State Of Theatre Research Articles

A Political Language for the Theatre: Edward Bond's RSC Workshops, 1992

Disillusioned by what he sees as the inadequate state of the British theatre, Edward Bond has refused to have some of his more recent plays produced in this country, although they have been seen in productions on the Continent. This year's Avignon Festival will thus be focusing on his work, and later in 1994 the Berliner Ensemble will be staging Olly's Prison. In 1992, however, Bond worked – for the first time since the late 1980s – with members of the Royal Shakespeare Company, resuming in workshop conditions his attempt to develop a distinctive acting style for his work. Commenting on the programme of workshops, and through subsequent interviews with Bond and some of the actors involved, Ian Stuart, who teaches in the School of Theatre at the University of Southern California, attempts to draw conclusions about Bond's current theatre methodology.

Young People's Theatre and the New Ideology of State Education

In NTQ38 (May 1994) Nicolas Whybrow offered a brief account of the immediate threat facing theatre in education (TIE) in England and Wales. In the first of two articles in which he examines the general state of theatre produced for both the formal and the informal education sectors, he goes on to provide a more searching contextualization of some of the changes now taking place. Here, he analyzes the implications for TIE of the Education Reform Act of 1988, and the effect of Youth Service policies on theatre for youth work. Nicolas Whybrow recently completed a PhD based on the practices of Red Ladder, Blah Blah Blah, and Leeds TIE, and is about to take up a lecturing appointment at the Workshop Theatre (School of English), Leeds University.

Feminist Theatre in Britain: a Survey and a Prospect

Despite widespread interest in the subject, there has been no previous attempt to collect comprehensive information concerning the history and present working conditions of feminist theatre companies in Britain: and so, with the exception of a very few assessments of particular companies, all too often what passes for critical analysis has had to depend on partial or merely anecdotal evidence. As part of her research for her book, Contemporary Feminist Theatres, forthcoming from Routledge in March, Lizbeth Goodman sent out between 1987 and 1990 a detailed questionnaire to 223 companies and organizations identified as having relevant concerns – whether in terms of company membership, production methods, policy aims, or targeted audience. With a response from 98 of these in hand, she assembled a detailed data-base from which the following article derives – describing the methods and aims of the survey itself, the nature of the response, and the needs in specific areas it revealed, both for the companies themselves and for the future assessment of their work. Lizbeth Goodman, currently a Lecturer in Literature for the Open University, has previously compiled a sequence of ‘Feminist Theatre Interviews’ for NTQ, and most recently contributed an overview of the state of contemporary Bulgarian theatre to NTQ32 (November 1992).

Blaho Uhlàr and the Slovak Theatre of Crisis

When we published Barbara Day's introduction to modern theatre in Czechoslovakia in NTQ7 (1986), we could little imagine that by the turn of the decade we would be carrying regular reports from Eastern Europe on the effects of the disintegration of the Soviet empire upon the theatres and theatre people of the former satellite states. In NTQ27 (1991), we included an overview of recent developments in the Polish theatre – following this up in NTQ28 with a detailed feature on the work of a single company in the new era, Gardzienice. Here, we similarly complement Premsyl Rut's report in NTQ27 on ‘The State of the New Czech Theatre’ with a study of the work of one of the directors who, like so many people in the arts, served as a herald to the ‘velvet revolution’ – Blaho Uhlár, whose career began, in the difficult years after the Soviet invasion of 1968, with the Theatre for Children and Youth, and whose most recently completed production with the Divadle Alexandra Duchnovic company, Nono, visited the Chapter Arts Centre in Cardiff during the city's festival last October.

Producing Marginality: Theatre and Criticism in Canada

Robert Wallace’s collection of essays, Producing Marginality, is a book to go back to again and again. It is deeply thought out, is built on a strong foundation of research, and is passionately committed. The positions Wallace maintains are bound to provoke long, hard thinking about the present state of theatre in Canada, the relation between theatre and political power and ideology, the relation between Quebec and the rest of Canada. It is frankly a polemic. Not only does Wallace make no claim to objectivity, he mounts an impressive argument against the very concept of objectivity and of universal critical values.

