The ‘Generation of 1870’ produced some of Portugal's best writers. In the theatre, two plays effectively broke the mould of playwriting and ended an era of overly moralistic and simplistic drama. The two plays could not have been more different: Os Lazaristas was a virulent attack on the Church while Viagem à roda da Parvónia was a satire on the middle class.

Strife, arguably John Galsworthy's best play, can most fruitfully be studied from four different perspectives: theatre history, textual history, dramatic analysis, and critical reception.

Given the omnipresence of performers of all political stripes speaking for a variety of causes and candidates, it is difficult to remember a time when artist-activists were not an integral part of America's theatrical landscape. Indeed, under David Douglass's leadership, the American Company (formerly the Hallam Company) assuaged Puritan fears about the presence of ‘theatricals’ in staid eighteenth-century New England by performing benefits for local causes, thereby injecting its work with a social purpose. Throughout its history the American theatre has used performance as a propaganda weapon for such causes as abolition (Uncle Tom's Cabin, 1852), temperance (Ten Nights in a Bar Room, 1858), civil rights (A Raisin in the Sun, 1959), and currently the AIDS crisis (Angels in America, 1993). Political activism in the American theatre flourished in the 1930s, largely through the work and ideology of such enterprises as the Group Theatre, the Theatre Union, even the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, and similar left-wing movements that sought to produce plays that deal boldly with deep-going social conflicts, the economic, emotional, and cultural problems that confront the majority of people. The mission was realized mostly through traditional theatre means, i.e. plays or agit-prop dramas à la Federal Theatre Project's Living Newspapers. These have been chronicled in a number of useful surveys, most notably Gerald Rabkin's Drama and Commitment (1964), Sam Smiley's The Drama of Attack (1972), and especially Malcolm Goldstein's detailed look at the 1930s radical theatre, The Political Stage (1974).

It is an hysterical and unpleasant affair and would have no chance of being produced here it if had been written by an Englishman. To some soi-disant ‘intellectuals’ anything foreign is good. (Lord Chamberlain's Report on Toller's Mass Man, 1924)

A play, a film; one author, one dénouement: the die is cast, there is nothing more to be done. Huis clos (No Exit) ends with Garcin's disillusioned surrender: ‘Eh bien, continuons.’ In Les Jeux sont faits (The Chips are down) ‘lentement [les bras des deux protagonistes] retombent, ils se détournent et ils s'en vont, chacun de son côté’. Against all odds, Garcin, Inès, Estelle — in the play —, Pierre and Ève — in the film — fight in vain for a new life, only to capitulate when their failure becomes evident.

Ma Pei is the protagonist in Blood-Stained Hands (Xie shou ji), adapted from Macbeth by the Shanghai Kunju Troupe (Shanghai Kunju Tuan). This production was first presented at China's first Shakespeare Festival in the spring of 1986, and came to Britain for the 1987 Edinburgh Festival and subsequently went on tour, to great acclaim, to Manchester, Birmingham, Cardiff and London. Its significance is marked not only by a fusion of Shakespearian characterization into stock Kunju character types, but also by its forcing changes on the Kunju stage.