Showing papers in "New Theatre Quarterly in 1994"
TL;DR: The British working-class pageants of the nineteen-thirties were cross-bred between the resolutely bourgeois civic pageants which had become popular around the turn of the century and remained so still, and the new Soviet style of mass-declamations with agit-prop intent as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: The British working-class pageants of the nineteen-thirties were curiously cross-bred between, on the one hand, the resolutely bourgeois civic pageants which had become popular around the turn of the century and remained so still, and, on the other, the new Soviet style of mass-declamations with agit-prop intent. Often ignored even by left-wing theatre historians, these pageants drew on other influences varying from endemic communal forms of creation such as choirs and processions to the work of contemporary, left-leaning ‘high art’ poets and musicians. Here, Mick Wallis looks in detail at one such pageant, Music and the People, mounted in London in April 1939, and at the tripartite five-day festival of which it formed a part. He goes on to explore the politics, aesthetics, and logistics of this long-neglected form of popular performance. Mick Wallis, who teaches drama at Loughborough University, has recently published on using Raymond Williams's work in the integration of practical and academic approaches to teaching. His one-man act, Sir John Feelgood and Marjorie, was an experiment in popular form for the sake of left-wing benefits.
37 citations
TL;DR: Demastes as discussed by the authors presents a general summary of chaos theory, applies it to The Master Builder, suggests ways in which Ibsen anticipates the postmodernists, and how, in turn, chaos theory can help in comprehending several paths that the theatre has followed since the inception of postmodernism.
Abstract: In 1978, Robert Brustein observed that Ibsen's The Master Builder subtly undermined the tenets of naturalism for which both the play and its author are usually remembered. Here, William W. Demastes suggests that, though lacking precise paradigms when they wrote the play and the critique, Ibsen and Brustein both approach the understanding of human interaction in ways that are currently explained through the ‘new’ scientific paradigm of chaos theory. This essay presents a general summary of chaos theory, applies it to The Master Builder, suggests ways in which Ibsen anticipates the postmodernists, and how, in turn, chaos theory can help in comprehending several paths that the theatre has followed since the inception of postmodernism. William W. Demastes is associate professor of English at Louisiana State University, and is author of Beyond Naturalism: a New Realism in American Theatre (1988). This essay is an extension of his book, and is designed in part as in introduction to his next book-length study, on the confluence of scientific and dramatic thought in the twentieth century.
12 citations
TL;DR: Bernhardt became vaudeville's centrepiece in its own war with the legitimate theatre for audience and status as mentioned in this paper, and received the highest salary ever paid to a ‘headlined’ vaudebased act, while performing a repertoire from which she was able to exclude the sort of light entertainment which had previously typified the medium.
Abstract: American vaudeville welcomed a host of important stage actors into its midst during the generation between the mid-1890s and the end of the First World War, and in 1912, following appearances in British music halls, Sarah Bernhardt became vaudeville's centrepiece in its own war with the legitimate theatre for audience and status. By way of exchange, she received the highest salary ever paid to a ‘headlined’ vaudeville act, while performing a repertoire from which she was able to exclude the sort of light entertainment which had previously typified the medium. Both vaudeville and Bernhardt profited, in very different ways, from this wedding of high culture to low – and in the process a cultural standing seems to have attached itself to exhibitions of pain which legitimised the lot of the morally deviant women she both portrayed and exemplified. Leigh Woods, Head of Theatre Studies at the University of Michigan, explores the ways in which the great actress thus maintained a demand for her services well after the eclipse of her legendary beauty and matchless movement.
5 citations
TL;DR: A performance text of the inaugural lecture delivered at Royal Holloway College, University of London, on 9 March 1993, by Jacky Bratton, following her appointment as Professor of Theatre and Cultural History.
