Theater Center Research Articles

An Artistic Community and a Workplace

The article analyzes how money interacts with the practices and organizational activities of independent theatres in Finland in the 2010s. It discusses what kind of development the interaction entails or favors in the wider context of Finnish cultural policy. We share the results of Visio (2015-16), an empirical study and development project funded by the Ministry of Education and Culture and carried out with four professional independent theatres, which originated as group theatres, but are now institutionalized and operate with discretionary state subsidies. During the development project supported by Theatre Centre Finland, the study observed aspects of organizational development and learning as well as sustainable work in the said theatres. This was done via ethnographic and multiple case study methodologies. The study defined a theatre organization as a community for artistic work and a workplace for a diverse group of theatre professionals. The cases and the ethnographies were then reflected against current Finnish cultural policy.As descendants of the group theatre movement – arising from artistic ambition and opposition to commercialism – Finnish independent theatres have developed in different directions in their ideas of theatre, artistic visions, objectives, production models, and positioning in the field. Yet, there is a tendency to define independent theatres in opposition to theatres subsidized by law (the so-called VOS theatres), instead of laying stress on their specific artistic or operational visions or characteristics. This emphasis is present in public discussions, but also in the self-definitions of independent theatres. Money, and the economic affairs it underlines, strongly interact with the development, organizational learning, and working culture of Finnish independent theatres. Theoretically, we promote a Simmelian framework that stresses the socio-cultural dimension of money. Thus, we examine how the practices of the monetary economy are present in the practices and the development of independent theatres, and how this reflects their position within the current cultural policy and funding systems. Based on the above, the article suggests a more versatile approach to artistic independent theatres – one that emphasizes recognizing the heterogeneity of their operating models and artistic orientations, and their roles as diverse artistic communities aside from workplaces.

International Theatrical Educational Programs: Moscow Art Theatre School Experience

This paper presents research results regarding the creation, development, and implementation of the international theatrical educational programs organized by the Moscow Art Theatre School together with leading American universities: the first program carried out together with the Eugene O'Neill Theatre Centre; the first international Master's theatre program carried out together with Carnegie Mellon University; the international Master's theatre program, which is currently being carried out together with the American Repertory Theatre at Harvard University, and the short-term international theatrical educational program carried out together with Wayne State University in Detroit (Michigan). The results confirm the necessity of carrying out international theatrical educational programs for training foreign students which are facilitated by the ongoing rise in global student mobility.

