[There] is evidence in the eleven plays collected [in The Fiery Hunt and Other Plays]—play, dance, dance-and-verse, opera—that Olson knew the various theaters of the classic Greeks, of Noh, of the masque, and of such exemplary contemporary companies as the Yiddish Art Theatre….

Olson was impatient with "straight theatre," which he felt was too much concerned with "contemporary realism." he wanted "enlargements and poets' treatment," a drama, [George Butterick explains in his Introduction], antedating Greek comedy and tragedy, emphatically given over to language and movement and to the single actor…. From the start his predilection was for a minimal company: for the single actor who exemplified heroism, danced the Man … and for the very few who were necessary to dance out his moral equations….

I call [The Fiery Hunt and Other Plays] primary because what … makes them notable is their singular emphasis on dancing the Man...