If by successful is meant widely performed, the most successful playwright in the English theatre between T. W. Robertson in the 1860s and A. W. Pinero in the 1890s was a Frenchman, Victorien Sardou. This apparent paradox can be elucidated not only by the list of English adaptations of Sardou which concludes this survey, but by noting some of the leading English actors who appeared in Sardou. They include Irving (Madame Sons-Gêne, Robespierre, Dante); the Bancrofts (Nos Intimes, Dora, Les Bourgeois de Pont-Arçy, Odette, Fédora); the Kendals (Les Pattes de Mouche, Nos Intimes, Dora, Maison Neuve); Wyndham (Rabagas, La Papillonne); Hare (Les Pattes de Mouche, Dora, La Tosca); Tree (Fédora); Forbes-Robertson (Dora, Les Bourgeois de Pont-Arçy); Hawtrey (Divorçons!); Bourchier (Divorçons!); Du Maurier (Dora). The admission to the list of such leading ladies as Ellen Terry, Mrs Patrick Campbell, Modjeska, Elizabeth Robins, and Gladys Cooper would extend it further.

Doomsayers and traditionalists prognosticate that the dominance of digital media spells the end of traditional arts in Java, Indonesia. Wayang kulit (shadow puppet theatre), while still highly regarded as theatrical heritage, is said to be under particular threat due to the long duration of its plays, complexity of language and the need for prior knowledge of characters and situations. Such features are at odds with the short attention spans and need for instant comprehension and gratification of Gen Z – the youth referred to in Indonesian media as inhabiting jaman now (literally the ‘era of now’). While digital social media, including Facebook and YouTube, definitely offer up alternative forms of entertainment and amusement, they are also being used by traditional puppet practitioners to reinforce and expand communities of practice. Facebook provides platforms for comparative discussion and critical debate, while YouTube potentiates the inclusion of a geographically dispersed audience, including overseas workers.

Max Reinhardt's theatre is an intriguing example of the social function of commodification in the late nineteenth century; while critics praised him as the leading figure of a renewed theatre, they also blamed him for a merely decorative style. Notwithstanding the fact that economic success was a substantial precondition of Reinhardt's theatre, Reinhardt's style was highly eclectic and determined by a visual or pictorial order rather than by literary concepts. But this theatre not only followed an aesthetic programme, it also answered to a major change in German society: the process of urbanization which produced a new community of urban dwellers which had to be integrated in the role models of society. The paradoxical reception of Reinhardt thus is not only a matter of taste but rather the hallmark of bourgeois theatre in a period of transition, rearticulating the cultural legacy by commodifying it for a new audience.

The first issue of the journal in 2004, and the first under my editorship, is devoted to a special focus on ‘Postdramatic Theatre’. While this term may not be familiar to many readers, the phenomenon it embraces most certainly is. Coined by the German theatre studies scholar, Hans-Thies Lehmann in his book Postdramatisches Theater,1 the concept refers to tendencies and experiments defining theatre outside the paradigm of the dramatic text. Also known, somewhat imprecisely, as postmodern theatre, it questions fundamentally the very tenets of the dramatic theatre. Postdramatic performances usually eschew clear coordinates of narrative and character and require therefore considerable effort on the part of the spectator. For this reason, it has been termed, in the words of New York theatre critic Elinor Fuchs, ‘spectator's response theatre: we write our own script out of the “pieces of culture” offered’.2 Like Lehmann, Fuchs tries to find an over-arching frame within which to make sense of the manifold experiments in theatre and performance that were taking place in the 1980s. Whereas Lehmann sees postdramatic theatre primarily as a question of form and history which affect the configuration of time, space and mediality of theatre, Fuchs regards the same developments as a response to the massive critique of Western models of subjectivity that we associate with terms such as poststructuralism and deconstruction.

