A Cumberland County man claiming to be a mixed martial arts fighter allegedly struggled with deputies over the weekend sending one of them to a hospital with arm injuries the York County Sheriff's Office filed charges alleging Tyler James Schlusser fought with five deputies after he was arrested on a DUI charge in Carroll Township Schlusser said he was an MMA fighter and fought and spit on multiple deputies while he was in custody at the county's central booking unit early Saturday morning of the 500 block of East Street in Carlisle is charged with five counts of felony aggravated harassment by prisoner charges one count of aggravated assault and a summary harassment charge More: Springettsbury Twp. woman accused of fighting cops More: Man accused in armed Codorus Twp. Rutter's robbery Incident: Carroll Township Police brought Schlusser to central booking about 3 a.m. so he could be processed on a DUI charge, court documents state. About 4:45 a.m., a deputy removed Schlusser from a holding cell to use the phone to make a call for a ride, officials said. He became "extremely agitated," that he could not use his own cell phone, so he began to shout profanities at four deputies, court documents state. Authorities said the deputies tried to escort him back to his holding cell, but he began resisting and held on to a door frame until they were able to get him into the cell. A deputy tried to remove Schlusser's cuff through a cuff port in his cell door, but Schlusser pulled away and continued to shout profanities, charging documents state. Deputies arrived: A corporal arrived and told Schlusser to put his hands out so his cuffs could be removed, and he then told them he was an MMA fighter before telling them to get the cuffs, officials said. Four deputies entered the cell to take the cuffs from Schlusser, but he began resisting, documents state. A fifth deputy arrived with an emergency restraint chair to help. While they were struggling to get control of Schlusser, he spit on three deputies while his lip was bleeding, according to charging documents. He also grabbed a deputy's wrist and attempted to twist it in a "breaking motion," officials said. Another deputy had to hit Schlusser in the face so he would let go of the deputy's wrist, the sheriff's office said. After that, deputies were able to get Schlusser into the emergency restraint chair, and he was checked on every 15 minutes, according to court documents. Schlusser was arraigned on the charges Saturday morning. He was sent to York County Prison on $75,000 bail. He remained there as of Wednesday, Feb. 27. His preliminary hearing is scheduled for March 26 at District Judge Linda Williams' office. Carroll Township Police had not filed a DUI charge against Schlusser as of Wednesday morning. — Reach Christopher Dornblaser at cdornblaser@yorkdispatch.com or on Twitter at @YDDornblaser. Diesel pollution in Portland is more than 10 times higher than the state's healthy air benchmark Diesel particulate is known to cause cancer and many other health problems But federal laws limit the city's options for reducing it "Under federal law, states and local governments are not allowed to directly regulate the emissions from certain types of motor vehicles," said report co-author Amelia Schlusser, staff attorney for the Green Energy Institute "So for Portland to effectively address its diesel pollution problem It's time to think a little bit outside the box." A map of the diesel pollution modeling results from a 2017 study by the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality Oregon Department of Environmental Quality "Indirect sources are facilities or properties that attract sources of pollution like trucks "Other states and local governments have adopted these types of regulations and they tend to offer a wide array of options for reducing pollution." For example, California's San Joaquin Valley Air District requires developers to reduce air pollution at large construction sites Developers can choose from a variety of options to reduce emissions such as upgrading construction equipment to models that emit less pollution or paying a fee to reduce emissions elsewhere Cities and counties can also reduce diesel pollution near schools or hospitals by setting mandatory truck routes and they can restrict the use of loading zones to reduce people's pollution exposure during the day The "Deconstructing Diesel" report analyzes the pros and cons of the legal options available to local governments without making any official recommendations "We’re generally trying to provide enough information for the city and county to make decisions based on their objectives and what they identify as the most serious sources of pollution in the area," Schlusser said "We think this is an area where local governments really need to take the lead and do everything in their authority to reduce these emissions." Schlusser said Oregon has made some strides in reducing diesel emissions, but California has done much more. That puts Oregon at risk of being a dumping ground for the older engines cast out of California Oregon and Washington are expecting to receive around $185 million to spend on replacing old diesel engines through a settlement with the automaker Volkswagen Oregon lawmakers recently passed a bill that requires diesel trucks registered in the Portland metro area to upgrade their engines to cleaner models by 2030 Diesel engines manufactured after 2007 include new technology that filters out more than 90% of harmful diesel