Strange Interlude

Strange Interlude

Gender and Dance in Modern Iran: Biopolitics on Stage

Gender and Dance in Modern Iran: Biopolitics on Stage

Hamlet by William Shakespeare, and: Saint Joan by George Bernard Shaw

Reviewed by: Hamletby William Shakespeare, and: Saint Joanby George Bernard Shaw Rachel Evans HAMLET. By William Shakespeare. Directed by Eric Tucker. McCarter Theatre Center, Berlind Theatre, Princeton, New Jersey: 01 28, 2017. SAINT JOAN. By George Bernard Shaw. Directed by Eric Tucker. McCarter Theatre Center, Berlind Theatre, Princeton, New Jersey: 01 28, 2017. Although Emily Mann, artistic director of the McCarter Theatre Center, had the New York–based Bedlam Theatre on her radar for several years before giving them in-residence status in New Jersey, audiences in Texas, Massachusetts, and Maryland had already been introduced to the company's work. In fact, starting in 2012, Bedlam's productions of Saint Joanand Hamletwere subcontracted to, co-produced by, and/or sponsored at resident theatre companies multiple times before occupying a valuable slot in the McCarter's 2016–17 season. By choosing to present Bedlam's Saint Joanand Hamletin repertory, Mann made equal commitments to both shows, expecting each to possess enough artistic merit to stand on its own, as well as having an engaging cohesion when considered in tandem. What may have been underestimated was the creative endurance and aesthetic stamina needed to support what amounted to six hours of stage time. Bedlam's artistic director Eric Tucker directed both offerings, proclaiming that he and his artistic team could tackle such iconic classics despite the heavy baggage of weighty expectations. While [End Page 92]more traditional repertory theatre ensembles might have used multiple productions to highlight actors' strengths, Bedlam's repertory only used four performers. This meant that there was plenty of stage time to go around; each actor played both leading and supporting roles in both productions. It was notable that Tucker served as one-fourth of the rep's performers, casting himself as Hamlet and an array of Joan's men. Andrus Nichols, who co-founded Bedlam with Tucker and previously served as the company's producing director, was another fourth of the cast, playing Joan, Ophelia, Gertrude, and a few of Hamlet's male characters, as needed. That left two others to undertake the remaining roles: Edmund Lewis and Tom O'Keefe. Together, this foursome revealed Bedlam's values through consistent use of certain storytelling strategies. One of the dominant characteristics was the flexible spatial relationship between actors and audience. A fourth wall was never established; instead, deconstructing the onstage/offstage areas produced a raw, accessible, and visible theatricality. The number of intermissions in the rep tallied four. During them, seating areas were reconfigured, granting viewers multiple intimate perspectives from which to experience Shaw and Shakespeare. With such closeness, Bedlam relied upon audience members to read-in lines of incidental characters (like Claudius's messengers sent to Norway), to stand-in as furniture (using an audience member's head as the table for Hamlet's fifth-act goblet), and to be the brunt of jokes (with their Joan-like garb-of-poverty pointed out). Tucker, Nichols, Lewis, and O'Keefe possessed a deep dramaturgical understanding of the plays' mechanisms. Their comprehensive study in rehearsal led to discoveries of oft-overlooked clues for nuance, textual richness, and humor. The result was that meaningful dualities were often held in contrast to each other, whether that be extreme darkness versus full light in Les Dickert's lighting design or close proximity versus distance in staging decisions. With the exception of the two titular characters and few others, no one Bedlam performer owned a role; many were shared by at least two actors. Correspondingly, any clarity of character was undercut with intentionally questionable terms of identity. The undoing of certain conventions created the Bedlamic antidote to tradition: playing spaces in, among, and across the audience; a minimalistic world of the play; and a general relaxed ease sans artifice in performance and production. This made director Tucker's unclouded delineation of Shaw's account of the Maid of Orleans all the more important, from the first scene's miracle of the eggs to the epilogue's canonization. In-between, there were heady debates and wordy passages. The production made good use of Nichols's ability to chart the course of Joan's outward and internal growth. In...

Performative Environments of Polish Memory: The Grodzka Gate – NN Theater Center’s Approach to Lublin’s Jewish Pasts

ABSTRACTThis article examines an under-researched artistic practice of Holocaust memorialization, which, emerging in Poland in the early 1990s, combines elements of theater, performance art, and religious ritual and invites a high degree of civic participation. I argue that these artistic practices are similar to traditional practices of lived and embodied transmissions of memory referred to by French historian Pierre Nora as milieux de mémoire. This article will challenge Nora's view that milieux de mémoire have been permanently replaced with lieux de mémoire (sites of memory). To counter this claim, I invoke the memorialization activities of the grassroots and Lublin-based cultural institution the Grodzka Gate – NN Theater Center. Through the series of artistic actions called Mystery of Memory (2000–2011) and Letters to (2005–present), this institution is actively involved in creating and sustaining Polish milieux de mémoire dedicated to the memory of the Holocaust. The ensuing milieux de mémoire have a practical, civic and social function to establish a sense of shared community among younger generations of Poles. Therefore, these actions look toward the future, rather than solely remembering the difficult past, and encourage participants to acknowledge and celebrate difference and multiculturalism, rather than singly confronting unsavory moments of Polish–Jewish relations.