The performance installation Exhibit A and B by South African theatre artist Brett Bailey has been touring Europe since 2010. Its twelve tableaux vivants provide a selective survey of European racial histories interspersed with displays of contemporary African refugees. It has increasingly provoked opposition by antiracist activists who compare the show to a ‘human zoo’ that objectifies black performers, facilitates emotional release for white European audiences, and benefits only the white director. In London, protests led to the cancellation of the show. This article examines these charges and sets them in the context of Afro-German theatre and activism. It advances an alternative reading of Exhibit B as a two-pronged intervention in European discourses of security on the one side, and in the restructuring of European museums on the other.

The Field Day Theatre Company was founded in 1980 by Stephen Rea, the actor, and Brian Friel, the playwright, at the former's suggestion. The combination of a playwright and an actor in the founding of a theatre in response to a crisis which is both cultural and political recalls the Irish National Theatre Society and the founders of Field Day were conscious that such parallels would be drawn. For both Friel and Rea, the only available models were the Irish Literary Theatre and the Ulster Literary Theatre. The differences between Field Day and other such ventures are however as instructive as the parallels. The Irish National Theatre Society and the Abbey were always Yeats's project; his plays, his theories on drama and speech, and his cultural politics were the informing elements in the development of the theatre. Field Day's founders, however, quickly took on four other fellow-directors – Seamus Deane, Seamus Heaney, David Hammond and Tom Paulin – for just as the Abbey had had Beltaine, Samhain, and The Arrow so Field Day has had its pamphlets and other non-theatrical projects, although in the case of Field Day, these are once again open to contributors from outside the company. The purpose of the pamphlets has been to re-examine the various pieties of Irish cultural life in this past century. In its short history Field Day has already attracted widespread attention, but the time seems right for a stock-taking since by the end of 1988 the company will have reached a plateau of sorts in its development. Since 1980 it has produced eight plays, twelve pamphlets, and one volume of poetry, not to mention the work its directors have produced outside the confines of the company; this work places Field Day at the centre of Irish cultural debate. 1988 saw the production of a new play by Friel, Making History – his first for Field Day since The Communication Cord (1982) – the publication of another set of pamphlets, which for the first time were by non-Irish critics – Terry Eagleton, Frederic Jameson, and Edward Said – and preparations for its anthology of Irish writing. The completion of these three projects should consolidate the company's position.

In his Postdramatisches Theater Lehmann compares the effect of the dramatic theatre to that of perspective in painting. Both are structured according to an aesthetic logic that can be characterized as teleological. On the contemporary post-dramatic stage, this logic is deconstructed or rejected. In my text, I take a closer look at this comparison of drama and perspective in Lehmann's text. I confront Lehmann's account of the postdramatic theatre with the work of Dutch theatre director Gerardjan Rijnders. Rijndesr's work draws attention to the inevitably of the subjectivity involved in every vision of the world, even when this world seems to be shown ‘as it is’ in itself. As I will argue, it is precisely the relationship between what is seen and the subjective point of view from where it is seen that is obscured in Lehmann's account of the similarities between drama and perspective.

The acting of emotions on the stage can be looked at from three different points of view. Traditionally, the relationship of the emotions of the actor to the presupposed emotions of his character is discussed from a theatrical point of view. I shall provide a short overview of the different approaches to acting emotions based on current acting theories. Only recently have the emotions of the actor on stage portraying character-emotions been looked at scientifically from a psychological perspective. Finally, I shall present the empirical results of a questionnaire drawing on answers from a wide sample of professional actors. Due to limited space, this presentation can only be a global one. Emphasis is placed on the presentation of the empirical material about actors and emotions on stage.

It is my contention that Shakespeare intended his plays to be performed using only two doors for entrances and exits. In the rapid repertory system of the Globe, stage-management was essential, but there is evidence that it was not based on the arbitrary, mechanical rule-of-thumb previously suggested. Analysis of the entrance and exit patterns in Macbeth shows that there was an organizing system in force, but that it depended on, and in turn reinforced, the spatial logic of the play.

