One of the most remarkable aspects of Leben Eduards des Zweiten is that it is an almost womanless play. Complementary to this observation is that the various antagonists in Marlowe's play become protagonists in Brecht's version. Furthermore, these protagonists—Edward, Gaveston, Mortimer, and Edward's son—are all “youths” and have as their opponents, obviously, father figures. That some of these protagonists oppose themselves does not contradict this. In starting with the Queen, I do not mean that she is the chief character. Quite to the contrary, we find her to be an absence, a negativity which allows our protagonists to stand in sharper profile.

The play consists of twelve captioned episodes which constitute a three-part structure: I. A-C; II. D, alone; and III. E-L. In the first episode (A), we find Gaveston back from exile, invited by the present King Edward, who has dared to recall his bosom friend against his now dead father's proscription and the peers’ wills.

My involvement in theatre has been with the body in motion. However changed or reduced the motion might have been or however elaborate the means used might have been, the focus was this movement. In retrospect this seems a constant value which was preserved. From the beginning I wanted to avoid the pulled-up, turned-out, anti-gravitational qualities that not only give a body definition and role as “dancer” but qualify and delimit the movement available to it. The challenge was to find alternative movement.

I was not the first to attempt such alternatives. Simone Whitman, together with others, had already explored the possibilities inherent in a situation of “rules” or game-like structures which required the performer to respond to cues which might, for example, indicate changes in height or spatial position.

People in Minneapolis were always asking me, “What does a Resident Playwright do?” And although I could usually come up with some high-sounding, evasive answer, I never found one that satisfied me. The Guthrie Theatre did not find an answer either, and my three years there were doubtless as frustrating to them as they were unproductive for me. Typically, our failure happened more from a lack of communication than from any real wish to do harm to one another, the result, perhaps, of a set of fortuitous circumstances that neither of us was prepared to accept.

I came to the Minnesota Theatre Company in the fall of 1962, while a student at the university, before the Guthrie was even a building. In the long winter months, we used to go down behind the Walker Art Center and look at that black skeleton rising out of the snow.

When questioned about the audience at Minneapolis’ Guthrie Theatre, a man who ought to know said, “Well, we're working out a deal with New York. They're going to send us 300,000 Jews and Italians and we're going to send them 300,000 Swedes and Norwegians.” The Guthrie started because Sir Tony wanted a regional theatre and Minneapolis came up with the best bid. Like starting an industry or relocating a plant. Three years have passed since the missionaries arrived. Sir Tony is leaving and his associate artistic director, Douglas Campbell, is replacing him. The theatre has developed into one of the two best in the nation (Washington's Arena Stage is the other). But something is missing—dialogue with the audience.

Sir Tony directed two plays last season, The Cherry Orchard and Richard III. The first was a museum piece of exquisite taste, the second a bold and bald exercise in condescension.

Eight men sit in armchairs arranged in a circle at a comfortable distance for speaking. Each man's wife sits on the right arm of his chair in a casual, intimate way. Within the circle, on small, separate tables are: 1. a large, portable transistor radio; 2. a small, portable television set; and 3. a portable record player with a popular record. The radio and television set are pre-tuned to broadcast immediately when they are turned on. One of the men has a small transistor radio in his pocket. Each of the women carries a small, white paper bag full of grains of rice.

Each performer's part is a list of eighty-one consecutive “moments.” There is no time schedule for these moments; they follow one another at any pace the performers as a group establish, and this pace can change continuously throughout the performance.