Abstract: This is the text – appropriately, a ‘performance text’ – of the inaugural lecture delivered at Royal Holloway College, University of London, on 9 March 1993, by Jacky Bratton, following her appointment as Professor of Theatre and Cultural History. Although she holds her chair at a former women's college, Jacky Bratton reflects that the introduction of co-education in such institutions has in practice left them as male-dominated as the rest. Ironically, this continued marginalizing of women in academic life reflects the common view of theatre studies as itself a marginal discipline – almost as suspect as Jacky Bratton's own specialist concern with its more popular aspects. Looking at the ways in which women have been marginalized within theatre history, she challenges in particular the received wisdom that the alleged ‘decline of the drama’ in the nineteenth century was reversed by a striving for respectability usually traced to the rattle of cups-and-saucers on box sets, and apotheosized in Irving's knighthood: instead, she reflects upon the radical impulses of earlier nineteenth-century theatre, and at the ways in which the gender of three women who worked within it influenced their theatrical careers, their social standing, and their own attitudes towards both.
5 citations
TL;DR: Gardiner as mentioned in this paper studied the composition of the audience for Shakespeare's theatre and concluded that the percentage attending the theatre has remained remarkably constant, and constantly low, and suggested that some approaches and even the findings of modern audience researchers may shed new light on the controversy.
Abstract: The received wisdom regarding the composition of the audience for Shakespeare's theatre has shifted in accordance with the social assumptions of the times – from Alfred Harbage's assertion of a popular, homogeneous audience, evolved for the egalitarian 'forties, to Ann Jennalie Cook's argument for a ‘privileged’ audience, put forward in the elitist 'eighties. While Andrew Gurr's Playgoing in Shakespeare's London corrects the worst excesses of both views, it remains dependent upon a great deal of inference from inadequate documentation, often directed to other purposes, and sometimes upon necessary guesswork, however rooted in common-sense. Caroline Gardiner teaches and researches in the Department of Arts Policy and Management at City University, whence have emerged the most detailed attempts to ‘profile’ the theatregoing populace of contemporary London: and here she suggests that some of the approaches and even the findings of modern audience researchers may shed new light on the controversy. Sometimes the results are surprising – and include the possibility that, relative to the pool of population available, theatre is now actually a more popular activity than in Shakespeare's London. However, she concludes that, overall, the percentage attending the theatre has remained remarkably constant, and constantly low.
4 citations
4 citations
TL;DR: McConachie as discussed by the authors pointed out that history is only one part of a much larger socio-cultural complex, and that it is the historian's job to analyze theatre in terms of that complex.
Abstract: Bruce McConachie teaches in the Theatre Department at the College of William and Mary in Virginia He is one of the leading theatre historians in the United States, who has, as David Mayer put it in his review of McConachie's most recent book, Melodramatic Formations: American Theatre and Society, 1820–1870, ‘been examining, criticizing, and improving the practice of theatre historiography’ for many years McConachie's re-examination of how history is researched, analyzed, and written has its origins in an article, ‘Towards a Postpositivist Theatre History’, which he published in Theatre Journal in 1985, criticizing scholars who limit their theatre histories to events in the theatre He called for historians to realize that theatre is only one part of a much larger socio-cultural complex, and that it is the historian's job to analyze theatre in terms of that complex this article was the point of departure for the following interview, which Ian Watson conducted with McConachie in Philadelphia in January 1993
3 citations
TL;DR: Rohmer as mentioned in this paper examines the transformation of playscript into mise-en-scene, focusing in particular on the use of music and dance, but looking also at the production as an intercultural event.
Abstract: In large part due to the relative lack of productions in Europe, the plays of Wole Soyinka have mostly been approached from a literary point of view rather than analyzed as theatrical events. Because the plays rely heavily on non-verbal conventions, this neglect of visual and acoustic patterns promotes an incomplete understanding of Soyinka's idea of theatre. Here, for the first time, a play by Soyinka is analyzed from the point of view of performance – specifically, the production of Death and the King's Horseman staged at the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester, in 1990. Martin Rohmer examines the transformation of playscript into mise-en-scene, focusing in particular on the use of music and dance, but looking also at the production as an intercultural event – asking not only how far a European company has to rely on African performing skills, but how far a European cast and audience is capable of a proper understanding of the play. This article is a revised version of a lecture delivered at the Conference of the Association for the Study of the New Literatures in English, held in Bayreuth in June 1992. Martin Rohmer studied Drama, German Literature, Anthropology, and Philosophy in Munich, and Theatre, Film and TV Studies at the University of Glasgow, before completing his MA in Munich in 1992. Presently he is a Research Assistant at the University of Bayreuth, where he is working on a PhD on the performing arts in Zimbabwe.
