Nothing tastes staler than the revolutions of the day before yesterday; the bitter flavor of great expectations disappointed clings to them; they make us feel superior for having seen through their ridiculous pretensions and sorry for our. fathers and grandfathers for having been taken in by them. That Naturalism in the novel and in the theatre still leaves such an aftertaste on our own palates is, in a way, a tribute to the intensity of emotion it aroused in its day and the length of time during which it acquired and held a dominant position. After all: it was in the 1870's that Zola shocked the world with his new concept of Naturalism; Ibsen's Ghosts was first published in 1881; Strindberg's Father in 1887, Miss Julie in 1888; Hauptmann's Before Sunrise had its first performance in 1889; Chekhov's Seagull in 1896.

This script is essentially a description and text of three performances given as part of the “Angry Arts Against the War in Vietnam Week” in New York City (January 29-February 5, 1961). The playing area was a former courtroom in the Old Courthouse on 2nd Street and Second Avenue. The piece can be done, however, in a conventional theatre as well as a created environment—and was done so, at the Gate Theatre on Second Avenue, a few days before the first performance at the Courthouse.

It is not an easy job to write about something which may not exist. Theatre? Does it still exist? And Italian theatre? Has it ever existed? Many people doubt it. Italian opera existed once, but what about Italian comedy and Italian drama? As far as I know, people have always spoken of them as being in crisis.

At times I try to find comfort in the thought that when something is in crisis, it probably exists. If I remember correctly, St. Anselm tried to prove the existence of God with a rather similar demonstration—but he succeeded only in proving that men desire God. So we might say that Italian theatre has been living for many centuries in mente italicorum, which does not mean that it has found its own reality in a living body of images, characters, stories, and styles. When we talk about it with foreigners, the conversation slides immediately to commedia dell'arte, to opera, and to neo-realistic movies.

The gymnasium measured 24 × 18 meters. The space was articulated primarily through the use of light. All other elements were reduced to two dimensions, so that the space appeared empty even though there was a “street” represented by a narrow strip of asphalt that entered from the open door and transversed the entire gymnasium. An obstacle on the side of the street was represented by a circle of 60-watt light bulbs attached to a metal base. Another obstacle was a sheet of plexiglass on which was projected a slide showing a window. To the right of the entrance were eighteen red velvet theatre seats with large plates of glass leaning on them to prevent anyone from sitting down. On the floor, perpendicular to the street, were six strips of wood that copied the line of vertical beams that supported the ceiling.

The Sorrentine Peninsula juts into the Mediterranean about twenty miles below Naples. Its southern shore, although part of the same peninsula, is referred to as the Amalfi Coast. The famous Amalfi Drive winds along this shore from Positano to Vietrisul-Mare, offering travelers spectacular views of cliffs and sea. Here the scenery seems to epitomize that phenomenal blend of sea and mountain beauty so often found along the coasts of Southern Italy. The ritual life of this Sorrentine-Amalfatine peninsula is as theatrical as its landscape: processions, scenic representations, and occasional dramas blossom colorfully and prolifically during the varied seasons of the Roman Catholic liturgical year. Easter, Corpus Christi, Christmas, and the feast days of the saints and the Madonna all become occasions of special devotion, merry-making, and the organization of traditional extra-liturgical rituals of a theatrical nature.

In his presentation of the twentieth-century world and Everyman, Duerrenmatt uses a form as old as Greek tragedy and a staging method as modern as surrealism; he uses characters as old as the Sphinx in combination with our contemporaries, Eisenhower and Nehru; and in his stage business, he uses motifs as old as Oedipal inspired fears of castration, dark, mysterious, and frighteningly uncontrollable, and motifs as new, as light, as explicable as the operation of The-Place-in-the-Sun Foundry and the economics of a simple local grocery store. This total presentation he makes with an artistry before which the imagination, even of an imaginative critic, boggles; for with a gorgeously simple style and technique, Duerrenmatt's dramatic lines achieve the stylization of poetry, and move from poetry to myth, where the complex of thought, passion, and affect become infinitely expansible, indefinitely relevant, and meaningful without apparent limit.

