Concurrent with the renaissance in English playwriting during the last quarter century has been a comparable creative surge in English staging, which had long rested on tasteful, predictable mise-en-scenes of cup and saucer drawing room comedy and melodrama, or on the equally unimaginative, albeit often elegant, mounting of poetic drama, above all of Shakespeare. It was almost as if the new drama, whether of angry young men or the absurd, sparked a similar breakthrough in explorations of stage space and movement, color, texture, and mass, rhythm and orchestration. English acting has perenially been held in high esteem, but now the work of many directors and scenographers also came to be recognized as being of equal worth. The Royal Shakespeare Company, the Old Vic and its offspring the National Theatre, and the English Stage Company all began to mount productions that recalled many of the prophetic visions of that earlier English man of theatre, Edward Gordon Craig, who celebrated the Artist of the Theatre over both playwright and actor. The English theatre is probably too deeply rooted in its homage to playwright and actor ever to go as far as Craig would have liked in scrapping the literary text and the star performer, but during the past two decades increasing international attention has been paid to directors such as Joan Littlewood, Peter Brook, Peter Hall, Trevor Nunn, John Barton, Terry Hands, John Dexter, and William Gaskill. Less celebrated but of comparable significance has been the remarkable achievement of English scenographers during the same period, as if they had risen to the challenges and opportunities provided by the new drama and the new directors. The English have dominated the most recent major international scenographic exhibitions (including top prizes at the Prague Quadrennials of 1976 and 1979), as well as the most recent Broadway seasons: the last two winners of Tony awards for design were both English (John Bury in 1980 and John Napier in 1981). Far more than skilled scene painters or elegant interior decorators, the contemporary English