Article: Mediating circumstances: Steven Henry Madoff on the festival d'Avignon.(PERFORMANCE)

IT WAS ONLY DURING the brief rendition of a 1977 performance piece by Marina Abramovic, in which five couples sat and slapped each other's faces faster and harder over several minutes, that I began to understand the state of contemporary theater.

I was in Avignon for the annual theater festival, which has been held there each summer since 1947 and remains ground zero for the European theater world. The identity crisis under which theater strains, or so its critics say, was in ample evidence. Audiences booed, cursed, and awarded rapturous ovations for the twenty-three works presented, with opinions as diverse as the theatrical styles on view. And where breadth was ...

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