The group, rather than the individual, is the typical focus of the alternative society, and this is reflected in the structure of the new theatre organizations, their manner of working, and their theatre pieces. The collective creation of theatre pieces has become the method of conceiving and developing works in the alternative theatre. Society has become increasingly specialized and competitive. This is reflected in an established theatre based on competition and a theatrical method that focuses on individual specialists, such as playwright, director, and star actor. In reaction to the fragmentation of the established society, which for many has become disorienting, the alternative society has sought wholeness. This is evident in many ways, including its focus on group living and group activities, and in its theatre, which is based on the cooperation of a creative collective.

Instead of the two-process method of the traditional theatre—a playwright writing a script in isolation and other artists staging it—the new theatre practices a one-process method, wherein the group itself develops the piece from initial conception to finished performance.

Acting means to feign, to simulate, to represent, to impersonate. As Happenings demonstrated, not all performing is acting. Although acting was sometimes used, the performers in Happenings generally tended to “be” nobody or nothing other than themselves; nor did they represent, or pretend to be in, a time or place different than that of the spectator. They walked, ran, said words, sang, washed dishes, swept, operated machines and stage devices, and so forth, but they did not feign or impersonate.

In most cases, acting and not-acting are relatively easy to recognize and identify. In a performance, we usually know when a person is acting and when he is not. But there is a scale or continuum of behavior involved, and the differences between acting and not-acting may be quite small. In such cases categorization may not be easy. Perhaps some would say it is unimportant, but, in fact, it is precisely these borderline cases that can provide insights into acting theory and into the nature of the art.

For the actor, the right use of self is the only sure basis for the expressive use of self.

Such a statement seems to me to summarize a trend in actor training in this country today. Soon after the Second World War, the Stanislavski “methodists,” led by Lee Strasberg, taught us important lessons in creative process, quite transforming our acting style. We crystalized a technique built on creative responsiveness, the mark always of good acting. Presumably these lessons are now an unforgettable part of our training.

However, those of us who were students of Strasberg—or some of the other great acting teachers of that time, like Alvina Krause or Sanford Meisner—and who went on to teach another generation of young actors, sooner or later found ourselves facing more fundamental problems. These dealt with what is usually called voice and body work.

To the modern temperament and to its artists, in a manner that will undoubtedly remain modern in generations to come, the main stream of theatre art in this century is clearly associated with developments in the visual and plastic arts. The sequence is apparent; from Gordon Craig (and Neo-Romanticism) through the Futurists, Dada, the work of the Russian formalists, the Expressionists, the Surrealists, the Bauhaus, and so on, to the work of the present day that draws in various ways upon this background. We perceive ever more clearly in this work an underlying intention: the creation of an abstract theatre. Its symbol, and that which clearly represents its function and aesthetics, is the mask—or the masked actor whom Craig called the Übermarionette.

I would like to explain a few aspects of Peter Handke's plays, not from the critic's point of view, but from that of direct practical work. By way of introducing my credentials for this task, let me say that I directed the world premiere in West Germany of Offending the Audience in 1966 and subsequent world premieres up to and including The Ride Across Lake Constance.

For those unfamiliar with the German theatre scene, it can be stated that Handke's works are played today on stages all over the country. Their premieres are the highlights of the season. This has given the critic cause to reflect on the theatre in general and the phenomenon of Handke in particular. For some of Handke's plays are being performed in numbers similiar to the musical successes on Broadway, and his books and essays can be found at the top of best-seller lists. And then, too, his works are just beginning to reach the stages of other countries in Europe, not to mention America.

While spending some time during the winter of 1801 in M., one evening in the public gardens I chanced upon Herr C, who had been recently engaged as the leading dancer at the opera house and who had found exceptional success with the public there.

I mentioned how surprised I had been to notice him on several occasions attending a marionette theatre that had been set up in the local market place, which entertained the masses with short dramatic burlesques interspersed with song and dance.

He assured me that the performance of these puppets was a source of great pleasure to him, and he made it quite clear that a dancer who wished to improve himself could learn a great deal from observing them.

Because his remarks were obviously not to be taken lightly, I sat down with him so that we might discuss his reasons for such a remarkable statement.

Black folks have grown weary of trying to educate white folks about racism. Aside from those black people who consider it a waste of time, others are suspicious that Whitey is seeking power, which, in the motto of the military, is “Know your enemy.”

As a member of that discredited class, the white liberals, I harbor the droll notion that a proper education may correct human error and, further, that it is the white man's burden to educate himself about himself. One of th,e best mirrors a white man can find is the glass of black-and-white theatre history. The misshapen images found in this cracked mirror makes it all the more valuable. White people can see themselves clearly awry, distorting the image of the black man into grotesqueries.

In October, 1971, Moshe Feldenkrais came to the United States to give seminars in body training at the Esalen Institute, at Carnegie Mellon, and at the School of the Arts at New York University. The interest shown in his work by these institutions reflects an important change of emphasis in the area of movement training for actors.

The choice, put simply, is between training the body to perform skillfully as a well-exercised, aesthetically pleasing physical instrument, and freeing the body of its habitual tensions and programmed patterns of behavior so that it can respond uninhibitedly to impulse, and genuinely reflect individual imagination and emotion.

There is a trend away from the use of the formal disciplines of ballet, modern dance and classical mime as exercises. Actors are turning to Yoga classes, are being Rolf’d, are taking Alexander classes and T’ai Chi.

For many years California has been considered a land of Canaan for black people. As one of the last frontiers in this country, the Golden State has been viewed as a place of unending sunshine, opportunity, and material fulfillment. The use of blacks in the Hollywood-based film centers was frequently viewed as opportunity rather than exploitation. It took the social turmoil of the 1960's to awaken many blacks in California to the fact that their plight was little different from that of their Southern relative or Eastern brother, that their sunlit cities were becoming crumbling ghettos ringed by white suburbs.

Black-run theatres were the answer of some, as the arts became a vehicle for informing, unifying and inspiring black people. Between the years 1964 and 1968, a number of groups were established, many still functioning today. This report is based on eight of these groups, all originally located in the Los Angeles and San Francisco Bay areas during the late sixties and early seventies.

In Kaspar, Peter Handke's protagonist learns to master language only to become the victim of language: a man destroyed by his instrument of communication. “The last thought I had on Kaspar became the first thought to The Ride Across Lake Constance,” Handke wrote in his notes for the Berlin premiere of his last play. This thought was “to demonstrate the modes of human interchange in our society by means of precise observation.—The first attempts to define these observations were the plays My Foot My Tutor and Quodlibet, in which theatre forms appeared isolated from plots, so that these forms became poses and could become identical with poses in daily life: the representation of the theatre poses was, among other things, an attempt to present the modes of everyday behavior as poses, too.”

T’ai Chi Ch’uan is a system for activating the body for the simultaneous development of physical, emotional and mental well-being. It is useful for the actor because it promotes a heightened perceptivity, sensitive awareness and stamina. Since the exercise has no stylistic mannerisms, it enhances the ability to manipulate the body expressively for any desired effect.

T’ai Chi Ch’uan (pronounced Tye Gee Chwon) has a long history. Its roots go back into the Chou Dynasty (5th Century B.C.), when concern for physical and mental health was being expressed in a philosophy of movement. But the organized exercise of T’ai Chi as we know it today dates from the 12th Century.