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World-renowned for having made a totally new kind of theatre, director-designer Robert Wilson first astonished international audiences in Paris in 1971 with Le Regard du sourd (Deafman Glance) and then with his twenty-four-hour Ouverture at the first edition of the Festival d’Automne in 1972. He also refers in this Conversation to Einstein on the Beach, premiered at the Avignon Festival in 1976, as another example among more of France offering him a home before he eventually founded the Watermill Center in 1992 on Long Island in the State of New York. Watermill, a laboratory for multidisciplinary creativity, opened its doors to the public in 2006 and is a focal point of the Conversation as a whole. Wilson’s immediately pre-Covid-pandemic production of The Messiah by Mozart was premiered at the Mozartwoche Salzburg in February 2020 and performed subsequently in Paris during a brief Covid ‘lull’ in September of that year. Discussion of this pivotal work leads to reflections on the opera productions that he had staged not so long before it, emphasizing the elements fundamental to his compositions – light, time, space, architecture, and silence. The Conversation, followed by audience questions addressed to Wilson, took place live online and on Facebook on 4 December 2020 as a prelude to the Festival Internacional Santiago a Mil in Chile, which opened on 3 January 2021. This was the Festival’s twenty-eighth year, but in a significantly restricted form due to Covid-19. A sequel to the Santiago interchange, also online but this time located in Paris, occurred on 17 September 2021. It resumes dialogue mainly on the Watermill Center’s broader cultural and social goals in the present and for the future, noting as well Wilson’s then current activities in Paris: a heavy schedule of four productions from the beginning of September to the end of December 2021, and a sound installation planned for 2022.Maria Shevtsova gratefully thanks the Fundación Teatro a Mil and its General Director Carmen Romero for their initiative in inviting Robert Wilson with her to converse publicly as part of the Festival a Mil, and for permission to edit the transcript for publication in New Theatre Quarterly. Thanks are due to interpreters Margit Schmohl and Jorge Ramirez, and to Maria Luisa Vergara for organizing the audience participation included below, as well as to Alfonso Arenas, former Coordinator of the Education and Communities Area at the Theatre Foundation a Mil. Warmest gratitude is extended to Robert Wilson for his generosity in all sorts of ways, and not least for finding the time to continue the Conversation in Paris. Thanks for their kind support to Nuria Moreno, Production at Teatro Real Madrid, Christof Belka, Executive Director of RW Work Ltd, Clifford Allen, Director of Archives of the Watermill Center, and Leesa Kelly and Noah Khoshbin, curators of the 2021 outdoor exhibition Minneapolis Protest Murals at the Crossroads Summer Festival held at the Watermill Center. The exhibition presented 190 public artworks from the 900 boards of the Minneapolis Protest Murals which were created organically in Minneapolis following the murder of George Floyd on 25 May 2020. Special thanks for their gift of images are given to photographers Lucie Jansch, Javier del Real, Kristian Kruuser and Kaupo Kikkas, Lovik Delger Ostenrik, and Martyna Szczesna. Kunsang Kelden and Maria Shevtsova transcribed this Conversation in two parts. Shevtsova, Editor of New Theatre Quarterly and author of Robert Wilson (Routledge, 2007; updated edition, 2019) edited and annotated the combined transcript for publication.