particulate Kevin Downing, former Clean Diesel Program coordinator for the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality, said most of what the state has done so far to reduce diesel emissions has been voluntary engine upgrades. Many upgrades have been subsidized by state and federal funds, as well as money from the Volkswagen diesel emissions cheating court settlement "Our diesel emissions are astonishingly high given how we think about this state," he said "The ubiquity of the engines themselves — there are so many of them — makes this issue challenging Downing said the Green Energy Institute report could help local governments "thread the needle through some of the constraints" that have prevented more diesel pollution regulation in the past John Wasiutynski, director of the Multnomah County Office of Sustainability, said his agency has advocated for state-level regulation but is also working with the city of Portland to implement its own rules on diesel emissions from construction equipment used on city and county projects "We’ve already done the work of cleaning up our own equipment," he said when you’re going to bring equipment to a county project it’s going to have to be clean equipment." The idea behind the new procurement policy is for multiple government agencies to develop the same standards to send a signal to companies that own diesel equipment that public contracting agencies are going to require newer Wasiutynski said his agency is open to additional options for reducing diesel pollution "Diesel is such a potent pollutant," he said We're going to be supportive of other efforts that move the needle on this." Hundreds of people die prematurely every year because of diesel exhaust. Enter a location in Oregon or Washington for a look at diesel pollution near you. View the related story. Tags: Science & Environment, Environment, Air, Local, News Stand with OPB and protect independent journalism for everyone Listen to the OPB News live stream (opens new window)Streaming Now producer and editor for OPB's Science & Environment unit Cassandra worked for The Daily Astorian newspaper before joining OPB and launching the Ecotrope environmental news blog She produced radio and television stories as part of the EarthFix public media collaboration that covered the environment in the Pacific Northwest \nCassandra is a fellow with the Institutes for Journalism and Natural Resources and the Metcalf Institute for Marine & Environment Reporting She’s gone out to sea to cover fisheries and marine heat waves and floated down the Klamath Columbia and Willamette rivers to report on dam removal She’s ventured into active wildfires and flown over burned forests to investigate post-fire logging.\n Her stories have won awards from the National Academy of Arts and Sciences the Radio Television Digital News Association and the Society of Professional Journalists Cassandra grew up in Chicago and holds degrees in journalism from the University of Missouri and the University of Oregon Current issue,  Podcasts,  NewslettersStage plight: The state of Australian theatreby Alison Croggon TheatreThe Dollhouse, directed by Daniel Schlusser, 2011. Image courtesy of Daniel SchlusserA generation of small independent theatremakers has been betrayed by government neglect and bad policy, creating a cultural crisis and an artist is forbidden a career in this place; an artist is permitted only the commercial “hit” I didn’t develop a passion for theatre until relatively late when I began to encounter a kind of performance that genuinely intoxicated me my regional secondary school arranged theatrical excursions to Melbourne My clearest memory of those shows is sneaking cigarettes behind a phone box near the Athenaeum Theatre in Collins Street There were several formative moments that showed me what theatre could be: not as Barry Humphries’ Sandy Stone would have it but a living art that calls on the deepest parts of human consciousness Not actors putting on funny moustaches and pretending to be someone else striking with the force of beauty to shatter what we think we know I saw Attis Theatre’s production of Bacchai directed by the Athens-based director Theodoros Terzopoulos which was brought to Australia by the Antipodes Festival I’m sure I sat through the entire performance with my mouth open: my body was electrically alive The stage was a ritualised arena of ecstatic bodies arrogant and wild: the very embodiment of the god it is condensed experience,” the playwright Heiner Müller “[T]he process of rehearsal is not the performance of a dramatic concept it is an adventure on a journey to the landscape of memory a search for the lost keys of unity between body and speech the word as natural entity … I saw the performance twice and both times I saw something new.” such as Justus Neumann’s solo play Kill Hamlet which I saw at Anthill Theatre three times or an unforgettable 1991 performance of Chekhov’s The Seagull by Moscow Art Theatre – showed me that theatre is at once a public communal act and a deeply personal experience is an art that has much to do with poetry and the poetic the forms the metaphor might take are infinite Its potency can be released in a scripted play or in traditional Noh theatre or a devised post-dramatic performance Theatre like this becomes a distillation of the present moment: an invitation to its audience to be fully alive Shows that possess this indefinable but palpable quality most often happen in what in Australia we call independent theatre – the small or micro companies formed around a singular vision that work as the Spanish playwright Lope de Vega once supposedly described it I have seen a lot of performance by both local and international theatremakers Some of it has been transcendent beyond words; some Failure is an essential part of the art: as a collaborative art form that incorporates many different disciplines – acting sound and composition – theatre is fiendishly difficult to create there is that thrill of anticipation: what will happen next Lindita by 24-year-old Greek-Albanian director Mario Banushi a mostly wordless work about death and the rituals of mourning I realised then that I miss the sense of discovery when you encounter a new artist who is doing something extraordinary I miss the sense of ferment when a community of wildly different artists are creating new work does a visionary 24-year-old have in Australia now Would they be able to rigorously develop their work in the first place let alone be recognised and pushed into the limelight The short answer is that their chances would be slim as nothing is impossible to a young artist bursting with energy and hope Australia has been unfairly gifted with brilliant theatremakers small independent companies such as Adena Jacobs’ Fraught Outfit the internationally acclaimed Back to Back Theatre many others together created a culture that was ambitious it created performances that seared themselves into memory At the time – roughly between 2004 and 2012 – I called this flourishing a renaissance It was made possible by many things: the availability of small indie venues; the possibility of funding a show sufficiently to pay people a minimum wage (of which more later); a new energised generation emerging from performance schools and forming their own companies Major theatres began to support small companies with studio programs such as the residency program at the Malthouse Theatre which produced Hayloft Project’s breakout hit Thyestes the NEON Festival of Independent Theatre at the Melbourne Theatre Company the independent program at Belvoir’s Downstairs Theatre in Sydney the Bille Brown Theatre at Queensland Theatre Under the attritional pressure of continuous funding cuts that collective energy – that sense that theatre was the place to be – has long dimmed Of course there are always people making good work experimental or visionary work – the work that is at the core of a culture’s vitality – is much harder than it was a decade ago broke and exhausted – have given up altogether while independent companies and venues everywhere are closed Among the more shocking recent events was La Mama – since the 1960s a haven in Melbourne for new and unconventional artists – announcing earlier this year that its stages are going dark through 2025 while it regroups For this essay I talked to many people on and off the record The consensus was universal and stark: the outlook for independent theatre in 2024 is more dire than anyone can remember One important part of this story – but by no means the whole of it – is money As so much of the damage to the culture has been attritional – there has been the odd sharp shock barely visible decline – it’s illuminating to look back to a time when independent theatre was thriving In order to get a general picture of how funding has changed I analysed annual general reports from Creative Australia (formerly the Australia Council) in 2010–11 and 2022–23 The national arts funding body was – and still is – the major source of funding for independent arts projects of all kinds It’s important to remember that in the early 2000s funding was already considered grossly inadequate Grant panels were routinely making lists of what they called “unfunded excellence” projects for which they couldn’t find the budget but which they considered fully deserving of support It took some digging to ensure I was comparing apples with apples – Creative Australia’s figures are much less transparent than they once were the total Australia Council budget was $163.8 million taking into account 39.9 per cent inflation total council funding has declined by 11.4 per cent since 2010 It gets worse when you look at so-called discretionary funding the portion of the budget that covers most grants for individuals and organisations across all art forms Under Creative Australia’s two-tier system 28 companies in the Major Performing Arts (MPA) framework – state theatre companies opera and so on – accounted for $96.5 million The MPA category was changed in 2019 to the National Performing Arts Partnership Framework (NPAPF) leaving $71.1 million – or 36 per cent of the total arts budget – for the rest The decline in discretionary funding in real terms since 2010 is 36 per cent the Australia Council received 5689 applications the council awarded 1897 grants and projects compared to 464 in 2022–23 – a decrease of 75 per cent compared with a total of 367 in 2022–23 – a decrease of 66 per cent 812 individual artists were directly given grants The 2022–23 report says Creative Australia supported 524 individual artists last year but it’s unclear how they reached that figure which outstrips the number of grants awarded If you subtract the grants awarded to organisations from the total figure the remainder – which presumably was given to individuals The decrease there is a staggering 88 per cent.  