Amateur Production Research Articles

Trading Art(s): Artaud, Spies, and Current Indonesian/American Artistic Exchange and Collaboration

In E. M. Forster's A Passage to India Adela Quested, like Mrs. Moore, wants to see the real India. Instead, both have to sit through an amateur production of Cousin Kate. Adela is appalled: she predicts rather gloomily that her desire to see the "real India" will be thwarted by her compatriots:

A Nativity Play for the Catholic Monarchs

On Christmas Eve, 1487, in the church of San Salvador, Zaragoza, a Nativity play was performed before an audience that included Ferdinand and Isabella and their children. To date the play has aroused only scant interest, mainly because information about it is limited to a string of bookkeeping entries recorded in the church ledger. Yet these entries enable us to reconstruct a skeletal outline of the play, which can then be elaborated by appealing to other fifteenth-century Christmas celebrations. What emerges is a full-blown opera that goes beyond the traditional scene of Mary, Joseph and the Christ Child to include the shepherds, the prophets of antiquity and the hierarchy of angels who, by means of revolving wheels perform the mystic ring dance as God the Father looks on. Unlike Encina's plays, the Zaragoza piece re-creates the biblical moment as the contemporary, historical, and spiritual worlds render homage to the Son of God. Apparently the play is no amateur production but the creation of a seasoned director and an accomplished scriptwriter, both supported by professional actors and musicians. Its language may well have been Castilian; whereupon it emerges also as a fitting tribute to the Queen of Castile. (CS)

Free Clinics Change the Scene

weekday evening one's first impression is noise. Hard rock competes with conversation punctuated by occasional shouts and gusts of laughter. After one's eyes adapt to the smoky air comes the second impression-color. The exposed overhead pipes are bright red, the walls yellow, the support beams green. There are splashes of purple, electric blue, shocking pink in the psychedelic murals and posters. As individual people come into focus, they all appear young, their dress casual in the extreme. It looks like a casting call for an amateur production of Hair. This is the waiting room of the Pittsburgh Free Clinic. Furnishings are cracked leather couches supported by stacks of bricks instead of legs, thrift shop rejects, with a church pew here and there. On one side of the room there are a record player, a magazine box, a brick-and-raw-lumber bookcase with used volumes, a Coke machine, and a table with the makings of instant coffee, tea, cocoa, and soup. Other bookcases hold the minutes of previous board meetings, health-related pamphlets, and news of the clinic in mimeographed form. There is also literature about venereal disease, family planning, abortion, and drug abuse, published by Blue Cross, health departments, and drug companies. A birth control handbook gives accurate and complete information about anatomy, physiology, and family planning methods. It contains, as well, sections on the political issues surrounding such topics-all in the style of the underground press. The two desks are manned by people who look and dress like all of the others sitting, standing, moving, and occasionally breaking into dance. Posters and signs cover the walls. Some advertise rock concerts, lectures on macrobiotics, art shows, women's liberation activities, sources of legal help. The antiwar theme is well represented and the antidrug, pro-mental-health message is carried by signs: "Still shooting dope? Stop living like a dead man" (pencilled in, "or woman"), "Call Alpha House," or "Hepatitis is a bad trip ... If you think you have it or have been exposed to it, call for free blood tests." Other posters relate directly to the clinic. Two list the standard local prices for routine tests, medications, and services, and the cost of same services at the clinic. Another, by the door, reads "All donations appreciated; we need the bread." One, obviously handmade ith a Magic Marker, lists the services offered. They include medical, gynecological, and dermatology care; nutrition; legal, personal, birth control, pregnancy, and venereal disease counseling. A cafeteria foodlist board announces the date of the next board meeting and urges everyone interested to attend. Give or take a few details, this is a typical scene in any free clinic in the United States. There are now about 200 of them treating over 2,000,000 people a year in storefronts, walk-ups, fire-gutted taverns, church basements, or wherever the space is cheap or free and convenient(l). This ease of access is crucial, because those who have adopted the hip life style can be as physically, economically, and psychologically barred from conventional sources of health care as members of any other minority or subculture in the country. Emergency rooms and outpatient clinics of large public hospitals and health departments are frequently far from the hip or student neighborhoods. Transportation is likely to be unavailable or prohibitively timeconsuming, hours of operation to be inconvenient. The wait can be long, the red tape longer, and secrecy, anonymity, or human dignity not considered. And the attitudes of clinic personnel can constitute a formidable barrier. We hear many accounts of humiliation and cruelty. To a runaway teenager with a venereal disease and a drug problem, an agency that aggressively pushes a thorough investigation of his sexual contacts can be threatening enough to make him put off treatment dangerously long. People who have venereal disease are asked to bring in their contacts for treatment or to refer them to the health department. If they do not bring their contacts in within two weeks, contacts' names are given to the health department and a social worker is assigned to locate them. Even young people who still live at home, though more or less alienated from their families and straight society, cannot use conventional me ical care for certain of their needs. Can you imagine the average middle-class, fourteen-year-old girl going to her pediatrician or her mother's gynecologist for an intrauterine device or a pregnancy test? MADALON M. AMENTA (B.A. Tufts University, Boston, Mass.; M.N., Yale University, New Haven, Conn.; M.P.H., University of Pittsburgh, Pa.), a doctoral student at the University of Pittsburgh, was formerly an instructor at that university. She acknowledges the special help of Kathy Chajkowski, Mary Curtiss, and Miriam Winikoff in sharing their thoughts and feelings about their experience in the Pittsburgh Free Clinic.

An Introduction to Filmstrips

THIS pamphlet contains a deal of common sense in a short space. Written with the needs of the classroom teacher firmly in mind, the technical processes of filmstrip production, the pros and cons of different types of apparatus and the basic principles involved in the use of this form of teaching aid are dealt with succinctly, lucidly and objectively. The line drawings and half-tone illustrations which accompany the text where necessary are admirably chosen for their purpose. On the most controversial point dealt with, the choice of frame size, the authors present a strongly argued case in favour of double-frame strip (24 mm. X 36 mm.) for general purposes, while agreeing that in certain instances single-frame strip (18 mm. X 24 mm.) will continue to be used. There is still a tendency in many quarters to regard cinematograph film as almost the only form of visual aid worth mentioning. Cine-film will always play an important part in education, but for regular classroom use the more humble filmstrip has much to commend it. The apparatus required is compact, weighs little and is easy to operate. The medium can be adapted to most classroom needs, is economical of time and allows considerable control of material by the user. Further, at very moderate cost the teacher can try out his own ideas in the way of film-strip production—and will learn much in the process. Users of filmstrip, whether or not they are interested in amateur production, will find the practical suggestions in this little book helpful and stimulating without being dogmatic. An Introduction to Filmstrips By H. R. I. W. Dance. Pp. 36. (London: George G. Harrap and Co., Ltd., 1948.) 2s. 6d. net.