The ecology of the rural setting in which Double Edge Theatre lives and works is as integral to its artistic work as to its principles of social justice, and these qualities mark the ensemble’s singular profile not only in the United States but also increasingly on the world theatre map. Stacy Klein co-founded the company in Boston in 1982 as a women’s theatre with a defined feminist programme. In 1997, Double Edge moved its work space to a farm that Klein had bought in Ashfield, Massachusetts, commuting from there back to Boston to show its productions. Within a few years, Klein and her collaborators were acutely aware of their separation from the local community, which necessitated a change of perspective to encompass personal and creative engagement with local people and to develop audiences within the area, while not losing sight of their international links. Carlos Uriona, formerly a popular-theatre activist from Argentina, had joined Double Edge and facilitated the local immersion that ultimately became its lifeline, most visibly during the Covid-19 pandemic, as Klein here observes. Klein, who had been a student of Rena Mirecka in Poland (starting in 1976), has maintained her friendship and professional relations with this founding member of the Teatr Laboratorium led by Jerzy Grotowski, inviting Mirecka to run wokshops at the Double Edge Farm. Collaboration with Gardzienice (also from the Grotowski crucible) through the Consortium of Theatre Practices (1999–2001) extended Klein’s Polish connections. She expanded her research on community cultures in Eastern and Central Europe and developed these experiences in her probing, distinctly imaginative explorations of theatre-making, while taking a new approach to participatory theatre-making in Ashfield. Her highly visual and sensual compositions are driven by her sense of the fantastic, no more strikingly so than in Klein’s Summers Spectacles, which are performed outdoors, in concert with the Farm’s natural environment – fields, trees, water, birds, animals, and heaven’s firmament. Double Edge’s profound commitment in the past decade to what it now terms ‘living culture’ and ‘art justice’ has taken root in multiracial collaborations, primarily with the indigenous peoples of Western Massachusetts. This Conversation took place on the winter solstice, 21 December 2020, a date that Maria Shevtsova, Editor of NTQ, had chosen symbolically. It was transcribed by Kunsang Kelden and edited by Shevtsova. Many thanks are extended to Travis Coe of Double Edge for assembling with such loving care the photographs requested.

The team running the Russian Case as part of Moscow’s annual Golden Mask Festival pulled off a major feat in 2021 by organizing a five-day programme online. Deeply disappointed that the Russian Case had been cancelled in the preceding year due to the Covid pandemic, this group made it its mission to succeed in adverse circumstances; and succeed it did by providing works varied enough to engage its habitual audience, as well as people coming to the event for the first time, albeit digitally. In a departure from established practice, several productions that were performed too late to compete for the awards of the 2021 Festival appeared in this year’s Russian Case. The overview offered here gathers some works out of the choices made by Maria Shevtsova, Editor of New Theatre Quarterly, whose most recent book is Rediscovering Stanislavsky (Cambridge University Press, 2020).

Elizabeth LeCompte co-founded The Wooster Group with like-minded pioneers in New York in 1975, leading and directing its collaborators as deaths, departures, and new arrivals have changed its composition and emphases over the decades, segueing into a world-wide uncertain present. Kate Valk joined in 1978, the last representative of The Wooster Group’s foundational period, apart from LeCompte herself, who is still a key member of the company. References in this conversation are primarily to works after 2016. LeCompte briefly remarks on the importance of Since I Can Remember – one of the Group’s ongoing works in progress in 2021 – as an archival project that draws on Valk’s memory of how Nayatt School was made during her formative years. Having become, since then, a quintessential Wooster Group performer, Valk extended her artistic skills to stage direction, undertaking, most recently, The B-Side (2017). Both the initiative and idea for the piece came from performer Eric Berryman, who had brought Valk the collection of blues, songs, spirituals, and preachings on the 1965 LP made from the research of scholar folklorist Bruce Chapman. Berryman had been inspired to approach Valk because of her exclusive use of unadulterated historical recordings in Early Shaker Spirituals (2014), her directorial debut. The main work in rehearsal during 2020 and which was still locked down by the Covid-19 pandemic at the time of this conversation is The Mother, a Wooster Group variant of Brecht’s dramatized version of Gorky’s novel, directed by LeCompte. LeCompte discusses the current situation, emphasizing the increased vulnerability of independent artists and small-scale theatre, while giving a glimpse of the disadvantages for such groupings built into the North American system of project funding. The Wooster Group is a salient example of small-scale theatre that, despite continually precarious conditions, which the pandemic has highlighted and exacerbated, has achieved its creative goals and has defined its place in the exploratory avant-garde flourishing vigorously in the 1960s and 1970s. This particular avant-garde, LeCompte believes, has seen various important developments over the years but might well now be counting its last days. The conversation here presented was recorded on 31 October 2020, transcribed by Kunsang Kelden, and edited by Maria Shevtsova, Editor of New Theatre Quarterly.