A Note from the Editor

A Note from the Editor Gwendolyn Alker I am pleased to introduce this general issue—the last of volume 27 and my final issue as editor of Theatre Topics. This issue presents a diversity of voices that all reflect the mission of the journal: to highlight how theatre can move between theory and practice, off the page and into specific communities and classrooms. The issue opens with Erika Hughes's essay "'The Veterans Project': Historiography in/as Performance." She adds to the burgeoning literature on applied theatre for combat veterans by focusing on "The Veterans Project," developed and performed at Arizona State University. What differs in this essay from much of the existing literature, however, is the nature of this "unscripted performance series that provides a live forum for veterans to share their stories with their communities" (179). Her ensuing exegesis of these witty and vulnerable improvisatory performances do much to complicate notions of gender and identity in the US armed forces. The use of such ethnographic theatre—this project is now in its fifth year—has allowed for a constant evolution and contemporary response to the ongoing stream of veterans as they reintegrate back into our national and local communities. Katelyn Hale Wood's "Curative Pedagogy in the Undergraduate Theatre Historiography Classroom" is an eminently useful essay that speaks to one of the core missions at TT: giving theatre teachers tools to keep their materials and teaching methods innovative. Utilizing the term curative to present an alternate mode of teaching theatre history to undergraduates, Wood challenges all faculty to think beyond the confines of historical narrative. She also situates this conversation (smartly) within our larger cultural conversations of the moment, including what is "fact" and how to negotiate teaching such truths to our students. Read this essay for some useful ideas to apply to almost any introductory theatre lecture. The next essay is also particularly timely and, in many ways, continues the conversations raised in the special issue on Latinx theatre from earlier in this volume. In "Deferred Action's Visibility for Legal Nonexistence and Legislative Power," Shelby-Allison Hibbs examines a recent production of Dallas Theater Center that was created with Cara Mia Theatre and staged in the spring of 2016. This play staged and challenged the conflicts that have been all too present within activist and political communities (both locally in North Texas and in Washington, DC). In particular it centers around the so-called Dreamers—young immigrants who were given legal protection from deportation due to President Barack Obama's executive action, known as DACA, in 2012.1 Such legal action has been a flashpoint of controversy since that time—especially after the election of Donald Trump and his administration's anti-immigrant rhetoric—making this play, and Hibbs's analysis of it, extremely timely. Emily Jane Warheit's fascinating and detailed investigation of Boalian techniques, specifically Forum theatre, within the context of public health work in Africa completes the essay section of this issue. In "Devising Theatrical Health Interventions in East Africa," she questions how the competing agendas of Boal's work and the funding streams that often enable such work coexist in both useful and problematic ways. Specifically, the basic nature of Boal's bottom-up methodologies often conflict with the top-down structures of international development organizations. Warheit's discussion of the specific challenges and successes of Magnet Theatre enlightens the evolving Boalian tradition as it moves into increasingly varied locations and applications. [End Page vii] In this issue we are pleased to include three notes from the field: one in print only, one an online-only offering, and one a hybrid piece that will appear in both formats. Our first note is a more developed version of a roundtable that began at the Congress on Research in Dance and the Society of Dance History Scholars Joint Conference in November of 2016. Here, Anurima Banerji, Anusha Kedhar, Royona Mitra, Janet O'Shea, and Shanti Pillai share the cross-cultural possibilities and challenges of transferring the guru–shishya parampara (a South Asian teacher–disciple mentorship model) to US classroom environments. The particular challenges of changing certain pedagogical traditions and of carrying these histories on...

Infrequently Asked Questions, or: How to Kickstart Conversations Around Inclusion and Accessibility in Canadian Theatre and Why it Might be Good for Everybody

I have a habit of liking to flip the familiar. In theatre this manifests as a driving obsession to look for artistic practices and models that work well for institutes, companies, and creators and ask: is this the way you’ve always done things? It’s a good question to start the rock rolling on issues of diversity, inclusion, and accessibility. No matter what the answer is, I like to invite people to start a conversation, to ask who is involved in these successful systems and who isn’t? Not everyone is interested. Heidi Taylor, Artistic and Executive Director of the Playwrights’ Theatre Centre (PTC) in Vancouver, is. Together we developed ACK Lab, an investigation on how to make the PTC Playwright’s Colony, a yearly writing intensive at PTC, more inclusive and accessible to persons with perceived or self-identified disabilities. It was graciously funded by the Bly Capacity grant, a LAMDA initiative and a Canada Council “Leadership for Change” grant. It involved six months of intense conversations and a ten-day workshop during December 2015.

On Reckoning

How can settler-colonial subjects bear witness to survivors of Canada’s residential school system? Kim Solga attends ARTICLE 11’s Reckoning at the Theatre Centre and asks questions about the strategies it uses to bring audiences into the conversation about truth and reconciliation.

Inclusion: Building a Culture of Desire and Resilience

On February 15, 2015, a day rumoured to be colder than the North Pole, a crowd of people filled Toronto’s Theatre Centre on Queen Street West to participate in an afternoon conversation event called The Republic of Inclusion. The audience—a range of academics, theatre makers, community activists, and educators—arrived on foot, wheels, with guide dogs and sticks.

