Drama training in Britain at the present time is replete with horror stories. In the academic sector, intake numbers have been pushed far beyond the strength of the resources – whether of personnel or performing spaces – designed to accommodate them. In the actor training sector, those students who have somehow managed to cope with the heavy fees struggle for subsistence – often by working at full-time jobs during the night and at weekends, while some have even joined the homeless on the streets. In the following article, Clive Barker attempts to disentangle the complex web of factors which have led to this situation, and to suggest how some of the artistic, if not the economic problems might begin to be tackled. Clive Barker, who recently retired from the Joint School of Theatre Studies at the University of Warwick, is co-editor of New Theatre Quarterly. Formerly an actor with Theatre Workshop, he is also author of the seminal text, Theatre Games.

Since its opening in 1961, the Victoria Theatre in Stoke-on-Trent has arguably been England's most adventurous and inventive repertory theatre, distinguished by the number and range of new plays it has produced – and particularly by the series of local documentaries which has set out to explore and reflect the life of the local community. The first issue of Theatre Quarterly (1971) covered the early years of the old Victoria Theatre, and included an article by the director, Peter Cheeseman, on the company policy and production style of what was then Britain's only permanent theatre in the round. In addition, a ‘Production Casebook’ followed the creative processes and the techniques involved in rehearsals of one of the early Vic documentaries, The Staffordshire Rebels. Here, Graham Woodruff looks at developments in the later Vic documentaries and, in the light of current discourses on popular theatre, history, and class politics, examines the implications of a regional theatre giving voice to ‘women of the working class’ in the latest Vic documentary, Nice Girls. Graham Woodruff, who has been Head of Drama at the University of Birmingham and for sixteen years worked for Telford Community Arts, wrote in NTQ28 (1989) on the politics of community plays, and is currently undertaking research on the ways in which the contemporary theatre gives expression to workingclass voices and interests.

The controversy in the United States surrounding the funding of ‘offensive‐ and ‘pornographic‐ works by the National Endowment of the Arts (NEA) has centered on whether or not the organization should espouse a morally conservative outlook in regard to the public funding of artistic works. However, the NEA arguably already pursues conservative policies rooted in its vision of the form, function, and outlook of the arts it exists to serve. The appointment of the actress Jane Alexander as chair of the NEA may have indicated that the organization would become more liberal in its moral stance, but the question remains: can government-supported art be anything but conservative? The following is a case study of one theatre's relationship to the NEA in the context of the Washington, DC, theatre community. The author, Mary C. Resing, is a former business manager of New Playwrights' Theatre in Washington, DC, and a former grant writer at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is currently working on her dissertation on the actress-manager Vera Kommissarzhevskaia.

Despite the recognized value of semiotics in opening-out our perceptions of what constitutes the text of a performance, its literary associations have meant that most theatre semioticians concerned with reception cling to analogies between the literary reading act and the spectator's reception of a theatrical performance. For them, there is a conceptual as well as a metaphorical relationship between a literary text and what they term the performance text — and so, by implication, a similar relationship between how both are ‘read’. Taking these semioticians at their word, in the following article Ian Watson isolates the actor in the performance text, examines how s/he is read, and questions the attempts of scholars to ignore quality as an important component of this reading.

Whether described as adaptations, documentations, translations, or transcriptions, the video cassettes which allow us to see performances on video are proliferating. Not always easily available for begging, borrowing, or buying, not always willingly turned over by the theatre companies who hold them for in-house use, often lost or erased by television channels, and always beleaguered with copyright problems, these electronic arts ‘documents’ are none the less causing a revolution in teaching, rehearsal methods, and research. In what constitutes a first detailed mapping of the territory, Annabelle Melzer's two-part article deals with the theoretical and aesthetic questions surrounding performance documentation, with some of the hands-on issues of such filming – and with her own journey to seek out the documents themselves. Annabelle Melzer, Associate Professor of Theatre at the University of Tel Aviv, is completing ten years of research on the adaptation and documentation of theatre through moving image documents. Shakespeare on Screen, the first volume of her multi-volume filmography, Theatre on Screen, appeared in 1991, receiving the Choice and American Library Association awards as outstanding reference book of 1991. Her articles on avant-garde performance have appeared in Artforum, Theatre Research International, and Comparative Drama, and her Hazan Prize-winning book Dada and Surrealist Performance has just been reissued by Johns Hopkins University Press. She is at present writing a book on the theatricality of war.

