International Theatre Research Articles

"Always in the Likeness": The Virtual Presences of Helmut Kajzaris Gw'azda in the Lothe Lachmann Theatre

“Always in the Likeness”:The Virtual Presences of Helmut Kajzar’s Gwiazda in the Lothe Lachmann Theatre Katarzyna Kwapisz (bio) In the 1970s, Helmut Kajzar formulated his manifesto, in which he defined theatre as "a place in between – such as stairs, a hallway, such as the Earth" (Manifest); yet, he never stopped asking where theatre begins and where it ends (Teatr Meta-codzienny).1 Nearly thirty years later, the participants of the International Theatre Festival, Dialog, were trying to answer, "What can the theatre offer […] in the time of the expeditious development of audiovisual arts? Does the theatre try to compete with the tools of contemporary pop-culture […] how does it use them?" ("Dialog"). After he had written his manifesto for Teatr Metacodzienno_ci [the Theatre of Meta-everydayness], Kajzar bought one of the first tape recorders available in Poland and, delighted with the new opportunities, treated it as an element of his theatre. Over the years, technological inventions have become not only tools or instruments in theatre but the meaningful elements of the theatrical space; similarly, digital transmission not only has enabled theatre to stage events, now, using solutions familiar from television or film but also poses basic questions as to the status of materiality and presence in theatre. Trying not to compete with the tools of contemporary electronic culture but rather to use them, theatre has developed various hybrids, extending the range of its already multiform configurations with multimedia performance. Equipped with technology much more advanced than Kajzar's tape recorder and questing after the body as "the primary means of theatrical display" (Kunst, "Impossible"), the Videoteatr "Poza" [Lothe Lachmann Theatre] actively pursues one of the lines of inquiry into this marriage of diverse forms. Theatre is the area of human artistic activity that combines the real and the virtual, the material and the immaterial, the non-physical and the corporeal modalities in a temporal and spatial appropriation of meaning. Various stage experiments have, in one way or another, attempted to use technology to reexamine these correlations. In the network of wires, cameras, projectors, and [End Page 513] screens, the most obvious and approachable tool for artistic creation – the body – has faced the danger of becoming redundant, or at least insufficient as the essential instrument of the theatrical medium. Thus, media, accused of creating surrogates for the reality that aspires to be conceived as the "only" reality, have been regarded as a threat to so-called real art. Challenged with such an accusation, diverse modes of multimedia performance, usually flourishing outside the structures of the theatre, have taken the concept of the body as the most "representative" sign of their alternative form of expression, raising awareness of what N. Katherine Hayles describes as a "technological development [that] can no longer be meaningfully separated from the human subject" (xiii). As an umbrella term, "multimedia performance" includes various practices that explore and extend performance through the combined use of animated projections, virtual images, and computer networks, which operate within the performance. In such computer-driven artistic ventures, the physical body struggles to mark its presence using zeros and ones. As a projected, simulated, or in some other way actuated "image," the body intricately combines the opposing rules of physicality and immateriality, of the actual and the virtual, reality and fiction. At the same time, it seems to evince the climactic point of the changing relations among text, representation, stage, actors, and audience in the modern theatre. Not without reason, Lachmann's play with electronic media, with embodied subject and mechanized object, can be understood as an attempt to unravel "the mystery of the real artificiality" (B»o½ski 9), to find out what an electronic mask or prosthesis, and this unnatural "pose" of the body, may stand for in theatre. Piotr Lachmann, a poet, essayist and translator, enacts these concepts in the theatre he has been producing with the actress Jolanta Lothe since 1985.2 Their Videoteatr "Poza," called by Marian GrzeÑczak the LLT (Lothe Lachmann Theatre), provocatively combines live acting with visual and audio recordings, producing, as some would say, inorganic surrogates of the human body. The LLT creates a theatrical space overloaded with technological equipment, in...

British Brutalism, the ‘New European Drama’, and the Role of the Director

The explosion of new theatre writing in Britain during and since the 'nineties contrasted with a dearth of original plays on continental Europe, east and west. Sanja Nikcevic attributes this in part to the dominance over the previous decades of the role of leading directors, who increasingly sought out raw materials to shape productions conforming to their own or their company's ideas. She traces the attempts in a number of countries to correct the imbalance by encouraging new writing through workshops and festivals—yet also how the explosion and importation of the British ‘in-yer-face’ style then affected the kind of new writing that was considered innovative and acceptable at such events. She argues against the claims made for the political significance of plays such as Sarah Kane's Blasted, suggesting rather that the acceptance of the normality of violence without reference to its social context negates the possibility of remedial action. A former Fulbright Scholar, Sanja Nikcevic is Head of the Department of English Literature at the University of Osijek, Croatia. Her full-length publications include The Subversive American Drama: Sympathy for Losers (1994), Affirmative American Drama: Long Live the Puritans (2003), and New European Drama: the Great Deception (2005). She was the founder and for eight years the president of the Croatian Centre of the International Theatre Institute.

