IN ARTES PLASTICAS, one of the government cultural magazines spawned by the Castro revolution, Manuel Diaz Martinez writes that “the artist must learn to help purify the revolutionary conscience of our Latin American brothers without ceasing to be an artist, without submerging his art in politics.” These words — surely contradictory — bare the dilemma of culture in Cuba today. Like all other revolutions, the Cuban upheaval of social and political institutions has stimulated a companion effort to uproot cultural institutions and nourish new and vital theatre, music, art, movies and writing. But this new culture can also wither under the upheaval’s propaganda demands. In Castro’s Cuba, no one doubts that cultural life today is busy, almost frenzied, but no one can be sure it is vital. Havana offers abundant evidence of activity: commercial and government playhouses show a varied theatrical fare. Foreign ballet and musical troupes, some of the world’s best, visit the city often; seats are available for the government admission price of 25c...

MEXICO CITY’S Concordia, a restaurant doubling as a playhouse, introduced me to Mexican theatre. As I approached the place, several young people were milling about on the street in front, including a huge ruffian with a black eye. Spotting him, I thought that excursions to the Mexican stage were perhaps not for me. But, suddenly, he pushed open the door and jumped into the restaurant, the others rushing after him. My ruffian and his friends were actors waiting for their cues during the evening’s first performance of Las cosas simples (The Simple Things), a play by a twenty-seven-year-old Mexican, Hector Mendoza. Inside, watching the second performance, I discovered that mistaking actors for spectators was part of the production’s charm. The play was about life in a diner near a college, and the Concordia looked just like that. The actors performed around a luncheon counter and five tables in front, while the audience munched their supper and followed the play from the other twenty-five tables. At times the actors moved into the audience to borrow a napkin or ask for a match — on one occasion, to kiss a bald patron on the head. The Concordia and Las cosas simples, which evoked a Saroyanesque atmosphere, are not entirely typical of Mexican theatre, but they offered a promise that the Mexican stage bristled with vitality. Several weeks of theatre-going have fulfilled that promise...

“NOBODY outside of New Orleans gives a hoot about Ewing Poteet,” claims Ewing Poteet, a smiling, rumpled ex-fiddler, as he goes about his business of trying to whirl the excitement of theatre into the heart of New Orleans. He plies one of the odd American trades. About 1,500 miles from Broadway, Poteet, drama critic for the New Orleans Item, covers the waterfront of theatre — the amateur clubs, the touring companies, the college shows. He covers the stuff few give a hoot about. No one seems to care if Poteet dulls or excites taste for theatre. No one cares if he is foolish or brilliant, if he upholds theatre or sneers at it, if he knows how to write. Yet most Americans turn to writers like Poteet when they want news and comment about theatre. At least 140,000,000 Americans do not read Brooks Atkinson every morning. The words of the New York Times drama critic or his Broadway colleagues make no impression on millions who, by harsh chance, live outside metropolitan New York. The forty-four-year-old Poteet, in his seventh year as Item critic, is more than just his newspaper’s theatre man. Most non-New York critics are the drama-music-movie-radio-television-nightclub-book-phonograph-art editors of their outfits. While Poteet does not dabble in all these beats, he does have an added chore: he spends half his journalistic hours covering the civil courts of New Orleans...

Staged at New Orleans - Brilliant acting by Maureen Stapleton and the music of a young Italian last night put life into two aging plays of Tennessee Williams. The Pulitzer prize-winning playwright watched his "27 Wagons Full of Cotton" and an English opera by 32-year-old Rafaello de Banfield in a world premiere here. The opera, "Lord Byron's Love Letter," is based on the Williams play. Both plays were published 10 years ago. The moods of the two works do not blend. "27 Wagons Full of Cotton" is coarse and comic, while the opera is poetic and almost fragile. But both are good theater, and there is no difficulty in enjoying their separate emotions. Miss Stapleton is exciting as the soft, giggling wife a Mississippi cotton gin owner unknowingly trades for burning down a big plantation gin. She moves deftly between scenes of pain and laughter...

A play and an opera mixed in a world premiere Monday night to produce an odd but exciting evening with Tennessee Williams. With the help of New Orleans talent, a Broadway cast presented Williams' "27 Wagons Full of Cotton" and an opera by Raffaello de Banfield was based on another short play by Williams, "Lord Byron's Love Letters." In their different ways, the play and opera have similar stories to tell. Both are concerned with people who hold to the past. In "27 Wagons Full of Cotton," a small cotton gin owner in the Delta area of Northeast Mississippi tried to keep his place by burning down the Syndicate Plantation's big gin. The action of "Lord Byron's Love Letters," is the New Orleans French Quarter of the late 19th Century. An old woman lived in the memory of her love affair with Lord Byron, when she was 16. Moods of the works, however, are not the same. The play is coarse and comic, while the opera has poetic sweetness...

Fresh New Orleans talent tonight, will help Tennessee Williams roll his aging "27 Wagons Full of Cotton" towards Broadway. The one-act play, published ten years ago, will join an opera by young Italian composer Raffaello de Banfield in a double world premiere here. Written in English, the opera is based on another early play of Williams, "Lord Byron's Love Letter." Unlike most professional shows, this one wants to grab more than applause and money from the city that starts its pre-Broadway tour. "We want these shows, despite the talent we bring in, to represent a community effort," says James S. Elliott of New York, the premiere's 29-year-old producer. Under an arrangement with Tulane University, Elliott has sliced expenses for the two-week run. Tulane and its Newcomb College for women will hand him without charge, theater, set designer, choreographers, musical director, lighting, costumes and stage crew. In exchange, Elliott promised to set up a Tennessee Williams writing scholarship at Tulane from the proceeds...

A young Broadway producer will save $70,000 tomorrow night by opening a Tennessee Williams play and an opera in New Orleans. With the help of Tulane University, 29-year-old James S. Elliott will present the world premiere of Williams' "27 Wagons Full of Cotton" and an opera by Italian composer Raffaello De Banfield. The opera, written in English, is based on another play of Williams, "Lord Byron's Love Letter." Usually a Broadway producer who wants an out-of-town tryout takes the complete show to Boston, Philadelphia or New Haven, Conn. Elliott, however, has taken an incomplete show to New Orleans and completed it with the city's theatrical talents. The producer picked New Orleans because Williams calls it home, the city's French quarter holds the action of "Lord Byron's Love Letter," and the scene of "27 Wagons of Cotton" is nearby Mississippi. Elliott's plans excited Tulane's drama department into offering free services and his own Broadway cast into approving salary cuts...

THE ENTERTAINMENT EDITOR OF A large metropolitan daily works in so special a field only students too foolish or confident or romantic to be deterred by reality can set out for the job. Even if they dare, students have little to go on. Where do entertainment editors come from? How do they get their jobs? What do they do? Recently while preparing an article more concerned with theater than journalism, I tried to find out something about these men. Questionnaires were sent to entertainment editors on the newspapers of the 24 largest cities next to New York, whose critics were ignored because enough has been written about them and their special function. Cities smaller than San Antonio, Texas, also were eliminated, for their entertainment writers, when they have any, find little theater to worry about. Twenty-one answered...