These figures reflect a massive shrinkage over the past decade across every art form they don’t include funding that comes directly from the arts ministry such as the RISE fund established during the pandemic is not available for individual artists and most small companies The federal government has pledged almost $200 million over four years under its Revive program to mitigate this damage which will see Creative Australia’s budget increase by 48 per cent to $326.2 million in 2026–27 This injection of funds is certainly welcome But the truth is that lack of funding is only part of the story One of the biggest problems now is the devastating and irreversible loss of cultural structures – and the years of experience and knowledge they represented – that once nurtured new and independent artists when one of the Abbott government’s first moves was to slash funding for youth arts entire organisations and platforms have either vanished or had their activities severely curtailed Many people are worried about the loss of specific visions for different art forms that occurred when the Australia Council’s art form boards were dissolved in its restructure “That is now left to an open market model,” one arts bureaucrat tells me “It’s up to individual arts organisations to progress the art form playwright and critic Robert Reid says that the situation is the same as it’s been for the past quarter century – a theatre sector under significant stress – but that now it’s “much a lot of the main building blocks of the community are either gone or on hiatus for a year – no La Mama for a year the infrastructure has rotted or been neglected or simply taken away.” the gap between the haves and the have nots The increased emphasis on philanthropic funding – Creative Australia now runs regular workshops on fundraising – inevitably favours artists who are already established or who have connections This is exacerbated by an increasing corporatisation of the theatre culture While it’s essential that organisations funded by public money are responsibly and transparently governed the current focus on corporate structures leads to a risk-averse culture that increasingly serves commercial rather than artistic interests In his 2014 Philip Parsons Memorial Lecture then artistic director of Sydney’s Belvoir St Theatre warned against the increasing domination of artistic boards by businesspeople “There is a notable absence of examples of artistic directors behaving like artists,” he said “We’re spending most of our time pretending to be managers and keeping our heads down … Broadly speaking there is a nationwide cultural queasiness with artistic leadership saying difficult things and making us think about ourselves.” The conflict between corporate and artistic leadership was exemplified by Circus Oz the Australia Council told the company that its funding was conditional on its acceptance of a “skills-based” board which included dropping its quota of artist representation The result was a membership vote that refused the restructure and Circus Oz – which is still going nevertheless – lost its state and federal funding a pro-Palestine curtain call at the Sydney Theatre Company was one of many conflicts post October 7 that have seen painful schisms opening between artists boards and the philanthropists who increasingly fund companies Whatever the merits of each particular case one has to wonder what the implications are if artists are sidelined in major decisions about the companies that ostensibly exist to produce their art an actor and artistic director of the Daniel Schlusser Ensemble the vision that no one can see until it’s on stage,” he tells me This also has implications for who is able to make theatre in the first place we don’t talk about class,” Schlusser says “If you can’t afford to go to drama school if you can’t afford to do that second or third show It starts to affect what is being talked about creative director and chief executive of Melbourne Fringe says the culture has inevitably become less ambitious “There is an increase in small scale or solo shows It’s just so much more difficult to make risky Abrahams says that there were once pathways to main stages for small and experimental companies but “Those pathways no longer exist.” A telling sign is now full of experienced artists “at the top of their game” Artists are feeling the increasing weight of trying to work ethically and responsibly and paying people properly for their work Playwright and theatremaker Mari Lourey feels this burden deeply “Once an individual artist could apply to OzCo for $60,000 for a single project,” she says “I know because I applied for such a grant for my play Bare Witness [in 2010] Combined with $30,000 from Creative Victoria and a further $20,000 from City of Melbourne (from memory) and various philanthropic grants that were available it was possible to almost raise a decent budget to mount an independent show.” Creative Australia individual project grants now offer at most $50,000 Creative Victoria recently offered $20,000 to note that successful applicants are often given less than what they ask for as funding bodies attempt to spread their budgets For Bare Witness – which I described at the time as “ambitious beautifully realised theatre” – Lourey was able to pay union-advised wages and fees to six performers After Covid scuppered hopes for a mainstage season she began to raise money for her most recent play which was selected for the Victorian school syllabus in 2022 and is the recipient of three awards “The minimum budget needed to mount this work with a professional cast of five designers and one of the country’s foremost [First