3 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, Posener takes up the debate, criticising the methodology and terminology adopted by Holderness and Loughrey, and some of the conclusions to which these led.
Abstract: Over the past few years we have encouraged the simmering in these pages of a continuing debate about the relationship between the bibliographical and scholarly problems of editing Elizabethan texts, changing perceptions of ‘authority’, and the theatrical and political conceptions, old and new, which may affect all these Brian Parker, in NTQ24 (1990), and Stanley Wells, in NTQ26 (1991), were early contributors, and in NTQ34 (1992) Graham Holderness and Bryan Loughrey took up the argument, specifically questioning the editorial principles of the recent Oxford Shakespeare Here, Alan Posener takes up the debate, criticizing the methodology and terminology adopted by Holderness and Loughrey, and some of the conclusions to which these led Alan Posener is a British expatriate living in Berlin who – after stints in radical left-wing politics and teaching – became a writer, specializing in popular biography He is currently rewriting one of the standard German biographies of William Shakespeare
3 citations
TL;DR: In this article, a tribute to Jan Kott in appreciation of all he has done to stimulate international enthusiasm for Shakespeare's plays is presented as a way of paying tribute to him.
Abstract: This essay is offered as a tribute to Jan Kott in appreciation of all he has done to stimulate international enthusiasm for Shakespeare's plays.
3 citations
TL;DR: Nicolas Whybrow as mentioned in this paper examines the general state of theatre produced for both the formal and the informal education sectors, and provides a more searching contextualization of some of the changes now taking place.
Abstract: In NTQ38 (May 1994) Nicolas Whybrow offered a brief account of the immediate threat facing theatre in education (TIE) in England and Wales. In the first of two articles in which he examines the general state of theatre produced for both the formal and the informal education sectors, he goes on to provide a more searching contextualization of some of the changes now taking place. Here, he analyzes the implications for TIE of the Education Reform Act of 1988, and the effect of Youth Service policies on theatre for youth work. Nicolas Whybrow recently completed a PhD based on the practices of Red Ladder, Blah Blah Blah, and Leeds TIE, and is about to take up a lecturing appointment at the Workshop Theatre (School of English), Leeds University.
TL;DR: Antigone loses its ground as tragedy because of the conflict between the ethos of authority and moral belief as discussed by the authors, this latter being motivated by religion, duty to the family, or love.
Abstract: FROM THE TIME of Sophocles' Antigone, his version of the myth – which relates how Oedipus' daughter buried her brother Polyneices against the decree of Creon and, upon being sentenced to death, died by her own hand – became invariable. It was in modern treatments of the story that changes began to be introduced: these concerned the person or authorities representing the law; the time when the events occur, and their location; the person whom Antigone buries; and why she dies. But a continuing, necessary determinant in such modern incarnations of the myth has been the conflict between the ethos of authority and the ethos of moral belief – this latter being motivated by religion, duty to the family, or love. Without such an opposition, Antigone loses its ground as tragedy.
TL;DR: This article explored a kind of reappropriation in the work of an early, professed admirer of Kott, Peter Brook, and found that reclaiming culture means reclaiming a part of oneself.
Abstract: How well Jan Kott understands that theatre is always our contemporary and must be shown to be our contemporary if it is not to become like old bones locked up in a glass case in a museum. He also explains with rare finesse that it is contemporary differently. Theatre lives in the here-and-now according to the culture making, interpreting, and appropriating it – and even reappropriating it, when it seems to have gone to belong somewhere else. Jan Kott knows, too, that reclaiming a culture means reclaiming a part of oneself. This tribute – part of research supported by the Australian Research Council Large Grants Scheme – explores a kind of reappropriation in the work of an early, professed admirer of Kott, Peter Brook.
TL;DR: In this paper, the help of friends and counsellors in Calcutta, Bhubaneswar, and Puri has been described as "a fitting contribution to an issue in honour of Jan Kott, for he has offered encouragement of the same kind on many occasions".