Introduction: Performance and Disability

On April 30, 2016, Cripping the Stage: A Disability Arts Cabaret presented “cutting-edge disabled artists from Canada and the United Kingdom.” The event, co-hosted by Alex Bulmer and Mat Fraser, aimed to put “disabled performers centre stage to celebrate Cripping the Arts Symposium presented by Tangled Art + Disability, a three-day event seeking to advance Deaf and Disability Arts in Canada, and enliven the vibrancy of Canadian culture” (“Cripping”). As demonstrated in the present issue, this exciting international event was one of many important disability theatre initiatives offered during the 2015 and 2016 seasons, a period that also saw disability theatre artists working with the National Arts Centre, Stratford Festival, Banff Fine Arts Centre, Playwrights Theatre Centre, Playwright’s Workshop Montreal, and Luminato Festival. This issue, then, appears in a remarkably generative period of disability theatre activity in Canada. In the past five years, national institutions and granting councils have sought to respond to, catch up with, and foster new conversations among disability theatre and performance practitioners. In 2012, for example, the Canada Council for the Arts released an access and equality strategy targeting Deaf and disability arts. While on one level this signaled a desire to “expand the arts” according to the council’s equity strategy, it also built from a recognition “that Deaf and disability arts are important evolving sectors and art practices in the Canadian arts ecology, to be supported, promoted and advanced” (Canada Council, “Executive”).

Perception and Practice of Health Personnel Regarding Biomedical Waste Management (BMW) in Selected wards of S.C.B. Medical College Hospital, Cuttack, Odisha.

Background: The wastes produced in healthcare especially in hospitals have serious health problems of individuals who directly or indirectly come in contact with this product and it has also hazardous effect on environment if they are not handled properly.Objective: This paper describes the co-relation between perception and practice of health personnel regarding biomedical waste management (BMW) whether the health personnel have some knowledge regarding BMW or not. So to enunciate the perception, a study was therefore undertaken in selected wards of a Medical College Hospital of district Cuttack in the state of Odisha and then we assess the practice of health personnel regarding BMW.Methods: In the study, the researcher adopted Purposive Sampling technique. The study consisted of 90 number of health personnel; doctors, nurses, laboratory technician, waste handler, nursing orderly of 5 major wards like medicine, surgery, obstetrics and gynaecology, operation theatre and regional diagnostic centre at S.C.B. Medical College Hospital, Cuttack, Odisha.Results: The data collected, organized, tabulated and planned to be analyzed using descriptive statistics on the basis of objectives and hypotheses of the study. The analyzed data will be presented in the form of table, diagrams, charts & graphs.Conclusions: We found there is a good proportion of hospital manpower is untrained. Though not poor, the practice of the BMW in the said setting is not good either. The practice of BMW could be enhanced by a training package to different category of personnel considering their level of understanding along with better supervision.

Perfect Storm

Perfect Storm was written by Yvette Nolan for Wrecking Ball Toronto 11: Now What, and premiered 6 December 2010 at The Theatre Centre under the direction of Donna-Michelle St. Bernard. In this political play, a paranoid mayor of Toronto meets with a calm and confident Chief of the Mississaugas.

The O'Neill: The Transformation of Modern American Theater

The O'Neill: The Transformation of Modern American Theater

Improving patient flow: role of the orthopaedic discharge sister.

Timely and well-planned discharge improves the patient's experience, contributes to patient safety and reduces the length of hospital stays. The role of orthopaedic discharge sister was developed at James Cook University Hospital in 2007 to provide safe, timely and efficient discharge for patients from the trauma and theatre centre, and to improve patient experience and flow. This article gives an overview of the role and describes how the sister works with colleagues to plan patient discharges from pre-assessment and emergency department admission through their hospital stay until their departure.