Maintaining and nurturing an ensemble theatre have been Anne Bogart's foremost concerns in these past near-thirty years since she and Tadashi Suzuki founded the Saratoga International Theatre Institute (SITI) in 1992 Suzuki had established the Suzuki Company of Toga (SCOT) in 1976, making a secluded mountainous landscape of Japan its home to this day Bogart's venture in the United States, although inspired by Suzuki's model of a production-based troupe of high artistic standards that, at the same time, developed its unique training methods, by no means merely duplicates its predecessor In this Covid Conversation, Bogart briefly maps a segment of SITI's history, reflecting on the company's inter-arts endeavours with differing dance idioms and its engagement with Greek tragedy She discusses the effects of the Covid pandemic on her troupe, also interrupting its performances of The Bacchae at the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis Her most recent opera production, Tristan and Isolde, was closed for the same reason at the Croatian National Theatre – a key work in her portfolio of nineteenth-century grand opera as well as contemporary avant-garde opera An acclaimed theatre director, Anne Bogart runs and teaches the Graduate Directing Programme at Columbia University in New York At the SITI summer school in Saratoga, she and the company have workshopped the Viewpoints method that she has elaborated from Mary Overlie's six principles for theatre and dance training Bogart's international workshops have further developed her method She is the author of A Director Prepares (Routledge, 2001) and of many influential books that include (with Tina Landau) The Viewpoints Book (Theatre Communications Group, 2004) The Art of Resonance is forthcoming (2021, Bloomsbury) Maria Shevtsova is the Editor of New Theatre Quarterly whose most recent book is Rediscovering Stanislavsky (Cambridge University Press, 2020) The following conversation took place on 27 August 2020, was transcribed by Kunsang Kelden, and was edited by Maria Shevtsova It is followed by a short coda announcing the transition of SITI into a resource centre [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of New Theatre Quarterly is the property of Cambridge University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use This abstract may be abridged No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract (Copyright applies to all Abstracts )

The article provides an overview of the adapted educational and methodological complex „Practical Spanish course for beginners” for students with disabilities (visually impaired)”. The complex has been compiled taking into account the peculiarities of the development of persons of this nosological group on the basis of the author’s methodology GalaxiaEspiral, which is a synthesis of innovative techniques, traditional technologies and modern developments in linguistics. This technology is focused not only on the assimilation of knowledge, but also on the development of logical and abstract thinking, associative memory, increasing motivation to Spanish language learning. The presented educational and methodological complex includes exercises aimed at the development of memory and socialization. In order to increase the efficiency of material learning, the set includes a workbook and a video course

Na primeira parte do capítulo Métodos, elementos e princípios, nomeada Método de Workshop, Maria Shevtsova apresenta o método de criação desenvolvido por Robert Wilson, particularmente a partir da utilização dos livros visuais. A partir de entrevistas com Wilson, a autora destaca a base de pensamento do trabalho do encenador, indicando a importância da linguagem gestual e do movimento de todos os elementos em suas criações. Através da descrição do trabalho de mesa [workshop table] e dos workshops com atores, a autora apresenta a equalização de todos os elementos presentes na encenação, aspecto fundamental no trabalho de Robert Wilson.

Every year at the Golden Mask National Theatre Award and Festival in Moscow, the Russian Case has its special characteristics, and 2019 clearly reflected the selection made by the many critics who travel far and wide across Russia to choose shows for the Festival. In this overview Maria Shevtsova gives some idea of the work in the category generally described as ‘small forms’, which dominated the Russian Case, and breaks the category down into the different genres gathered under its name. She also refers to several productions that are ‘large forms’, notably those directed by Konstantin Bogomolov and Yury Butusov, who are major directors in the field acclaimed nationally and internationally. Shevtsova's The Cambridge Introduction to Theatre Directing (2014, co-authored) is a landmark in research on European directors and her Rediscovering Stanislavsky is forthcoming (2019). She is co-editor of New Theatre Quarterly.

The article investigates the Lamb wave generation by the surface bonded circular actuator and wave propagation within the orthotropic Carbon Fiber Reinforced Plastic (CFRP) plate considering the anisotropy of the material elastic and damping properties. The first part of our investigation includes experimental determination of the elastic properties of CFRP, the wave attenuation, determination of the waves type that can be excited in the studied CFRP panel using a given frequency range. The model of anisotropic material damping has been proposed, which was further used in the Finite Element (FE) implementation of transient wave generation, propagation and attenuation that is present in the second part of the reported study. The proposed results can be used at the design of SHM for the composite structures with the structural anisotropy and damping, and for making a reasonable choice of the frequency and amplitude of excitation to provide the desired propagation distance and orientation of generated waves.

