Edward Albee’s theatre continues to be controversial. The discussion centers around two questions: one has to do with truth, and the other with dramatic structure. The first runs as follows: is the image of human relations in America which Albee presents justifiable because it is in some sense realistic, or is his an essentially flawed and perverted point of view? The second is: are there valid grounds for the invented child in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf and the confused events which lead to Julian’s death in Tiny Alice, or is Albee artistically callow and unable to structure a play properly?

Among the wrongs which the current theatre is said to sustain to its detriment, homosexuality is included with an increasing alarm, if not in print so much, then in conversation. If one believes what one hears, then homosexuality inflicts no mere indisposition on the general theatrical enterprise, but rather a grave disability. Homosexuals—the indictment goes—have exploited the theatre's traditionally liberal hospitality toward deviant and errant souls and have become numerous, widespread, and powerful; they discriminate in favor of their own kind, invariably betraying artistic considerations for sexual and social advantages. But most lamentable—the indictment continues—is the fact that even when the homosexual resolves to renounce immediate personal gratifications in the service of theatre itself, his good intentions (unlike yours and mine) go awry; for there is something in the nature of homosexuality itself, some vague though actual corruption of spirit and vision, which imposes certain inevitable limitations on the expressiveness of the homosexual performer, writer, director, or whatever.

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.

June, 1897. At a historic eighteen-hour session in the Slavic Bazaar, a restaurant in Moscow, Stanislavski and Nemirovich- Danchenko agreed to pool their acting companies and form the Moscow Art Theatre (MAT). Stanislavski wrote: