My first moment of theatre, the moment most powerful for me and my first step away from life in the direction of art, occurred in 1961 the first time I was in front of an audience. The play was The Curious Savage. (Ironically enough, it was a romantic play about an insane asylum and its inmates of which I was one.) It was our senior play at a small boarding school I was attending in Maine.

When the appearance of work changes radically, one generally can also assume that the underlying concerns governing the work have shifted. While the hypothesis of that statement definitely applies to my work, the conclusion does not, and I find myself reflecting on aspects of continuity rather than discontinuity, particularly with regard to the involvement of the spectator.

In 1964, one of my dances took place on a street in lower Manhattan. It was observable to an audience from the windows of a loft located on the opposite side of the street. The dance was entirely based on its found surroundings, and performers, myself and one other, essentially blended in with the other activity that was going on in the street. From time to time, however during the six-minute duration of the dance, we were engaged in pointing out various details and/or irregularities in the facades of the buildings: lettering and labels, the assorted content of displays in the store fronts (sheets, pillow cases, etc.).

In the exuberance of revolutionary zeal, it is natural that certain political theatre groups should turn to forms of entertainment associated with fun, with the common man, with people in general regardless of social, economic, or educational status, in contrast with the traditional aristocratic forms that have “artistic” pretensions and tend to be more contemplative than energetic. It is also predictable that such groups should shun ballet, opera, the symphony, and literary theatre, and use instead techniques from commedia dell'arte, circus, puppet shows, music hall, vaudeville, parades, magicians, carnival side shows, buskers, brass bands, comic strips, striptease, melodrama, minstrel shows, and other means of exhilarating celebration.

Since the present seemed to hold no answers, it was inevitable that the search by these groups for political theatre forms would turn to the past, a past which, through education and television, had become more accessible than ever before. Such breaks with the present served another purpose as well—they demonstrated a disassociation with the Establishment and its theatre.

According to Squat, the downstairs stage of Andy Warhol's Last Love is Warhol's Factory: the place he used to manufacture his art-objects. And upstairs the Blue Room, where the first part of “Warhol” is staged, is the actual living space of Eva Buchmüller and Istvan Balint. The street is 23rd Street, a theatrical environment only by virtue of the casement glass window separating Factory from street. As in Pig, Child, Fire!,the street is used in the show both randomly and by careful design. Randomly as passersby (and a few regulars, or knowing ones, like me) stop to see the same movie those in the Factory are seeing (the screen is transparent) or crowd in around the glass door to glimpse Kathleen Kendel, the naked witch, being interviewed in the Factory by (a) Warhol (lookalike).

The use of the arts as a therapeutic tool is widespread today. Hospitals all over the country employ music, dance, and art therapies, as well as “psychodramatists” as an adjunct to more traditional methods of treatment. In addition, a small number of institutions have recently begun programs of “theatre therapy” in which patients work collectively on a performance under the supervision of trained theatre practitioners.

Psychodrama, the oldest of the therapies utilizing theatrical techniques, and the only one to possess an articulated theoretical framework, was first practiced in Vienna in 1920. Dr. J.L. Moreno, who originated the concept, writes that psychodrama developed out of what he called the “impromptu play,” which he first used with children in 1911:

The early years of Mary Wigman's career as a dancer involved a search for a new dance form. She found no medium for communication in the dance styles of the early 20th century. The prevailing techniques of ballet and popular stage dancing concerned themselves with unreality and illusion. Isadora Duncan was startling the world by dancing barefoot to the music of the great composers, but her inspiration derived from a bygone era. Mary Wigman's dance was a deeply personal message of its time, and neither the form, the music nor the subject matter of any existing dance style could completely and satisfactorily express this message.

Wigman returned to the fundamentals of dance as she examined the expressivity of movement and the function of movement in space with an awareness that was remarkable for its time.