This paper investigates the Lamb wave generation by the surface bonded circular piezoelectric (PZT) actuator and wave propagation within the orthotropic Carbon Fiber Reinforced Plastic (CFRP) plate considering the anisotropy of the elastic and damping properties of the materials; existence of the adhesive layer; and dependence of the interfacial stress distribution on the surface between host plate and actuator, on the anisotropy of the plate material, and on the excited frequency, wavelength and plate thickness. This part of our investigation includes FE based study of the shear stress distribution on the interface between circular PZT actuator and surface of orthotropic CFRP plate, and its dependence on the excited wavelength and plate thickness. The anisotropic elastic and damping properties of the plate material, which are used in the implemented finite element (FE) model, have been preliminary determined in the first part of our investigation. We compare the behavior of the wave generation, propagation and attenuation that are studied using this model with the similar dependencies obtained at the simulation of the non-dissipating plate excited by the periodical radially oriented force, which is distributed along the circumference bounding the actuator, i.e. 3D pin-force excitation case. The proposed results can be used at the design of SHM for the composite structures with the structural anisotropy and damping, and at making a reasonable choice of the frequency, type, dimensions and optimum placement of the actuators and sensors.

In this profoundly dialogical exchange, Peter Sellars, theatre director, researcher, and teacher, and Maria Shevtsova open out a whole array of questions on the integral relation between politics and the theatre in its multiple manifestations. These questions not only concern the damages inflicted by the present Covid-19 pandemic but also those developed by the neoliberal economics and politics of the past forty years and more. In Sellars’s view, neoliberalism has been the hotbed of social injustices, inequities, market and other forms of current enslavement, migrations, refugee and related precarities, and the havoc of the world climate in which the plight of humanity and that of the planet are indelibly interconnected. His and Shevtsova’s discussion links such vital concerns with his theatre practice, which ranges from his engagement with local communities and indigenous peoples – he details some of his work with the collective, community organization of two Los Angeles Festivals of the early 1990s – to the various forms of his music theatre in which he collaborates, in institutional structures, with highly proficient musicians, singers and dancers. The focus chosen here from his music theatre is The Indian Queen (2013), which Sellars dramaturgically invents using pieces by Henry Purcell combined with prose fragments by Nicaraguan novelist Rosario Aguilar. Peter Sellars is an internationally renowned theatre director among whose more recent productions is Mozart’s Idomeneo, premiered at the Salzburg Festival in 2019. Maria Shevtsova, Professor of Drama and Theatre Arts at Goldsmiths, University of London, is editor of New Theatre Quarterly. This conversation took place on 16 August 2020, was transcribed from the recording by Kunsang Kelden, and was edited by Maria Shevtsova.

This paper addresses investigation of guided-wave excitation by angle-beam wedge piezoelectric (PZT) transducers in multilayered composite plate structure with orthotropic symmetry of the material. The aim of the present study is to determine the capability of such actuators to provide the controlled generation of an acoustic wave of a desirable type with the necessary wavelength, propagation distance and directivity. The studied CFRP (Carbon Fiber Reinforced Plastic) panel is considered to be homogenous, with effective elastic moduli and anisotropic structural damping, whose parameters were determined experimentally. According to the results of dispersion analysis and taking into account the data of wave attenuation in a highly damping CFRP composite, the two types of propagating waves A0 and S0 were considered theoretically and experimentally in the frequency range of 10&ndash, 100 kHz. Using the results of a previous study, we reconstructed the structure of the wedge actuator, to develop its finite-element (FE) model, and a modal analysis was carried out that revealed the most intense natural vibration modes and their eigenfrequencies within the frequency range used. Both experimental and numerical studies of the generation, propagation, directivity and attenuation of waves in the orthotropic composite panel under study revealed the influence of the angular orientation of the actuator on the formation of wave patterns and allowed to determine the capabilities of the wave&rsquo, s directivity control.