Moises Kaufman: The Copulation of Form and Content

Moisés Kaufman:The Copulation of Form and Content Rich Brown (bio) Theory and practice should fuck, and their children should be the plays. The result should be the plays. —Moisés Kaufman Moisés Kaufman's explorations over the past ten years have led to his Tectonic Theater Project's current mission to produce innovative works that explore theatrical language and forms and to foster, through their art, a dialogue with their audiences on social, political, and human issues. Tectonic's creation of new work centers around the "copulation of form and content" (11 Nov. 2002). Kaufman explains: I think the most important thing for Tectonic is this binary focus that we have. Whenever we do a play, we have two interests in mind: form and content. This is something that happens not only in our theoretical meanderings but in our work. Whenever we're in rehearsal, we deal with both of those issues and pose questions about both. We do exercises that explore subject matter, and we do exercises that explore form. [. . .] The way we think about it in Tectonic is that we want form and content to copulate. We want the offspring of that copulation to be the play. We think about it in binary because we like to devote time to each one individually. And that is a theoretical as well as a pragmatic way of working. (11 Nov. 2002) To foster this copulation, Kaufman has developed a technique for creating theatre called Moment Work. In Tectonic workshops in which new work is formed, each artist who signs on for a project becomes what Kaufman calls a "performance writer," meaning she uses all the tools of the stage to generate individual theatrical Moments. Similar to homework assignments, the Moments are individually formulated outside of the workshop, and then presented to the other ensemble members; this is when collaboration begins. Kaufman defines Moment Work in the introduction to The Laramie Project as, "A method to create and analyze theatre from a structuralist (or Tectonic) perspective. . . . A Moment does not mean a change of locale or an entrance or exit of actors or characters. It is simply a unit of theatrical time that is then juxtaposed with other units to convey meaning" (xiv). A Moment can be as simple as a single gesture or breath or as complex as an entire scene complete with multiple characters, scenic pieces, lights, props, and sound. Most importantly, Moment Work is a tool for collaboratively discovering new theatrical forms while using all the languages of the theatre in equal interplay. In this article I investigate the particular devising methods used by Kaufman and Tectonic, and through tracing Kaufman's key influences, examine the origins of his "Tectonic techniques" for creating new work. [End Page 51] Tectonic Theater Project was founded in November 1991 by Kaufman and Managing Director Jeffrey LaHoste as a laboratory in which structural and theoretical questions of the theatre could be posed—"Tectonic" means "relating to the art and science of structure." The company's main objective is to "explore new theatrical vocabularies and theatrical languages that use the full potential of the stage" (Tectonic Theater Project home page). Today, Tectonic begins each new project by conducting workshops—exploring existing texts or investigating new works through rigorous experimentation and collaboration over months, even years. Kaufman believes the rehearsal space is a place for collaborative questioning and exploration that may or may not lead to the creation of a new piece. He states,"This is what we do in rehearsal. We learn as we go. We get into a room, pose some questions, and we ask the theatre to help us discuss it" (9 Dec. 2002). This way of working is directly connected to Kaufman's first artistic home with the Thespis Theatre Company in his native Venezuela, where he acted under the direction of Fernando Ivosky, whose influence on Kaufman cannot be overstated. Ivosky was influenced by the same ground-breaking artists Kaufman had seen and admired as a teenager at the International Theatre Festival in Caracas. At this yearly festival, he witnessed Jerzy Grotowski's Laboratory Theatre's Acropolis, Peter Brook's company's Ubu Roi, and Tadeusz...

