The approximately contemporary Jacobean plays, King Lear and Nobody and Somebody, share an ancient British setting, a preoccupation with instability in the state, and an unsettling interest in negation. Peter Womack here suggests that by reading them together we can retrieve some of the theatrical strangeness which the more famous of the two has lost through familiarity and naturalization. The dramatic mode of existence of the character called ‘Nobody’ is paradoxical, denaturing – an early modern visual and verbal Verfremdungseffekt, at once philosophical and clownish. His negativity, which is articulated in dialogue with the companion figure of ‘Somebody’, is matched in King Lear, above all in the role of Edgar, but also by a more diffused state of being (withdrawal, effacement, folly) which the play generates in reaction to its positive events. Ultimately the negation in both plays is social in character: ‘Nobody’ is the dramatic face of the poor and oppressed. Peter Womack teaches literature at the University of East Anglia. His most recent book is English Renaissance Drama (2006), in the Blackwell Guides to Literature series.

In this article Jane Turner explores the trilogy of works titled Re-placing Texts, together with Epilogue, devised and performed by the innovative group Plane Performance, now in its tenth year. The trilogy – Three Degrees of Frost, SET and Round-about – are rewritings of Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard, David Lean's film Brief Encounter, and Rogers and Hammerstein's film musical, Carousel. The article examines the strategies adopted by the company as acts of ‘creative vandalism’, both in terms of current understandings of theatre practice and in terms of their treatment of the original texts. Jane Turner argues that the dramatic texts have become ossified by cultural usage and that the radical stance taken by the company allows for a counter-cultural position to re-emerge. The author is a Principal Lecturer in Contemporary Arts at Manchester Metropolitan University. She has recently published work on Eugenio Barba and applied theatre practice.

The title of Benjamin Lloyd's article reflects the apparent dissociation between, on the one hand, a spiritual religion distinguished by its lack of dogmatism and by non-liturgical forms of worship and, on the other, a mode of entertainment long divorced from the ritual religious forms in which it may well have had its roots, yet which continues to depend on preserving authenticity despite the rote of repeated performance. The author suggests that a communal seeking after inward enlightenment occurs no less in the approach of some of the most influential of modern theatre teachers – notably Stanislavsky and Grotowski – than at a meeting of the Society of Friends; and that the nature of Quaker worship may not, after all, be far removed from a striving for theatrical truth. In the series of ‘meetings together’ here described and analyzed, Benjamin Lloyd brought together friends and practitioners to investigate the nature and possible value of the relationship. The author has acted and directed in New York, Edinburgh, and Prague, and taught at Villanova and Princeton Universities. He presently teaches acting at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, and his book, The Actor's Way: a Journey of Self-Discovery in Letters, was published by Allworth Press in 2006. He is a member of Haverford Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends.

The issue of globalization has recently been exercising many minds in the field of theatre studies as elsewhere, resulting in various calls for approaches to theatre history that are less nationalistic or eurocentric. Yet of all art forms theatre appears to be, by its nature, the most parochial, tied to the needs of distinct social, ethnic, or other interests within constituencies limited by the economics of touring. Here Jo Robinson places arguments about globalization and theatre in a broader context of the current debate within the social sciences, and argues that exploring the ways in which performing cultures are truly interconnected may best be achieved by an exploration of neglected local histories. The author is a Lecturer in Drama at the University of Nottingham, and is currently leading the AHRC-funded three-year project, ‘Mapping Performance Culture: Nottingham 1857–67’, which is exploring the use of maps and mapping to recuperate performance history within the area. She is also Co-convenor of TaPRA's Theatre History and Historiography Working Group.

Kobna Holdbrook-Smith was a member of the repertory company formed by artistic director Nicolas Kent for the 2005–2006 African-American season at the Tricycle Theatre in north London. That company also included Jenny Jules, Joseph Marcell, Lucian Msamati, Carmen Munroe, and Nathan Osgood. In Walk Hard – Talk Loud by Abram Hill, a play originally produced in 1944 and set in New York in the late 1930s, Holdbrook-Smith played a young boxer who faces racism. In Lynn Nottage's contemporary satire Fabulation, he took on dual roles – the heroine's husband who absconds with her wealth, and the gentle ex-junkie who offers her love. And in August Wilson's Gem of the Ocean, set in Pittsburgh in 1904, his Citizen Barlow seeks purification from the 285-year-old spiritual adviser Aunt Ester and is taken on a symbolic rite of passage. The Ghanaian-born Holdbrook-Smith also appeared at the Tricycle in 2004–2005 in Mustapha Matura's Playboy of the West Indies. Terry Stoller, who teaches at Baruch College in New York City and is working on a book project about the Tricycle Theatre, spoke with Holdbrook-Smith in June 2006 in Covent Garden, London.

Kwame Kwei-Armah's play Elmina's Kitchen was a landmark in British theatre history as the first drama by an indigenous black writer to be staged in London's commercial West End. The play's success since its premiere at the Royal National Theatre included a national tour and a season at Center Stage, Baltimore, directed by August Wilson's director Marion McClinton. In this interview with Deirdre Osborne, Kwei-Armah testifies to Wilson's considerable influence and the inspiration he derives from Wilson's project to account for the history of black people's experience in every decade of the twentieth century. Deirdre Osborne is a lecturer in drama at Goldsmiths College, University of London, and has published essays on the work of black British dramatists and poets including Kwame Kwei-Armah, Dona Daley, debbie tucker green, Lemn Sissay, SuAndi, and Roy Williams.

In his play Paul, first staged at the National Theatre in 2005, Howard Brenton attempted a dramatic portrayal of one of the most influential and controversial figures in human history, the man many regard as the ‘founder’ of Christianity. In this article John Baker explores the complex relationship between Brenton's Paul and his Biblical counterpart, and asks what drew an avowed atheist and socialist to a dramatic consideration of a religious leader often condemned as authoritarian, anti-Semitic and misogynistic. John Baker was awarded his PhD by the University of Manchester in 1999. He currently teaches English Literature at the University of Westminster.

Many theatre pieces in Japan now focus on a certain type of physicality which results from the sense of unease present in Japanese society. Manabu Noda argues that the senses of estrangement, distrust, apathy, helplessness, and incongruity in this supposedly democratic country come partly from the macho pressures under the right-wing Koizumi administration of 2001–06, and examines some current Japanese performances in the context of Japanese post-war society and of the continuing conflict in Iraq. He explores how these performances stage the body ill at ease – perceived as something irrevocably ‘left behind’ physically rather than textually. Manabu Noda is former general secretary of the Japan Centre of the International Association of Theatre Critics, and presently holds the position of Professor in the School of Arts and Letters at Meiji University in Tokyo. A theatre critic, he has also published books and essays on British and Japanese acting and theatre history. The present paper is based on a presentation in October 2006 at the conference ‘Foundation and Horizon of Hong Kong Performing Arts Criticism’, organized by the International Association of Theatre Critics in Hong Kong, and on a shortened version presented at the IATC 2006 Extraordinary Congress in Seoul.