ABSTRACT
This book looks as though it sets out to tell the story of theatre in Europe during thirty years. But that already poses questions. There ma y be more than one story; there is more than one wa y of telling. Each of the chapters shows different angles and implies the possibility of a different method. That diversity is deliberate, although it is also in a way fortuitous. A second question: why this period? Again the answer is slightly different depending on the location, although in a general sense it can be said that the period starts after an era of post-war reconstruction or recovery; and there have been important shifts in the way almost all aspects of theatre, from finance to actor-training, have been viewed. It is aperiod in which censorship is abandoned in several countries, in which the outburst of political and personal awareness of the 1960s occurs, and in which Europe experiences a variety of political swings. It also ends, fortuitously but appropriately, with a 'year of revolutions' in Eastern Europe which will make the situation significantly different in the future (particularly, no doubt, in Germany and Poland). Economic and political alliances in Europe (EEC, NATO) are already having to adjust to these events, and where these political 'theatres' are required to change, it will not be long before the artistic equivalents reHect the process.
