This booklet contains six easy plays written for educationally handicapped children. The plays are brief, use few characters and simple language and plots, and are based on fairy tales. Titles are: (1) "The Three Bears'" (2) "The Gingerbread Boy'" (3) "Little Red Riding Hood'" (4) "The Three Billy Goats Gruff'" (5) "Hansel and Gretel'" and (6)…

A brief reading of "Desire under the Elms" by Eugene O'Neill illustrates how a conventional Oedipal reading of the playscript opens up spaces within the text for deconstructive free-play. In this case, a tension is identified and foregrounded between this conventional application of the Oedipal complex and Freud's interpretation of the…

This article explicates the techniques of famous comic playwrights in an attempt to establish prominent parallelisms between the literary and therapeutic use of humor. Using literary devices as a model, the essay elaborates on ways in which the counselor can employ similar strategies with clients. (Author/BW)

Adapted from a paper presented at the AETA Convention (Los Angeles, Calif., 1968).

Dramatic theory in the past has been confused with hypothesis, hunch, manifesto, and observation. It is, in fact, a scientific activity--much like theorizing in physics, human society, or art. The current state of the art of theory in the drama classroom faces many problems. Most theatre faculty offer courses called "Theory and…

If drama theorists are to improve the profession at large, they need to put their own house in order first. Too often drama theorists rely on intuition, tolerating the unexplained and the unsystematized. They could learn from theorists in other fields, such as physics and the "hard" sciences, by organizing the facts of their field of knowledge and…

Most theatre people (academic and professional) are disdainful of dramatic theory and related matters. Teachers of theory, criticism, and history assert the importance of their studies but do not demonstrate that importance. It is easier for teachers to expose students to explicit material on theory and test them to see if they remember it than to…

Defining structuralism as an unannounced aesthetic movement that involves not only the theatre but all arts, this journal issue focuses on structuralist performance. The nine articles provide information on the following topics: the French theatre group, Atelier Theatre et Musique; "Tell Me," a play by Guy de Cointet; patterning in "Five…

The paper describes a theater workshop for children with learning disabilities, and discusses its benefits, including improved oral and written language, self esteem, and self control. Comments of actors involved in the workshop are included. (CL)

Stage violence is a complex art which, when conceived inventively, approached with professional care and respect, and practiced with patience and energy, can be the highlight of a scene or of an entire play. This book is designed for amateurs who have not had the benefit of formal training in stage violence. Chapters discuss falling (the…

The Theatre of the Grotesque, a dramatic movement in Italy from 1916 until 1930, grew directly out of Pirandello's concept of "umorismo," the painful laugh accompanying the tragic sense of bewilderment at the incongruities and cruelties of life. Growing first of all from a reaction against positivism and its theatrical counterpart,…

Four twentieth century playwrights--Pirandello, Giraudoux, O'Neill, and Albee--differed in their solutions to the human dilemma and in their philosophic apprehensions of human dilemma, but all four showed interest in the basic concerns of all humanity: body and soul, appearance and reality, the real and the ideal. Albee, the only one of the four…