Jatinder Verma founded Tara Arts in 1977 as a British-Asian company, the first of its kind in Britain. Its use of ‘Binglish’, a term coined by Verma to define the English of speakers belonging to the diaspora of the Indian subcontinent, is an integral part of Tara's identity, as he discussed in his commentary in NTQ52 (1997). This new interview, conducted in July 2008 and February 2009, focuses on issues to do with multiculturalism, engaging Verma in an in-depth discussion of this problematic and increasingly contested area and leading him to outline the artistic pursuits of his company. Special attention is given to the working processes of the Journey to the West trilogy (2002) and to the aesthetic principles driving it, which extend to other productions he has directed for Tara Arts, not least to his more recent transpositions of Ibsen and Shakespeare. A complete chronology of productions can be found on the Tara Arts webpage, www.tara-arts.com. The first part of this interview was published in Maria Shevtsova's Sociology of Theatre and Performance (Verona: QuiEdit, 2009), p. 359–71. She is Professor of Drama and Theatre Arts at Goldsmiths, University of London, and co-editor of New Theatre Quarterly.

Comedy, argues Laurence Senelick, is the form most indigenous to the Russian stage; so while its great players may still vie to make Hamlet their own, it is the comic figure of Khlestakov in Gogol's Government Inspector (Revizor) who most fully absorbs and enacts the concerns of the times in which the role is recreated. Here, while tracing the history of the role during the nineteenth century, Laurence Senelick is chiefly concerned with its performance by Mikhail Chekhov in Stanislavsky's first post-Revolutionary production at the Moscow Art Theatre in 1921. Stanislavsky's earlier revival in 1908 had placed Khlestakov amidst a ‘community of fools’; now – reflecting the view of Gogol's anti-hero given by Dmitry Merezhkovsky in his influential essay of 1906, ‘Gogol and the Devil’ – Chekhov accomplished the challenging task of embodying a nullity, an ‘empty vessel’, the odd one out in a ‘normal’ society which he manages briefly to plunge into delirium. Laurence Senelick is Distinguished Professor at Tufts University, and has published widely in the fields of Russian theatre, the history of popular entertainments, sex and gender and performance, and theatre iconography. His most recent works include A Historical Dictionary of Russian Theatre (Scarecrow Press, 2007), The Complete Plays of Anton Chekhov as translator and editor (Norton, 2005), and The Changing Room: Sex, Drag, and Theatre (Routledge, 2000).

The Sogo bò, primarily an animal masquerade, can be distinguished from Western theatre through its use of a fluid space with shifting boundaries between spectator and performer. An oral tradition dictates the characterization, scenario, and content. The resemblance to ritual can be found in structural elements such as its repetitive nature and the use of non-realistic performance objects and motions. As in ritual, there is a clear sense of order, an evocative presentational style, and a strong collective dimension. The functional resemblance lies in the complex metaphorical expression through which relationships and values are symbolized, objectified, and embodied in a highly artistic way. Marie Kruger is an associate professor and the Chair of the Department of Drama at the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa, where puppetry is offered as a performance and research option. Her research is focused on masquerades in Africa and the various contemporary applications of puppetry in sub-Saharan Africa.

By 1909 the French actor, playwright, and director Max Linder was probably the most popular male film star of his time, and his success as an innovative writer-actor of variety and revue continued until the outbreak of the First World War. But this followed five years of frustration in stage-ornament roles on the professional, ‘legitimate’ stage, and only after success in the cinema did his playlets, integrating filmed and live action, further enhance his fame in variety venues across Europe. After the war, and Linder's stints in Hollywood, his long descent into bouts of manic depression tragically began. But his theatrical spirit survives in the cine-stage works of the Prague theatre, Laterna Magika, and Frank Bren also discusses here his possible influence on the work of Erwin Piscator, and more surely on the spectacular Paris music-hall production, Jour de fête à l'Olympia, created by and starring Jacques Tati in 1961. This was plainly modelled on Linder's cinema-theatre creations of 1910–1914, with Tati and Pierre Etaix the outstanding successors to Max in French film comedy. Australian actor-author Frank Bren is currently writing a biography of Pierre Etaix, whose classic film comedies of the sixties are now being restored for international re-release – two of them paying discreet homage to Max Linder. Bren has written or co-written histories of Polish and Chinese cinema and theatre as well as articles for diverse international periodicals.

By the 1990s, the feminist contention that gender norms inform the production and reception of art had become widely accepted in academia. Many theatre journalists, however, continued to insist on the possibility of writing about performance from an apolitical, gender-neutral position. This article examines the gendered history of this insistence from the early 1700s to the present, its effects on the production and reception of plays by women, and its implications for theatre scholarship. Focusing on Carolee Schneemann's critique of a masculine bias in art criticism in her performance Interior Scroll and the Guerrilla Girls' actions against gender discrimination in the art world, this article examines strategies adopted by female and feminist journalists in Britain and the US to counter women's inequitable status in art journalism and playwriting. By engaging with the gendered binaries mind–body and text–performance, Schneemann and the Guerrilla Girls help clarify how reviewing practices have informed critical thinking about femininity and performance. In doing so, these artists anticipate poststructuralist feminist critiques of visibility and the performing body. Stefka Mihaylova holds a PhD in Theatre Studies from Northwestern University. Her research focuses on performance theory, especially gender and racial aspects of spectatorship in contemporary American and British feminist and radical theatre and performance art.

Corporeal mime and the work of Etienne Decroux are well known in the world of physical theatre, remaining inspirational to those who have studied and explored this complex art form. In the following article Nicola Baylis examines the prevailing misunderstandings that surround corporeal mime, briefly addressing its historical context, and moving on to discuss contemporary applications of Decroux's training system. With the increasing advent of innovative theatre produced by a new wave of actors trained in corporeal mime, she focuses on the current work of artists in Naples, and concludes with reflections on corporeal mime's relevance to present-day experimental performance and on the potential future role of the form within modern theatre. Nicola Baylis is an actor, director, and teacher who has trained in corporeal mime and commedia dell'arte. Before moving to Naples, she worked as a Lecturer in Drama on degree programmes at Bournemouth and Poole College, in conjunction with Bournemouth University. She is currently working on an adaptation of Macbeth which will be performed in London in the autumn.