From Eugenio Barba's article in the inaugural edition of New Theatre Quarterly to Julia Varley's in the current issue, we have traced the progress of Odin Teatret both through the thinking of its members and – as in the following article – through the commentary of its friends and observers. Odin remains one of the most influential of contemporary experimental companies, as does Eugenio Barba one of the most widely-respected directors – having more recently extended his activities into the foundation and continuing work of ISTA, the International School of Theatre Anthropology. But Odin is also one of the longest-surviving of post-war companies, recently completing thirty years of work, largely at its home base of Hoistebro in Denmark. In the following article Ferdinando Taviani celebrates the occasion with a view of Odin which attempts to capture the essence of its style and approach, and to define the paradox of the image of the ‘empty ritual’ which Barba has himself recently used to describe it. Ferdinando Taviani, a specialist in commedia dell'arte and the craft of the actor, is a professor at Aquila University in Italy. He published The Book of Odin in 1972.

In 1992, during the session of ISTA (the International School of Theatre Anthropology) in Brecon, the word ‘subtext’ was replaced by ‘subscore’ – a term felt to be more appropriate for the not necessarily literary theatre, in which actors build their scenic presence with a vocal and physical form of behaviour called ‘score’. Yet, as Odin actress Julia Varley here argues, the actor's body remembers and his or her actions contain a far greater quantity of information than consciousness can ever master – while, more practically, each actor has to go through various phases of utilizing such ‘information’ if work is to be kept alive and interesting, for herself as much as for her audience. Here, Julia Varley argues for an approach to ‘precision’ in acting which is less concerned with the analysis of what is internal or external, but closer to the contemporary scientific perception – that ‘all is matter in communication without borders, a continuous flow and interchange’.

In the second and third volumes of the Russian edition of Stanislavsky's notebooks, Rezhisserskie Egzemplary (Moscow, 1981 and 1983), are to be found Stanislavsky's own notes on his productions of Chekhov's plays for the Moscow Art Theatre – The Seagull, Three Sisters, and The Cherry Orchard. Questioning the received wisdom that in many ways his first director served Chekhov ill, with over-elaborate productions which failed to bring out the humour and ambiguity of the plays, Jovan Hristić here draws deeply upon the notebooks to contrast their instructions and descriptions with the directions and stated or presumed intentions of Chekhov himself. He illuminatingly reveals that, while some of Stanislavsky's solutions understandably appear over-the-top to more minimalist modern tastes, they are almost invariably complementary rather than contradictory to Chekhov, and designed to serve the plays rather than to subject them to directorial whim.

Born in 1846, Franz Mehring as a young man was a follower of Ferdinand Lassalle, who in 1863 had organized Germany's first socialist party. As well as establishing a reputation as a journalist with his contributions to many liberal and democratic newspapers, Mehring was awarded his doctorate at Leipzig University in 1881 for his dissertation on the history and teachings of German social democracy. In his mid-forties he embraced Marxism and in 1891 joined the German Social Democratic Party, soon emerging as the intellectual leader of its left wing. He became editor of the Leipziger Volkszeitung and wrote prolifically for Die Neue Zeit and other radical journals on history, politics, philosophy, and literature. His book The Lessing Legend, published in 1893, is regarded as the first sustained attempt at Marxist literary criticism. His major biography of Karl Marx appeared in 1918, the year before his death. Completed in 1891, The Weavers was accepted for performance by the Deutsches Theater but was rejected by the Berlin censor as ‘a portrayal which specifically instils class hatred’. The first production of the play, discussed by Mehring below, was possible only because the Freie Bühne was a subscription society. In October 1893 a further private performance was given at the Neue Freie Volksbühne, followed by seven more in December at the Freie Volksbühne, where Franz Mehring was chairman. By now, the Prussian State censor had overruled his Berlin subordinate and The Weavers received its public premiere at the Deutsches Theater on 25 September 1894. On each occasion Hauptmann's play was greeted with great enthusiasm by the public, but found no favour with the Imperial family who indignantly cancelled their regular box at the Deutsches Theater. Subsequently The Weavers was banned from public performance in France, Austria, Italy, and Russia. Mehring's article appeared originally in Die Neue Zeit, XI, No. I (1893). Its translation in NTQ forms part of an occasional series on early Marxist dramatic criticism, which already includes Trotsky on Wedekind (NTQ28) and Lunacharsky on Ibsen (NTQ39). EDWARD BRAUN