The 2017 Golden Mask and National Theatre Award and Festival in Moscow offered, as it usually does, a wide range of large- and small-scale theatre, musical theatre, opera, ballet, contemporary dance, and puppetry – a month and more of intensive activity that keeps its annually changing jury on its toes. Maria Shevtsova provides an overview of the Russian Case: a concentration of productions for foreign producers and critics that reflects quite accurately the Golden Mask's complete spoken theatre selection (as distinct from other forms of theatre such as dance). She observes that a cluster of productions refers to rebellions and revolutions that preceded the 1917 October Revolution, though none deals directly with that event. Remaining works allude in various ways to more recent Russian and global history, showing how its makers are sensitive to a past that filters through the more than troubling present. Maria Shevtsova, Professor at Goldsmiths, University of London, is co-editor of New Theatre Quarterly.

The paper aims to develop improved acoustic-based structural health monitoring (SHM) and nondestructive evaluation (NDE) techniques, which provide the waves directivity emitted by the angle beam wedge actuators in thin-walled structures made of plastic materials and polymeric composites. Our investigation includes the dispersive analysis of the waves that can be excited in the studied plastic panel. Its results allowed to find two kinds of generated acoustic waves&mdash, anti-symmetric Lamb waves (A0) and shear horizontally polarized SH waves (SS0). The bounds of the chosen frequency range for the experimental and numerical studies were accepted as a compromise between the desire to obtain a high defect resolution by generating short waves, their adjustable directivity, and maximum propagation length. The finite element model for the transducer was built by using the results of an actuator structure experimental study. The frequency response functions for the actuator current and oscillation amplitude of the footprint surface demonstrated good agreement. The found eigenfrequencies of the actuator&rsquo, s structure were used for the numerical and experimental study of the Lamb and SH wave generation and propagation in a thin-walled plastic panel. Our results convincingly demonstrated the satisfactory directivity of the actuated waves at their excitation on the frequencies that corresponded to the natural modes of the actuator oscillation. The authors assume that an efficient use of the proposed technique for other analyzed quasi-isotropic materials and applied actuators can be provided by preliminary research using a similar approach and methods presented in this article.

This study presents some results of the experimental and numerical investigations on the generation of Lamb waves using a piezoelectric angle beam actuator with wedge. The experiments were carried out on isotropic plastic panel. Experimental study was performed using the Olympus V414-SB angle beam transducer. For the numerical part of the current research, the finite element models were developed and analyzed. A preliminary calculated dispersion curves for studied material allowed to identify the types of waves generated in the plate under consideration. The complex dependencies of the generated wave’s directivity on the excitation frequency were established. The obtained results allow the purposeful use of angle beam transducers, providing a large scanning index.This study presents some results of the experimental and numerical investigations on the generation of Lamb waves using a piezoelectric angle beam actuator with wedge. The experiments were carried out on isotropic plastic panel. Experimental study was performed using the Olympus V414-SB angle beam transducer. For the numerical part of the current research, the finite element models were developed and analyzed. A preliminary calculated dispersion curves for studied material allowed to identify the types of waves generated in the plate under consideration. The complex dependencies of the generated wave’s directivity on the excitation frequency were established. The obtained results allow the purposeful use of angle beam transducers, providing a large scanning index.

The article investigates the Lamb wave generation by the bonded piezoelectric (PZT) actuator and its travel within the orthotropic Carbon Fiber Reinforced Plastic (CFRP) plate. We consider the anisotropy of the plate elastic and damping properties, existence of the adhesive layer and dependence of the interfacial stress distribution on the surface between host plate and actuator on the anisotropy of the plate’s material, on the excited frequency, wavelength and plate’s thickness. Our investigation includes experimental determination of the elastic properties of CFRP, the wave attenuation, on the base of which the models of anisotropic material damping and the Finite Element (FE) implementation of transient wave generation, propagation and attenuation have been proposed. The proposed results can be used at the design of Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) for the composite structures with the structural anisotropy and damping, to make a reasonable choice of the frequency, type, dimensions and optimum placement of the actuators and sensors.

