Loïe Fuller's contributions to the theory and practice of theatre and dance are numerous, yet few dancers and even fewer theatre people know of her work. Most dance and theatre historians, if they mention her at all, only devote a cursory paragraph to her achievements. As is often the case, repeated omission is gradually solidified into misinformation. Other people have often been credited with her innovations.

Between 1865 and 1891, Fuller had a rather successful career as actress, manager, and sometime. playwright. After 1892, she influenced (and was influenced by) Art Nouveau, Symbolism, and Impressionism. She was written about, painted, and sculpted by most of the important artists in Paris at the turn of the century. A theatre was even built for her. And she set up and managed the initial European tours of Isadora Duncan, Maude Allen, and two Japanese acting companies. All the while, she kept on writing plays.

The ProVisional Theatre from Los Angeles performed two of the three works in their repertoire at the Experimental Theatre Festival in Ann Arbor. In addition, they gave a workshop, conducted by Steve Kent, a non-performing director of the group. It consisted for the most part of animated body work and theatre games. Exercises from Viola Spolin's canon as well as sound and movement exercises developed by Joseph Chaikin and The Open Theater were demonstrated, as well as improvisational games of their own. It was obvious that, in addition to the political aspect of The ProVisional Theatre's work, there was a desire to experiment with developing the actor's technique.

The ProVisional Theatre is an eleven-member group and, although they consider themselves highly political, they refuse to identify themselves with any specific philosophy.

Written in 1930-1931 after a Party directive to bring more women into the various German Communist organizations and first produced in January, 1932, Brecht's adaptation of the well-known Maxim Gorky novel, The Mother, was the subject of an intense esthetic and political debate among theatre critics and left-based theatre workers.

Nikolai Foregger (1892-1939), christened Nicholas Baron Foregger von Greiffenturn, the sole descendant of an aristocratic Russo-German family, was one of the most extreme exponents of mechanization and abstraction in the Soviet theatre and dance during its first decade. Foregger belonged to that unique generation of Russian writers, artists, directors, and dance-masters who, born in the 1890's, quickly reached their artistic maturity in the early Twenties. Writers and artists like Mayakovsky, Sergei Tretyakov, Isaac Babel, Varvara Stepanova, and Alexander Rodchenko are among the best known of that era. In the fields of theatre and dance, there were Foregger Eisenstein, Sergei Radlov, Boris Tikhonovich, Boris Ferdinandov, the FEKS group Vera Maya, and Kasyan Goleizovsky. Together, despite acknowledged differences in motivation and style, these young artists accepted the critical appellative Constructivist to describe their art.

With the exception of Eisenstein (see T61) and Meyerhold, who was judged according to other standards, the scenic work of the Constructivists is not well known although at the time of the Constructivist period (1920-1924), many of their productions and techniques were considered more radical than Meyerhold's and in fact prefigured many of his own post-revolutionary innovations, such as Biomechanics and mobile decor.

The Research University organized by Jerzy Grotowski from June 14th to July 7th, 1975, in Wroclaw. Poland, was a series of introductions to the Laboratory's paratheatcal activities that are part of the “Mountain with a Pillar of Flame” project. The vocabulary as well as the work of the Teatr Laboratorium has been evolving since the first public exposure in 1973. The entire series of events which took place: in Philadelphia and the University ot Pittsburgh at that time was called “The Grotowski Special Project” (and included performances of Apocalypm cum figuris. workshops, and a symposium) but the term “Special Project” referred only to a certain kind of activity. This activity has “paratheatrical” objectives, synonymous with those articulated in “Holiday/The Day That is Holy” (T-58), and which, according to Grotowski, is a new kind of performing art (in contradistinction to the art of performing in the theatre).

In Western Europe, where Brecht's plays have by now become standard fare for bourgeois audiences and where political theatre remains, by and large, the domain of students and middle-class intellectuals, the work of Dario Fo stands out as an anomaly. He is a gifted poet and playwright, as well as an actor, director, and full-time cultural activist; but, although his plays are known throughout Italy and numerous other European countries, they are usually discarded after a few months’ performance. His company does not consider itself avant-garde, and eschews formal experimentation for its own sake, yet it has incorporated many innovative techniques both in the dramatic structure of its productions and in its mode of organization. Although his group does not perform agit-prop or guerrilla street theatre, it is small, flexible, mobile, and militant. Fo has definitively renounced the commercial stage and dedicates his energies to serving the revolutionary movement in Italy; yet he continues to enjoy enormous popular support.

The contemporary era is a working era. Every day, every hour—a new thrust forward, a new blow at the dying order. Simplicity, precision, expediency—these are the requirements called for in works of art. “I create-as the bird sings”; “I am above all and create what my leg desires”; “Art is accidental”; “Art for art's sake,” are phrases that now have been forgotten. The muses have become production workers and have dispersed to their respective trade unions. They meet not on Olympus but at the All Union Central Council of Trade Unions (VTSPS), and are summoned not by Apollo but by Tomski.

