Caryl Churchill began her playwriting career for radio in the ‘sixties’, became a writer for live theatre in association with such companies as Monstrous Regiment and, notably. Joint Stock – and recently achieved her greatest commercial success with the transfer to Wyndhams Theatre of her play about the City. Serious Money, premiered at the Royal Court in March 1987 in a production by Max Stafford-Clark. In conversation here with Geraldine Cousin, she sketches in the early years of her career and the different demands of radio and stage plays, discusses some of her recurrent themes and preoccupations, weighs how far she feels herself a ‘woman writer’, and describes the collaborative approach of working with Joint Stock. She then talks in more detail not only about Serious Money, but her earlier collaboration with David Lan (author of Flight. Sergeant Ola and His Followers, and The Winter Dancers) – a variation upon the Bacchae theme, A Mouthful of Birds, directed by Les Waters and lan Spink. The interviewer, Geraldine Cousin, teaches in the Joint School of Theatre Studies at the University of Warwick.

Is the ‘Performance art’ whose influence is pervasive in today's American theatre truly in the ‘tradition’ of the avant-garde – or merely modish? In an age where fashions, whether in theatre, clothing. or motor cars. are manufactured to facilitate the turnover necessary for mass-produced obsolescence, does ‘imagist’ theatre serve as a force for social change – or merely titillate palates as jaded by yesterday's art as by yesterday's styles? R. G. Davis looks at the ways in which visually- oriented forms of theatre have been constructed and received in America since the ‘happenings’ of the early ‘sixties – and at the changing political climate since that time, which has itself modified the impact of any artistic statement. He asks whether the progressive theatre worker should in today's reactionary climate regard such forms as suspect, or look for ways of harnessing them to the creation of a ‘dialectical view of pleasure’ through the multi-faceted potential of epic theatre. R. G. Davis, who was founding director of the San Francisco Mime Troupe in the 'sixties, is a leading director of Brecht and, more recently, of Dario Fo in the United States, and is currently directing his adaptation of llya Ehrenburg'sLife of the Automobile as an imagistc theatre piece. He has been a regular contributor to TQ and NTQ.

In Spain, alone among western nations, political theatre has arguably had a real impact upon the course of social and political change – yet it remains little noticed or assessed in other countries. This article examines the leading Spanish theatre groups which operated first in Franco's declining years, under strict though often incompetent government censorship, then in the period of transition to democracy – and now facing very different challenges under a nominally socialist government. The author. Eugène van Erven, who contributed a study of the popular theatre movement in the Philippines to NTQ 10, focuses in particular on the work of El Joglars (‘The Jesters’) from Barcelona – a company which, under the leadership of Albert Boadella, has been performing almost continuously since 1962. at first subverting the censorship by evolving a style of ‘politicized mime’, then through controversial works on overtly political themes, and more recently in a ‘provocative’ style intended to engage audiences in an active process of questioning the consumerist direction being taken by a democratic Spain.

In the earlier instalments of this series of articles, published in NTQ 11 and 12, Rustom Bharucha described. first, how he and fellow director Manuel Lutgenhorst became fascinated with the idea of transposing Franz Xaver Kroetz's play without words. Request Concert, about the last evening in the life of a very ordinary German woman. into a variety of social contexts in his native India. He then provided detailed descriptions of the productions as realized under their direction in Calcutta and Bombay, revealing the very difficult kinds of insight they offered both into the theatrical potential of the play, and the different natures of the urban societies to which it was being adapted. The performances of Usha Ganguli in Calcutta and of Sulabha Deshpande in Bombay – themselves strongly contrasting both in actorly approach and in realization – were followed in Madras, in a production by Lutgenhorst. by the very different interpretation of the dancer Chandralekha, who brought to the play the energies and disciplines of Bharat Natyam. revealing yet other stylistic possibilities and sustaining a creative tension between these possibilities and the surface realism of the play.

What happens during a rehearsal? How are actors' expectations and achievements affected by different directorial approaches, and how do the various ‘systems’ of acting fit with the responses of an audience? From Diderot through Stanislavski. Brecht. and Artaud to the work of such modern experimental directors as Brook, Grotowski, Chaikin, and Schechner, the theory may or may not be adequately tested against the practice. The author of two earlier, complementary studies in empirical theatre research – ‘Feedback as a Subsystem’ and ‘Prompt–Copy as a Subsystem’, both published in Kodikas/Code: Ars Semeiotica (1984 and 1987) – Stratos E. Constantinidis here checks several normative fallacies which have influenced theatre practice by relating the findings of empirical research in theatre to the experimental work of theatre artists. The author, who has previously worked in the Universities of Iowa and Arizona, presently teaches theory and criticism in the Department of Theatre at Ohio State University.

David Mamet, born in Chicago in 1947, is one of the most talented and eagerly watched young playwrights in America today, whose work has also found a ready response among British audiences. After such plays as Sexual Perversity in Chicago (1974). American Buffalo (1975) and Edmond (1982), his Glengarry Glen Ross (1982), dedicated to Harold Pinter, had its world premiere in London at the National's Cottesloe Theatre, and subsequently won the Pulitzer prize for the best American play in 1984. In the same year, American Buffalo (seen briefly on Broadway in 1977) won an award for best revival, while the London production of Edmond, which opened at the Royal Court in December 1985, was favourably received by English critics in contrast to its mixed reception in New York. In addition to Mamet's work for the stage, he has written the screenplays for the films The Verdict and The Postman Always Rings Twice. Noteworthy for their sensitivity to the nuances and rhythms of American speech, including its unmistakable penchant for banalities and obscenities. Mamet's best plays, as the accompanying essay demonstrates, carry with them an implicit attack on American business values, usually through a confrontation between two individuals, one of whom tries to exploit or dominate the other. The interview which follows was conducted in New York City on 2 January 1986 following a performance of Mamet's latest work, a double bill of one–act plays entitled The Shawl and Prairie du Chien, selected by Mamet's friend and close associate at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago, Gregory Mosher, to reopen the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater at Lincoln Center in New York.

You grew up in Chicago? Yes. And then came to New York, to study acting at the Neighborhood Playhouse, a school of theatre where I came back later to work as an actor and director, I kind of stumbled upon a career as a playwright. I became a playwright because I was an actor and I started directing because I wasn't a very good actor and I started writing because I was working with very young actors and there was nothing for them to do. I started writing because nothing existed for twelve 23-year-old actors to do.