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In the first part of this series, published in NTQ17. Maria Shevtsova discussed the misconceptions and misplacements of emphases which have pervaded sociological approaches to theatre, and proposed her own methodology of study. In Part Two, published in NTQ18. she examined in fuller detail two aspects of her taxonomy which had an existing sociological literature—looking first at dramatic theory, as perceived by its sociological interpreters, and then considering approaches to dramatic texts and genres. From the assessment of the relatively new discipline of theatre anthropology which concluded Part Two. she now turns to examine sociological approaches to the act of performance itself, analyzing in particular the various attempts by semioticians to provide an appropriately comprehensive vocabulary for its description, and measuring these against the pioneering work of Mikhail Bakhtin. She concludes her study with some practical examples of productions which illuminate the sociology of performance. Maria Shevtsova trained in Paris before spending three years at the University of Connecticut. She has previously contributed toModern Drama, Theatre International, andTheatre Papers, as well as to the originalTheatre Quarterlyand other journals.

Although many disciplines have helpfully (and a few less helpfully) interacted with theatre studies over the past decade, progress has been notably slow in the discovery of a dialogue with sociology. Indeed, such progress as has been made has too often, argues Maria Shevtsova. resulted in perceptions and emphases which are not always sympathetic (or seemingly even relevant) to the interests of theatre workers. In this, the first of a three-part introduction to the sociology of theatre, Maria Shevtsova combines an objective analysis of progress to date with a study of the problems and misconceptions encountered along the way, and also proposes a possible methodology for correcting the present imbalance. In future instalments, she will look in particular at the ways in which theatre anthropology and theatre semiotics have helped and hindered this problematic relationship. Now teaching in the Department of French Studies at the University of Sydney, Maria Shevtsova trained in Paris before spending three years at the University of Connecticut. She has previously contributed to Modern Drama, Theatre International, and Theatre Papers, as well as to the original Theatre Quarterly and other journals.

Space, as Einstein has taught us, has no limits, and time is relative to where you are moving and the speed of light. Our millenium, then, is only a speck in eternal space. It is, nevertheless, a point relative to which we are positioned and on which we place a limit—a date—so that our actions may be chronicled, measured, and brought to some sort of completion, thus releasing us from living forever in the present. Yet, notwithstanding our ability to construct, contain and count time, somewhere someone has made a slip, for there is a ‘glitch’ in the system that still prevents millions of computers from recognizing the year 2000, by which devilry we are sent back to less than zero, to zero twice, 00. This error may well have disastrous consequences, although it would be preferable not have any of them happen—hospital operations failing, aeroplanes losing their bearings and going down in apocalyptic spectacles that are considered appropriate for a millenial ending. is as if this error might be interpreted as a token of what Jean Baudrillard, in a different context that has nothing to do with computers, sardonically suggests may be our desire to wipe out history, even, perhaps, to start again from scratch. Baudrillard's is, of course, one of multiple theses on the ‘end of history’ and millenial nothingness that have emerged, not least via the theatre, with the approach of the twenty-first century.