Stories in and outside DNA: Deborah Zoe Laufer’s Informed Consent

Stories in and outside DNA: Deborah Zoe Laufer’s Informed Consent Yuko Kurahashi (bio) IN THE SPRING OF 2014 I had an opportunity to attend a performance of Deborah Zoe Laufer’s Informed Consent at the New Ground Festival. Coproduced by Geva Theater Center in Rochester, New York, and Cleveland Play House, and directed by Sean Daniels, this ninety-minute play (without an intermission) captivated the audience with its fast-paced, seamless presentation.1 In August 2015 it was staged at Primary Stages in New York City with a revised script.2 Informed Consent (2014) takes the audience to the heart of an ethical controversy between Indigenous cultural values and modern scientific research conducted by scientists at Arizona State University in the 1990s that led to a suit against the school by the Havasupai tribe. In the play Laufer creates a fictional character, the scientist Jillian, who uses blood samples collected from the Havasupai in ways that clash with the tribe’s beliefs, rights, and dignity. When Laufer, a non–Native American playwright, read about the court case in the New York Times, she became interested in “the tidal changes that our growing understanding of the genome” would bring about. At the same time, Laufer recognized in the court case “new ethical dilemmas and questions” and “conflicts” between one’s knowledge and other people’s rights.3 I found the work extremely moving. I was impressed with the way the director presented, with scenery and lighting, the history of the Havasupai who became, without their consent, the object of genetic research that violated their tribal beliefs. Although the work explores contemporary DNA research and the tribal traditions and beliefs that were ignored, I was touched by another thread of the play, the researcher Jillian’s efforts to do the “right” thing for her family even at the cost of violating the law and medical and scientific ethics. Informed Consent also underscores the importance of our stories and their importance even in scientific investigation. In this article I will provide a historical context for the play to assess the value and importance of Informed Consent as artistic and cultural material that questions issues of ethics in genomic research and the cultural identity of Indigenous communities. [End Page 116] Arizona State University’s Genetic Research Project Arizona State University’s genome research on the Havasupai tribe members could be considered as part of the study of “Native American DNA,” in which anthropologists and scientists beginning in the 1960s sought to apply “new biochemical techniques” to understand “ancient human migrations and the biological and cultural relationships” of native populations.4 For example, the Human Genome Diversity Project launched by scientists at Stanford University in collaboration with other global institutions sought to record the genetic profiles of Indigenous populations and “build up a picture of how different human populations are related to each other.”5 However, this project’s “large-scale collection of the blood of Native peoples” and the “standard procedures for the procurement and disposition of blood samples from indigenous peoples”6 came under scrutiny. The real-life case Laufer alludes to in Informed Consent is a project run by geneticists at Arizona State University. The goal of this project was supposed to be different from that of the Human Genome Diversity Project. In the early 1990s members of a tribe called the Havasupai, who live in the Grand Canyon area of Arizona, gave blood samples to geneticists at ASU with the hope of providing genetic clues to the tribe’s devastating rate of diabetes. The project was led by Therese Markow, who ran a series of tests on the blood which was collected, with the help of her then colleague, the social anthropologist John Martin. Because the tribe trusted Martin, who had built a strong relationship with the tribe for more than forty years, they willingly gave their blood samples.7 The problem became clear when the tribe learned that without their knowledge or consent the blood samples had been used for other DNA-based studies, including studies of population inbreeding, schizophrenia, and ethnic migration, all of which are “highly charged topics that are taboo in the Havasupai culture.”8 In...

