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Showing papers in "New Theatre Quarterly in 1988"


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Gottlieb argues that the tone of "Thatcher's theatre" was already being set by such earlier plays as Peter Shaffer's Equus, in which she detects both the despair of rational solutions and the willing subjection to supposedly implacable forces that have since become characteristic of our national theatre as well as our national mood as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: A dozen years after the political and theatrical watershed of 1956 came those further shifts in social thinking of 1968. which were also reflected in major changes on the theatrical scene. Another twelve years on, any theatre people who were expecting such a collision of events in 1980 appeared to be waiting in vain. Yet, in retrospect, the impact of that first full year of a new kind of Conservative government can be seen as no less decisive, though its effects on the theatrical scene are only now beginning to make a kind of negative sense. Here, Vera Gottlieb argues that the tone of ‘Thatcher's theatre’ was already being set by such earlier plays as Peter Shaffer's Equus, in which she detects both the despair of rational solutions and the willing subjection to supposedly implacable forces that have since become characteristic of our national theatre as of our national mood. Vera Gottlieb. who is Principal Lecturer in Drama at Goldsmiths’ College. University of London, is the author of Chekhov and the Vaudeville (Cambridge, 1982), is presently collaborating with Peter Holland on a study of Stanislavsky as director, and has been co-author and director of Red Earth (Hampstead, 1985) and Waterloo Road (Young Vic Studio. 1987).

49 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Caryl Churchill began her playwriting career for radio in the ‘sixties, became a writer for live theatre in association with such companies as Monstrous Regiment and Joint Stock, and recently achieved her greatest commercial success with the transfer to Wyndhams Theatre of her play about the City.
Abstract: Caryl Churchill began her playwriting career for radio in the ‘sixties’, became a writer for live theatre in association with such companies as Monstrous Regiment and, notably. Joint Stock – and recently achieved her greatest commercial success with the transfer to Wyndhams Theatre of her play about the City. Serious Money, premiered at the Royal Court in March 1987 in a production by Max Stafford-Clark. In conversation here with Geraldine Cousin, she sketches in the early years of her career and the different demands of radio and stage plays, discusses some of her recurrent themes and preoccupations, weighs how far she feels herself a ‘woman writer’, and describes the collaborative approach of working with Joint Stock. She then talks in more detail not only about Serious Money, but her earlier collaboration with David Lan (author of Flight. Sergeant Ola and His Followers, and The Winter Dancers) – a variation upon the Bacchae theme, A Mouthful of Birds, directed by Les Waters and lan Spink. The interviewer, Geraldine Cousin, teaches in the Joint School of Theatre Studies at the University of Warwick.

26 citations



Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The quasi-theatrical kinds of performance-ritual which existed in pre-Columbian Latin America have been little investigated, and are almost entirely neglected by English-speaking theatre scholars as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: The quasi-theatrical kinds of performance-ritual which existed in pre-Columbian Latin America have been little investigated, and are almost entirely neglected by English-speaking theatre scholars. In NTQ 8, Robert Potter looked at ways in which the missionaries who followed in the wake of the Spanish conquistadores tried to adapt Aztec rituals to their own proselytizing purposes: and here, Adam Versenyi, in the first of a series of articles on early Latin American performance, provides an overview of the ways in which the great pre-Columbian civilizations embraced performance into their often-unfamiliar world view – suggesting that in some cases the cosmogony expressed through the dramatic rituals made them particularly ill-equipped to confront the ‘otherness’ of the invading Spaniards. Adam Versenyi is currently preparing a study which parallels recent developments in Liberation Theology and Liberation Theatre in Latin America.

15 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Theatre workers in the Third World have largely rejected both the outward trappings and the underlying aesthetic assumptions of the colonial styles they first inherited: but the impulse to evolve or rediscover indigenous forms has often involved the imposition of a would-be ‘popular’ theatre form by an elite of university-educated animateurs as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: Theatre workers in the Third World have largely rejected both the outward trappings and the underlying aesthetic assumptions of the colonial styles they first inherited: but the impulse to evolve or rediscover indigenous forms has often involved the imposition of a would-be ‘popular’ theatre form by an elite of university-educated animateurs. David Kerr has described these as ‘induced’ forms, and here analyzes the process by which one such experiment, in Malawi, was both adopted and assimilated by villagers, for the better understanding of whose social problems it was conceived. From 1974 to 1980 David Kerr was artistic director of the Chikwakwa Theatre project in Zambia (described in the first series of Theatre Quarterly, III, No. 10), since when he has been teaching in the Department of Fine and Performing Arts in the University of Malawi, and serving as co-ordinator to the Travelling Theatre project there.

