Introduction

Introduction Among the current academic journals dedicated to drama and theatre, our own has probably been the one most associated with a bias favouring text over performance . Yet, as any reader of Modern Drama must be aware, there has been a growing proportion of articles that deal with the embodiment of dramatic texts in specific stagings, and that reflect increasing interest, in recent years, in identifying where and when drama actually achieves its form: in the playwright 's words? the actors' bodies and voices? the director's mise-en-scene? In 1995, two major international conferences were held in Canada to deal with those questions, and though they went about it in significantly different ways, both produced stimulating papers dealing with the relationship of staging to text in the creation of dramatic form - which is why, following a suggestion by Christopher Innes, we title this special edition "Form and Performance ." In Montreal, in May of 1995, the International Federation for Theatre Research (La Federation Intemationale pour la Recherche Theatrale) pursued the implications of "Actor, Actress on·Stage: Body/ActingNoice." One of its chief organizers, Josette Feral of the Universite du Quebec aMontreal, is my co-editor for this special edition; she provides an introduction to the articles derived from the Montreal sessions. In Toronto, a conference and theatre festival conceived and led by Pia Kleber (Director of the Drama Programme at University College), and sponsored by the University of Toronto, Humboldt Universitat zu Berlin, and Modern Drama, extended from October 30 to November 5. Its title was "Why Theatre / Pourquoi Ie Theatre," and whether people did or did not notice that the question mark was deliberately omitted, the emphasis was clear enough: with papers dedicated to international stylistic trends, social, political and culModern Drama, 39 (1996) 533 534 DAVlD BLOSTEIN AND JOSETTE FERAL tural policies, private and public funding, and new technologies, the sessions both questioned and affirmed the human need fulfilled by the dramatic arts, and placed both form and performance in a context large enough to merit the conference's subtitle: "Choices for the New Century." Six of the articles in this issue originated as papers at "Why Theatre." To begin with, the very amenability of theatrical performance to academic analysis is strongly questioned by Jure Gantar, who adamantly but cheerfully insists that drama as performed is fundamentally unstable, and draws upon chaos theory to maintain that "pandemonium is not necessarily bad." (For another flirtation with chaos theory, compare Dean Wilcox's paper from the Montreal conference.) The question of the degree to which such instability is forestalled by inscription of performance in the dramatic text is the starting point of a series of linked probes by Michael Sidnell into dramatic form and performance . Like Sidnell, Marc Silberman weighs the role of the actor in the embodying of form (whether or not originating in text), but he zooms in on the particular experience of German actors earlier in the century as they exported and adapted their methods from stage to screen. In Rosalind Kerr's account of a play still in the process of becoming, actors' performance (through months of rehearsal and workshopping) actually contributes to the creation of text. And assumptions about text, performance, and form itself are submitted to a vigorous re-evaluation in Ian Watson's analysis of the Los Angeles riots as an example of the "exchange theatre" of Eugenio Barba (who was the keynote speaker at Montreal). Finally, Rosette Lamont's enthusiastic transatlantic romp in search of an international theatre reminds us that the "why" of theatre includes not only its capability of binding human beings together but also its creation of unabashed pleasure. It will not go unnoticed thai these six articles are by no means insistent on the precedence of text in the identification of dramatic form. The eight articles that follow them - particularly in the light of Josette Feral's analysis - should, therefore, complete a fruitfully uneasy partnership. DAVID A. BLOSTEIN, UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO 11 The 1970S were a period of intense re-evaluation in the theatre and not a single aspect of this art went unquestioned. Space, text and the audience were rethought in termS of a newly adopted...