THEATRE

   Sf literature and theatre have much in common, as both rely heavily on the audience's imagination, yet the two forms have rarely been combined in a significant dramatic work. The principal reason seems to be a widely held assumption that the theatre, with its physical limitations, cannot plausibly present the fantastic vistas which sf writers envision. "Writing an sf play is a bit like trying to picture infinity in a cigar box," Roger ELWOOD declared in his introduction to Six Science Fiction Plays (anth1976), the only such anthology in existence. Thus, though more than 300 sf dramas have been catalogued, the history of theatrical sf is largely that of various playwrights influenced by the genre, but with no commitment to it. (The parenthetical references given in this article are to cities and years of premieres; only when no such date is known is the earliest publication date used.)Although some scholars detect speculative elements in the plays of Aristophanes and even Shakespeare's The Tempest, the earliest dramas with sf premises were adaptations. Richard Brinsley Peake's Presumption, or The Fate of Frankenstein (London, 1823) began ahistory of more than 100 plays inspired by Mary SHELLEY's novel Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus (1818; rev 1831). Adaptations ofStrange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) appeared almost immediately after Robert Louis STEVENSON's novel was published. Jacques Offenbach's opera Les contes d'Hoffman ("Tales of Hoffman") (Paris, 1881), based on stories by E.T.A. HOFFMANN, includes an episode based on "The Sandman", in which a poet falls in love with a scientist's mechanical doll.The first significant original plays appeared in the 1920s and 1930s. Karel CAPEK's R.U.R., in which an army of rebellious ANDROIDS destroys the human race,introduced the Czech word ROBOT to our language, and enjoyed successful runs in New York and London after its 1921 premiere in Prague. (Capek wrote 2 other plays with sf themes.) New York's Theatre Guild premiered the first play to deal with EVOLUTION, George Bernard SHAW's Back to Methuselah (1922), and the first atomic-weapons play, Wings Over Europe(1928) by Robert NICHOLS and Maurice Browne. Russian satirists Vladimir MAYAKOVSKY (The Bedbug, Moscow, 1929; The Bathhouse, Moscow, 1930) and Mikhail BULGAKOV (Bliss, 1934; Ivan Vasilievich, 1935-6) used TIME TRAVEL to expose the foibles of the Soviet bureaucracy.Through the 1950s many other famous writers produced full-length sf-related dramas of varying quality, some of them never staged. Arthur KOESTLER's dark comedy Twilight Bar (Paris, 1946) features 2 ALIENS who threaten to destroy Earth unlessthe inhabitants of a small island achieve happiness within 3 days. J.B. PRIESTLEY (Summer Day's Dream, London, 1949) and Upton SINCLAIR (A Giant'sStrength, Claremont, California, 1948; The Enemy Had it Too, 1950) were among the many playwrights to speculate on the consequences of nuclear WAR in the post-Hiroshima period. Elias Canetti (1905-) wrote 2 plays in which societies strive towards UTOPIA: by numbering all citizens according to their predicted death dates (Die Befristeten, Oxford, 1956; trans as The Numbered; vt Life-Terms), or by banishing mirrors and other tools ofvanity (Komodie der Eitelkeit, written 1934; 1950 Germany; trans as Comedy of Vanity). Egypt's Tawfik al- HAKIM sent 2 convicted killers into space in search of a second chance in Voyage to Tomorrow (1950). Gore VIDAL's play Visit to a Small Planet (1956; 1960), filmed in 1960, is claimed as one of the most successful sf plays ever staged.Since the 1950s various writers have adapted sf narratives for the theatre, but their results have seldom been satisfactory. An exception is Ray BRADBURY, who relied on simple staging techniques to dramatize 3 of his short stories in The World of Ray Bradbury (Los Angeles, 1964; New York, 1965) and THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES (Los Angeles, 1977). Other sf classics to be adapted haveincluded H.G. WELLS's THE WAR OF THE WORLDS (1898; Brainerd Duffield, 1955; Albert Reyes, 1977), John HERSEY's The Child Buyer (1960; PaulShyre, 1962), Aldous HUXLEY's BRAVE NEW WORLD (1932; David Rogers, 1970), George ORWELL's NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR (1949; Pavel KOHOUT, 1984) and Walter M. MILLER's A CANTICLE FOR LEIBOWITZ (1960; Richard Felnagle, 1986).The most noteworthy sf dramas since the 1960s have been those by professional playwrights employing familiar sf premises or iconography for non-sf purposes. Antonio Buero Vallejo explored the sociological effects of the Spanish Civil War through the eyes of two scholars from the future in Eltragaluz (Madrid, 1967; trans as The Basement Window). Sam Shepard's "The Unseen Hand" (New York, 1969) features an alien fugitive who seeks the aidof 3 Old West outlaws, while his The Tooth of Crime (London, 1972) posits a society ruled by rock'n'roll stars. David Rudkin's The Sons of Light (London, 1977) pits a pastor's sons against an evil scientist who has usedmyth and brainwashing techniques to create a subterranean slave army. In Eric Overmeyer's Native Speech (Los Angeles, 1983) the monologues of adisc jockey influence events in a devastated urban world; in Overmeyer's On the Verge (Baltimore, 1985) words propel 3 19th-century lady explorerson a journey through time.Sf has also influenced performance art. In The Games (West Berlin, 1983) by Meredith Monk and Ping Chong a future societyattempts to preserve its past through Olympic-style rituals. 1000 Airplanes on the Roof (Vienna, 1988), a multimedia collaboration byplaywright David Henry Hwang, composer Philip Glass (MUSIC) and designer Jerome Sirlin, is a single-character narrative about a psychologicalencounter with aliens.A few playwrights have combined comedy with sf to reflect modern social problems. Alan Spence's Space Invaders (Edinburgh, 1983) and Constance Congdon's Tales of the Lost Formicans (Woodstock, NewYork, 1988) use the alien-encounter premise as a metaphor for the plight of the individual in a confused world. Alan Ayckbourn employs a mechanical nanny to explore a similar theme in Henceforward . . . (Scarborough, 1987).Despite the failure of the Broadway musical Via Galactica (GaltMacDermot, Christopher Gore, Judith Ross, 1972), sf spectaculars have appeared frequently since the early 1970s. A more successful musical was Bob Carlton's Return to the Forbidden Planet (Blackheath, England, 1983),a 1990 hit in London, which covers much the same ground as FORBIDDEN PLANET (1956) with great good humour and a lot of mainly 1960s rock'n'rollsongs. (For further discussion of sf musical dramas and opera see MUSIC.) A cult favourite in the USA was Warp! (Chicago, 1971-2; New York, 1973), acomic trilogy by Stuart Gordon and Lenny Kleinfeld. Its counterpart in England, Ken Campbell's and Chris Langham's Illuminatus! (Liverpool, 1976;London, 1977), was a 5-play epic based on the trilogy by Robert SHEA and Robert Anton WILSON, and was followed by Neil ORAM's 10-part play sequence The Warp (1979), also dir Ken Campbell. These productions employed a variety of modern theatrical techniques to create convincingly fantastic worlds on the stage.

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