In the Shakespearean theatre, the removal of dead bodies from the stage was a theatrical necessity, owing to the absence of a curtain between the stage and the auditorium. Despite the many non-realistic conventions accepted in the theatre, the disposal of corpses had to be carried out in such a way as not to disrupt the reality of the fictional world. An analysis of certain kinds of intriguing situations, such as suicide scenes, reveals how efficiently Shakespeare and his contemporaries utilized the stage hangings, the upper gallery, and the stage trap so as to avoid the necessity of bringing on bearers for the corpses at the ends of the scenes. Only at the end of the play, when the logic of the fictional world stops functioning, could the spectacle of a corpse getting up and leaving the stage have been accepted by the audience.

This article explores images of the Jewish actor in modernist German theatre. It deals with the question of theatrical identities on the stages of the Weimar period and discusses the complexities of cultural stereotyping applied to actors of Jewish origin. Special attention will be devoted to the perspectives of the avant-garde used here in the historical sense of the term. In the second part of the article, individual actors such as Max Pallenberg, Alexander Granach and Fritz Kortner will be analysed with respect to certain physical or vocal characteristics deemed to be typically ‘Jewish’. In the final section Kafka's reactions to visiting Yiddish performers will be examined as an example of aesthetic (self)reflection on the question of Jewish identity and modernism.

In 1939 the Chicago and New York City dance units of the Works Progress Administration's Federal Theatre Project premiered two works inspired by the events of the Spanish Civil War. This paper offers an examination of the conflicts that arose in presenting dances about a war in which the US government adopted a position of neutrality, but about which many artists took a profoundly partisan stance. Further, this research unveils how internal censorship at the Federal Theatre Project affected the creation and presentation of these dances as well as ways in which the choreographers (Ruth Page/Bentley Stone and Helen Tamiris) subverted requests for alterations to their scenarios and choreography.

This re-examination of the plays of 1960s farceur Joe Orton reveals that his plays can survive the passage of time as well as cultural displacement. Orton's skill lies in using the medium of the theatre to create a liminal situation, whereby all the signs and subtexts can crystallize into accessible images, which are explored here from a semiotic perspective. Orton's scrupulous understanding of genre and plot construction enables him to pay lip-service to a specific genre, as he simultaneously mocks modern realistic theatre conventions; the one-room settings are examined for their metonymic function, and the props and costume are considered from the semiotic perspective of vectorization. This fresh approach to Joe Orton elucidates how the plays have their own intrinsic dramatic merit, independent of their original 1960s context: Orton plays games with his audiences, and game-playing is a universal pastime.

A shibboleth has grown up around the work of Edward Bond. The tag ‘controversial dramatist’ has continued to dog both the man and his work. This article will hope to explore some of the contradictory, and sometimes frustrating manifestations that such ‘celebrity’ has produced. Since the reception of The War Plays [1985] by the Royal Shakespeare Company at the National Theatre Bond has largely withdrawn his work from mainstream British theatre. Since the late 1990s he has looked to a new home – La Colline Theatre – in France, to premiere new work and run retrospective seasons of older plays. Here, Bond's celebrity is of a different kind, and has allowed him to enhance and develop his work as a playwright, director and writer about theatre. While this article draws on secondary sources it also uses material based on personal correspondence with Edward Bond.

John Hoon's play, Kang Tek-koo, tells the story of the unexpected encounter between two half-brothers, one South Korean and the other North Korean, in Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union. In the play, the conventional tragic scene of the reunion of the family members separated by the Korean War is dealt with in a resilient comic spirit from the perspective of a younger generation of South Koreans. This article examines the production of Kang Tek-koo by the South Korean company Apple Theatre, which took place in 2001 – a time when the fluid dynamics of globalization were encompassing Korea, and the transnational flow of media, people, and ideology opened up the possibility for North and South Koreans to interact and search for a common language, culture, home and nationhood.