We have moved into the position now of where we are more concerned with being directly a part of the political activity of our time than we are with being a part of the theatrical activity of our time.” So said Julian Beck of The Living Theater. He was speaking in the somewhat derelict three-story brownstone near the Brooklyn Academy of Music that has been the home of the twenty-member collective for the last couple of years. Judith Malina, Beck's wife and co-founder of the theatre, explained that on January 1st of this year The Living had begun another rehearsal phase in its development of The Legacy of Cain, a cycle of some 150 plays to be performed not in theatres but throughout a city.

The Legacy of Cain is a unique theatrical/political piece. The Living collective has been working on the development of the cycle for four-and-a-half years, and it is estimated that it is at least three or four years from culmination.

In order to deal with an artist's rehearsal techniques, it is necessary to discuss a particular system or process; in Richard Foreman's work process is important. Foreman has been producing his plays for five years and, although there have been changes, his esthetic and style have remained distinctively constant; partially because he is concerned with the problem and process of making art. He wants the spectator to notice not only the “art that is made” but also that “art is being made.”

The members of the People Show do not call their presentations “plays.” Nor do they consider themselves to be actors. A show does not begin with a script; there is little or no story or narrative. Between shows, the performers lead very separate lives, but they constantly collect material and ideas for new pieces. When they come together to create a new show, each person contributes his own ideas and helps decide on an over-all structure. They choose their own costumes and create their own characters.

The fact that they are all the “authors” of a show and that the characters they play are created from their own imaginations gives the People Show an unusual energy and freedom. Although the structure and images usually remain the same in each repetition, the performers are free to improvise and experiment, using each other, props, and other elements as cues and motifs.

Robert Wilson's The Life and Times of Joseph Stalin was presented at the Brooklyn Academy of Music on December 14, 15, 21, and 22. This performance was an unusual event. It consisted of seven acts and lasted for twelve hours. Since Stalin began at seven in the evening and ran until seven the following morning, it became a singular event in the life of the spectator, who had to change his habits in order to attend it. Even before it began, the performance had imposed itself on the spectator by the expectation of its unusual length. At least in part, the duration of the piece was an attempt to physiologically modify the perception of the spectator. During the twelve hours, the spectator had to accommodate himself to the slow tempo of the performance; as he became physically tired (sometimes on the verge of sleep), his mode of perception altered.

In 1967, Charles Ludlam organized the Ridiculous Theatrical Company, patterning it after modern dance companies where composer and choreographer perform with the group. It was an actors’ company, primarily composed of untrained actors, non-actors, and filmmakers. Most had experience working in “underground“ films, but few had any professional training. Ludlam was the only one of the group with extensive schooling and experience in acting, directing, and playwriting.

In the years 1918, 1919, and 1920, the Berlin Dada movement, mounting less than thirty productions, exerted a formidable, if indirect, influence over the development of the German theatre. This influence would later lead to the dismantling of Expressionism as the dominant theatrical force in Central Europe. Retooling the theories and performance techniques that they inherited from the Futurists and the Zurich Dadas to their own specifications, the Berlin Dadas introduced the use of pure—onomatopoetic or vowel—sound and abstract movement, improvisation, simultaneous and illogical actions, verbal and physical assault on the spectator, antiillusionist scenic design, and the incorporation of popular entertainments, such as cabaret acts and cinema, into German performance.