9 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The most successful of the male impersonators was Vesta Tilley, whose various disguises, the nature of their hidden appeal, and the "messages" they delivered are analyzed by Aston as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: Music hall has only recently been treated to ‘serious’ as distinct from anecdotal study, and the ‘turns’ of its leading performers remain largely unexplored. Particularly revealing, perhaps, are the acts of the male impersonators – whose ancestry in ‘legit’ performance had been a long one, yet whose particular approach to cross-dressing had a special social and sexual significance during the ascendancy of music hall, with its curious mixture of working-class directness, commercial knowingness, and ‘pre-Freudian innocence’. The most successful of the male impersonators was Vesta Tilley, whose various disguises, the nature of their hidden appeal, and the ‘messages’ they delivered are here analyzed by Elaine Aston.

8 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, a playwright who grew up in Chicago and came to New York to study acting at Neighborhood Playhouse, a school of theatre where I came back later to work as an actor and director, kind of stumbled upon a career as a play writer.
Abstract: You grew up in Chicago? Yes. And then came to New York, to study acting at the Neighborhood Playhouse, a school of theatre where I came back later to work as an actor and director, I kind of stumbled upon a career as a playwright. I became a playwright because I was an actor and I started directing because I wasn't a very good actor and I started writing because I was working with very young actors and there was nothing for them to do. I started writing because nothing existed for twelve 23-year-old actors to do.

7 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The body-in-life metaphor of the actor's work and the balance between its three vital organs has been explored in this paper, with the focus on the body's energy and the way in which it crosses cultural and other divides.
Abstract: Both in his practical work with Odin Teatret, and his close involvement with ISTA, the International School of Theatre Anthropology. Eugenio Barba has developed an approach to theatre which is highly personal in expression, yet far-sightedly comparative in its concern with the nature of the actor's work and the ways in which it crosses cultural and other divides. An Advisory Editor of NTQ, Eugenio Barba contributed earlier pieces on the nature of the actor's energies to NTQ 4 and NTQ 11, and now further develops his thinking, in a consideration of what he calls ‘the body-in-life’, and the balance between its ‘three vital organs’ which is essential if the actor is to realize his full potential.

6 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors look at the different forms it may take (and the differences in underlying intentions) so far as performers are concerned, and relate their ideas to forms of dramatic experience as discrete as psychodrama, and to schools of acting from Stanislavski to Grotowski.
Abstract: ‘Catharsis’ remains one of the several concepts employed by Aristotle in the Poetics whose precise meaning and implications have tantalized critics over the centuries. But all too often ‘catharsis’ has largely been discussed as a process which occurs to the audience of a tragedy: in this article, Ian Watson looks instead at the different forms it may take (and the differences in underlying intentions) so far as performers are concerned. He relates his ideas to forms of dramatic experience as discrete as psychodrama, and to schools of acting from Stanislavski to Grotowski.

6 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Mamet's best plays carry with them an implicit attack on American business values, usually through a confrontation between two individuals, one of whom tries to exploit or dominate the other as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: David Mamet, born in Chicago in 1947, is one of the most talented and eagerly watched young playwrights in America today, whose work has also found a ready response among British audiences. After such plays as Sexual Perversity in Chicago (1974). American Buffalo (1975) and Edmond (1982), his Glengarry Glen Ross (1982), dedicated to Harold Pinter, had its world premiere in London at the National's Cottesloe Theatre, and subsequently won the Pulitzer prize for the best American play in 1984. In the same year, American Buffalo (seen briefly on Broadway in 1977) won an award for best revival, while the London production of Edmond, which opened at the Royal Court in December 1985, was favourably received by English critics in contrast to its mixed reception in New York. In addition to Mamet's work for the stage, he has written the screenplays for the films The Verdict and The Postman Always Rings Twice. Noteworthy for their sensitivity to the nuances and rhythms of American speech, including its unmistakable penchant for banalities and obscenities. Mamet's best plays, as the accompanying essay demonstrates, carry with them an implicit attack on American business values, usually through a confrontation between two individuals, one of whom tries to exploit or dominate the other. The interview which follows was conducted in New York City on 2 January 1986 following a performance of Mamet's latest work, a double bill of one–act plays entitled The Shawl and Prairie du Chien, selected by Mamet's friend and close associate at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago, Gregory Mosher, to reopen the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater at Lincoln Center in New York.

5 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Constantidis as discussed by the authors checks several normative fallacies which have influenced theatre practice by relating the findings of empirical research in theatre to the experimental work of theatre artists, from Diderot through Stanislavski, to the work of such modern experimental directors as Brook, Grotowski, Chaikin and Schechner.
Abstract: What happens during a rehearsal? How are actors' expectations and achievements affected by different directorial approaches, and how do the various ‘systems’ of acting fit with the responses of an audience? From Diderot through Stanislavski. Brecht. and Artaud to the work of such modern experimental directors as Brook, Grotowski, Chaikin, and Schechner, the theory may or may not be adequately tested against the practice. The author of two earlier, complementary studies in empirical theatre research – ‘Feedback as a Subsystem’ and ‘Prompt–Copy as a Subsystem’, both published in Kodikas/Code: Ars Semeiotica (1984 and 1987) – Stratos E. Constantinidis here checks several normative fallacies which have influenced theatre practice by relating the findings of empirical research in theatre to the experimental work of theatre artists. The author, who has previously worked in the Universities of Iowa and Arizona, presently teaches theory and criticism in the Department of Theatre at Ohio State University.