What political theatre may be in contemporary times and in what sense it is ‘political’ are the core issues of this article. Maria Shevtsova discusses examples from within a restricted period, 2007 to 2014, but from a wide area that begins in Eastern Europe – Russia, Romania, Hungary, Poland – and moves to Germany and France. Her examples are principally productions by established ensemble theatre companies and her analysis is framed by a brief discussion concerning independent theatres, ‘counter-cultural’ positions, and institutional and institutionalized theatres. This latter group is in focus to indicate how political theatre in the seven years specified has been far from alien to, or sidelined from, national theatres, state theatres, or other prestigious companies in receipt of state subsidy. Two main profiles of recent political theatre emerge from this research, one that acknowledges political history, while the other critiques neoliberal capitalism; there is some unpronounced overlap between the two. Productions of Shakespeare feature significantly in the delineated theatrescape. Maria Shevtsova is co-editor of New Theatre Quarterly and Professor of Drama and Theatre Arts at Goldsmiths, University of London. Her most recent book (co-authored) is The Cambridge Introduction to Theatre Directing (2013).

One of the most important theatre festivals in Russia, the Baltic House Theatre Festival has a well-defined focus, as its name suggests. During the twenty-five years of its existence, it has showcased and in other ways nurtured and encouraged some of the greatest talents – actors, directors, designers – of the Baltic region. It has invited such leading directors as Eimuntas Nekrosius to prepare and rehearse works in its theatre – in the case of Boris Godunov in 2015, performed by the National Theatre of Vilnius. The Festival has also financed co-productions, to extend the reach of its own theatre and develop young audiences, inviting, for example, Luk Perceval and Silviu Purcarete to mount Macbeth (2014) and A Midsummer Night's Dream (2015), respectively, with the Baltic House company. Maria Shevtsova is co-editor of New Theatre Quarterly and Professor of Drama and Theatre Arts at Goldsmiths, University of London

In this article, three different models simulating the wave propagation in an infinite isotropic structure are compared. The first semi-analytical model is based on the Fourier transform and Galerkin method for the calculation of the occurring contact stresses, when the function of displacements in the contact area is specified. The wave fields excited by this model are compared to the results calculated for a finite element (FE) model of an isotropic layer during the steady-state analysis. The structure is loaded by the given displacements in the contact zone. According to the third approach, the effect of the actuator is approximated by a pin-force model. This problem is simulated using the FE formulation as well. In both FE models, the infinite boundary conditions are simulated using the perfectly matched layers (PML). The efficiency of the presented approaches is assessed by comparing the obtained results.

The Golden Mask and National Theatre Award and Festival, founded in Moscow in 1994, has showcased some of the most exciting theatre to be found across Russia’s vast territories: ‘theatre’ including opera, ballet, contemporary dance, puppetry, and newer forms that have taken root with changing artistic practices. Maria Shevtsova’s brief overview of the 2015 Russian Case, a selection for foreign producers and critics, prominently features ‘new drama’, not least because of the difficulties recently imposed on Teatr.doc, a founding player within this powerful movement. Major young directors appear here, with crossover to their work as represented in past editions of the Russian Case, and with reference to current socio-political factors. Reviews of earlier festivals appeared in NTQ 85, 95, and 103. Maria Shevtsova, Professor at Goldsmiths, University of London, is co-editor of New Theatre Quarterly. Her most recent book is the co-authored Cambridge Introduction to Theatre Directing (2013). Her seminal Dodin and the Maly Drama Theatre: Process to Performance (2004) has been translated into Romanian, Korean, and Mandarin and, in 2014, Russian.

In this paper, we formulate the contact problem of an actuator on an isotropic layer. The appropriate integro-differential system of equations is solved for a 2D model. We start with calculating the unknown stresses in the contact area using the Petrov-Galerkin method and proceed with obtaining the wave fields using the integral equation. Finally, we analyse the obtained wave fields in the considered isotropic structure and compare them with the results obtained by means of an engineering approach.