Nations] directors and that’s basic wages and fees,” she says Lourey secured $22,000 before realising that it was impossible to raise more than two thirds of the budget from current sources “One body offered $12,000 from the requested $19,000 I refuse to ask people to work for less than professional rates.” Another theatre artist – a young sound designer – tells me that they could expect a fee of anywhere between $1000 and $3000 to design an independent show “It’s not much for weeks of work,” they say “But at least it was something.” Recently they turned down a gig where they were offered $200 for the same work But we will continue to lose our mature and mid-career developing artists because we cannot continue to treat what we do as a hobby or a passion rightly pointing to the nodes of energy and vital artists that still exist the effects of the federal government’s additional funds under Revive are yet to be seen we’re surveying the wreckage after 10 years of neglect an entire generation of young artists has been betrayed “One of the interesting things about the theatre is that from time immemorial it’s been dying,” the British director Sir Peter Hall said in 2006 it’s always going through some awful convulsion.” Performance is the most mortal of art forms: it continually dies and is continually reborn She is The Saturday Paper’s arts editor The Monthly is a magazine published by Schwartz Media For subscription enquiries, call 1800 077 514 or email [email protected] For editorial enquiries, email [email protected] Nearly 10 years since Daniel Schlusser first read Euripides’ play his version of the Hercules legend is about to open in Melbourne or his original Greek incarnation of Heracles from slaying the Nemean lion to capturing Cerberus the three-headed dog guarding the gates of hell It was this aspect of the demigod that young Daniel Schlusser read about in Charles Kingsley’s book of classical Greek heroes popular with generations of boys since it was first published in 1855 As Artistic Director of his eponymous Melbourne-based theatre ensemble Schlusser later discovered another side of this ancient hero in Euripides’ neglected play in which he murders his wife and children during a moment of madness “I was fascinated to find it … because it’s not in the canon,” says Schlusser of this 416 BCE play “My first thoughts were this is a parallel story to Medea … so why is it not as celebrated?” He believes the obvious answer to that question is a greater taboo in our culture about mothers killing their children than fathers doing the same “That in itself is an interesting problem to unknot.” Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Contribute to Limelight and support independent arts journalism Check out our playlists from our latest issue Our free Weekly Newsletter delivers the latest arts news reviews and features to your inbox each Saturday Get full access to The Hitchhiker's Guide to Python and 60K+ other titles O’Reilly members get unlimited access to books and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers The Hitchhiker's Guide to Python takes the journeyman Pythonista to true expertise Python was created with the philosophy of simplicity and parsimony Python has become the primary or secondary language (after SQL) for many business users With popularity comes diversity—and possibly dilution collaboratively written by over a hundred members of the Python community describes best practices currently used by package and 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Add articles to your saved list and come back to them any time MELBOURNE independent director Daniel Schlusser has taken on a big challenge with his mainstage debut at the Malthouse Theatre this month and later at the Sydney Theatre Company - how to attract big audiences by presenting an obscure Austrian classic ''I want to make work that appeals directly to audiences here and now,'' he says But his choice for his theatrical breakthrough is well outside the mainstream of popular theatre and even of the English-language tradition Bille Brown and Katherine Tonkin prepare for the Malthouse production of The Histrionic with director Daniel Schlusser (front).Credit: Rodger Cummins whom Schlusser compares with Samuel Beckett ''Everyone knows there are no soft edges in Beckett's work,'' he says of the Irish Nobel prize winner ''Bernhard has a similar toughness but he has a dark Viennese presence as if he is a creature from folklore whose main role is to get up people's noses.'' The secret to Bernhard's appeal is his anarchic humour ''There is all this thick and scary subtext but part of his game is that he does comedy on top,'' Schlusser says making a comparison with Italian director Roberto Benigni is a comic romance set in a concentration camp how can you make a comedy about this sort of impossible material but that's what Bernhard does.'' He promises the show will be ''a really silly production'' with a big serving of slapstick and a set that looks as if it came from ''the graveyard of old Moomba floats'' The Histrionic tells the story of a tyrannical actor (played by Bille Brown) touring a comedy called The Wheel of History through provincial Austria As he prepares a performance in the rotting hall of an obscure inn as Schlusser says the text is mostly a monologue for his character including such notable performers as Barry Otto (as the innkeeper) ''Bille's character is such an egomaniac that he causes hilarity and despair because he won't shut up,'' Schlusser says