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The production during 1987 of no less than three plays by the usually-neglected Spanish dramatist Lorca as mentioned in this paper provided a rare opportunity for a reconsideration of the plays as works for the live theatre, and of the particular problems involved in translating them (in every sense of the word) for the English-speaking stage.
Abstract: The production during 1987 of no less than three plays by the usually-neglected Spanish dramatist Lorca – Blood Wedding, Yerma, and The House of Bernarda Alba – provided a rare opportunity for a reconsideration of the plays as works for the live theatre, and of the particular problems involved in ‘translating’ them (in every sense of the word) for the English-speaking stage. In the following article. Gwynne Edwards considers the difficulties which confront the translator of Lorca's plays, the production-style which is implicit in Lorca's theatre, and the varying extents to which the three recent productions approximated to it. Gwynne Edwards is Professor of Spanish at the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth. He has published full-length studies of Lorca and of Luis Bunuel, and numerous translations of Spanish plays, including two in the volume of Three Plays published by Methuen in 1987, and the version of Blood Wedding used in the Contact Theatre production here considered.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: For many theatregoers whose sensibilities were shaped by the new theatre writing of the late ‘fifties, the adaptation in 1963 of Shakespeare's first tetralogy of history plays into the three-play cycle The Wars of the Roses came as a startling revelation of the ‘political’ Shakespeare as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: For many theatregoers whose sensibilities were shaped by the new theatre writing of the late ‘fifties, the adaptation in 1963 of Shakespeare's first tetralogy of history plays into the three-play cycle The Wars of the Roses came as a startling revelation of the ‘political’ Shakespeare. Directed for the still-fledgling RSC by Peter Hall and John Barton, with the latter also responsible for the adaptation and revision, the sequence was perhaps most memorable for the performance by Peggy Ashcroft as Queen Margaret-Shakespeare's ‘first heroine’ –whose presence first illuminated and then haunted the production. Robert Potter, who now teaches in the Department of Dramatic Art at the University of California, Santa Barbara, encountered the production while on a Fulbright scholarship to England, and here recollects in tranquility the disturbing impression of Ashcroft's performance, and its impact upon our understanding of the plays. Robert Potter, who as a practising playwright made his own adaptation of the Roses sequence in 1977, has also published widely in the field of medieval drama, and wrote on theAbraham and Isaac play as presented in Aztec Mexico in NTQ 8.


