Word: played
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...past, over and over and over again. The reality these playwrights ignore is that man is a finite being, bound always to act and react within the limits of his nature, "a fallen creature" in religious terms. If the human character could be altered and improved by a play, it would have happened ages ago. All wars would have ended 2,000 years ago with The Trojan Women-the greatest and most moving antiwar play ever written...
...simply trade on the headlines of the day and gamble that the people they attract will come to the theater precisely because their consciences are on the alert. There is nothing easier than to preach to the already converted. For any but a guilt-collecting audience, most of these plays rate a big B for Boredom. There is no moral suasion in crude hack work that substitutes lapel-grabbing diatribes for scrupulous dramatic craftsmanship. A poor play does not become a good play simply because the playwright's heart is in the right place...
...wanted a burning intensity to be felt in the theater that would sear an audience: "The spectator who comes to us knows that he has agreed to undergo a true operation, where not only his mind but his senses and his flesh are going to come into play. He must really be convinced that we are capable of making him scream...
...should be like: "We do not cater to the man who goes to the theater to satisfy a social need for contact with culture: in other words, to have something to talk about to his friends and to be able to say that he has seen this or that play and that it was interesting. Nor do we cater to the man who goes to the theater to relax after a hard day's work. We are concerned with the spectator who has genuine spiritual needs and who really wishes, through confrontation with the performance, to analyze himself...
...basis of his first offering, The Constant Prince, he succeeds awesomely well. The play is a loose adaptation from the 17th century Spanish playwright Calderon. It is acted out in an area rather like a bull pit with the audience looking down over the walled-in enclosure on all four sides. Four men and a woman representing the madness, arrogance and corruption of the world humiliate, torture and finally cause the death of the Prince, a pure and passive soul clad in a white loin cloth...