Profound demographic shifts in Australia's population are raising fundamental questions about how we reimagine the practices of our mainstream cultural institutions. The ability and the willingness of these institutions to reconceptualize their work in ways that encompass a diversity of traditions and tastes are critical. The paper draws on Pierre Bourdieu's notions of distinctions and taste to examine the influence of cultural identification on the choices that young people make about attending live theatre. The paper includes findings from a large Australian study, TheatreSpace, which examined why young people chose to engage or not to engage with theatre. In New South Wales nearly 40 per cent of the 726 young participants spoke a language other than English at home. Most were attending with their schools, many with no history of family attendance. This paper highlights significant issues about cultural relevance, accessibility and the often unintended challenges and confrontations that theatre can present to young first-generation Australians.

In Germany in the 1920s, Oskar Schlemmer engaged in three years of practical research at the Dessau Bauhaus School of Art, on the nature of ‘non-naturalisitic’ or ‘abstract’ stage space, that is, space exploited theatrically for its dynamism, scale, texture and sonic properties. It is argued here that Schlemmer attempts to recreate on stage the metaphysically resonant spaces which he depicts in his paintings. By engaging with an embodied art form, performance, Schlemmer defies the commonly held assumption that the Bauhaus Stage is locked into the ‘machine age’ mentality and rigid Modernist essentialism. On the contrary Schlemmer's work is revelatory of stage space in direct, simple and phenomenologically intense ways and has much to teach us about the nature of theatrical power in postmodern visual and object theatre, and is better interpreted in the light of postmodern, rather than Modernist, sensibilities.

Between 1999 and 2008, Zimbabwe was in political and economic crisis. A number of theatre-makers responded by creating several different kinds of protest theatre. They did this to compensate for a media monopoly by the state, to promote active citizen engagement in politics, and to promote political change. This article first surveys developments in protest theatre at this time. It then draws attention to a brand of protest theatre that emerged after the crisis in Zimbabwe, after the formation of a Government of National Unity. Reconciliatory protest theatre, I explain, was concerned with issues of national healing and reconciliation which dominated the post-crisis situation in Zimbabwe. Whilst both the state and protest artists concurred on the fact that the nation ought to be healed and that reconciliation was needed, tensions emerged as to how the processes of healing and reconciliation were to unfold. By looking at two examples in detail, I explain how Zimbabwe's theatre artists viewed this issue, and how the state reacted.

In 1965, in an interview in Sight and Sound, Peter Brook eloquently discussed the difficulties of filming Shakespearian plays, decrying the ‘sad history of Shakespeare on the screen’ and denouncing the majority of Shakespearian films as ‘pitiful’ and ‘unspeakably bad’. Speaking at UNESCO's Shakespeare Quatercentenary Celebration in Paris, he said, in essence, that Shakespeare was impossible to film at all. However, the winter of 1968–9 found Brook in Northern Jutland, filming one of Shakespeare's most profoundly intricate tragedies, King Lear. When the film was released in 1970–1, critical reaction ranged from rapture to outrage. Nigel Andrews called Brook's Lear ‘a distinct achievement’, praising the acting, the setting, and, above all, Brook's use of the camera to ‘transcend repre-sentationalism’. Frank Kermode hailed Lear as a ‘fully realized and deeply imagined version of this great work … a masterly conception of the play’. Charles Phillips Reilly cautiously labelled the film ‘a mixed bag’, lauding Paul Scofield's performance as Lear and Brook's understanding of the themes of the play, but criticizing the camera work, especially in the storm sequence. Pauline Kael, the formidable reviewer for The New Yorker, simply said ‘I hated it’, and dismissed the film as ‘gray and cold … the drear far side of the moon’. According to Kael, the concept was ‘second-rate’, the script ‘plotless’, and the actors walking corpses.12 She dubbed the film ‘Peter Brook's “Night of the Living Dead”’.