Editor's Note

EDITOR'S NOTE We are happy to present a group of essays covering a wide variety of topics and texts. One may observe that a good proportion of the articles in this number of the Bulletin of the Comediantes deal with plays by women dramatists and with the representation ofwomen in early modern Spanish drama. This is a testament to those who in recent years have rediscovered and studied these plays and playwrights, and who have helped to make the works more accessible to scholars and students ofthe Comedia. We take this opportunity to mourn the passing ofan illustrious Golden Age scholar and member of the editorial advisory board for many years, Professor Willard F. King of Bryn Mawr College. Our colleague Cynthia Leone Halpern, a friend and former student of Professor King, has written a tribute to her mentor. We also remember fondly Professor Ann E. Wiltrout of Mississippi State University, a fine Comedia scholar and a frequent contributor to this journal. Their loss will be felt, but "las obras quedan. ..." Special thanks to Robert Lauer, Darci Strother, and Susan Fisher for their reports on international theater festivals, and to Robert Lauer again for setting up a website for the journal. As always, we acknowledge the work of our board members and contributors, and we invite scholars to submit their work on all aspects of early modern Spanish and colonial Latin American drama to the Bulletin ofthe Comediantes. E.H.F. ...

The International theatre design archive

The International theatre design archive

Experimenters, rebels, and disparate voices: the theatre of the 1920s celebrates American diversity

Introduction by Arthur Gewirtz and James J. Kolb Experimenters, Rebels, and Disparate Voices Searching for Big American Play: The Theatre Guild Produces John Howard Lawson's Processional by Beverle Bloch The Idiosyncratic Theatre of John Howard Lawson by John Shout Glitzing the Proletariat: John Howard Lawson's Plays of the 1920s by Michael C. O'Neill Direction by Design(er): Robert Edmond Jones and The New Provincetown Players by Jane T. Peterson Glitter, Glitz, and Race: The Production of Harlem by Freda Scott Giles Disparate Voices: African-American Theatre Critics of the 1920s by Freda Scott Giles Garland Anderson and Appearances: The Playwright and His Play by Alan Kreizenbeck The First Serious Dramas on Broadway by African-American Playwrights by Jeanne-Marie A. Miller Theatre and Community: The Significance of Howard University's 1920s Drama Program by Scott Zaluda To Doubt Is Fatal: Eva Le Gallienne and the Civic Repertory Theatre, 1926-1932 by Estelle Aden Sophie Treadwell's Play Machinal: Strategies of Reception and Interpretation by Kornelia Tancheva Sophie Treadwell's Summer with Boleslavsky and Lectures for the American Laboratory Theatre by Jerry Dickey On of a New Form: The Cabinet of Dr. Galigari and Susan Glaspell's Experiments in The Verge by Steven Frank They Knew What They Wanted: American Theatre's Use of Nonverbal Communication Codes to Marginalize Non-Native Characters in the 1920s by Beverly Bronson Smith The Poet Lore Plays: A New Chinese Voice ... But How New? by Dave Williams Theatre and Set Design Against the Tide: Mordecai Gorlik and the New York Theatre of the 1920s--Processsional, Nirvana, The Moon Is a Gong, and Loudspeaker by Anne Fletcher Another Revolution to Be Heard From Jane Heap and the International Theatre Exposition of 1926 by John Bell Architecture for the Twentieth Century: Imaging the Theatre in the 1920s by William F. Condee Selected Bibliography Index

Havana Daydreaming

Report on the eleventh Havana International Theatre Festival, held from 18 to 28 September 2003.

Baise-Moi: from a political to a social female friendship film

This study is devoted to an aspect in the film, Baise-Moi, largely overlooked by critics, i.e. the friendship between two women. When Baise-Moi, directed by Virginie Despentes and Coralie Trinh Thi, was released in France in June 2000, it was at the centre of a heated debate regarding its explicit scenes of violence and sex and was consequently banned from French and international cinema theatres. Examining exclusively the relationship between the two main female protagonists—Nadine and Manu—this article will attempt to highlight the link between feminist ideas and the issue of female friendship in contemporary French cinema. It will therefore be a matter of bringing forward the film's political position on the situation of women in contemporary France. However, a detailed study of the representation of the feminist issue of female friendship in the film and its impact on female viewers will lead to questions about its real significance in Baise-Moi. Indeed, the film ends on a deceiving note for its female protagonists, prompting a reconsideration of aspects of the film, which will finally result in a revelation of its social and hence recuperative undertones.

The International theatre design archive

The International theatre design archive

‘New Theatres – New Writing?’

Report on the International Theatre Institute forum held at the Soho Theatre and Writers Centre Studio, London, on 25 February 2003.

After Grotowski – the Next Generation

In NTQ62, Joanna Ostrowska reported on Grotowski's last visit to his native Poland before his death in 1999. Here, Paul Allain assesses the Grotowksi inheritance in Pontedera, Italy, which had been the base for Grotowski's research since 1986 – specifically, on the second Generazioni International Theatre Festival, held there in June 2001. Paul Allain's doctoral research on the Gardzienice company took him to Poland during the years of ferment around the fall of Communism. He is presently Senior Lecturer in Drama in the University of Kent, and was co-editor of the recent Cambridge Companion to Chekhov.

