The capital discovery in the career of Alfonso Sastre was the fact that the theatre is a social act, and one which may have far-reaching consequences. The recognition of his role as a kind of social leaven places a heavy responsibility upon the dramatist, for he is capable of directing the thoughts and feelings of large sections of a population. Sastre, facing up squarely to this responsibility in a country where it is not always easy to do so, is producing what he calls a Theatre of Social Agitation whose fundamental theme is Revolution. It is not surprising to find that his plays have enjoyed few performances in Spain, where, however, Sastre is recognized as one of the outstanding young playwrights of today, and more than an author of promise. Of the ten full-length plays written before 1959, only five have been presented in Spain.

On his four-hundredth anniversary, as at all other moments of critical judgment, it is Marlowe's peculiar destiny to be reconsidered in a Shakespearean context. His strongest claim is bound to be the fact that he did so much more than anyone else to bring that context into existence. This was the high point of A. C. Swinburne's eulogy in the Encyclopaedia Britannica: “He is the greatest discoverer, the most daring and inspired pioneer, in all our poetic literature.” Yet even Swinburne qualified his superlatives: “The place and the value of Christopher Marlowe as a leader among English poets it would be almost impossible for historical criticism to over-estimate.” The implicit qualification is underlined by our realization that the Victorian poet was far from being a historical critic. Marlowe must abide the question of history, which Shakespeare has all but outflown.

When Tamburlaine was first published in 1590, it was described on its title page as “Deuided into two Tragicall Discourses”—a curious reminiscence of George Whetstone's Promos and Cassandra, which in 1578 was similarly described as “Deuided into two Comicall Discourses”—and each part of Tamburlaine was divided into five acts. The publication of 1590, however, does not command our full confidence, for Richard Jones, the printer, admitted in his prefatory address “To the Gentlemen Readers” that he had excised passages that he found “far vnmeet for the matter” which the play as a whole presented. Even so, there is a prima facie case for accepting the division into two parts, each with its characteristic Marlowe prologue, and into five acts for each part, as having authorial warrant.

Okada is one of the most internationally produced contemporary Japanese playwrights. American directors approach his work both as uniquely Japanese and as a synecdoche for the world. The story of Okada’s web of institutional, professional, and personal relationships is an object lesson in the foreign assembly of international works.

Labyrinthe Royal de l’Hercule Gaulois triomphant (Avignon, 1601) documents a ceremonial performance that happens more in the time of reading than a historical moment. Focusing on discrepancies between a vivid image of elephants and a description attesting that there were none reveals how this document makes the festival “present” by suspending the reader between allegory and history, representation and performance, and most importantly, the presence and(/as) absence of racialized “Mores” driving the fictitious pachyderms.

The actions of Hamlet are all beginning and end, with no middle. The play takes place in the shadow of three events—the murder of King Hamlet, the marriage of Claudius and Gertrude, and the death of Polonius. The consequences of these events—the suffering of the wronged, the remorse of the wrongers, the extensive repercussions in subsequent events—are fully and inexorably worked out. Within this atmosphere of prolonged aftermath, numerous actions are begun, stopped, started again, stopped, and not generally brought to completion until the finale. It is these arrested actions which set the main rhythm of the play.

From the opening of treaty ports in 1843, the modern history of performing arts in Shanghai traces more than 170 years of development. This history not only summarizes the modern development of Chinese performing arts; it is also representative of the historical development of Chinese urban space and city culture. Theatre arts, culture, and urban development intertwine, as they are refracted through the rise and fall of theatre buildings, yielding a fascinating legacy of cosmopolitan Shanghai.

The transnational circulation of persistent racial types that are attached to Asian/American women have shaped Asian-focused narratives and roles on Broadway. The King and I (2015) and KPOP (2022) exemplify Asian/American women’s performative labor and the tensions embedded in and disruptive of the contested political arena of Broadway musical theatre.

In 1953, Shanghai Film Studio produced a Shaoxing opera film version of The Butterfly Lovers as the first color film of the People’s Republic of China. Noted for its immense popularity in the Sinophone sphere throughout the 1950s, the film actually exemplifies a history of Shaoxing opera that is connected to urbanization and nationalism as well as women’s liberation and the cultural politics of early communist China. It is an early example of how Chinese opera and modern media technology contribute to transnational negotiations and imaginations of Chinese identities.

For some time now I have been trying to shrug off the hunch that contemporary audiences and dramatic critics have lost the art of seeing plays. Now this is a disturbing thought to anyone engaged in the practice of theatre. It is hard to work without some faith in the intelligence and appreciation of either critics or audiences. When you don't succeed in maintaining that faith to some degree, you feel anxious and guilty, and begin to get paranoic.

But “paranoia” occurs when imaginary dangers are identified as real; and although I am perfectly willing to regard my feelings as neurotic, I have also found that they seem to be widely shared in the profession. Something has happened to audiences and critics that fills the theatre with irritation. The mere mention of a critic's name in professional circles causes hackles to rise.

The analysis by Darko Suvin in regard to happenings (T47) has much in it of interest—but much also, I fear, which obfuscates the last few years of theatrical experiment, and which wrongly discredits the happenings tendency. Since Professor Suvin paid considerable attention to an article of mine on this topic in formulating his view, perhaps you will permit me to respond.

Foremostly, the Suvin piece smacks of remoteness from an adequate experience of happenings and related theatre pieces. To found this suspicion, one need not have picked up on the statement that his theorizing about this mode of theatre proceeded “basically from scenarios and descriptions” rather than from firsthand contact.

The Ma'yong theatre of Malaysia, though little known outside the province of Kelantan where it once flourished, is a rare example of a court entertainment which changed into a popular performance within the relatively brief period of about fifty years. Ma'yong, now performed only two or three times a year by wives of rice farmers in the remote villages of Kelantan, carries little evidence of its court origins; however, the magical propitiatory function which seems to have been associated with it from the beginning is still recognized. Furthermore, Ma'yong is unique in that all the leading roles, both male and female, are taken by women, while only the parts of the servant-clowns, or peran (generally two in a given play), are played by men. This introduction to Ma'yong is based on a three-month expedition I made in 1968 to record this theatre and its music on video tape.

The title Room 106 refers to the large lecture hall on the seventh floor of Saint Francis College, Brooklyn, New York, in which the piece was presented. Although the following description is intended partly as a guide for anyone wishing to recreate the work, the title and almost everything else in such a re-creation—the dialogue, the structure, possibly even the physical set-up —would change. As was indicated when such a re-creation was presented in Argentina, based only on a vocal description, the “integrity” of the piece lies not in the particular words and images used in the original performance, but in the concept and the manner in which the material is generated.

Whoever coined the expression “cultural explosion” to describe America's flirtation with the arts must have taken a decibel count first. For whether we are experiencing a true artistic renaissance, or, as the recent Twentieth Century Fund study suggests, merely witnessing a modest expansion of arts activity, one thing is certain—whatever is happening is not happening quietly.

When a community, an organization, or even a small group of individuals decides to build a new theatre or arts center, the announcements stream forth, press conferences are called, and words flow endlessly from mayors, civic leaders, businessmen, and occasionally from arts professionals. On December 11, 1966, for example, three lengthy articles about arts centers appeared in the New York Times.