In the first issue of New Theatre Quarterly (February 1985), we included a descriptive analysis by David Williams of three of the major productions of Peter Brook's Centre Internationale de Recherche Théâtrale in Paris. Following the opening of the company's most recent production, the Mahabharata. a number of its earlier members returned to join in a series of meetings designed to share some of their approaches and experiences with a public audience. Georges Banu – whose own detailed account of Brook's work formed the thirteenth volume of Voies de la création théâtrale (Paris: CNRS. 1985) – was among that audience, and here presents a journal of the six days of meetings, which were held from 18–20 and 26–28 March 1986.

It is ironic that interest in the roots of ‘alternative comedy’ is probably greater than ever before just as the most successful of its exponents are moving, in commercial terms, firmly into the mainstream. Perhaps that process is inevitable – and perhaps the drift into sitcoms and voice-overs does not matter so long as there remains a ferment of new activity, jostling for the less lucrative exposure of the smaller venues and the new cabaret circuit. The author of this survey, Tony Lidington, was himself in at the beginning of the ‘Pierrotters’ – which claims to be the first concert party to have existed in Brighton since the war, having now played four summer seasons there – and in 1983 he also founded the Bright Red Theatre Company. Here, he traces the development of the phenomenon of ‘alternative cabaret’ from its social and cultural beginnings, and looks at the present scene from the perspective of some fellow south coast performers – whose problems and ambitions are, he feels, representative of a nationwide network of diverse and, thankfully, often diverting talent.

Recent feminist criticism has led to a reassessment of women's roles in the Elizabethan drama, especially in such ‘difficult’ plays as The Taming of the Shrew or Shakespeare's problem comedies. Yet this has often been with an implicit belief in the appropriateness of ‘psychological’ or ‘interpretive’ approaches to character and gender quite alien to the period in which the plays were first performed. In the following article. Kathleen McLuskie. who teaches in the Department of Theatre at the University of Kent, looks at the different, often conflicting approaches to the sexuality of performance in the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods, at how these were reflected both in theatrical conventions and in contemporary attitudes to the plays and the ‘boy actresses’ – and at some possible implications for modern productions.

Our inclusion in NTQ5 of a piece by the priest-playwright Karl Gaspar, recording his experiences of creating drama in a Philippine prison-camp, coincided with the overthrow of the Marcos regime – a revolution in whose preparation and support. Eugène van Erven now argues, the theatre played a significant part. In the following article, he describes the organization and work of the Philippine Educational Theatre Association – PETA for short – from its creation in the early 'seventies, to the fully-established network of companies and activities of the present day, and discusses its future role in a society not yet certain of the success of its revolution. Eugène van Erven is currently involved in a long-term project researching liberation theatre in the Third World, funded at present by his postdoctoral research fellowship in the Drama Studies Programme of the Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. His earlier publications have been in the field of contemporary western European political theatre, on which subject he was awarded his doctorate from Vanderbilt University. Tennessee.

Among the three or four leading contemporary American playwrights, John Guare is probably least known in Britain: yet in many ways he is the most clear-sighted about the nature of American society, and the most ‘European’ in the often ironic viewpoint which informs his work. His career now spans the period from the 'sixties years of protest against the Vietnam War to the recent Lydie Breeze tetralogy, which approached the past with something of the sweep of a nineteenth-century novel. John Harrop begins this three-part NTQ feature on Guare with a brief critical overview of the man and his plays. His interview with Guare. conducted last September following the successful New York revival of his House of Blue Leaves, follows, and a detailed bio-bibliographical NTQ Checklist of Guare's work provides a full factual complement. John Harrop. an advisory editor of NTQ. is Professor of Drama at the University of California. Santa Barbara, and was a frequent contributor to the original Theatre Quarterly. His study of American actor training was published in NTQ3, and he is author of Creative Play Direction (with Robert Cohen) and of Acting with Style (with Sabin Epstein). He also acts and directs professionally, and has himself directed two of John Guare's plays

The play deals with one of the characters, Ronnie, who is trying to kill the Pope. Now if you wrote about trying to blow up the Pope in 1971, people would say, ‘Where do you get your ideas? It's bizarre…’. I went to see the play in 1981 at the Berkshire Theatre Festival just after the Pope had been shot, because I wondered what that event would do to the play. Would it make audiences gasp? What it did was strange. People used to look at the play in some skewed fashion and say, ‘Oh, what a kooky… what a funny…’. Suddenly, with the shooting of the Pope, I felt as if a protective wall had shattered and the audience had tumbled onto the same side of the mirror as the play, and I felt that their perception allowed them to see the characters' needs and hungers with much more directness than in 1971.

The Stary Theatre in Cracow has. since the death of its former director Konrad Swinarski, enjoyed a reputation for more eclectic work than those Polish theatres identified with a single, strong directorial ‘line’. Its recent season nevertheless reveals that this ‘old’ playhouse, as its name translates, remains in the vanguard of new and experimental work, with three productions of contrasting styles but shared stature – Wajda's Crime and Punishment. Pasolini's Affabulazione. and Bradecki's A Pattern of Metaphysical Evidence. The leading Polish critic Andrzej Żurowski. who is also vice-president of the International Association of Theatre Critics, provides an evocative comparison of plays, directors, and styles.

In NTQ7 we included an assessment by Geraldine Cousin of two recent productions of Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew – one of them by Di Trevis for the touring group of the Royal Shakespeare Company. The designer for that production was Pamela Howard, who created for it a central traverse playing area adaptable to the many different kinds of venues to be visited. Here, she adds an illustrated postscript on the conception, creation, and utility of the design element, which we hope will initiate the regular documentation of this often-neglected area of theatre practice. In addition to designing for the RSC and numerous other theatres and companies, Pamela Howard has since 1972 taught theatre design at the Central School of Art in London.