Showing papers in "New Theatre Quarterly in 2000"
TL;DR: Deeney as discussed by the authors examines how the Lord Chamberlain's licensing of Christa Winsloe's lesbian-themed Children in Uniform, and the commercial and critical success of its production at the Duchess Theatre in 1932-33, invites a reassessment of the possibilities open to women playwrights for exploring deviancy.
Abstract: British theatre between the two world wars has been a neglected area of interest for contemporary scholars and theatre historians, but a growing body of work in this field has of late begun to challenge the orthodoxies. Much of the new work has focused on the reclamation and repositioning of the work of ‘forgotten’ women playwrights and commercially successful gay playwrights such as Noel Coward and Terence Rattigan. Here, John Deeney examines how the Lord Chamberlain's licensing of Christa Winsloe's lesbian-themed Children in Uniform, and the commercial and critical success of its production at the Duchess Theatre in 1932–33, invites a reassessment of the possibilities open to women playwrights for exploring ‘deviancy’; and how contemporary theoretical positions too frequently ignore the challenge of the historically and culturally specific.
46 citations
TL;DR: Fensham and Varney as discussed by the authors examined the anxieties that surface at the point of implosion between live and mediatized performance and proposed a model of "videocy".
Abstract: With the spread of digital and other modes of electronic recordings into the auditoria and lecture theatres where performance is studied, the debate about the video documentation of performance – already well rehearsed and in the pages of NTQ – is about to intensify. Rachel Fensham and Denise Varney have based the article which follows on their own work in videoing live theatre pieces for research into feminist performance. This article deliberates on their experience with the medium and examines the anxieties that surface at the point of implosion between live and mediatized performance. The first part locates these anxieties in the question of presence and absence in performance – especially that of the performer, whose body and self are both at stake in the recorded image. In the second part, the authors offer a description of viewing practices, which they present as a model of ‘videocy’. Rachel Fensham is Senior Lecturer in the Centre for Drama and Theatre Studies, Monash University, and Denise Varney is Lecturer in the School of Studies in Creative Arts, Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne.
23 citations
TL;DR: Davis and O'Sullivan as discussed by the authors argue that Boal's methods have been far from revolutionary for many years, and that they are now focused on individual needs, enabling the individual to survive a little longer within an oppressive social structure.
Abstract: Augusto Boal is one of the best-known contemporary practitioners and teachers in the use of drama as a means of challenging the status quo. Starting as a self-proclaimed revolutionary, challenging the artistic theories of Aristotle and seeking to supersede those of Brecht, he developed his ‘Theatre of the Oppressed’ working with the poor of Brazil. Now he is perhaps best known for his work in ‘Forum Theatre’ and ‘Image Theatre’. In this article, David Davis and Carmel O'Sullivan argue that not only have Boal's methods been far from revolutionary for many years, but that they are now focused on individual needs, enabling the individual to survive a little longer within an oppressive social structure. They propose that this is not a case of Marxist revolutionary ideology becoming diluted over time, but that the roots of the change are to be found in a lack of grounding in Marxist theory and philosophy from the beginning. David Davis is Director of the International Centre for Studies in Drama in Education and Professor of Drama in Education at the University of Central England, teaching on the MA programme as well as supervising PhD research. He has presented workshops in many parts of the world, and published widely. Carmel O'Sullivan lectures in the Education Department at Trinity College, Dublin, and is currently completing her doctoral thesis critiquing the theory and practice of Boal at the University of Central England.
20 citations
TL;DR: The Notting Hill Carnival is now Europe's largest street festival, celebrating the music and popular arts of a variety of cultures as mentioned in this paper, and it has been widely perceived as both threatening and marginal, but more recently the size, success, and high media profile of the carnival have given it a'responsible' image.
Abstract: The Notting Hill Carnival is now Europe's largest street festival, celebrating the music and popular arts of a variety of cultures. Not so long ago, the event – which sometimes culiminated in violence between the police and carnival goers – was widely perceived as both threatening and marginal. But more recently the size, success, and high media profile of the carnival have given it a ‘responsible’ image – and won sponsorship from a variety of commercial concerns. In this article Gavin Carver Explores these developments in the meditation and context of the carnival, and asks whether the sponsorrship has contributed towards the containment of the carnival, transforming a socio/cultural event into mere decorative spectacle. GAvin Carver is a Lecturer in Drama at the University of Kent.
16 citations
TL;DR: Claire Cochrane as discussed by the authors studied the history and development of the Birmingham Repertory Theatre in relation to the city as an outcome of the Industrial Revolution, which made it distinctive in terms of its manufactures, the workers and entrepreneurs who produced them, and a civic consciousness that was disputed yet also shared.
