Der Zuschauer

Sirs, Kameradinnen, Fellow Felt-Hat Makers, playgoers, play readers, we shall have none of this peer review shite; we are not an academic journal. You will never find articles on the body, the other, gender, or queering in this journal, except in an irreverent way. We will avoid neologisms, kowtow bolshie scaffolding, and offer instead a collection of cogent, lucid remarks, essays and reportage on drama, history, and literature. We will spare you performativity, semiotics, and Derridada. We will remind you that the term “avant-garde” is a badge of shame in the 20th century and looks no better in the 21st: rubbish, windfucking (see George Chapman), and bellywash. We like plays. We think the drama the most capable, concise, and exciting art form. We salute its brevity, intensity, and its exploration of the emotional depth of ideas. We gladly admit that we read. We like to read plays, and yes, often, especially in America, we would rather read plays since so many American theatrical productions are boring, incompotent, hectoring trash. We detest the shameless self-promotion of bad theatre companies, brain-dead zombie artistic administrators, and semi-literate wunderkind mise-en-scénistes, and/or auteur-director wankers. We will tell you stories, some of which will be true. We like Die Fackel, Wiliam Hazlitt, and G. E. Lessing. We do not think his hamburger book is boring. Read it with beer, mustard, and sharp, sour gherkins. Running Features will include play suggestions, programming ideas, etc., for the blank-minded artistic directorships in America. We will round about on TCG and American Theatre magazine as often as seems necessary. Robert Brustein may see himself on a critical Mount Rushmore; we find him petulant, peevish, and preening, decades of which can be trying; all honor to his labors in favor of an intelligent, literate theatre. Eric Bentley is the true dean of American drama critics, in despite of English birth and an ability to read foreign languages. We will continue a critique and reassment of the current Fab-Playwrights. We will offer neither vagina monologues nor Schwanzwitzen. Based as we are, in an abandoned air-hanger on the island of Guam, we hope to keep you informed, if not up to date. We may digress, Dear Reader; we occassionally swear. So, in closing: Enter Autolycus being chased by a bear.

Valentin Ludwig Fey
George Henry Lewes
Christian Dietrich Grabbe
Aaron Hill
Friedrich Maximilian Klinger
John Dennis

Editors, Der Zuschauer. Some postings will be attributed, most not. All editorial material is copyright by the authors and/or Guam Battalions, Intellectual and Various, 2008.

For further commentary on Trotsky in Ulan Blator, and Mongolian Cultural History, please see the page, Grabbe, Here.