The State of the New Czech Theatre

The State of the New Czech Theatre

Orientalizing the Self: Theatre in China after Tiananmen Square

GUIZHOU, YUNNAN, INNER MONGOLIA, SHANXI, MayJuly 1990 From 23 May to 9 July 1990 I traveled in China researching the state of theatre.1 My official research concerned nuoxi (ritual theatre by ethnic minorities) in southwest China; my unofficial research concerned repression by the government since the brutal crushing of the democracy movement of 1989. I went to China with the naive assumption that, like Eastern Europe in recent years, I would find a thriving underground. My own Eurocentrism (despite years of training in Asian theatre and culture) prevented me from viewing the events in China from a Chinese perspective. The repression, fear, and sadness in China was far greater than I had expected. The year prior to the 4 June 1989 massacre at Tiananmen Square had been a year of artistic advances. A breath of freedom was in the air, perhaps most visible in the first public, government-sanctioned exhibit of Chinese paintings of nudes. Displayed in Beijing during the early months of 1989, the exhibition coincided with attempts by China's avant-garde visual artists to imitate what were perceived to be Western styles. For example, one artist blasted her painting with bullets during an exhibit. Neither the nude paintings nor the bullet-spewing performance would have been tolerated-or even attempted-prior to that extraordinary spring thaw. Such events encouraged the optimism of the prodemocracy movement. Thus the brutality of the military reprisals was all the more shocking to Chinese artists. I naturally assumed that arriving in China one year after the massacres, traveling under the auspices and at the invitation of the Chinese Theatre Artists' Association (Zhongguo Xijujia Xiehui), I would be able to meet and discuss theatre with playwrights and directors all over the country. Indeed, I discovered that they were more than eager to share their experiences with me. A priority for theatre artists in China today is to be heard; and since the silencing of protest is extremely efficient, foreign visitors are viewed as emissaries, letter carriers from behind the lines. The fact that I was accompanied by Kuang-Sheng Shih, a doctoral student at UCLA who is a native of Taiwan (and thus was freed from a translator provided by the Chinese government) meant that I was a safe person with whom to speak. The knowledge that comments spoken to me would neither be censored nor reported to Chinese authorities gave me a peculiar power, seeming to draw artists to me. Much of what I will

The plays of David Storey: a thematic study

This is the first comprehensive play-by-play analysis of the drama of David Storey, one of the most acclaimed innovative, sometimes controversial, writers in the British theatre since World War II. Grouping the plays according to theme, Hutchings demonstrates that the central focus in the drama of David Storey is the devaluation of traditional rituals in contemporary life the disintegration of the family. A playwright attuned to the poetry in the ordinary, to the profundity, subtle eloquence, dramatic tension in the mundane, Storey explores the ways people cope, or fail to cope, with complexity, with uncertainty, with constant, bewildering flux. He writes about groupsfamilies (In Celebration, The Farm), rugby teams (The Changing Room), and construction crews (The Contractor). In his plays, individuals seek to overcome isolation integrate themselves into a significant assemblage that transcends the self.Hutchings notes that Storey frequently deals with working-class parents who cannot understand their grown children s anxieties, their discontentedness with life, their unstable marriages, their inability to enjoy the benefits of the education advantages they labored so hard for so many years to provide.Storey understands sympathizes with parents who have paid to educate their children out of their own spheres. He saw it happen in his own family, knew the disapproval of his father: What else could my father think when, nearing sixty, he came home each day from the pit exhausted, shattered by fatigue, to find mea young man ideally physically equipped to do the job which now left him totally prostratedpainting a picture of flowers, or writing a poem about a cloud. There was, there is, no hope of reconciliation.Hutchings supplements his thematic analysis of Storey s plays by interweaving into his text 90 percent of a major interview with the playwright, the only such comprehensive interview in existence. Storey, who believes that readers ought to be chary of all interviews, discusses alleged literary influences on his work, the current state of British theatre, his reactions to critics. He also provides insight into various productions performances in his work.

