Bitef

relationships? We are trying to use the theatre to make visible the human situation at a time when 'things could be different.’ But only some of the work and thought is in social terms. Much of the work is abstract and nonliterai. When we begin on a new form or idea, we have no way of knowing if it will result in anything visible or lend any clarity. Often it doesn’t. When you take a job in the theatre, you must become the size and shape of that job. At the Open Theatre we have the feeling that this is not enough. It is not possible to make discoveries under the pressure to please, to gain audiences and money. Only in a climate where people are listening to their own drumbeats can it be possible. It is then necessary to close off this impulse to 'make it’ in order to open oneself to other voices. The structure and emphasis of attention of the Open Theatre is always changing. I have no idea what will happen in the future.

the new establishment? (joseph chaikin)

In the Open Theatre, it’s not so wery important to be immediately useful; it's more of a research and a laboratory. Julian Beck said that an actor has to be like Columbus; he has to go out and discover something,

and come back and report on what he discovers. Voyages have to be taken, but there has to be a place to come back to and the place has to be different from the established theatre. This place is not likely to be a business place. Everyone who's in theatre should also have someplace to which he's devoted where he doesn’t get any money, where he doesn’t get any credit necessarily, where he doesn’t get anything, but where he can do the kind of work which he has an impulse to do —because it seems to me that the structure of the established theatre does not afford the license to do that kind of research. The Open Theatre in it a number of actors and some very original aud fine playwrights. It has directors; it has two critics. The function of the critic in the Open Theatre is to work in the theatre not as one who stands aside and says this is good or bad after it's been done, but as one trying to build ideas and develop them.