Abstract: In NTQ61, Deborah Saivetz described the attempts over the past decade of the Italian director Pino DiBuduo to create ‘invisible cities’ – performances intended to restore the relationship between urban spaces and their inhabitants, through exploring the actual and spiritual histories of both. Earlier in the present issue, Baz Kershaw suggests some broader analogies between the theatre and its macrocosmic environment. Here, Claire Cochrane, who teaches at University College, Worcester, narrows the focus to a particular British city and the role over time of a specific theatre in relation to its urban setting. Her subject is the history and development of the Birmingham Repertory Theatre in relation to the city – of which its founder, Barry Jackson, was a lifelong resident – as an outcome of the city's growth in the wake of the Industrial Revolution, which made it distinctive in terms of its manufactures, the workers and entrepreneurs who produced them, and a civic consciousness that was disputed yet also shared. She traces, too, the transition between old and new theatre buildings and spaces which continued to reflect shifting class and cultural relationships as the city, its politicians, and its planners adapted to the second half of the twentieth century.
8 citations
TL;DR: Feral as mentioned in this paper offers illuminating definitions and suggests helpful boundaries - aesthetic, cultural, social, and historical -for the critic in the theatre and of his or her responsibilities towards the theatre, arguing that the dilemma has always been heightened by the ephemerality of the art to which the review gives a vicarious and subjectified after-life, but also by the shifting sands between the journalistic and the academic landmarks of the craft.
Abstract: The functions of the critic in the theatre and of his or her responsibilities towards the theatre have long been debated and disputed, and are now in a state both of flux and contradiction – flux, because of the rapidly changing state of the media in which criticism is published and the new forms which ‘publication’ can now take; contradiction, because of the dual perception of criticism as at once an ‘offensive’ art and an ‘art of solidarity’. Especially for the critic of theatre, the dilemma has always been heightened not only by the ephemerality of the art to which the review gives a vicarious and subjectified after-life, but also by the shifting sands between the journalistic and the academic landmarks of the craft. Rather than attempting impossible solutions, Josette Feral offers illuminating definitions and suggests helpful boundaries – aesthetic, cultural, social, and historical. Josette Feral is full professor in the Drama Department of the Universite du Quebec a Montreal. She has published several books, including Mise en scene et jeu de I'acteur, (two volumes, 1997, 1999), dealing with many European as well as North American directors, Rencontres avec Ariane Mnouchkine (1995) and Trajectoires du Soleil (1999), both on Mnouchkine's work, and La Culture contre I'art: essai d'economie politique du theâtre (1990). She has also published several articles on the theory of theatre in Canada, the United States and Europe, in journals such as The Drama Review, Modern Drama, The French Review, Discourse, Theaterschrift, Cahiers de theâtre, and Theâtre Public. She is currently President of the International Federation for Theatre Research.
8 citations
TL;DR: Wallis and Overfield as discussed by the authors presented a show called In the Twenty-First Century Everyone will be Stelarc for Fifteen Minutes (Rehearsal for a Ceremonial Event), with Jan Overfield and Movements in Mayhem.
Abstract: Though little remembered or honoured today, Mary Kelly (1888–1951) was one of the more enlightened among those who, between the wars, encouraged the then-booming amateur theatre into attempting more than the limp reproduction of West End successes. She had a strong belief in the intrinsically dramatic potential of the country dweller, imbued with generations of traditional lore: but unlike many of her more nostalgic contemporaries, Mary Kelly well recognized the class conflicts and history of deprivation of the rural poor, and blended such elements into the pageants she devised not only for her own village but for other rural communities – and which she encouraged others to emulate through her instructional writings. Mick Wallis, Reader in Performance Studies at Loughborough University, has written on modern-day pageantry in his two-part article on ‘Pageantry and the Popular Front’ in NTQ 38 and 41 (May 1994 and February 1995), and in ‘Delving the Levels of Memory and Dressing-up in the Past’ in Inter-War Theatres, edited by Clive Barker and Maggie Gale, forthcoming from Cambridge University Press. His millennium show, In the Twenty-First Century Everyone Will Be Stelarc for Fifteen Minutes (Rehearsal for a Ceremonial Event), with Jan Overfield and Movements in Mayhem, was premiered at Loughborough in December 1999.
8 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors make connections between the high-imperial Victorian love of glasshouses and the massive 'nineties ecological experiment of 'Biosphere II' -a gigantic glass ark the size of an aircraft hangar situated in the Southern Arizona desert, which embraces all the main types of terrain in the global eco-system.