But he emphasises there is plenty of work for the other actors ''I have a lot of experience in ensemble works that emphasise physical performance and that is an important part of what we are doing,'' he says The play comes in the middle of a very busy year for Schlusser He directed his adaptation of Ibsen's The Dollhouse last October then directed and acted in Ophelia Doesn't Live Here Anymore for Chamber Made Opera and Bell Shakespeare a month later In February he completed the final development of his adaptation of Mikhail Bulgakov's anti-Soviet classic novel The Master and Margarita at Theatre Works and after the Sydney season of The Histrionic he will perform in a version of Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray by The Rabble in St Kilda He had earlier proposed The Histrionic to the STC's associate director with Brown in the lead because Wright had a long interest in the show and is renowned for translations of classic scripts for Barrie Kosky and others ''The play is much loved among directors,'' Schlusser says ''Michael Kantor also had his eye on it when he was (artistic director) at Malthouse.'' He suspects the main reason Bernhard is unknown in English even though he is considered one of the most important German-speaking postwar writers is because of the scarcity of translations ''You need a fresh translation every time you do it,'' he says ''If an audience is going to understand it today there is always a risk that it will age very quickly.'' Wright agrees the key to understanding the work is to appreciate Bernhard's humour and he compares the misanthropic lead to the character in the film who is admirable and repulsive in equal measure ''That is true to theatrical tradition,'' he says ''The pleasure is the sheer quality of Bernhard's writing There is comedy in his cruelty.'' But he acknowledges the difficulty in explaining the work to an Australian audience ''Imagine trying to explain Beckett if nobody had seen Waiting for Godot.'' Bernhard created controversy even after he died when his will decreed there should be no publication or staging of his works in Austria forcing the focus on his legacy to move to Germany ''Austrians were deeply deceitful about their complicity [with the Nazis] and Bernhard never stopped reminding them,'' Wright says ''Austria was portrayed as one of the first victims of Nazi invasion after the war as if they were like Czechoslovakia when the fact is they opened their borders to Hitler.'' But he says the play's humour is obvious by the characters in the play-within-a-play ''It's as if Bernhard is saying history has made us clowns But the end is like a Buster Keaton film and the joke is clearly on us.'' The Histrionic (Der Theatermacher) opens at the Malthouse on April 10 until May 5 ''I want to make work that appeals directly to audiences here and now,'' he says ''Everyone knows there are no soft edges in Beckett's work,'' he says of the Irish Nobel prize winner ''Bernhard has a similar toughness but he has a dark Viennese presence as if he is a creature from folklore whose main role is to get up people's noses.'' The secret to Bernhard's appeal is his anarchic humour ''There is all this thick and scary subtext but part of his game is that he does comedy on top,'' Schlusser says He promises the show will be ''a really silly production'' with a big serving of slapstick and a set that looks as if it came from ''the graveyard of old Moomba floats'' ''Bille's character is such an egomaniac that he causes hilarity and despair because he won't shut up,'' Schlusser says ''I have a lot of experience in ensemble works that emphasise physical performance and that is an important part of what we are doing,'' he says He directed his adaptation of Ibsen's The Dollhouse last October then directed and acted in Ophelia Doesn't Live Here Anymore for Chamber Made Opera and Bell Shakespeare a month later In February he completed the final development of his adaptation of Mikhail Bulgakov's anti-Soviet classic novel The Master and Margarita at Theatre Works and after the Sydney season of The Histrionic he will perform in a version of Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray by The Rabble in St Kilda He had earlier proposed The Histrionic to the STC's associate director ''The play is much loved among directors,'' Schlusser says ''Michael Kantor also had his eye on it when he was (artistic director) at Malthouse.'' ''You need a fresh translation every time you do it,'' he says ''If an audience is going to understand it today there is always a risk that it will age very quickly.'' Wright agrees the key to understanding the work is to appreciate Bernhard's humour and he compares the misanthropic lead to the character in the film ''That is true to theatrical tradition,'' he says ''The pleasure is the sheer quality of Bernhard's writing ''Imagine trying to explain Beckett if nobody had seen Waiting for Godot.'' ''Austrians were deeply deceitful about their complicity [with the Nazis] and Bernhard never stopped reminding them,'' Wright says ''Austria was portrayed as one of the first victims of Nazi invasion after the war as if they were like Czechoslovakia when the fact is they opened their borders to Hitler.'' But he says the play's humour is obvious by the characters in the play-within-a-play ''It's as if Bernhard is saying history has made us clowns But the end is like a Buster Keaton film and the joke is clearly on us.'' The Histrionic (Der Theatermacher) opens at the Malthouse on April 10 until May 5.