Elizabeth LeCompte and Kate Valk here discuss with Maria Shevtsova The Wooster Group's work with the Royal Shakespeare Company on Troilus and Cressida and the challenges posed for them by this joint venture. The project was initially proposed by Rupert Goold, but was brought to fruition by playwright Mark Ravenhill, his first directing experience. Troilus and Cressida was part of the World Shakespeare Festival, during which all Shakespeare's plays were performed by different companies from countries across the globe. The Festival, four years in the making and spanning eight months, was part of the cultural programme of the Olympic Games held in London in 2012. Troilus and Cressida was first performed at the Swan Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon from 3 to 18 August 2012, and then at the Riverside Studios in London from 24 August to 8 September. This conversation took place at the Riverside Studios on 30 August 2012, and pairs with the discussion of The Wooster Group's Hamlet, the company's first Shakespeare production, published in NTQ 114 (May 2013). Maria Shevtsova holds the Chair in Drama and Theatre Arts at Goldsmiths, University of London and is co-editor of New Theatre Quarterly. Her most recent book is the co-authored Cambridge Introduction to Theatre Directing (2013).

This conversation took place during the Gdansk Festival, 1–10 August 2009, where The Wooster Group performed its internationally acclaimed Hamlet (2006), directed by Elizabeth LeCompte. The conversation, led by Maria Shevtsova and edited by her for publication, was part of the conference organized under the auspices of the Festival by Jerzy Limon, the Festival's director. Here LeCompte and two performers from the company, Kate Valk and Ari Fliakos, discuss how they generated the work, and develop their thoughts in answers to questions from the audience. Later this year The Wooster Group will perform Hamlet on 10–13 August at the Edinburgh International Festival. Maria Shevtsova is the Chair Professor of Drama and Theatre at Goldsmiths, University of London, and Co-Editor of New Theatre Quarterly.

Teatr ZAR has been developing its Gospels of Childhood triptych since 2003, when the company was founded after several years of research in Armenia, Iran, and Georgia. It was in Georgia that ZAR learned polyphonic songs from the Svan oral tradition, which it developed in its unique song theatre. In this article Maria Shevtsova maps the first of a series of expeditions, the latter notably including Greece, Corsica, and Sardinia. She describes how the ancient hymns and chants gathered through direct oral transmission (ZAR's choice of material reflects its interest in the songs of early Christianity) provide the subject matter and the spiritual dimension of the group's performance pieces. The idea of the ‘spiritual’ is here distinguished from the strictly religious/denominational as well as the ritualistic or cultic framings of the word. Details from the triptych show how breath, vibration and energy are the forces of ZAR's sonic compositions in which singing, instrumental music, sound making, and movement are vehicles for experience other than immediate material sensation. Reference is made to ZAR's link to the Grotowski legacy in the song theatre of Poland today. Maria Shevtsova, Chair Professor of Drama and Theatre Arts at Goldsmiths, University of London, wishes to thank the International Research Centre of the Freie Universität Berlin for hosting her research, of which this article is an integral part.

This paper presents some results of finite element (FE) analysis performed for membrane-type piezoceramic transducer for underwater acoustics applications. We studied the miniaturized sensor with perforated holes in the active PZT membrane, intermediate, and protective plates. In this investigation an influence of the polyimide plate viscous damping, the membranes dimensions and the relative area of the perforated holes on the frequency response of sensitivity was studied for the broadening and flattening the operating frequency band. An optimization of these key parameters using the genetic algorithm working with the device’s FE model was demonstrated.

The Craiova International Shakespeare Festival has been a major touchstone in Europe for theatre artists, theatregoers, and scholars for nearly two decades. This overview briefly situates the Festival historically, indicating the ideals and perspectives developed for it by its founder Emil Boroghina, former director of the National Theatre of Craiova. It identifies as well a number of the Festival's many highlights over the years, Romanian as well as international, and focuses on examples from the 2012 programme, including Silviu Purcarte's The Tempest and Robert Wilson's Shakespeare's Sonnets performed by the Berliner Ensemble. Attention is drawn to the presence at the successive editions of the Festival of productions directed by Purcarete, who established his career at the National Theatre of Craiova, to which Boroghina had invited him, and who won international fame after performances of his Ubu Rex with Scenes from Macbeth at the 1991 Edinburgh Festival. Maria Shevtsova holds the Chair in Drama and Theatre Arts at Goldsmiths, University of London, and is co-editor of New Theatre Quarterly.

Report on the seventh year of the Shakespeare Festival held in Gyula in south-eastern Hungary.