In 1946, after nine years’ confinement, Antonin Artaud was at last allowed to leave mental hospital and he returned to live just outside Paris. He was in poor physical condition and, in consequence of this and his supposed insanity, he did not return to work in the Paris theatre. He nonetheless wrote with an energy which bespoke several years of forced literary inactivity. He gave some lectures and talks, one very notable one under the patronage of his friend, Charles Dullin. However, despite his personal liberation, not all Paris welcomed his return; some, such as André Breton and Surrealists, had little respect for his genius, others, perhaps a little more staid, were frankly scared by his intransigent attitude.

There are two versions of Laius’ murder in Oedipus Rex. First, there is the version that is current in Thebes and is expressed by Creon, Jocasta, the Chorus, and presumably the Shepherd if he were to talk about it. Second, there is Oedipus’ version.

The first version is essentially this: one day, not too long before the Sphinx came to terrorize Thebes, Laius set out—so he said—to Delphi. He did not travel as a king generally might with a great many soldiers, but with only four of his men, one of whom was a herald. Laius himself rode in a chariot. At a place where three roads meet, Laius was met by a group of robbers.

The group, rather than the individual, is the typical focus of the alternative society, and this is reflected in the structure of the new theatre organizations, their manner of working, and their theatre pieces. The collective creation of theatre pieces has become the method of conceiving and developing works in the alternative theatre. Society has become increasingly specialized and competitive. This is reflected in an established theatre based on competition and a theatrical method that focuses on individual specialists, such as playwright, director, and star actor. In reaction to the fragmentation of the established society, which for many has become disorienting, the alternative society has sought wholeness. This is evident in many ways, including its focus on group living and group activities, and in its theatre, which is based on the cooperation of a creative collective.

Instead of the two-process method of the traditional theatre—a playwright writing a script in isolation and other artists staging it—the new theatre practices a one-process method, wherein the group itself develops the piece from initial conception to finished performance.

In China, theatre studies has been dominated by Western discourse on serious drama, mostly the theatre of purgation. It is equally important, however, to study popular Western theatre genres, such as musicals, comedies, and relatively uplifting plays, especially in terms of their similarities with Chinese opera—an epitome of theatre of cultivation.

For the actor, the right use of self is the only sure basis for the expressive use of self.

Such a statement seems to me to summarize a trend in actor training in this country today. Soon after the Second World War, the Stanislavski “methodists,” led by Lee Strasberg, taught us important lessons in creative process, quite transforming our acting style. We crystalized a technique built on creative responsiveness, the mark always of good acting. Presumably these lessons are now an unforgettable part of our training.

However, those of us who were students of Strasberg—or some of the other great acting teachers of that time, like Alvina Krause or Sanford Meisner—and who went on to teach another generation of young actors, sooner or later found ourselves facing more fundamental problems. These dealt with what is usually called voice and body work.

For at least two generations now the serious-minded European theatre has existed in an era of experimentation. The diverse experiments have not as yet produced any unequivocal, clearly discernible results, but the era is by no means at an end. It is my opinion that the experiments followed two separate courses, which, though they occasionally intersected, can, when separated, be individually pursued. These two courses of development are distinguished from one another by means of their individual functions: entertainment and instruction, that is to say, the theatre organized experiments which were to increase its powers of entertaining, and experiments which were to increase its powers of instruction.

In a world as fast-moving and dynamic as ours the enticements of entertainment are quick to wear out. We must always be prepared to meet the desire for progressive public stupefaction with new effects.

The primary focus of both theatre and therapy is the same: human behavior. Dramatic action generally stems from a movement toward or an avoidance of change in behavior—the same process that characterizes a dynamic therapy. The actor and the director confront human action in the text of the drama. In the development of a score for performance, they adapt immediate and ongoing behavior to this action. Behavior is suggested, represented, experienced; the entire range of human response is available as a source for creation and discovery in performance. The function of criticism and acting training is to provide systems to analyze patterns of action—in the text and in the related experience of the performer. Traditional analysis has nearly always been external, treating behavior as an artifact that can be schematized, predicted, fixed, kept in a limbo between past and present.