To provide both an enriching theatre experience for students and faculty and new opportunities for women artists, the Department of Theatre Arts and Speech at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey at Newark held a competition for new plays by New Jersey women playwrights. The winning play, Leni Hamilton's "The Fortress," a story of…

One problem confronting theater directors is how to revive a play in such a way as to give it new relevance to a contemporary audience, and there many unhappy examples of this dilemma. Each director is concerned with exploring the text, and in some cases, manipulating the content, in order to bring out new meanings. Whether controversial or…

Thinking skills and performance skills are compatible, and actors and directors should learn them both. If there are to be advances in performing arts there must be a clearer understanding of the processes of thinking and the practices of performing. Efforts to define thinking skills have tended to categorize the skills into four camps: critical…

An analysis of the problem solving process reveals at least three options: (1) finding the cause, (2) solving the problem, and (3) anticipating potential problems. These methods may be illustrated by examining "Oedipus Tyrannus," a play in which a king attempts to deal with a problem that appears to be beyond his ability to solve, and…

An introductory problem for a theatre history course presents the process of group decision making and problem solving in theatre studies, encourages students to compare values when collecting information and making decisions, and illustrates the variety of dramatic forms, production styles, and economic concerns of contemporary theatre. Entitled…