Georg Buchner's "Woyzeck": A History of Its Criticism

Richards, David. Georg Bachner's Woyzeck: A History of Its Criticism. Rochester, NY. Camden House, 2001, xiv + 167 pp. $55.00 hardcover. Woyzeck ranks among the most heatedly debated texts in German literature. When Buchner died in 1837, he left four drafts containing various sequences of scenes: a final version of this powerful, aesthetically highly complex play does not exist. From its first publication by Karl Emil Franzos (1878) in a badly flawed rendition to the most recent editions by Henri Poschmann (1992) and Burghard Dedner/Thomas Michael Meyer (1999), the controversy about questions of textual evidence and about the construction of a reading and performance arrangement has not been put to rest. Today's editions display an amazing degree of refinement and approximation to Buchner's writing, but a consensus is still lacking in some areas. Yet at the same time Woyzeck has had an enormous, lasting impact on generations of writers from the outset, beginning with the Naturalists and reaching into postmodernism, as well as on the reading public and on international theater audiences. Literary critics have proposed a great variety of readings of the text. These readings are, as can be expected, not only a reflection of the shifting paradigms of criticism itself and the discourses of the given time period, but they are also often intricately bound to the respective status of the numerous editorial projects. In brief: Woyzeck criticism-up to the 1970s and sometimes beyond-is a series of frustrating, at times absurd trials and errors. As a case history of the evolution of critical methods, it is well worth chronicling from today's vantage point. Richards has published substantial contributions to Buchner and Woyzeck in the past and thus appears to be eminently qualified for the task. If the book under review falls somewhat short of expectations, this is due to a certain lack of focus and stringency and to the author's reluctance to take a decisive stand on various issues discussed. The first two chapters provide an instructive survey of criticism from the beginnings to 1962. Already in the second chapter, devoted to the fertile post-war period, Richards' inclination in favor of apolitical readings (Martens, Biittner, Mautner, Knight et al.) becomes apparent. The truly gound-breaking study of the Marxist critic (27) Hans Mayer is dispatched swiftly: Buchner research owes much to Mayer-he died recently at age 94-and little is given due credit here. …

The buried astrolabe: Canadian dramatic imagination and Western tradition

Astrolabe / aestrae leOb/ n. an instrument consisting of a disc and pointer, used to make astronomical measurements, especially of the altitudes of celestial bodies, and as an aid in navigation. Over the last two decades Canadian drama has emerged as an important presence in international theatre. In The Buried Astrolabe Craig Walker offers a critical introduction to contemporary Canadian playwriting, providing a context for the study of Canadian drama and showing how it developed from Western European philosophical, literary, and dramatic traditions. Walker devotes the main body of his work to critical readings of James Reaney, Michael Cook, Sharon Pollock, Michel Tremblay, George F. Walker, and Judith Thompson, respecting the distinctive elements of the writer's voice while helping the reader appreciate the cultural context that informs each play. He analyses the poetics or mythological underpinning of the works and investigates the cultural significance of the tropes that typify their works. The Buried Astrolabe stakes the claim of Canadian playwrights to be considered among the most important in the contemporary world.

The International theatre design archive

The International theatre design archive

Graaf Willem I van Holland (1202-1222): ridderschap en machtspolitiek

Count William I of Holland (1203-1222): Chivalry and Power PoliticsWilliam I, Count of Holland (1203-1222) is generally known as a chivalric prince who was more interested in the international theatre of war than in governing his own estate. William did indeed participate in two crusades (1189-1191 and 1217-1219), one major 'European' battle (Bouvines 1214) and a French invasion in England (1216). However, these 'chivalric' activities did not stem from sheer personal impetuosity and a lust for adventure. In all cases, political motives played a role. Chivalric behavior went hand in hand with pragmatic power politics.