Theatre in Thatcher's Britain: Organizing the Opposition

On 7 May 1988 a meeting was held at Goldsmiths' College, London, involving a number of theatre practitioners and academics on the left, to discuss the current state of British theatre under Thatcherism and suggest some possible responses. The meeting was organized by Vera Gottlieb, and NTQ Editor Simon Trussler, who both teach in the Drama Department at Goldsmiths' College. Also present were Clive Barker, Pam Brighton, Colin Chambers, Trevor Griffiths, Peter Holland, Kate Harwood, Albert Hunt, Nesta Jones, John McGrath, Paul Moriarty, Rob Ritchie, and Juliet Stevenson. Apologies for absence were received from Caryl Churchill, Tilda Swinton, and Clare Venables. This abbreviated transcript was edited by Andy Lavender.

The Present State of Black Theatre

During the I960s and '70s black theatre in America earned a reputation as one of the most controversial and dynamic movements in the world. Plays by black dramatists boldly portrayed black life in relation to oppressive political and social institutions in the United States. Blacks founded hundreds of theatre groups which produced plays by at least 200 dramatists. Widespread interest led to a proliferation of black theatre articles, dissertations, and scholarly books. In the I98os there appears to be no consensus in the assessment of the development of black theatre since the '6os. A 1987 survey of black theatre artists and scholars revealed opinion to be almost equally divided as to whether black theatre has progressed, regressed, or stagnated.1 Black theatre groups can still be found in major cities across the country, but less than a third survive of those existing during the prior two decades. Most scholars and theatre artists would have difficulty naming recent productions of plays by some of the most renowned black dramatists of the '6os. Although Charles Fuller, August Wilson, and George C. Wolfe currently enjoy national acclaim, few other black playwrights have such reputations. Despite all this, I am one black woman who is not ready to bemoan the current state of the black theatre and write its obituary. The black theatre has found ways to continue to function during these times marked by conservative political and social policies. The black theatre exists because it learned lessons of survival from the '6os and '70s. The institution is a vital part of our culture and expresses who we were, are, and will be. Changes in the black theatre since the '6os must be viewed in the context of changes in the political and social conditions in America. Historian Lerone Bennett, Jr., called 1963 the first year of the Black Revolution (I982:386). After nearly 300 years of protest and oo00 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, most black Americans still found themselves without the same civil rights and standard of living enjoyed by whites. During I963/64 the nation experienced more than I0,000 demonstrations against discrimination in employment, education, housing, and the use of public facilities. White racists injured and murdered blacks and their white sympathizers. Militant segregationists did not exempt black children or churches from their wrath. In one of the most hideous incidents of the period, a bomb thrown into the basement of a Birmingham, Alabama church killed 4 girls and injured 21 other people. The governors of Ala-

Rousseau and the State of Theater

Research Article| January 01 1986 Rousseau and the State of Theater David Marshall David Marshall Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Representations (1986) 13: 84–114. https://doi.org/10.2307/2928495 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation David Marshall; Rousseau and the State of Theater. Representations 1 January 1986; 13 84–114. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/2928495 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu nav search search input Search input auto suggest search filter All ContentRepresentations Search This content is only available via PDF. Copyright 1986 Regents of the University of California Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Rousseau and the State of Theater

Rousseau and the State of Theater

New Broadways: Theatre Across America 1950-1980 by Gerald M. Berkowitz (review)

