The Theatre Festival by Jane Boutwell. Talk story about this year's Bayreuth Festival in Germany, at the Festspielhaus, the theatre that Richard Wagner built for the performance of his operatic works. It was the premiere of a controversially eclectic new "Ring"directed by Sir Peter Hall & conducted by Sir Georg Solti. The Festival opened...

The Talk of the Town Paper Bags by William McKibben. Talk story about the first nationwide shopping-bag art competition, which took place in the International Paper Building on 45th Street. It was sponsored by the National Alliance of Supermarket Shoppers, a consumer-advocacy group founded in 1977. The work of 60 finalists was shown to a crowd consisting of...

The Theatre Back Street Blues by Edith Oliver.

Personal History III-LEARNING by Ved Mehta. PERSONAL HISTORY about writer's life in India from June, 1947 to Sept., 1948. He and several relatives left their homes in Lahore, where in the face of the Partition of India, all Hindus were threatened. They went by train to Bombay & stayed in a cousin's flat, which was...

Comment by Robert Shaplen. Aquino, who was shot and killed last week as he debarked from a plane in Manila after three years of self-imposed exile in the U.S., had, like his political rival Ferdinand Marcos, wanted to be President of the Philipines since he was a young man. Marcos was fifteen years...

The Current Cinema SEX AND POLITICS by Pauline Kael.

Comment by Gwyneth Cravens. It's ten-thirty in the morning at Columbus Avenue and 94th Street. The arm of the traffic light casts a diagonal shadow across the pavement, which almost touches the manhole cover near the center of the intersection. Two teen-agers stroll along; they are holding hands, A maroon van with...

Letter from Europe by Jane Kramer. Since Margaret Thatcher's reelection this June, there has been a lot of argument among the Tory establishment as to whether she is a fierce but innocent front for their class interests, or whether she is using them to convert England to a radical politics of the right. The traditional Tory...

Scrapbook Scrapbook of Y. V. Andropov by Bruce McCall. Drawings of assorted souvenirs from Yuri Andropov's past found in his scrapbook. He is General Secretary of the Communist Party and President of the Soviet Union. It has been said he is fond of American things, including popular music and knows the English language. These drawings reflect this. One shows...

Fiction The Jaguar Sun by Italo Calvino. On a vacation in Mexico, a couple stays at a hotel in Oaxaca. In the bar they notice a painting of a nun & a priest from the 18th century who loved each other so much that when the priest died, the nun also "expired of love." Olivia is...

Poetry Inside and Out by Robert Phillips. Upstairs a young man plays...

Poetry Finale by Dick Allen. The music was thrilling. But when we left the concert gullies of...

Poetry The Rockettes by John Updike. Now when those girls, all thirty-six, go...