ABSTRACT
Sharing the Caribbean island of Santo Domingo (Hispaniola) with the French-speaking country of Haiti, the Dominican Republic is an independent Spanish-speaking country of 7.5 million people (1992), covering 48,700 square kilometres (18,100 square miles). An appreciation of this geographic situation is important since the unstable history of the country, its location between Puerto Rico and Cuba, and its similarities and differences with Haiti in terms of politics, language and culture are all closely related to the development of its long theatre history.
