In the early 1960s, certain new developments in Western theatre occurred which in some ways seemed to complete the process of the re-definition of theatre that was initiated by the historical avant-garde movement at the beginning of this century. In a decisive move against the long established bourgeois, educational and commercial theatre, now theatre was explicitly being defined as the “detailed investigations of the actor-audience relationship”. As before, this new definition led to the search for new theatre spaces and genres and a new manner of using signs where the focus shifted from the semantic to the pragmatic level. Performances were held in a disused workshop (Richard Schechner's Performance Garage in New York), a factory (Ariane Mnouchkine's Theatre du Soleil in a former munitions factory in Vincennes), a slaughter house (Bremen), in cinemas (Bremen and Bochum), in an exhibition hall (the Schaubuehne Greek project), in a film studio (the Schaubuehne Shakespeare project at the Halleschen Ufer 1976–7), in a tram depot (Frankfurt), in the 1936 Olympic Stadium in Berlin (Gruber's Winterreise 1977).

The Parliamentary Act of 1843 that eradicated the duopoly of Covent Garden and Drury Lane affected London taverns as well as theatres. To skirt the ban on drama, minor theatres had long interpolated musical interludes into any sort of play, thus naturalizing indoors a variety format more common to the fairground or circus. The growing taste for miscellaneous entertainment was also served by tavern saloons, where variety bills supplemented alcoholic conviviality. The Act of 1843, amending the licensing act of 1737, merely recognized this fact of life and extended a welcoming hand to these and other performance spaces. All places of entertainment holding a “burletta license” might stage plays, provided that smoking and the sale of spirituous beverages were banned from the premises.

Twenty years after Louis Jacques Daguerre. invented modern photography, Dion Boucicault incorporated the camera as a crucial plot device in his play, The Octoroon. When his character Salem Scudder discovers a freshly taken photograph lying by the body of a murder victim, he holds up the picture as evidence and cries: “Jacob M'Closky, ‘t was you murdered that boy! Here you are, in the very attitude of your crime….’ Tis true! The [camera] can't lie.”

“And as for ‘art,’ well, philosophers differ. But it's widely believed by wise people that art and ego sit uncomfortably together.” Joseph Sobran, The National Review, 1991.

Just when Madonna, the performer one critic recently referred to as a “schlockmistress,” seemed doomed to a future as the subject of scholarly articles on pop and post-modern aesthetics, she's in the news again with a coffee table best seller on the joys of sex with anything that moves and some things that don't. Madonna, the high priestess of American pop culture, has constructed a multi-million dollar performance empire, the success of which rests primarily on her extraordinary ability to behave outrageously and market it. Though pre-pubescent females are Madonna's most ardent and uncritical admirers, her concerts and films attract a heterogeneous crowd of men, women, gays, and straights–most of them under thirty. In spite of (or perhaps because of) her immense popular following, the press loathes her. Mainstream critics deplore her dissipated lifestyle, sexual athletics, and public exhibitionism, while avant-garde critics regard her performances as trendy schlock rather than legitimate art. This has little effect on Madonna except to increase curiosity about her (and therefore sales of the book and videotapes) among ordinary citizens who might otherwise be completely indifferent to the Madonna phenomenon.

Before my performance of wayang golek menak (a rod-puppet performance of Islamic legends) Pak Narto, my teacher in Central Java, was trying to dress me for the role of a dhalang, the puppeteer of a wayang. He tugged down on the batik sarong, already wrapped low about my waist, and pulled at the dress hat and jacket that pinched my head and bound my shoulders, as if he could have concealed that I was anything more or less than a large American in Javanese dress. That evening, in the village of Gombong on the South coast of Central Java, I would perform a demonstration of wayang golek menak. I had only arrived a few months before to undertake my research with Pak Narto and was hastily prepared to perform for a celebration surrounding the wedding of his wife's cousin. After my brief demonstration, there would be an all night wayang performance by Pak Narto's brother, Pak Kuswanto.

“Who's afraid of the Tanks?” proclaimed the headline of the Lithuanian daily, Lietuvas Rytas, in its review of Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in Vilnius in April 1990, six weeks into the nation's tumultous declaration of independence that had brought Soviet tanks onto city streets. Seizing the fundamental point of the play – the need to destroy illusion and face reality without fear – Lithuanian audiences saw a distinct analogy with their national situation that demanded they forswear dreams of some painless future solution and confront the reality of Soviet military intervention. Their grasp of the play, despite cultural chasms and the vagaries of simultaneous translation, testified to the clarity of Albee's staging of this classic of the American theatre.