expressiveness. Robb Lovell is a resident artist/technologist at the Institute for Studies in the Arts (ISA) at Arizona State University. He is co-creator of the Intelligent Stage, a theatrical space that registers sensory input through video and audio, and responds through lights, sound, video, animation, and robotics. He is currently creating tools for artists and technicians based on the technology of the Intelligent Stage – tools that allow artists to create interactive mediated works. He is working on a practical PhD in Interactive Theatre Design through the Institute for New Media Performance Research.

Eugenio Barba is founder and director of Odin Teatret, and of the International School of Theatre Anthropology. A longstanding Advisory Editor of NTQ, he is also a prolific writer on the nature of acting and the actor, with a special concern for what is shared by and what divides the traditions and styles of East and West. In the following article he explores the fundamental differences in approaches to the training of the aspirant actor, distinguishing between ‘acculturation’ as the usual point of departure in eastern traditions, and ‘inculturation’ as the dominant western mode. He explores the differing natures of the young actor's apprenticeship which have historically derived from these traditions, and the consequences of new emphases and social movements in the twentieth century which threaten the future of the ‘accultured’ approach, while requiring a new range of responses from the ‘incultured’. This article was first presented at the international symposium ‘Tacit Knowledge – Heritage and Waste’ which was held in Holstebro from 22 to 26 September 1999, on the occasion of Odin Teatret's thirty-fifth anniversary. Eugenio Barba's most recent publications are Land of Ashes and Diamonds: My Apprenticeship in Poland, including a long correspondence from Jerzy Grotowski, and Theatre: Solitude, Craft, Revolt, both from Black Mountain Press.

Spiritualism enjoys an equivocal reputation not unlike that of wrestling – for whatever their intrinsic qualities, both benefit greatly from the trappings of showmanship. Supposed spiritualist mediums first manifested themselves during the Victorian era, which seems to have been highly susceptible to such fraudsters as the American Davenport brothers – whose touring ‘seances’ were, however, greeted with rather more scepticism in the North of England than in London. While audiences seemed to enjoy the way in which such demonstrations of spiritual possession were presented in a manner resembling a professional conjuring act, professional conjurers were properly offended by such presumption. So, too, was the young Henry Irving, who, with two companions, took up a challenge in The Era, the newspaper of the variety profession, to emulate the mystical achievements of the Davenports. The following paper, which was originally presented in July 1995 at the Theatre Museum as part of the celebrations of the centenary of Irving's knighthood, traces the rise and development of the spiritualist craze, and illuminates this previously obscure aspect of Irving's career. Helen Nicholson is currently completing her PhD on the life of the Victorian actress and singer Georgina Weldon, before taking up an appointment as a drama lecturer in the English Department at Manchester Metropolitan University. She has published articles on Georgina Weldon in Occasional Papers on Women and Theatre, on the Victorian supernatural, and on Victorian fairies in History Workshop Journal.

Augusto Boal is one of the best-known contemporary practitioners and teachers in the use of drama as a means of challenging the status quo. Starting as a self-proclaimed revolutionary, challenging the artistic theories of Aristotle and seeking to supersede those of Brecht, he developed his ‘Theatre of the Oppressed’ working with the poor of Brazil. Now he is perhaps best known for his work in ‘Forum Theatre’ and ‘Image Theatre’. In this article, David Davis and Carmel O'Sullivan argue that not only have Boal's methods been far from revolutionary for many years, but that they are now focused on individual needs, enabling the individual to survive a little longer within an oppressive social structure. They propose that this is not a case of Marxist revolutionary ideology becoming diluted over time, but that the roots of the change are to be found in a lack of grounding in Marxist theory and philosophy from the beginning. David Davis is Director of the International Centre for Studies in Drama in Education and Professor of Drama in Education at the University of Central England, teaching on the MA programme as well as supervising PhD research. He has presented workshops in many parts of the world, and published widely. Carmel O'Sullivan lectures in the Education Department at Trinity College, Dublin, and is currently completing her doctoral thesis critiquing the theory and practice of Boal at the University of Central England.