Canadian Drama and Performance in the UK: Featuring Quebec and a Canon

According to Todd Marciniak, Cultural Industries Officer responsible for the performing arts in the Cultural Relations office at the Canadian High Commission, London, there is now three times as much production of Canadian drama and performance in Britain - by both British and Canadian companies - as there was ten years ago.2 Regularly visiting Canadian companies include theatre companies Ex Machina and One Yellow Rabbit, the circuses Cirque du Soleil and Cirque Eloize, dance companies La La La Human Steps and O Vertigo and children’s theatre companies Les Deux Mondes and Théâtre Sans Fil. British theatres that produce or host Canadian work regularly include the Traverse, Edinburgh; the Tramway and the Tron Theatre, Glasgow; the Royal Exchange, Manchester; and in London the Royal National Theatre, the Bush Theatre, the Battersea Arts Centre, Riverside Studios and the Finborough Theatre. Festivals that Canadian companies regularly participate in include the Edinburgh International Festival, the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the Glasgow Dance Festival, New Moves, the Belfast Festival and BITE, the Barbican International Theatre Event in London. Writers whose plays are often produced in Britain include Michel Tremblay, Brad Fraser, Judith Thompson and George F. Walker.3

Directing with the Viewpoints

Theatre Topics 10.2 (2000) 155-168 [Access article in PDF] Directing with the Viewpoints Joan Herrington Figures Since Anne Bogart began to develop the Viewpoints in the Experimental Theatre Wing of New York University (ETW) twenty years ago, her approach has become a training tool, a staging tool, an "everything" tool, adopted and adjusted by theatre artists around the world. The Viewpoints, a technique used to focus actors' awareness on different elements of performance (tempo, duration, gesture, spatial relationship), no longer remain exclusively among the avant-garde; rather, in the last decade, a generation of mainstream directors has begun to incorporate Viewpoints training and practice into the rehearsal process. Some have studied with Bogart; some have studied with her students; some have studied with Viewpoints creator Mary Overlie; and some have only attended a workshop. The only significant source of information on the Viewpoints is a collection of articles, Anne Bogart: Viewpoints (1995), which was a welcome response to a clamor for information. But this multiperspectival work raised more questions than it answered, lauding the benefits of working with the Viewpoints while affording only a few glimpses into their application in rehearsal. Jon Jory warns in the foreword that "lots of people are going to incorporate [Bogart's] theory into their practice, and just like Konstantin's acolytes, many will misunderstand it, do it badly and give it a bad name" (xvi). Motivated by Jory's words, and aware that there was much to learn from theatre artists well-versed in the Viewpoints, I attended the rehearsals and workshops of three directors: Bogart, Leon Ingulsrud, a founding member and director of the Saratoga International Theatre Institute (SITI), and Kevin Kuhlke, director of the ETW. 1 I also interviewed several other directors, including Scott Zigler, who studied with Bogart and is currently director of actor training at the American Repertory Theatre. These directors apply the Viewpoints in both professional and academic theatres, and their varied techniques, continually reexamined and reshaped, are creating theatrical works of unusual physical and visual clarity. In doing this research, my objective is to examine how these directors incorporate this tool into the rehearsal process and to describe what happens in the creation of shows. While we wait, as Jory notes, for Bogart to write her book, I hope this article provides insight into how she and other Viewpoints directors do their work. [End Page 155] Basic Principles There is not, as many believe, a "right" way to apply the Viewpoints. In fact, there are variations in the approach to cast training, the degree of integration, the process of staging, and the format of improvisation. Because the Viewpoints have evolved slowly over the past twenty years, and because different directors have encountered them at different points in their development, even the four directors discussed in this article employ different sets of Viewpoints. 2 Despite this diversity, I found remarkable agreement on the rewards of their use. It became clear to me that, despite their mystification, the Viewpoints produce effects that are quite specific. The primary and most obvious benefit is the collaboration between actors and directors, which generates "viscerally dynamic moments in the theatre" (Bogart qtd. in Drukman 32). The Viewpoints assume that actors who are sentient and open to the complete environment, who are motivated by instinct unimpeded by intellect, will create powerful stage movement and composition. In her plenary speech at the Viewpoints Conference in January 1997, Bogart clarified, "In the Viewpoints work, nothing is invented--everything is a response." Viewpoints training and its integration into rehearsal empower actors by providing the tools, vocabulary, forum, and secure ensemble with which actors can independently conceive a stage composition or enhance staging provided by the director. Less acknowledged, and sometimes more difficult to reconcile in rehearsal, is that working with the Viewpoints involves relinquishing some of the control it has taken directors a century to acquire. When actors become active participants in the overall creation of the show, power is redefined: the traditional director/actor hierarchy disappears. Veteran Viewpoints directors are clearly willing to make this trade in order to reap other rewards. Because practice of...

