New Theatre Quarterly 

About: New Theatre Quarterly is an academic journal. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Drama & Theatre studies. It has an ISSN identifier of 0266-464X. Over the lifetime, 1043 publication(s) have been published receiving 5156 citation(s). The journal is also known as: N T Q. New Theatre Quarterly & New Theatre Quarterly.

‘Verbatim Theatre’: Oral History and Documentary Techniques

Abstract: ‘Verbatim Theatre’ has been the term utilized by Derek Paget during his extensive researches into that form of documentary drama which employs (largely or exclusively) tape-recorded material from the ‘real-life’ originals of the characters and events to which it gives dramatic shape. Though clearly indebted to sources such as the radio ballads of the 'fifties, and to the tradition which culminated in Joan Littlewood's Oh what a Lovely War, most of its practitioners acknowledge Peter Cheeseman's work at Stoke-on-Trent as the direct inspiration - in one case, as first received through the ‘Production Casebook’ on his work published in the first issue of the original Theatre Quarterly (1971). Quite simply, the form owes its present health and exciting potential to the flexibility and unobtrusiveness of the portable cassette recorder - ironically, a technological weapon against which are ranged other mass technological media such as broadcasting and the press, which tend to marginalize the concerns and emphases of popular oral history. Here, Derek Paget, who is currently completing his doctoral thesis on this subject, discusses with leading practitioners their ideas and working methods. Derek Paget teaches English and Drama at Worcester College of Higher Education, and has also had practical theatre experience ranging from community work to the West End, and from Joan Littlewood's final season at Stratford East to the King's Head, Islington.

Celebrity and the Semiotics of Acting

Abstract: One of the persistent problems in acting, and one that seems to grow steadily in importance, comes from the public identity of the actor. This study suggests that a semiotic approach to the acting sign can help to distinguish the function of celebrity in acting, the threats to authority that celebrity imposes, and the results of celebrity acting both on stage and in the efforts of the actor to achieve an identity. This essay is related to earlier discussions of the stage figure by its author, Michael Quinn, in Modem Drama and Gestus . applying the Prague School model of analysis that also supported his article on reading and directing in NTQ11 (1987). Michael Quinn, an assistant professor at the University of Washington, is currently working on a critical study of Vaclav Havel, as well as a longer study of the stage figure in different theatrical contexts.

Community, Class, and Control: a View of Community Plays

Abstract: ‘Community’ has, suggests Graham Woodruff, a friendly ring: yet it is also a weasel word, lending a stamp of often spurious togetherness to bodies politic or theatric. Thus, the use of ‘community’ in the geographical sense is often drained of any true meaning, where it is not a cover for the avoidance of contentious political issues. ‘Communities of interest’ had some success in speaking theatrically in the 'seventies, but now, Woodruff claims, the political situation is such that ‘community theatre’ can and should seek to express the common interests of the increasingly beleaguered working class, offering a way of extending the dramatizations attempted outwards from parochial to wider political concerns. Graham Woodruff was Head of the Drama Department at the University of Birmingham before becoming director of Telford Community Arts, on whose work he draws for the following article.

Palimpsest or Potential Space? Finding a Vocabulary for Site-Specific Performance

Abstract: A recent preoccupation with space and place has drawn together theorists and workers in a wide range of disciplines, including human geographers, archaeologists, architects, cartographers, psychoanalysts, sociologists, poets, novelists ‐ and theatre practitioners. There are therefore a range of lenses, a range of vocabularies, through which site-specific theatre and performance can be considered. In this article, Cathy Turner focuses on Mike Pearson’s descriptions of site-specific work, particularly his involvement with archaeology, before proposing that we might find a useful, complementary vocabulary within psychoanalytic theories of object relations. She refers to performances by Lone Twin and to her own work with site-specific company Wrights & Sites, who created An Exeter Mis-Guide and A Courtauld Mis-Guide in 2003. Cathy Turner has produced a number of site-specific ‘mis-guided walks’, tours, and performances in her work with Wrights & Sites since 1998. She recently completed a Research Fellowship at Exeter University, investigating writing processes in contemporary performance, including site-specific work. She is now a Teaching Fellow at Exeter University and an Associate Lecturer at Dartington College of Arts.

Mapping the Terrain: a Survey of Site-Specific Performance in Britain

Abstract: Who is producing site-specific performance in Britain? Who sees it? Where do these performances occur, or, more particularly, ‘take place’? What tools are used to construct a performance of place? Why is the site-specific mode chosen? And, crucially, how is it variously defined? Drawing on a survey of British practitioners conducted between November 2000 and December 2001, Fiona Wilkie sets out to explore these questions. While pointing to the wide variety of practices that might be delineated by the term ‘site-specific’, she analyzes the implications of such generalizations as can be made – about the types of performance site chosen, the effects of funding policy on the character of work being made, the possibilities for identifying a ‘site-specific’ audience, and the debates surrounding the terminology itself. Fiona Wilkie is currently completing a PhD at the University of Surrey, on which this article is based, which aims to develop a theoretical model for site-specific performance, with particular reference to the spectatorial role.