Book Reviews 399 in the expressionist Act II" of the play with "similar discoveries ... in the expressionist Act Ill" of Red Roses/or Me, "where - though the plaster statue has disappeared - Our Lady of Eblana, herself, reappears in many forms," and when she analyzes O'Casey's language, "with its multiple dimensions and ironies ... far beyond realism to become expressionist in a special way, for it is deliberately reaching, at one and the same moment. both towards the absurd and towards the sublime." Sean O'Casey's Bridge D/Vision is not without its vestiges of dissertationitis, despite its originality and maturity. and Kleiman could easily have kicked away some of the unnecessary props which credit critics of the past with commentaries anyone could have made, One cannot help but wonder at the quotations extracJed from Robert Hogan's The Experiments of Sean O'Casey, a study that surely must contain more valuable contributions than the fatuous value judgments included here. One must also hope that the obvious kind of footnote infonning us that in Ulysses Stephen Dedalus "also speaks of God as 'a shout in the street'" (emphasis added) is not intended as a case of post hoc, ergo propter hoc. And one of the most serendipitously enjoyable typos occurs in the labeling, credited to Brooks Atkinson, of Red Roses as "romatic tragedy" - what great possibilities are conjured up in that romalie! (although a subsequent repetition of the same misprint in "like a romatic counterpart of the cynical Diogenes" does not resonate quite as well). Two small areas approached by Kleiman invite further speculation. A footnote mapping out the dimensions ofO'Casey' s transposition of reality in the labor dispute at the center of Red Roses/or Me, suggested by O'Casey himself, nonetheless brings Kleiman inevitably back to the Dublin lockout of 1913, rather than the Railway Strike of 1911 . And her concern regarding the "strong Ulster dialect" of Foster and Dowzard, "so characteristic of the extreme Orange faction - though there is no indication in the text that they come from anywhere else but Dublin," could probably be satisfied by Alan Simpson's description of the East Wall area of Dublin, pertinent for both plays, with its railway links to Belfast. With a renewed interest within Dublin in unearthing the "realities" of O 'Casey's world, which we can only hope survives the untimely death of Alan Simpson, and the revived burst of innovative criticism found in Carol Kleiman's Bridge o/Vision, the dreary present of O'Casey studies may be modifying into a clearer future. BERNARD BENSTOCK, THE UNIVERSITY OF TULSA GERALD M. BERKOWITZ. New Broadways: Theatre Across America 1950- 1980. Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield 1982, Pp, ix, 198, illustrated, $19.50, If, compared with its European cousin, the American theatre was slow in the birthing, it has moved in the past three decades through its delayed adolescence into the fullness of maturity. Gerald Berkowitz traces the growth process in this well-presented overview, which includes looks at New York's Broadway, off-Broadway, and off-off-Broadway, and regional theatres across America. The survey stops with 1980, on a note of anxiety occasioned by the new administration's plans to cut budgets in the arts, the only sour chord in an otherwise optimistic rendering of the state of theatre in America. Berkowitz's study steers admirably clear of the kind of provincialism that acknowl- 400 Book Reviews edges only New York theatre. With Joseph Wesley Zeigler (Regional Theatre, Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1973), he sees New York as the only possible site for a national theatre - indeed, its theatres collectively represent the centrality associated with such an institution - but he gives ample credit to the growing role of professional regional theatres in major cities throughout the country. Berkowitz points out that Broadway dominated the American theatre at midcentury, a situation modified by the efforts of such people as Margo Jones in Pasadena, Nina Vance in Houston, Zelda Fichandler in Washington, D.C. , and Herbert Btau and Jules Irving in San Francisco. Berkowitz moves from one regional theatre to the next, remarking on the principals and productions, culminating his discussion in comments about the beginnings...

