To speak of placing any theatre work within its ‘social and political context’ has become almost a matter of course, but, at the same time, the epistemological problems presented by the proliferation of critical theory based on fragmented views of society (or society as fragments), proposing tentative opinions and ‘open readings’, makes this a difficult task and expresses the insecurity of the age. The pluralistic accommodations demanded by theories based on identity, for example, can add to this insecurity. It may become ‘safer’ and considered virtuous to offer ‘partial readings’, thus suggesting a democratization of thought which I would argue is frequently spurious. What often results is a disjunction between theory and materiality. Life is experienced through materiality, action cannot be indeterminate, though it may imply indeterminacy. When the actors appear in the performance space to create a relationship with their audience, this action is predicated by material decisions. The size of the space, positioning of the audience, spatial relationships beween actors and set, textures and colours, and when to turn the lights on and off are all the subject of prior consideration conditioned by the intentions of the play's producers. What do they want the play to do? Why are they doing it? They seek an audience in order to expose ideas and to create a theatrical experience. These ideas may be confused or contradictory but they exist. Moreover since all creative work is derivative in some sense (in that it is based on pre-existent tradition), theatre makers cannot claim to be innocent observers. It is naive to suggest that theatre may be somehow ‘neutral’ or ‘open’ since all meaning is constructed on the basis of prior knowledge. Thus I am proposing that there is a crucial dialectical relationship between theory and practice.

In 1855, the first ‘coloured’ minstrel troupe, the Mocking Bird Minstrels, appeared on a Philadelphia stage. While this company did not stay together long, it heralded a change in the ‘face’ of minstrelsy in the United States. Many other black minstrel troupes would quickly follow, drawing attention away from the white minstrels who had until then dominated the scene. However, the white minstrel show had already iconized a particular representation of the ‘Negro’, which ultimately paved the way for black anti-minstrel attitudes at the end of the nineteenth century. The minstrel show existed in two guises: the white-in-blackface, and the black-in-blackface. The form and content of the minstrel shows changed over time, as well as audience perception of the two different types of performance. The black minstrel show has come to be regarded as a ‘reclaiming’ of slave dance and performance. It differs from white minstrelsy in that it gave theatrical form to ‘signifyin” on white minstrelsy in the manner in which slaves practised ‘signifyin” on whites in real life.

Current productions written, directed, and/or performed by First Nations Canadians are often characterized by a complex layering of myth and iconography operating simultaneously in more than one cultural system. The effect is richly visual and auditory theatre, but, more important, such performances highlight the essentially indexical and iconographic nature of theatre itself by writing text at the intersection of discourses with quite different political and historical markers and, in the process, bringing those discourses together to form a new typology of signs. What is problematic is the effect of such signs.

The craze for amateur theatricals among the higher orders in late Georgian England is notorious. It was a passion that was given vent not only in Britain itself, but throughout the Empire, where military officers and civilian gentlefolk trod the boards in centres as far apart as Montreal and Cape Town, Jamaica and Calcutta. One colony that conspicuously lacked such genteel pleasures was convict settlement in New South Wales. The rigours of the posting, the minute numbers constituting the social elite, their geographic dispersal, and the bitter factionalism of their community effectively killed off any possibility of such theatre for the first twenty-five years or so of the outpost's existence. For the next fifteen years the positive influence of a growing population was negated by the continuance of the factionalism, by the deep suspicions of a succession of governors, and by the growing influence of the clergy, most of whom were bitterly hostile to theatre.

Canada became a country in 1867 through the Confederation of the two small eastern (Maritime) colonies of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick with the larger, more inland colonies of Upper and Lower Canada (Ontario and Quebec). Yet the flag remained the British Union Jack and the constitution resided in London. Canada's own flag was raised only in 1965, and the constitution repatriated only in 1982, both events accompanied by considerable controversy within the nation. The political controversy then (and now) reflects a constantly ambivalent attitude of Canadians towards the relationship between identity and nationalism, an ambivalence that encompasses protean forms of nationalism, including essentialist nationalism and a more elastic concept which recognizes the legitimacy of emotional and cultural ties beyond the national borders.

Intercultural processes have become a major concern of European theatre people and critics since the 1970s. They serve to bolster the postmodern discourse marked by endlessly alterable and changing cultures and, therefore, by essentially elusive cultural identities. But the aggressive global expansion of audiovisually mediated performing culture, primarily American television, film, and video, is being viewed as a menace to received cultural identities. There are fears that European cultures are being submerged and disfigured by an ever increasing inundation of overpowering American cultural productions and may even disintegrate altogether.

The tension between form and meaning pervades the entire life of the performer … How is routine life connected to that intensified union of form and meaning which constitutes performance?

During the last twenty years the number of community plays has grown enormously in Scandinavia and Great Britain. In Denmark, on average, some twenty new plays are produced annually. From the early 1970s to 1993, I have registered more than 300 Danish productions; these include about sixty of the 140 plays which celebrate the two-hundredth anniversary of abolition of adscription in 1988. ‘Community plays’ are known by a number of different names. In Scandinavia they are called ‘lokalspil’, ‘egnsspil’, ‘bygdespel’, ‘krönikespel’, ‘arbetarspel’, and so on. It is important to distinguish ‘community theatre’ from ‘community play’. Community theatre is any kind of performance organized by ordinary people in a given area with or without support from theatre professionals. It may be totally amateur or it may include professional guest performances by theatre practitioners from outside the area.