Clytaemnestra was murdered six days ago; the pyre on which her body burned is still warm. She murdered Agamemnon in the first year of the war; his tomb is some hundred yards from the palace, next to her tomb. Euripides’ Orestes begins at this moment. The war is over, at least onedirty and hateful war is over. Yesterday Menelaus disembarked in Nauplia and today, at dawn, Helen sneaked into the palace. “Home from Troy at last,” Menelaus says. “How happy I am to see this house once more.” I was astounded when, at the opening night of Orestes and at all following performances, the audience received this line, Menelaus’ first, with jeering laughter.

In his introduction to the translation, William Arrowsmith has underlined the most striking aspect of Orestes: in no other Greek plays, with the possible exception of Aristophanes, has anachronism as a method of political and artistic provocation been carried so far.

Looking over the lush material landscape and the thin spiritual atmosphere of contemporary America, Reinhold Niebuhr called this “the age of sophisticated vulgarity.” That was several years ago, when the first crackles of what was later fanfared into a cultural explosion made his phrase seem an excess of gloom. Now, however, after we have seen so many of the knowledgeable enmeshed by patterns in which they neglect, adulterate, or destroy the best they are or know, Niebuhr's estimate does not appear so extreme. Various kinds and degrees of extremes are my concern here—specifically one strand in the pattern: the extremes that occur toward the end of an artistic movement, when it disintegrates, yet sweeps on in splinters to disable its adherents and opponents alike.

Late in 1960, soon after I came to New York to work in the theatre, I met my first disprized playwright, Jerome Max—26, largely self-educated, witty, poor, and unhappy. He had actually written something, unlike the neglected young novelists I had known, and when he finally allowed me to read his play, I thought it eccentric and very good. Max didn't think it was good at all, however, and he was full of pessimism about his prospects. But he was working on two new plays. When he finished them some months later and showed them to agents, producers, and directors, people started telling him that he was a good writer, and when a producer took an option on the new plays the point got through to him. Max took a leave from his job and lived on the option money.

“Myths” are experimental. The performers, members of the Dancers’ Workshop Co. and participants in Ann Halprin's Advanced Dance seminar, are unrehearsed. What unfolds is a spontaneous exploration of theatre ideas. “Myths” are meant to evoke our long buried and half forgotten selves. Each evening will explore a different relationship between the audience and performers, and between our awareness, our bodies, and our environments. The audience should not be bound by accustomed passivity, by static self images, or by restricted clothing. “Myths” are your myths. They are an experiment in mutual creation.

For 10 consecutive Thursdays, starting in October 1967, groups of about 50 people came to the Dancers’ Workshop studios in San Francisco. Most of them expected a “performance,” and instead found themselves “performers.” The Workshop had attempted to prepare the public by mailing the above announcement, but people were too pre-conditioned to understand what the release meant, and could only be convinced by the actual experience.

The Performing Garage: a beautiful cube of space, sprinkled with high platforms & towers made of raw two by-fours which but for their air of negligence would announce an acrobatic show. Individual gymnastics, each gymnast sole, randomly distributed. Their relentless contortions get them into a sweat—physical translations of introspection. Here & there a little acrobatics, action.

From this laborious anarchy the play powerfully emerges on a natural free rhythm. Couples form, the chance proximities of gymnasts turn into the interaction of performers. The timing of several trigger actions cuing others. Progressively assembling the play has been left up to the individual performers. Barely audible, mumbled chanted lines from a translation of Euripides sound out here & there, are repeated, taken over by others. Though they belong to parts they are not the property of any individual actor. The lines are metric, their delivery is amateurish & affected—false speech.

Today, all over the United States, American young people are being spoken to by revolutionists in words they understand, in a style that makes those words acceptable, and through an invisible medium that old professional politicos have not yet picked up on.

This medium is the phonograph record, purveyor of bubble gum music and symbol of Elvis Presley's “Houn’ Dog” and the celebrated “Get off of my Blue Suede Shoes” (which John Lennon once called a protest song). One of the leading manufacturers, Columbia Records, runs a series of advertisements in the underground press the theme of which is “The man can't bust our music” and “Know your friends.” The implication aligns “us” against “them,” and the context of the advertising design and illustration is interracial, hippie, pot-smoking youth.

Is Columbia for legalization of marijuana? No. Columbia is for making money. Thus the investment in music aimed at long-haired youth.

“Peking drama with contemporary themes” is an English translation of Ching-ch hsien-tai bsi—a new phenomenon in Communist Chinese theatre which began in 1958 and was fully developed by 1964. In the Western world it has also been called “modern Peking opera” or “new-style Peking drama.” It is difficult to place this form in any of the theatrical genres of China, for it combines the qualities of a number of Chinese dramatic styles, most notably those of the traditional Peking opera and the “spoken drama”—that is, the Western-style drama which appeared in China in the late 1900's; the word “spoken” emphasizes the fact that the new form is essentially conversational while the traditional drama is mainly sung. Many old conventions of the Peking theatre have been kept; for instance, singing and movement patterns are still largely based on traditional Peking drama. As a general principle, however, the conventions are manipulated to achieve something new.