Shakespeare in Stratford and London, 1981

It is pleasing to curl one's fancy around the symmetry that London and Stratford-upon-Avon are as important today as centers for theatregoing as they were in Shakespeare's time. The steady flow of eminent and not-so-eminent itinerant companies through Shakespeare's home town in the midand late-sixteenth century ensured that the populace, then as now, was well entertained and that any keen citizen had ample opportunity to try and join the profession. It is true that nowadays transference is reversed, with major productions having conception and birth in Stratford before moving in willowy young maturity to London. But the symmetry is there, and a sense that the country's metropolitan heart depends mightily on the arterial flow from the environs. It is fervently to be hoped that this pattern will survive, though it must be strongly tempting for the management to relegate the awkward, old, curmudgeonly inconvenient Memorial building at Stratford now that the spanking new London Barbican center for the Royal Shakespeare Company is opened. The Aldwych Theatre (known till recently as the RSC's London home) will doubtless go. Money problems may well be added to the lures of newness, so that Trevor Nunn and company may soon confront Sir Peter Hall at the National, with headquarters in London-Stratford left slowly to museum their way into secondary status. This would be a sadness and probably an error with several dimensions-not least because it would only add one more cultural facet to a divisiveness between center and periphery, between capital and provinces-a divisiveness that is already dangerous and sapping-but perhaps most because, at Stratford, the RSC has created at its Other Place's small auditorium a theatre of exciting potency and achievement. Stratford's main house still has to come to terms with the presence of this small theatre, but it is out of the tension between the two (the Warehouse in London is a pale imitation) that the Company is likely to revitalize itself. Monolith Barbican (Trevor Nunn) facing stony National (Peter Hall) will create no tensions, only a kind of clobbering, unproductive medieval warfare-perhaps scenarioed by John Barton. In any case, so far as Shakespeare is concerned, the National has never begun to rival the Royal Shakespeare Company. There is no real contest. In Stratford, because of The Other Place, the RSC is now in creative challenge with itself-and that is good. But there is a world elsewhere, in theatre as in reality, and the specific relationships of the National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company have to be seen against a context of some doubt, confusion, and not a little anger. All theatres lack money-many of them, though not all, partly because they tend to spend it loosely, with childlike incontinence. One has to see, but few do-including Great Britain's clumsily indeterminate Arts Council (indeterminate in the sense that it seems to base some of its funding less on policy than on sentiment, apprehension, hazy ideology, or benevolent unconviction)-the poor financial state of British theatre in ternis both of the economic situation and of its own natural, ineradicable profligacy. Theatres are incapable of real economy-though they play at it-because their world is one of illusion and self-delusion. The credit titles for staff at the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National would be terrifying to many a canny businessman. They are feasible only if you remember that theatre survives solely by being larger, in every sense, than life. In the long run small theatres suffer more than larger ones because they have less to be profligate about and fewer opportunities to indulge in endearing but incredible shadow-play with reality. The Royal Shakespeare Company (or any large organization) can always cock a snook at public relations and, for example, charge theatre critics for their second tickets at first nights (traditionally a free privilege). The smaller theatres may not dare to do it-at least they haven't. How many pence the Royal Shakespeare Company has saved by its fiddling and farcical gesture one cannot say. Enough to pay for yet another (and again temporary) alteration to the main house stage for the

Lascelles Abercrombie - Playwright

Best known as a critic and poet, Lascelles Abercrombie (1881-1938) was also a playwright deeply concemed with the state of the English theatre in the first three decades of this century. For the most part, he was adversely critical of the commercial theatre of his day, opposed to the twin evils of sentimentality and the factual treatment of contemporary social issues, what he termed "naturalism." He wanted to create and promote plays which conveyed the type of "symbolic realism" he found in the work of two feIlow Georgians, John Drinkwater and Gordon Bottomley. In Drinkwater's Cophetua, he saw "a bold attempt to break through the accretions of dramatic convention ... and to achieve a broader, simpler, more frankly symbolic method of drama"; and in Bottomley's The Riding 10 Lithend, he appreciated a play shaped not "according to nature, but according to the curves of beauty, into a symbol of life infinitely more powerful than any actuality could do."

Nathan Cohen: The Making of a Critic

Though historically rare, there have been a number of occasions when a critic of theatre towered above the theatre he himself wrote about. Horace was certainly one such; the German, Lessing, another. Both men castigated the state of theatre they saw around them and in doing so helped pave the way for a theatre of genuine meaning and commitment to come into being. Chronologically, it’s only a short time between the critical work of Horace and the appearance of Seneca, Rome’s most important tragedian and a dramatist whose work later served as the inspiration for even greater tragedians including Shakespeare. Lessing, certainly the first theatre critic in any sort of modern sense, wrote about the kind of theatre that he was hoping to bring into being himself — an important bourgeois drama. Again, it is only a short step from Lessing’s work to the greater dramatic flowering of Germany in the works of such men as Schiller and Goethe.