13th Annual Eurokaz Festival of International Theatre, Zagreb, Croatia, 23-30 June 1999, and: 5th Annual Puf International Theatre Festival, Pula, Croatia, 2-6 July 1999 (review)

13th Annual Eurokaz Festival of International Theatre, Zagreb, Croatia, 23-30 June 1999, and: 5th Annual Puf International Theatre Festival, Pula, Croatia, 2-6 July 1999 (review)

Theater der Welt in Berlin

ariner's signal flags in the Berlin streets announced the opening in June 1999 of the city's three-week Theater der Welt festival. Berlin, as the designated capital awaited the move of the federal government, was rather a stormy sea than a safe haven for theatre. The hosting of Germany's international theatre festival for the first time coincided with the final move of ministers and their armies of bureaucrats from Bonn to Berlin. Although the socalled Berlin Republic will partly be defined by its cultural aura, perhaps even invoking the status Berlin had in the 1920s, nobody dares to say if all this implies a return to the rigid centralization of cultural life of that earlier era. That Theater der Welt, a biennial or triennial festival which has moved from city to city since its inception in Hamburg in 1979, took place in the new capital is, of course, a sign of Berlin's growing importance in the life of the country.

Artslynx International Arts Resources (review)

Reviewed by: Artslynx International Arts Resources Melanie Blood Artslynx International Arts Resources. By Richard Finkelstein. [Internet, WWW], ADDRESS: www.artslynx.org As its title, Artslynx International Arts Resources, suggests, this web site is a link library that organizes connections to thousands of sites in its major categories: advocacy, arts administration, dance, education, film, funding, jobs, music, theatre, visual arts, and writing. Surprisingly, there is only one man behind this colossal effort: Richard Finkelstein, a theatre designer based in Denver who has been involved in electronic publishing since the bulletin board days. Probably the most important difference between web and print publication is that the web allows non-linear linking of many kinds of material. If one selects International Theatre Resources from the Artslynx homepage, one finds the theatre page organized into twenty-four sub-categories. On the sub-categories’ pages, Finkelstein points to related topics within Artslynx, to sites for specific information, or to more sites with even more link options, such as his Costume page or Theatre-central. Although a search engine powered by whatUseek aids the researcher, it is of limited use. More helpful is Finkelstein’s cogent, careful organization of information into useful sub-categories and his linkages among those sub-categories. A link library like Artslynx is invaluable for the wired arts scholar or the casual user seeking a specific piece of information. A digital search engine like Yahoo lacks the knowledgeable human who selects, organizes, and annotates links. Finkelstein links to well-known and unusual sites, as well as to other link libraries, rather than repeating already published information. His range of selections and his organization are superior. A greater number and further detail in annotations for the links would make Artslynx even more valuable. A second important feature of the web is the range of media it supports. Graphics, animation, video, and sound may be particularly important to theatre scholars, as performances can often be captured better through these media than through written language. Finkelstein limits the graphics in Artslynx and because the goal of a link library is to get you to other sites, it is entirely appropriate to avoid slow-loading media files. Since the server and labor are donated, Artslynx is thankfully free of advertisements. Finkelstein does provide links to sites with superior graphics and animation, such as Theatron, Didaskalia, and Design Images Online. A third feature of web publication is that a web site can be designed for maximum functionality, with content helping dictate form. Greater consistency in the use of the homepage’s icons and visual similarity between the homepage and the rest of the site would enhance the visual impact of the site. More internal links for users to move within and among pages—for example a consistent menu down the margin—would also make the site more user friendly. A final asset of web publication is its widespread accessibility at low cost. This could mean a reduction in the cost of specialized journal subscriptions and scholarly monographs. Accessibility also suggests that sites be designed for a range of users. Here Artslynx is very successful. A theatre practitioner looking for new ways to market her skills, a star-struck teenager looking to break into film acting, and a scholar of ancient theatre history can all find material quickly and easily through Artslynx, from, respectively, Theatrejobs, SAG’s information pages for young actors, and abstracts from an international conference in Saskatchewan. There are also some difficulties with web scholarship. The two most serious ones, lack of adjudication and accountability, are less important to a link library than to a content site. Finkelstein readily admits Artslynx cannot be fully comprehensive, and he conscientiously asks for users’ help with new sites and outdated links. I found only a handful of broken links among hundreds, despite [End Page 473] Artslynx’s staff of one. Two other potential problems are out-of-date sites and technological failures. It is customary for a webmaster to note when a site was last updated at the bottom of the page, but Finkelstein does not adhere to this custom. While technological difficulties with Artslynx itself are unlikely, many of the sites one links to do include large...