The theatre of today has been significantly changed because of Brecht's influential work as a playwright, producer, and theoretician. In fact, anyone working in the theatre of today must come to grips with the phenomenon that is Bertolt Brecht. True, such an undertaking will be difficult. Brecht's achievements—literary, theoretical, and practical—are all parts of a whole which is not understandable if one part of it is examined by itself. Furthermore, as he wrote in his poem “Behauptung,” Brecht by no means “always remained the same“; both the man and his views changed. For this reason an investigation of the development of Brecht's theatrical theories apart from the rest of his work is a questionable undertaking. There are, however, two justifications for it: 1) So far nothing coherent about Brecht's early ideas concerning the theatre has been written.

Recently the Yiddish theatre has been the object of considerable study, translation and revival; yet the world of Yiddish vaudeville remains virtually untouched. This is odd, considering that what we would now call vaudeville skits and playlets were among the very first products of the Yiddish stage (1870s), while similar material is still being presented to Yiddish-speaking audiences today. It is almost a truism to state that the rise of the Jewish-American comedian in the 1950s and 1960s was rooted in the low humor of the Borscht belt, but few have shown any interest in tracing the genealogy further back. One of the reasons for this neglect has been the scorn with which Jewish theatre critics, historians and activists view all ethnic entertainment not directed towards creating an “art” theatre. An even more important impediment is the almost total lack of surviving printed or manuscript versions of early Yiddish vaudeville.

As a sculptor, photographer, playwright and director, Michael Kirby has been and is still an articulate proponent of the interanimation of the arts. As a practitioner as well as a theoretician of several arts, he has made and defended work that not only mixes media but also transposes forms and preoccupations of one art to others. Kirby’s commitment to the lively cross-fertilization of the arts partially accounts for the rise of Structuralist Theatre since that movement, in certain respects, appears to have been influenced in important ways by the tendency of Minimalist Art referred to as systemic painting.

Some of Kirb’s Structuralist plays, like Revolutionary Dance and Identity Control, are composed of a series of dramatic, narrative vignettes that have no apparent causal or chronological relation. Kirby created his dramatic incidents as a painter might choose a color or shape, i.e., with an eye to its place in the overall formal structure.

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.

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.

In theatre, a heightened perception and experience of structure is possible in three kinds of work. The first is theatre based on strong codified conventions, as in Oriental theatre and a large part of Western folk theatre. In viewing Kabuki or No productions my awareness of structure is heightened not only because of the great variety and distribution of theatrical signs and their apparent systematic codification but also because, as a foreigner to Japanese culture and theatre, my attitude during the production is one of deciphering.

Frogs flourish in the wet rlcefields of Bali. Their sounds and rhythms are mimicked with vivid comic precision by clowns in the temple dramas. Continuity between performance and everyday events is a powerful element in Balinese community life. The links are reflected in numerous forms other than dancing frogs, but it was the frogs I noticed first.

I arrived in Bali for a year of theatre research not knowing how I would proceed. Having been a circus clown in the U.S. I was attracted by the comic characters in the Balinese temple dramas. Eventually I moved into a small village, attended numerous performances, and became a regular follower of Topeng masked dancer Made Dlimat.

Although I did not know it at the time, my presence as a spectator of Balinese temple dramas was the first step along the way to my becoming part of the performance.

In 1869, Hendrik Ibsen, then 41, paused in his dramatic labors to compose a short poem. He had left his beloved Rome just one year before to settle in Dresden (he was to remain in exile from Norway until 1891), and he had just completed his first realistic prose play, The League of Youth, after having established his reputation as the author of Brand and Peer Gynt. Since The League of Youth contains strong satire on the hypocritical opportunism of the contemporary Norwegian Liberal, critics were beginning to charge Ibsen with having joined the Conservative faction. The poem—“To My Friend, the Revolutionary Orator”—is addressed to one of these critics, and is a polemical defense against the current charges. In these verses, Ibsen affirms that he is still a perfervid revolutionary—but he then proceeds to distinguish his own revolt from anything in recorded history.

The thing about The Tart is that I wanted to be specific and unabstract. Most experimental theatre has been done by painters who think abstractly. But I was a musician in rebellion against my medium; I didn't come to Happenings from the visual arts. I felt that the painters were too elegant and iconoclastic. What was missing was danger. So I wrote The Tart to express a sociological concept through choreography. It was not successful; neither was it intended to be. As it has no psychological empathy, The Tart does not permit the audience to view it as a play or ballet. But my hope was that audiences would sympathize with the performers (not the characters) in their social contexts and that the lines would be more tragic than funny.