TOTAL THEATRE

As someone recently, rather ruefully, reflected--""It's impossible to slip one's shoes off at the theatre any more . . . one never knows when one is going to be called upon to perform."" Whether dancing a Dionysus 69 or Loving In with the Living Theatre, the audience .is becoming definitely. a part of the scene. Which is just one more extension of Total Theatre, the encompassing organic form theatre theoreticians have for years seen as a merging of all elements--dance, music, drama, poetry, etc., into a ""theatre of effects"" that will hopefully increase perception via ""the emotionalizing of the intellect"" as Richard Wagner says in his essays on Gesamtkunstwerk, ""the theatre of the furore."" This is an interesting compilation of his and 21 other articles that show the evolvement of this new expressionistic form. It includes the surrealistic philosophies of Artaud; Gordon Craig's contentions that actors should be replaced by Ubermarionettes; Walter Kerr on Species Spectacularosis; Sergei Eisenstein on Kabuki; Cocteau, Apollinaire, Meyerhold; Max Reinhardt and even Thomas Wilfred on the latest and brightest of art forms--""Light."" For those who have been exposed who would like to know why it's Happening.