Abstract: In what would a postmodern theatrum mundi, or ‘theatre of the world’, consist? In an ironic inversion of the very concept, with the microcosm issuing a unilateral declaration of independence – or of incorporation? Or in a neo-neoplatonic recognition that it is but a cultural construct of an outer world that is itself culturally constructed? In the following article, Baz Kershaw makes connections between the high-imperial Victorian love of glasshouses, which at once created and constrained their ‘theatre of nature’, and the massive 'nineties ecological experiment of ‘Biosphere II’ – ‘a gigantic glass ark the size of an aircraft hangar situated in the Southern Arizona desert’, which embraces all the main types of terrain in the global eco-system. In the Biosphere's ambiguous position between deeply serious scientific experiment and commodified theme park, Kershaw sees an hermetically-sealed system analogous to much contemporary theatre – whose intrinsic opacity is often further blurred by a theorizing no less reductive than that of the obsessive Victorian taxonomists. He offers not answers, but ‘meditations’ on the problem of creating an ecologically meaningful theatre. Baz Kershaw, currently Professor of Drama at the University of Bristol, originally trained and worked as a design engineer. He has had extensive experience as a director and writer in radical theatre, including productions at the Drury Lane Arts Lab and as co-director of Medium Fair, the first mobile rural community arts group, and of the reminiscence theatre company Fair Old Times. He is the author of The Politics of Performance: Radical Theatre as Cultural Intervention (Routledge, 1992) and The Radical in Performance: Between Brecht and Baudrillard (Routledge, 1999), and co-author of Engineers of the Imagination: the Welfare State Handbook (Methuen, 1990).
7 citations
TL;DR: Cohen-Cruz argues that community theatre tends to assemble the more self-confident members of a majority group to emulate successes from the Broadway repertoire, while community-based theatre prefers to draw upon minority and deprived groups in an attempt to create original modes of performance that help the participants make sense of and improve their society.
Abstract: Jan Cohen-Cruz argues that in the hyphen separating community theatre from community-based theatre lies a world of difference – of intention as of realization. Where community theatre tends to assemble the more self-confident members of a majority group to emulate successes from the Broadway repertoire, community-based theatre prefers to draw upon minority and deprived groups in an attempt to create original modes of performance that help the participants make sense of and improve their society. Drawing upon her own experiences and those of other community-based theatre practitioners over a period extending back to the heady days of the 'sixties, Jan Cohen-Cruz identifies weaknesses and failures as well as strengths – as also the ambiguous area where the success of the product may carry dangers of compromise or unhappy collaboration. Associate Professor of Drama Jan Cohen-Cruz co-edited Playing Boal: Theatre, Therapy, Activism, and edited Radical Street Performance: an International Anthology. Her articles have appeared in TDR, High Performance, American Theatre, Urban Resources, Women and Performance, The Mime Journal, African Theatre, and the anthology But Is It Art? From 1995 to 1997 Cohen-Cruz co-directed NYU Tisch School of the Arts AmeriCorps project – President Clinton's domestic Peace Corps – focusing on violence reduction through the arts. She has since co-directed Urban Ensemble, through which Tisch School of the Arts students undertake community-based art internships.
7 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors trace the rise and development of the spiritualist craze, and illuminates this previously obscure aspect of the career of Henry Irving, who, with two companions, took up a challenge in The Era, the newspaper of the variety profession, to emulate the mystical achievements of the Davenports.
Abstract: Spiritualism enjoys an equivocal reputation not unlike that of wrestling – for whatever their intrinsic qualities, both benefit greatly from the trappings of showmanship. Supposed spiritualist mediums first manifested themselves during the Victorian era, which seems to have been highly susceptible to such fraudsters as the American Davenport brothers – whose touring ‘seances’ were, however, greeted with rather more scepticism in the North of England than in London. While audiences seemed to enjoy the way in which such demonstrations of spiritual possession were presented in a manner resembling a professional conjuring act, professional conjurers were properly offended by such presumption. So, too, was the young Henry Irving, who, with two companions, took up a challenge in The Era, the newspaper of the variety profession, to emulate the mystical achievements of the Davenports. The following paper, which was originally presented in July 1995 at the Theatre Museum as part of the celebrations of the centenary of Irving's knighthood, traces the rise and development of the spiritualist craze, and illuminates this previously obscure aspect of Irving's career. Helen Nicholson is currently completing her PhD on the life of the Victorian actress and singer Georgina Weldon, before taking up an appointment as a drama lecturer in the English Department at Manchester Metropolitan University. She has published articles on Georgina Weldon in Occasional Papers on Women and Theatre, on the Victorian supernatural, and on Victorian fairies in History Workshop Journal.
7 citations
TL;DR: New Sites for Shakespeare as discussed by the authors relies as much on John Russell Brown's experiences of the 'exotic' as his 'familiar' work on numerous western productions of Shakespeare, which are often given short shrift in western performances or simply cut.
