Admired by Brecht, yet also counting Hitler among his fans, the German cabaret performer Karl Valentin remains an enigmatic figure for most English-speaking theatre people; and his accommodation as a licensed jester during the Nazi years has reinforced the received wisdom that his comedy was ultimately offering reassurances of their own supremacy to bourgeois audiences. Here, Oliver Double and Michael Wilson outline Valentin's life and career, and offer an analysis of his performance style closely linked to two of his best-known routines, which are here also translated for the first time into English. They conclude that Valentin's idiosyncratic style of surreal logic had an effect akin to that of Brecht's Verfremdung, of making the familiar strange, and so, while often extremely funny in its unexpected dislocations, never offering a simple view either of comedy or of life. Oliver Double worked as a comedian for ten years on the alternative comedy circuit, was formerly proprietor and compère of Sheffield's Last Laugh Comedy Club, and is the author of Stand-Up! On Being a Comedian (Methuen, 1997). Currently he lectures in Drama at the University of Kent at Canterbury. Mike Wilson, whose background is in community theatre, is now Professor of Drama and Field Leader for Performing Arts and Film at the University of Glamorgan. He has published widely on varying aspects of storytelling practice and, in particular, on teenage storytelling culture, notably in Performance and Practice: Oral Naratives Among Teenagers in Britain and Ireland (Ashgate, 1997). His latest book, Theatre, Acting, and Storytelling will be published by Palgrave in 2004.

The distinctively Korean concept of Han evokes a pervasive sense of sorrow, traditionally in need of shamanistic purging in the spirits of the dead, but also describing the sense of national trauma induced first by the Japanese occupation, then by the post-war division of the country. Han has also become an important feature of modern Korean drama, and in this article Jung-Soon Shim describes how Park Joh-Yeol's play The Toenails of General Oh (1974) revisits the concept, integrating indigenous cultural traditions – notably the shamanic ritual Gut – and how, in the production by Sohn Jin-Chaek, the director utilized a western style of epic theatre to create a ‘distanced’ style of Gut on the proscenium stage. Jung-Soon Shim is Professor of English at Soongsil University in Seoul, and a founding member of the Korean Association of Women in Theatre (KAWT), of which she is currently President. Her books include the two-volume Globalization and Korean Theatre (2003), which won the Best Book of the Year Award of the Korean Ministry of Culture. She also received the Best Critic Award for 2004 from the Korean Association of Theatre Critics. Her research for this article was supported by Soongsil University.

The long-standing artistic collaboration between director Deborah Warner and actress Fiona Shaw has, argues Clara Armand, raised the powers of performance to a form of genuine authorship. Her article explores the distinctive qualities of their scenic writing as evident in the production of Medea which transferred from the Abbey Theatre to London's West End on 30 January 2001, and went on to play at the Queen's Theatre for over ten weeks. She makes comparisons between the production of Medea and those of the earlier Footfalls and Richard II, focusing on Warner's challenging ways of transforming pre-existing playtexts and theatrical spaces so as to enunciate statements about the contemporary world. Shaw's interpretation of Medea is explored with an emphasis on the actress's ability to maintain truthful identification with the dramatic character and make it reverberate with her own critical social stance as an artist. The discussion of Medea as seen at the Queen's Theatre is developed in the light of Bakhtin's concept of dialogism and related ideas. The article is complemented by the interview with Fiona Shaw which follows. Clara Armand teaches acting and directs at the Stratford Circus Theatre in Stratford East, and is currently a doctoral student at the University of Reading.

Clara Armand, author of the preceding article on ‘Dialogism and the Theatre Event’ in relation to Deborah Warner's production of Euripides' Medea, talks with Fiona Shaw about her close working relationship with the director in earlier productions, and the process of creating and developing the title role in the play. The interview took place in the Queen's Theatre on 21 February 2001, during the West End run of the production.

Chris Vervain is a mask maker who has for a number of years trained and directed in performing masked drama. On the basis of research she has undertaken, using her own masks, on how to perform the ancient Greek plays, in this article she questions some of the modern orthodoxies of masked theatre, drawing specifically on her experience with Menander's New Comedy. With David Wiles, she contributed ‘The Masks of Greek Tragedy as Point of Departure for Modern Performance’ to NTQ 67 (August 2001) and, with Richard Williams, ‘Masks for Menander: Imaging and Imagining Greek Comedy’ to Digital Creativity, X, No. 3 (1999). Some of her masks can be seen at www.chrisvervain.btinternet.com. She is currently working towards a doctorate on masks in Greek tragedy at Royal Holloway, University of London.

A personal introduction by Clive Barker on the place of the Shysters in Midlands theatre: I moved from London to Birmingham around the time the new Birmingham Rep was built. I thought it had all the worst features of a theatre and all the best features of a municipal crematorium. There were serious flaws, too, with the Midlands Art Centre, although my children enjoyed the Saturday morning activities. However, soon a group of idealists founded the Birmingham Arts Lab, whose work was exciting and enjoyable, and brought to the city the best of new experimental theatre. Some years later I moved to Coventry, which I had thought of as a theatrical desert since the death of Brian Bailey, with the Belgrade staggering through a succession of unfortunate managements. But the past ten years have seen a glorious flowering of small companies which display both vision and technical ability. Central to this activity are the Shysters, a group of actors with learning disabilities who have found ways of turning these into their own distinctive theatrical style and language. Since I sit on their board of directors I have felt it difficult to write personally about their work in NTQ, and was delighted when Rachel Karafistan remedied this deficiency by offering us the following article. I love the Shysters: their work entrances me, and I would willingly see their shows once a week if possible. They help to make being sent to Coventry a rich theatrical experience.

Dance is often assumed to have universal values and to manifest a spirit of freedom, especially individual freedom. It is also the case that such freedom is perceived to be deeply rooted in the condition of humanity. In this article Gregory Sporton shows how these assumptions can mislead us about the basis on which dance operates. By citing the body as the original manifestation of expression, and linking dance practice to primitive experience, a sentimental picture of ourselves as dancers emerges. Taking dance practice in Taiwan as an example, the author shows how this ‘naturalist argument’ can be exploited by a political culture and in doing so divert questions of identity. For the visiting observer, dance appears to evidence political culture and social aspiration, identities that are fixed in the present rather than the archaic past. Gregory Sporton has had a substantial performing career in ballet, contemporary dance, opera, and performance art. He is Head of the School for Performance and Moving Image at the University of Central England.

Celebrating the life of Glynne Wickham, 1922–2004.

Report on the ‘Political Futures: Alternative Theatre in Britain Today’ conference at the University of Reading, 16–18 April 2004.

The Russian theatre recognizes achievement at the Golden Mask ceremony in the Bolshoi, April 2004.