The Contemporary Spanish Theater (1949–1972) by Marion P. Holt

174 Comparative Drama dividual and society and through repetition of the cosmogonic act they afford a rebirth for the individual and for society. Cole, however, denies that theatre has any function apart from the presentation of imaginative truth (except, he says, almost parenthetically, insofar as such presen­ tation provides a sense of community) . "It is a symptom of something art cannot cure when a society begins looking to art for cures" (p.159). "Theatre has all it can do to make its own miracles; it cannot also make society's" (p. 1 60). There is, for Cole, something so mystical in the pro­ cess of making imaginative truth present that it is its own justification. This mysticism arises from Cole's analogy of the .actor to the shaman and the hungan. But these figures serve functions for the individual and for �ciety. And Cole states that his analogy illuminates but is not to constitute proof of identity. Had Cole begun his analysis of the acting process not with primitive religious events but with children's pretend play (a perpetual source of theatre in every culture which has been gen­ erally ignored) he might not have found it to be surrounded by such a mystical aura and might have been prompted to seek further for its functions. The over-all structure of the argument does not hold up. Cole claims too much for a too narrowly defined theatrical event. Still, the book con­ tains a number of important and provocative ideas. The evidence Cole finds of shamanistic descriptions of acting in our culture is interesting. The chapter on scenic means is sometimes exciting. The analysis of good dramatic writing as manifestation of consciousness is very good, although finally it is not convincing that manifestation of an illud tempus entails manifestation of various consciousnesses. All in all one must thank Cole for directing our attention to theatrical function, to the importance of dramatization as a means, and for providing many suggestive ideas. But the arrogance of the flawed logic is not vindicated by these. Natalie Crohn Schmitt University of Illinois-Chicago Circle Marion P. Holt. The Contemporary Spanish Theater (1949-1972). TWAS 336. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1975. Pp. 189. $8.50. The year 1949, according to the author, marks the renaissance of dramatic activity in Spain after the debacle of the war years. In this first history of the contemporary Spanish theater written in English, Professor Holt treats the 23-year period beginning with the estreno of Jose L6pez Rubio's Alberto and Antonio Buero Vallejo's Historia de una escalera. The book is divided into four principal chapters plus a brief conclu­ sion. An introductory chapter provides an excellent overview of the state of the modem Spanish theater. In addition to thumbnail sketches of the principal writers, including some not covered in subsequent chapters, there are sections on foreign plays in Spain, on the ubiquitous problem of censorship (an area studied elsewhere by Patricia O'Connor) , and on aspects of theatrical production. Reviews 175 The second chapter, the longest of the book, is devoted to the six leading dramatists of the prewar generation. In an apparently descending order of importance, Holt considers the contributions of Jose L6pez Rubio, Miguel Mihura, Joaquin Calvo Sotelo, Jose Marfa Peman, Juan Ignacio Luca de Tena, and Edgar Neville. (The preface explains the ex­ clusion of Enrique Jardiel Poncela and Alejandro Casona from this line­ up.) Most of these playwrights, who were born around the tum of the century and were well-established before the war, are often associated with humoristic comedies in the vein of "teatro de evasi6n." Without excusing their weaknesses, Holt considers their respective talents in handling dramatic technique and in dealing with serious themes. "New Writers of the Post-Civil War Theater," the third chapter, treats Victor Ruiz Iriarte, Antonio Buero Vallejo, Alfonso Sastre, and Alfonso Paso. This chronological arrangement makes for strange bed­ fellows, since esthetically we might expect to find Ruiz Iriarte and Paso in the previous chapter. Holt makes a convincing case, however, for see­ ing them as more than writers of facile, ephemeral plays. Buero receives the most attention in this chapter, commensurate with his talent and with...

Without the Tarragon

Under “normal” circumstances the closing of a theatre, even on a short term basis, would hardly be a promising event. Nevertheless. Bill Glassco’s decision to withdraw Toronto’s Tarragon Theatre from active production during the 1975-’76 season may prove an exception to the rule. What’s more. Glassco’s decision is representative of the present state of theatre in Toronto which, indeed, is anything but “normal.” Beneath the ever-increasing quantity of productions encountered with each new season, one senses that a kind of spiritual exhaustion has infected the city’s most important theatres.