Surviving records of early eighteenth-century London theatres include a number of account books recording daily receipts, but fewer than we would like. ‘Rich's Register’ gives us daily totals at Lincoln's Inn Fields from 1714 to 1723, and we have accounts in one form or another for a good many seasons at that theatre thereafter. Drury Lane is a different matter. Not until 1741–2 do we possess day-by-day totals for a season there. In view of the comparative paucity of information about receipts at Drury Lane, neglect of one of the few sources of financial information available to us seems odd indeed. The MS at issue was quoted in print as early as 1939, and is cited in The London Stage (under the wrong reference number) – but no one has ever printed or analysed more than a small sampling of the figures available.

In November 2011, on the brink of a new wave of conflict over Egypt's future, an obviously energized audience crowded into Cairo's Rawabet Theatre for The Tahrir Monologues, a documentary play celebrating the Eighteen Days leading to Hosni Mubarak's ouster. Apparently a premature celebration, the show turned out instead to be a self-conscious nostalgia exercise meant to register the decay of revolutionary ideals. This essay analyses The Tahrir Monologues and several other theatrical responses to the unfolding – not to say unravelling – situation in post-Mubarak Egypt. Amid the grotesque improvisations of power, I ask, what can scripted theatre still say? For an answer I turn to an American University in Cairo production of Sa'adallāh Wannūs's 1994 masterpiece Rituals of Signs and Transformations – one of three productions of this play worldwide in 2012–13. Why this play now? The answer lies in its ingenuity, its passion and, ultimately, I argue, its prophetic pessimism.

The criticism of ‘intercultural’ theatre in general, and Peter Brook's Mahabharata in particular, that was spearheaded by Rustom Bharucha in Theatre and the World, has taken firm hold in the Anglo-American academy and especially in Britain. Bharucha's critique of Eurocentric appropriation of non-western cultures (although the word ‘plundering’ might be more precise for his argument) is the mainstay of his attack on interculturalism, whether theorized by Richard Schechner or, in Bharucha's view, epitomized in performance by Brook's production. Schechner is understandably Bharucha's central reference, for he essentially gave the concept of interculturalism its particular twist in the early 1980s and has continued his crusade for it ever since. Scheduler's concept involves generic mixing within an anthropological framework, as occurs, for instance, when ‘western’ text-based theatre, usually situated in the domain of art and letters, merges with non-western ritual, one of the main areas of anthropological study.

This dossier opens up a set of questions about what theatre and performance can do and be in a climate-changed future. Through a series of practice snapshots the authors suggest a diversity of responses to decolonizing and environmental justice issues in and through theatre and performance. These practices include the climate-fiction film The Wandering Earth, which prompts questions about what decolonizing means for China and the impact of climate chaos on the mental well-being of young people; The Living Pavilion, an Australian Indigenous-led project that created a biodiverse event space showcasing Indigenous art making; Dancing Earth Indigenous dance company who use dance as a way to engage Indigenous ecological thinking and Indigenous futurity; water rituals in the Andes of Peru that problematize water policy and ethnic boundaries.

This article is about audiences’ reactions to plays at the 2013–14 Roverman Festival of Plays at the Ghana National Theatre. Using a modified version of Willmar Sauter's ‘Theatre Talks’, questionnaires and participant observation, I sought to ascertain what audiences at this festival made of two of the plays presented to them: What's My Name? and The Day Dad Came. Audiences identified and discussed endemic corruption and domestic violence in ways that showed their keen engagement with and interpretation of the plays and their eagerness to take what was presented to them and make it their own. The discussion also reveals the audiences’ interest in the aesthetic qualities of the plays, which they shared in surprising detail. I argue that the personality of the director–playwright, Ebo Whyte, frames the audiences’ appreciation of the plays.

Theatresports have been played for several decades now, and the form can claim international acceptance. This success is best viewed against the background of theatre's position in contemporary art and society. This form of theatre markedly takes advantage of the specificity of theatre, of its immediacy, of the fact that it is ‘live’ art. The improvisational matches thereby stress to what extent the ‘live’ aspect of theatrical performance has become distinctive in the domain of art. Moreover, theatresports highlight the social nature of theatre to such an extent that they probe the boundaries between the artistic and the social fields. By privileging the social event theatresports turn to advantage an aspect that allows theatre to buttress its position in competition with screen media.