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The relationship between Appia and Jaques-Dalcroze at Hellerau in NTQ 2 and 3 has been investigated in this paper, with extensive extracts from the Appia-Craig correspondence.
Abstract: The names of Appia and Craig are often linked as prophets of the ‘new’ theatre – and as early as 1915 critics were beginning to stake invidious claims as to which was the dominant ‘influence’. In fact, they arrived by separate paths at artistic conclusions some of which were compatible – and some of which reflected their very different temperaments and sense of theatrical priorities. At last, in 1914, the two men met, and until a few years before Appia's death in 1928 conducted an intermittent but intimate correspondence, which has previously been unpublished. Richard C. Beacham, who teaches in the Joint School of Theatre Studies in the University of Warwick, published a study of the relationship between Appia and Jaques-Dalcroze at Hellerau in NTQ 2 and 3, and here provides an illuminating commentary to extensive extracts from the Appia–Craig correspondence. His full-length study of Appia appears in the ‘Directors in Perspective’ series from Cambridge University Press.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The interview given by Orton to Glenn Loney in New York in October 1965, a few days before the Broadway opening, therefore went unpublished at the time and was only recently published as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: It is now twenty-one years since Joe Orton's death, though his relatively slender theatrical output has retained its freshness and power. After the modest West End success achieved by his first play to reach the stage. Entertaining Mr. Sloane, the New York production proved a failure, and the interview given by Orton to Glenn Loney in New York in October 1965, a few days before the Broadway opening, therefore went unpublished at the time. We print it now, as an intriguing sidelight on the attitudes and opinions of the playwright. It is placed in context by the widely-published theatre critic and teacher Glenn Loney, who also describes the brief, mainly epistolatory friendship with Orton that sprang from this first meeting.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors reconstruct the processes which led towards its eventual performance structure, and place the play with in the context of Brenton's earlier and subsequent work, and present a full-length study for publication by Methuen in 1990.
Abstract: Among the products of the theatre workshop run by Max Stafford-Clark at the Traverse Theatre – whose twenty-fifth anniversary is celebrated elsewhere in this issue – was Howard Brenton's Hitler Dances, on which the playwright worked with the director and actors late in 1971. Richard Boon sees both the play and the workshop experience as pivotal to Brenton's later development: here, he reconstructs the processes which led towards its eventual performance structure, and places the play with in the context of Brenton's earlier and subsequent work. Richard Boon, who also contributed an introduction to the Methuen Modern Plays edition of Hitler Dances, has recently completed his doctoral dissertation on Brenton's plays, and is working on a full-length study for publication by Methuen in 1990. He is currently Lecturer in Drama in the University of Leeds.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Welfare State International (WSI) as discussed by the authors is a consortium of freelance associates, many of whom have a fine art background, who have achieved an international reputation for their original and pioneering work, having worked for and with communities throughout Britain and Europe.
Abstract: Founded by John Fox in Bradford in 1968, Welfare State International – WSI for short – is a consortium of freelance associates, many of whom have a fine art background. Funded by the Arts Council to research prototype forms of visual, celebratory theatre and ceremonial art, the company has achieved an international reputation for its original and pioneering work, having worked for and with communities throughout Britain and Europe, and as far afield as Japan, Australia, the USA, Canada, and Tanzania. Handcrafted celebratory events may variously incorporate specially made pyrotechnic animations, iceworks, architectural lanterns, carnival orchestras, oratorios of popular song, clay grottoes, mobile tableaux of performance art, theatrical transformations, surreal films, and infernal sculptural machines. WSI has consistently explored the territory between theatrical product and applied anthropology. In the original series of Theatre Quarterly, a feature in TQ8 (1972), compiled by John Fox, described and illustrated the company's early years, and in 1983 Tony Coult and Baz Kershaw edited a ‘Welfare State Handbook’ for Methuen, entitled Engineers of the Imagination. As the company celebrates its twentieth anniversary, its Development Director, Michael White, looks at some current directions and preoccupations in WSI's work and thinking.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors consider the various kinds and qualities of theatre that have been produced in Chile since 1973, and draw some conclusions about the nature of freedom of expression and its repression.
Abstract: Largely as a result of the experimentation and stability of the university theatres founded in the early 'forties, Chilean theatre is among the best-established in Latin America. But how far has its survival since 1973 depended on the regime's sense of the theatre's relative impotence to effect change? Little is known about Chilean theatre in Britain, few plays have been translated, and with rare exceptions those that have found their way here have been limited to ‘solidarity’ audiences. In this article. Catherine M. Boyle, who teaches in the Department of Modern Languages of the University of Strathclyde, considers the various kinds and qualities of theatre that have been produced in Chile since 1973, and draws some conclusions about the nature of freedom of expression and its repression.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Bennett as discussed by the authors analyzed the distinctive qualities and "sonances" of language in the play, looking in particular at the couplets, whose use and significance he analyzes and defends.
Abstract: Among the infinite variety of critical approaches to Shakespeare, relatively little attention has been paid, even by scholars professedly concerned with Shakespeare's language, to the quality and nature of the sound of his words – despite the commonplace assumption that the young Shakespeare, in particular, was in love with language. One consequence is that such a major element of Richard II as its high proportion of rhyming couplets is either briefly (and negatively) dismissed, or ignored. Here, Kenneth C. Bennett, who teaches in the Department of English at Lake Forest College, lllinois, considers in detail the distinctive qualities and ‘sonances’ of language in the play, looking in particular at the couplets, whose use and significance he analyzes and defends.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In his major work on Theatre Games (Methuen, 1977), Clive Barker provided both a practical textbook on the uses of game-playing for actors, and some theoretical background to its value as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: In his major work on Theatre Games (Methuen, 1977), Clive Barker provided both a practical textbook on the uses of game-playing for actors, and some theoretical background to its value. There, he largely stressed the function of games as a means to an end – the development of acting skills, and the enrichment of the rehearsal process. But, partly as a result of the book's appearance, he has also conducted many one-off ‘game workshops’, often for groups whose concerns are not primarily or professionally theatrical: and in the following article he discusses the value that game-playing still seems to have for such groups, by close analogy with the function of the ‘kissing-games’ of his own childhood and adolescence – as a means of breaking down inhibitions within a context that is both socially acceptable and controlled. Clive Barker, whose career in the professional theatre began with Joan Littlewoods's Theatre Workshop company, is co-editor of New Theatre Quarterly, and now teaches in the Joint School of Theatre Studies at the University of Warwick.


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present the UHRA definition of the concept of the U-HRA and propose a method to define the definition of a U-UHRA.
Abstract: Copyright Cambridge University Press [Full text of this article is not available in the UHRA]