The Foundation's program of support for the creative and performing arts, now over fifteen years old, has two main objectives. One is the development of professionals in music, theater, dance, architecture, literature, and the visual arts. The other is strengthening and improving professional groups and institutions that can serve as outlets for artists' careers.

Toward these objectives the Foundation's Division of Humanities and the Arts makes grants and administers projects of four types:

• experiments and demonstrations of new artistic approaches. Among organizations that received support during 1973 for such activities was an improvisational theater troupe whose actors not only interact among themselves but also involve the audience as players in the performance.

• the training of young people, with special emphasis on blacks and other minorities—this year, for example, a museum preparator training program in Washington's Anacostia Museum.

• assistance in the preservation of artistic crafts and traditions, such as a project to research, compile, and publish the many methods of musical notation.

• help to strengthen professional groups and organizations in both the performing and visual arts. Besides providing operating support to selected companies, the Foundation continued for a third year a program of cash reserve grants; the program aims to help stabilize the financial position of professional theater, dance, and opera companies.

Support for humanistic scholarship is given largely at the postdoctoral level and channeled through the American Council of Learned Societies. The Foundation granted ACLS $3.2 million supplementary support through 1982 for postdoctoral fellowships, bringing the total since 1956 to $18.5 million.

EXPERIMENTS AND DEMONSTRATIONS

The Foundation's work in the theater has focused on leading resident repertory theater, off-off-Broadway groups, and other organizations that show promise of forging new directions in experimental productions and acting styles. For example, the International Centre of Theatre Research received continued support in 1973 for its experimental theater training program. Under British director Peter Brook, the center involves actors from Europe, Asia, Africa, and the United States in workshops at its headquarters in Paris and in public demonstrations of its research, including the widely publicized Orghast I and Orghast II, using a specially created language. Having performed in Iran and Africa in 1971 and 1972, the group gave demonstrations in the United States this year in places ranging from E1 Teatro Campesino in California to the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

A group of American actors and actresses being trained in Britain received support for an experiment that combined British and American methods of Shakespearean performance. According to many drama critics, British and American actors and actresses have distinct styles of presentation; each group brings to its particular rendition of Shakespeare special qualities that elude the other. Under the direction of the British actress Tina Packer, fifteen American actors and actresses worked first at Stratford, England, then at the O'Neill Center in Connecticut, where they performed two Shakespearean plays, and finally at New York City's Performing Garage. Five noted British drama teachers participated.

In an effort to enable symphony orchestras to give their players more varied experiences with repertoire, the Foundation granted $50,000 to the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra. The funds will partially support two seasons of an experimental chamber music series. By enabling the orchestra's members to play in small groups with noted solo artists, the series gives musicians more professional opportunities and offers St. Louis audiences new musical experiences.

Several efforts to integrate the arts into the affective and perceptive experiences of young children were supported. Among them was the Roberson Memorial Center's project to demonstrate how television can be used to develop children's aesthetic sensitivity. The experiment involves research,