Te Vaka

Reviewed by: Te Vaka Candice Elanna Steiner Te Vaka. 30October 2015, Hawaii Theatre Center, Honolulu. Te Vaka, the award-winning and wildly popular South Pacific fusion group representing and featuring music and dance influences from many Pacific Island cultures, kicked off their US tour on 9 October 2015, with stops in Florida, Washington, California, Arizona, and Hawai‘i. Touring members included founder, [End Page 518]songwriter, and bandleader Opetaia Foa‘i; lead drummer and percussion composer Matatia Foa‘i; vocalist, keyboardist, and percussionist Douglas Bernard (aka D.Burn); vocalist, dancer, and choreographer Olivia Foa‘i; electric guitarist and percussionist Joe Toomata; bassist and percussionist Max Stowers; dancer Gerard Tioti; and dancer Etueni (Edwin) Pita. With their wide range of influences and impeccable skills, these musicians and dancers gave a spectacular performance, and the audience enthusiastically reciprocated. Indeed, the hallmark of the tour was a contagious energy that began its spread months before the first show with the band’s announcement of a major upcoming project and an album release, and that energy fully enveloped the audience during the 30 October performance in Honolulu. In August 2015, Te Vaka announced in their newsletter and via social media that Opetaia had signed on as songwriter—along with Lin Manuel Miranda and Mark Mancina—for Disney’s upcoming feature film Moana, which is set for theatrical release in November 2016. In concert with this announcement, on 14 August Te Vaka performed one of the new songs for the film during D23: The Official Disney Fan Club’s D23 EXPO, a biannual event showcasing, among other things, Disney’s current and upcoming projects. Not long after, on 24 September, the band released their much-anticipated eighth studio album, Amataga. Members actively promoted Moana, Amataga, and the US tour on social media, stirring up excitement that spilled over into the group’s live performances. The Honolulu audience definitely brought this excitement to the show. Adding to this was a strong sense of community among those present: attendees of all ages and representing many of the communities in Hawai‘i quickly found friends and family in the crowd, greeting each other with hugs and excitement about the night’s event. To our great surprise, Auli‘i Cravalho, the teen from Mililani, Hawai‘i, who was cast to play the title character in Moana, was part of our concert community that evening (I turned to my left, and there she was just one section over). We were all looking forward to a memorable show. The first half of the concert featured some of the group’s softer and more serious songs, and the audience responded accordingly, smoothly shifting from bright to somber depending on the tone of each piece. During the introduction to one song in particular, sections of the audience burst into applause at the mention of Tuvalu but then fell into silence when Opetaia explained that the piece, “Loimata e Maligi” (Let the Tears Fall), mourns the loss of eighteen teenage girls and their supervisor in a dormitory fire in Tuvalu on 8 March 2000. The performance itself, led by Olivia, was breathtaking. Olivia’s voice filled the song’s range—both vocal and emotional—beautifully, and the entire group’s impeccable delivery left the audience rapt. The other songs during this half of the concert were equally engaging with their respective topics and outstanding delivery, and the audience was eager to participate throughout, cheering at the mention of any Pacific Island place and—in the case of a handful of particularly lively audience [End Page 519]members in the middle orchestra section—standing to dance during the more upbeat songs. Momentum was building. During the second half of the concert, it peaked. Encouraged to dance (Opetaia invited people to dance in the aisles, quickly adding that he probably shouldn’t have said that) and elated to have met Disney royalty during an intermission meet-and-greet with Auli‘i, the audience was ready to explode with energy. Our excitement was reflected back to us in the jubilant faces and exemplary performances of the band as they led the second half with one danceable hit after another. Te Vaka took full advantage of our...

Black and White: <i>Othello</i> at Maynardville, 1970-2015

After a fourteen-year absence, Othello has returned to Maynardville in a competent and often enjoyable staging by Abrahamse and Meyer Productions, directed by Fred Abrahamse and with Marcel Meyer as set designer, costume designer, verse coach and in the role of Iago. A departure from their colorful, at times overwrought Midsummer Night's Dream of 2013, this Othello is meat and potatoes Shakespeare; while most elements of the production are at least competently done, and the high quality of the cast keeps one engrossed in the story, there is little here that is especially innovative. The primary goal of this production seems to be making the text as accessible as possible. Writing for the Daily Maverick, Marianne Thamm provides a clue as to why this might be. She describes how Abrahamse and Meyer initially approached the Artscape Theatre Centre and secured an agreement to produce Othello for the theatre's schools programme, due to take place later in 2015. Budgetary constraints resulted in the school show and the annual Maynardville show being collapsed into one production, which may explain why this year's Othello feels more suited to newcomers to Shakespeare than to the seasoned Maynardville faithful.

Fix

Fix: A Play Provocation and Workshop for Young Audiences is by Alex Bulmer in residency with Theatre Centre UK. Written to be received in the ears, rather than seen with the eyes, the play is intended to be recorded and played to an audience using surround sound technology. The play explores disability, access, and artists as a young woman navigates London’s underground while trying to reach an audition in post-Olympics, austerity-driven London. This play draws on Bulmer’s experience as an actor, director, and playwright formerly based in the UK where she was deeply involved both with Graeae Theatre, an inclusive disability theatre company, and the 2012 London Cultural Olympiad and its Unlimited program. The workshop associated with the play encourages youth audiences to think about the social model of disability in relation to the kinds of barriers that disabled people face in terms of training, arts access, and mobility. Creatively addressing the broader themes of this issue, Fix was first produced by London UK’s Theatre Centre in March 2015.

Antunes Filho: Formation of the Brazilian System of Theatrical Art

Antunes Filho: Formation of the Brazilian System of Theatrical Art (by Argus Cecil Nery Monteiro) is devoted to the formation and development of the method of Antunes Filho, a reformer of the modern Brazilian theatre. Resting on Stanislavski’s system, he created his own method based on contemporary psychological and philosophical researches. His method is successfully used in training actors at the Centre of theatre researches founded by him in São Paulo.