A Dialogue: The State of Theatre in Canada

In 1950, Robertson Davies was identified by the Massey Commission as editor of the Peterborough Examiner, author and playwright. At that time, he was asked to do a special study for the Commission on the state of theatre in Canada and, unlike others who were asked to do similar studies in other areas, Davies offered up his in the form of a dialogue. When the Commission’s final report appeared in 1951 (Report Of The Royal Commission On National Development In The Arts, Letters and Sciences, Ottawa), its prime recommendation was for the establish- ment of a council for the arts, letters, humanities and social sciences. When that agency was finally formed some years later (the Canada Council) it was obvious that many of Davies’ ideas had been kept in mind. Professor Davies’ study is reprinted here with his own permission and with the permission of Information Canada which holds the copyright. It originally appeared as a Royal Commission Study under the title A Selection Of Essays Prepared For The Royal Commission On National Development In The Arts, Letters and Sciences (Ottawa, 1951).

Reality Theater in Chicago

A true theater is a fix, a mainline shot that infuses itself into reality, turning reality upside down, producing alterations in the structure and in the elements of the real. A grandiose claim. But is this not precisely what we have always been assured was the case in the Theater of Dionysus and in Shakespeare's Elizabethan theater? Is it disturbing that our authorities have inadvertently taught us the truth? Perhaps all real theater, and any real art, can only be revolutionary. Whatever is new ultimately must be a metaphysical argument. The Reality Theater that is evolving today cannot be stopped. It cannot be stopped because Mayor Daley exists on the same plane as all impersonations and fictions. The city of Chicago itself is in its way only a kind of ontological rhetoric, a hyperbole, a form of make-believe. If this statement seems far-fetched, it is only because we have chosen to believe in the metaphors of our rhetoric. Which is not to say that Mayor Daley and Chicago are not real-they are all too real, but it is the nature of that reality which needs examining. A Real theater can be achieved. It was the vision of this which turned Yeats to the ritualized forms of the Japanese Noh plays; and in the failure to translate successfully from the images in his mind to the concrete space of the stage lies, perhaps, a negative verification that the metaphor behind the vision was at least always true. Artaud was certainly right to this extent: a real theater must be a dangerous place, or else it is a meaningless one. The crucial mistake of Yeats was in his idea of where a theater had to be located; that it was necessary to be outside ordinary reality, in a special place and a special time, and that reality could come to it for enrichment. There can be no separation of the two: they must be coincident with each other, they have always to occur together. As far as the state of American theater is concerned, it is obvious that we have not had one for a long time. We have had moving plays, but this is a peculiarly formal issue, and plays which simply make us emote are not by that fact alone connected with formal issues at all. They cannot change anything, and a real theater must. We are going to have a theater, and it is going to be real. Broadway can never be taken seriously. It is too expensive. It can afford to cater only to the few, to those who demand to be entertained and who can afford to pay the price of entertainment. Then there are the many houses throughout the country which offer professional of classic plays. They are certainly related to theater and ought definitely to be supported, but they have affinities at best with an immediate past; essentially they belong to another age. Insofar as a true theater can be said to exist in this country at all, it is found off-off Broadway, where for the most part it speaks to and for a subculture of East Villagers whose psyches have been fashioned by the myths of a million grade-B movies and then acted out again after the movies in the kitchens of a billion immigrant families in Brooklyn and the Bronx. Harlow and Maria Montez are its divinities, and Gorilla Queen is perhaps its most serious expression. But there is another movement in the theater, as legitimate at least, and, I think, more likely to have serious historical consequences. Popularly it has become known as Guerrilla Theater, and companies have sprung up throughout America. For the most part they address themselves to issues connected with the non-war we are waging in Vietnam. Obviously it is only a matter of time before a broadly based Black Guerrilla Theater forms, interesting itself less in the war than in issues connected with the suppression of domestic freedom. In Chicago, a group of students at the University of Chicago have been attempting a variant of Guerrilla Theater, have put on some productions already and have a great many planned for the coming months. (Another company has formed at Northwestern University, but as of this writing I have no information about them. …