Abstract: I could not have written this essay without the help of friends and counsellors in Calcutta, Bhubaneswar, and Puri. They listened carefully to my questions and took time to help me appreciate what I was encountering for the first time on stage and in life around me. This indebtedness makes this essay a fitting contribution to an issue in honour of Jan Kott, for he has offered encouragement of the same kind on many occasions. First I had read his Shakespeare Our Contemporary, and then I was able to enjoy his company, at Brighton, Vancouver, and for over two years at Stony Brook, Long Island. He helped me to think adventurously and showed me how to be watchful. I owe him a great debt and this essay is offered in token of my gratitude, pleasure, and admiration.
TL;DR: Jan Kott as discussed by the authors is the embodiment of all the best qualities of the great tradition of Central European men of letters: intellectuals of universal erudition, critical insight, deep humanity, combined with a divine sense of humour.
Abstract: Jan Kott belongs to that outstanding group of Polish writers and intellectuals who stand as living proof of the immense talent and genius of their generation which triumphantly emerged from the Nazis' attempts to annihilate the Polish nation, not only physically but culturally as well. He is the embodiment of all the best qualities of the great tradition of Central European men of letters: intellectuals of universal erudition, critical insight, deep humanity, combined with a divine sense of humour – a worthy peer of giants like Kantor, Milosz, and Mrozek.
TL;DR: In this paper, Oliver Double, himself a working comic, describes the distinctive characteristics of regional alternative comedy, and the now very real dangers of stagnation, illustrating his argument from interviews with leading comics on the regional circuits.
Abstract: Metropolitan snobbery and the logistics of scale both militate against the success of comedians working in the regions. Yet, as Oliver Double here argues, the scene has been a lively one, often daring in its style and range alike – at least until the absorption of its big names into the London circuits by the agencies which increasingly control most of the bookings and much of the talent. Oliver Double, himself a working comic, describes the distinctive characteristics of regional alternative comedy, and the now very real dangers of stagnation, illustrating his argument from interviews with leading comics on the regional circuits – Nick Toczek, Stu Who?, Roger Monkhouse, Malcolm Bailey, Anvil Springsteen, Adam Caveleri, Kevin Seisay, Henry Normal, and John Simmit. Offering some hopes for the future, he points out the relatively low audience figures required to ensure a vigorous growth – if only emerging talent can be nurtured rather than condemned to still birth.
TL;DR: In their respective contexts, most structuralists are able to change a light bulb, provided, since these processes are always two-way, that the light bulb doesn't change them first as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: IT IS A STRANGE and little-known fact that even scholars and critics can be characterized in terms of changing light bulbs. A classicist can change a light bulb, but the old one was essentially better. The modernist may change a light bulb, but only after the house has been completely rewired. In their respective contexts, most structuralists are able to change a light bulb, provided, since these processes are always two-way, that the light bulb doesn't change them first. But when Jan Kott changes a light bulb, he has the unfortunate knack of switching on the whole Christmas tree.
TL;DR: In 1992, for the first time since the late 1980s, Bond worked with members of the Royal Shakespeare Company, resuming in workshop conditions his attempt to develop a distinctive acting style for his work.
Abstract: Disillusioned by what he sees as the inadequate state of the British theatre, Edward Bond has refused to have some of his more recent plays produced in this country, although they have been seen in productions on the Continent. This year's Avignon Festival will thus be focusing on his work, and later in 1994 the Berliner Ensemble will be staging Olly's Prison. In 1992, however, Bond worked – for the first time since the late 1980s – with members of the Royal Shakespeare Company, resuming in workshop conditions his attempt to develop a distinctive acting style for his work. Commenting on the programme of workshops, and through subsequent interviews with Bond and some of the actors involved, Ian Stuart, who teaches in the School of Theatre at the University of Southern California, attempts to draw conclusions about Bond's current theatre methodology.
TL;DR: In addition to being a theatre director, Mirzoev is a novelist, poet, critic, and artist as discussed by the authors, who studied with Mark Mestechkin, a disciple of his teachers Sergei Eisenstein and Vsevolod Meyerhold.