The dance fulfills certain functions, strengthens the basics for self-discipline in the masses, provides practice for the learning and mastery of rhythm (mass dances), which is so necessary in all labor processes. It can be said that the work of the Scientific Organization of Labor (NOT) is the inculcation of the dancing instinct in industrial manufacturing.

Scaffolds were placed in the center of the auditorium, and five raised platforms were set around the perimeter of the space: two had curtains hanging from makeshift wires across the back, another was a booth stage with a framework of poles on which fabrics were draped, one stage was used by the orchestra, and one was set up as-a boxing ring. The audience seated themselves on top of, under, and around the central construction. They were surrounded by the stages, contained by them. A mirrored ball hanging overhead rotated slowly, casting colored light over the entire space.

The orchestra played “Yesterday.” Five people in costumes emerged onto the largest of the playing areas and applauded the audience, who promptly responded with whoops and cheers.

Rote Rübe is a theatre collective made up of three women and four men in their twenties, who live and work together in the Munich suburb of Grünwald They are dedicated, in their own words, to producing “political theatre that is fun and that makes identification possible.” These performers, who profess a Marxist orientation came together as acting students at the Otto Falckenberg Drama School in Munich They then grew disenchanted with the conservatory system, which they have described as “a factory for the delivery of material to subsidized theatres,” and gradually worked out their own methods, techniques, and principles.

They established their independent collective in December, 1971. The collective's chief performance space is the Munich Poplokal, or rock club, Crash, which has an audience of young apprentices, working class youths, students, and local residents. To further their aim of reaching “a public drawn from the maximum variety of social strata, and above all a public that doesn't go to the traditional theatre,” they have refined their theatrical means, reducing them to a flexible minimum, so that productions can be taken to community and youth centers, public squares, and cafes.

One week after its American premiere in Washington, D.C., the Otrabanda Company's Barong Display was presented in the Michigan Union Ballroom. The production was the finished product of the Otrabanda's study at the University of Malaysia in Peneng.

A comic melodrama treated in a somewhat serious fashion, Barong Display exhibited influences from the traditional and popular Balinese and Chinese theatres. The plot involved the intricate, workings of a rapidly decaying Southeast Asian kingdom and its court, symbolized by the Balinese barong, or dragon. Barong Display's music was composed from a mixture of gameloninstrumentation and Western percussion pieces. The acting and costuming were derived in part from the Peking Opera and from popular Chinese and American roots—for instance, Kung Fu and the Chinese Dragon Dance.

Stanislavsky once observed that “One theatrical production can tell you incomparably more about a foreign country than a whole series of lectures, libraries, books, or years of theoretical study.” This is particularly true in the Soviet Union today, where the theatre, in addition to its official role as a major tool of education and indoctrination, serves as an increasingly important outlet for the expression of ideas and the airing of dissatisfactions still largely excluded from the printed page.

And given the present social and political climate, it surely is no coincidence that one of the major unofficial themes in the Soviet theatre today is that of censorship and freedom of expression. As the chant goes in Yuri Lyubimov's production Under the Skin of the Statue of Liberty (see T57), “If only three minutes of truth! If only three minutes of truth!” Although sung by a chorus of American students, the message's real target is hardly lost on those sitting in the audience at the Taganka Theatre in Moscow.

Working alone in his one-room New York apartment, Robert Anton has built and continues to perform an event that cuts across the problems and history of making theatre. It is hard to say who “makes” this theatre. Anton has built “actors” with heads no bigger than an inch and a half, whose hands are the size of fingernails.

Take off is at once a parody and a series of collusions masked as deceptions (or put-ons). The central issue is trust in the truthfulness and loyalty of a confederate. The confederate is trusted to carry a desired impression to another person. But she or he is also the confederate of that other person and may not be loyal. The possibility of secrecy and intimacy exist on all sides. And betrayal.

But since all three parties become at some point go-betweens (or confidence women/men), each one is able to take certain advantage of the others by manipulating the truth. The take off lies in the fact that the whole Activity is a grand collusion in which each of the the participants knows the scheme from the start, and knows that the others know.

Is all theatre political? Some people claim that it is. To some extent, this view is based upon a misunderstanding of the word “political.” Webster defines “political” as:

1. 1. of or concerned with government, the state, or politics.

2. 2. having a definite governmental organization.

3. 3. engaged in or taking sides in politics; as political parties.

4. 4. of or characteristic of political parties or politicians: as political pressure.

These definitions may help us to understand the nature of political theatre, but they do not apply to all theatrical activity.

Some of the people who claim that all theatre is political seem to confuse “political,” “social,” and “economic.” Of course, all theatre exists in a certain socio-economic context. By definition, it involves an audience; it is not a solitary activity. But this does not mean that it necessarily is concerned with government or that it must take sides in politics. The psychological elements and interpersonal relationships of, say, A Streetcar Named Desire may be magnified into social statements.