Augusto Boal — Political Street Theatre
Augusto Boal enters the story of modern theatre the way a spark enters dry grass: not politely, not quietly, and not with any respect for the comfortable boundaries that keep “art” safely separated from…
Podcasts · In this section
Contemporary and Performance
Episodes on Peter Brook, Caryl Churchill, Ariane Mnouchkine, Richard Schechner, and Robert Wilson examine contemporary staging, collective creation, performance theory, and visual theatre.
Sarah Kane – In-Yer-Face Theatre
London, January 1995. A cold rain slicks the streets of Sloane Square as theatergoers file into the tiny upstairs auditorium of the Royal Court Theatre. They don’t know quite what they’re in for, but…
Peter Brook – The Empty Space
Picture an empty stage – just a bare space. Now imagine someone walks across that space while someone else watches. “That is all that is needed for an act of theatre to be engaged,”…
Ariane Mnouchkine – Collective creation
Paris, 1973. The dim, cavernous interior of La Cartoucherie—a former munitions factory on the outskirts of the city—has been transformed into a bustling revolutionary fairground. It is here that 1789, a theatrical reenactment of…
Richard Schechner – Performance theory
New York City, 1968. In a converted garage on Wooster Street in Soho—gritty walls, low ceiling, the smell of sweat and incense in the air—a group of performers and spectators are entangled in a…
Robert Wilson – Slow time, visual theatre
Avignon, 1976. Late on a July evening in the cobbled courtyard of the Théâtre Municipal, hundreds of festival-goers sit on wooden benches beneath a darkening sky. On stage, a strange and hypnotic tableau unfolds.…
Caryl Churchill – Form experimentation
The audience is dazzled—this is funny, moving, and unlike any play structure they’ve seen. At intermission, they buzz: “All women on stage, and not a dull moment!” “Who wrote this?” The answer: Caryl Churchill,…