Today many states have no theatre censorship laws. When laws governing propriety in the arts were enacted (for example, in California in 1872), they anticipated censorable activity in literature, sculpture, and the visual arts, but never in theatre: such was the powerful, silent entente of gentility between audience and performer which bound theatre to its middle-class audiences. But today, even in much popular theatre, a measure of conflict is expected as part of the theatrical experience. Playwrights and theatre people, as never before in this country, are outspoken morally, philosophically, sexually, and politically. With neither tradition nor legal precedent to act as a guide, American theatre faces the possibility of powerful and unreasoned censorship.

Professional theatre in New York has had few censorship problems, most of them on grounds of obscenity, not politics or morality. A greater threat is censorship on campus.

The play XX takes place entirely within a two-story house of twenty rooms. These rooms—ten on each floor—have been constructed around a large hall with stairs. They are connected to each other by doors, which lead into corridors and also from room-to-room. On the second floor, the rooms have windows and through these, as well as through the corridors, the spectator can see theatre seats, in this case those of the Odéon in Paris, dimly outlined in the shadows. Looking upward, one can see the decorative ceiling of the famous Paris theatre. Even before the performance begins, it is simply and clearly established that the spectator [for the purpose of this article, the author] is at the theatre, within theatrical space/time.

The play, however, does not begin at the same time for everyone. The relationship between actor and spectator is established on new ground.

Within the last 10 years, many directors of “gestural theatre” have attempted to dispense with the author. As a result, the theatre is used as a vehicle for conveying a “message.” That is the job of newspapers, theses, political speeches, and this very text. But art finds its essence only in the ambivalence of all things and their signs, in their unfathomable ambiguity.

Some directors rely on classical culture. We expect from a true creator an exploration of the unknown that opens up into the infinite, not a rehashing of mummified mythologies.

Directors appear unwilling to accept their dependence upon the author, who is bound by everything written before his time, by the state of the language in his time.