Abstract: In addition to being a theatre director, Vladimir Mirzoev is a novelist, poet, critic, and artist. Born in Moscow in 1957, he studied with Mark Mestechkin, a disciple of his teachers Sergei Eisenstein and Vsevolod Meyerhold. Before he emigrated to Toronto, Canada, in May 1989, Mirzoev was known in Russian theatre as an iconoclast and a leading figure of the avant garde. His productions of Voltaire, Pushkin, Gogol, Buchner, Strindberg, Claudel, Weiss, and Howard Barker became renowned for the plasticity of the actors' movement and the use of metaphor to convey meaning, and Russian critics hailed his extraordinary ability to sculpt his own distinctive theatrical language, blending the ironic and the grotesque. In NTQ32 (August 1992) we published an interview with Mirzoev conducted by Rita Much: here, Julie Adam takes up the story, with an assessment of the director's work with ‘Horizontal Eight’ in Toronto – notably the productions, of Gogol's The Inspector General, Wilde's Salome, Camus's Caligula, and Barker's The Possibilities.
TL;DR: The early career of the actress Fulvia Giuliani affirms both her strong endorsement for and participation in the movement, and her contempt for women who passively accepted the roles assigned to them by the patriarchy as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: Despite the importance of Italian Futurism to the modernist movement in Europe during the early inter-war period, it has suffered a bad press – initially because of its association with the emergent fascist movement, and more recently because of the feminist concern with apparently misogynistic elements in the writing of the acknowledged leader of the movement, F. T. Marinetti. However, Gunter Berghaus argues that this is to ignore not only the roots of Marinetti's own anti-feminism – in contempt for the very aspects of subservient womanhood now condemned by feminists themselves – but also the support that Futurism enjoyed from a number of women artists in Italy at the time. Certainly, the early career of the actress Fulvia Giuliani affirms both her strong endorsement for and participation in the movement, and her contempt for women who passively accepted the roles assigned to them by the patriarchy. Gunter Berghaus, who teaches in the Drama Department of the University of Bristol, here outlines Giuliani's role in the Futurist movement and documents it from previously unpublished sources.
TL;DR: Lunacharsky as mentioned in this paper was one of the first Bolsheviks to join the Bolsheviks after the revolution in 1917, and after the October Revolution he was appointed to Lenin's first ‘Cabinet' as Commissar for Enlightenment, a post embracing the arts and education.
Abstract: The death of Ibsen in 1906 prompted a number of appraisals of the dramatist by Marxist critics, notably Clara Zetkin, Henrietta Roland-Holst, and George Plekhanov. The most extended of these was Anatoly Lunacharsky's article, ‘Ibsen and the Petty Bourgeoisie’, published in three parts in Obrazovanie , St. Petersburg, Nos. 5–7 (June-August 1907). The central section, ‘Ibsen's Dramas’, is printed below. Born in the Ukraine in 1875, Lunacharsky became a Marxist in his teens and joined the Moscow Social Democrat group in 1899. Arrested for his political activities, he was exiled to Northern Russia, where he wrote his first theoretical treatise, An Essay in Positive Aesthetics . In 1903 he joined the Bolsheviks, but broke with Lenin after 1905, having identified himself with the so-called ‘God-seeking’ tendency. Following the fall of Tsarism in 1917 Lunacharsky rejoined the Bolsheviks, and after the October Revolution he was appointed to Lenin's first ‘Cabinet’ as Commissar for Enlightenment, a post embracing the arts and education. Exceptionally, he retained this position up until 1930, when he became one of the Soviet Union's two representatives to the League of Nations. He died in 1933, shortly before he was due to become Soviet ambassador to Spain. Lunacharsky's published output runs to some 1,500 articles, embracing philosophy, aesthetics, and theoretical and critical writings on all the arts. He also wrote a number of plays, including Faust and the City (1918) and Oliver Cromwell (1920). He was an intellectual of wide erudition and acute critical perception, balancing respect for the old and the traditional with encouragement for the new and the inconoclastic. As Commissar for Enlightenment, he did much to defend the early avant garde's freedom to experiment, making the Soviet Union a power-house of artistic innovation.