Abstract: New Sites for Shakespeare relies as much on John Russell Brown's experiences of the 'exotic' as his 'familiar' work on numerous western productions of Shakespeare. His observation of ritual practices (a Balinese cremation ceremony) as well as of performance practices (notably Kutiyattam and Jatra in India) have encouraged him to rethink the ceremonial and ritualistic elements inscribed in Shakespeare's texts, which, he argues, are often given short shrift in western performances or simply cut. As well as (re)imagining the staging of scenes like the banquet in Macbeth, he also surmises interesting parallels between contemporary Asian audiences and the Elizabethans. Verbal participation has recently been encouraged and revived at the Globe to many critics' dismay and even embarrassment. Russell Brown digs deeper than this imitative behaviour to reconceive the parameters of imaginatively constrained western productions. His writing reads refreshingly like an anthropologist's draft observations, but occasionally veers towards a Rough Guide the notion of Asia is an unwieldy monolith. The book is at its most fruitful in direct textual references which indicate how his experiences help him (re)envision Shakespeare (Edgar's final speech in King Lear in a Delhi performance became a public statement, voicing the on-stage crowd's feelings, rather than an individual expression). It is a light but stimulating read which gains much from the insight he offers into his shifting perceptions.
TL;DR: In this article, Roberts considers the fluctuations in gay visibility, and asks what happened to the gay theatre that sprang to prominence in the 'eighties, and situates the best of present gay theatre work as standing in a critically defining role to mainstream theatre culture, not only through its political conscientizing of "queer" and theatricality, but also in its opposition to an assimilationist gay subculture.
Abstract: With hopes for a repeal of Clause 28 poised for imminent realization or disappointment, a successful European challenge to Britain's policy on gays and lesbians in the armed forces, and an overwhelming House of Commons vote to equalize the gay ‘age of consent’, gay issues are high in the public consciousness. But to what extent are these political events being reflected in contemporary theatre? In this article, Brian Roberts considers the fluctuations in gay visibility, and asks what happened to the gay theatre that sprang to prominence in the 'eighties. He situates the best of present gay theatre work as standing in a critically defining role to mainstream theatre culture, not only through its political conscientizing of ‘queer’ and theatricality, but also in its opposition to an assimilationist gay subculture. Brian Roberts lectures in Drama and Theatre at Goldsmiths College, University of London, and is presently revising his book Artistic Bents: Gay Sensibility and Theatre for publication.
TL;DR: Brown and Brannen as discussed by the authors analyse the ways in which the English Arts Council operated the franchise scheme in an attempt to revitalize aspects of English theatre from 1986 onwards, trace the change in the values of 'political' theatre over that period, and critically examine some received ideas in the light of the available evidence.
Abstract: The pressures of Thatcherism on theatre funding in the 'eighties were severe, but the early harshness was tempered by several factors. One was the positive influence of the Cork Report, particularly on touring and experimental theatre. Another, the authors believe, was a careful strategy of reallocation of funding to support creativity in English theatre, notably through the touring franchise scheme. Here, they analyze in detail the ways in which the English Arts Council operated the scheme in an attempt to revitalize aspects of English theatre from 1986 onwards, trace the change in the values of ‘political’ theatre over that period, and critically examine some received ideas in the light of the available evidence. Ian Brown is Dean of Arts and Professor of Theatre at Queen Margaret University College, Edinburgh, Rob Brannen is a Senior Lecturer in Drama at De Montfort University, Bedford. Douglas Brown is Assistant Director, Scottish Centre for Cultural Management and Policy, at Queen Margaret University College, Edinburgh.
TL;DR: Rohmer as discussed by the authors looked back to the ways in which song enabled forms of protest against forced labour and other aspects of colonial rule and considered how urban theatre groups in independent Zimbabwe have adapted the tradition to their own, contemporary ends.
Abstract: In Zimbabwean society, what may not be spoken sometimes becomes acceptable in song – whether to avoid social taboos and enable a wife to complain against her mother-in-law, or in broadening the boundaries of political protest. In this article, Martin Rohmer looks back to the ways in which song enabled forms of protest against forced labour and other aspects of colonial rule – in times of outward compliance as well as of direct struggle – and considers how urban theatre groups in independent Zimbabwe have adapted the tradition to their own, contemporary ends. Martin Rohmer spent almost two years studying Zimbabwean theatre when a research assistant at the University of Bayreuth, and completed his doctorate on Theatre and Performance in Zimbabwe at the Humboldt University, Berlin, in 1997. Since then he has been working in the field of cultural management for the Young Artists' Festival in Bayreuth. The present paper was first presented at the Annual Meeting of the African Studies Association in San Francisco in November 1996.
TL;DR: In an earlier issue of New Theatre Quarterly, NTQ55 (August 1998), Marcia Blumberg examined the setting of the kitchen in performances by Bobby Baker and Jeanne Goosen, arguing for the transitional and transgressive possibilities of this domesticum-performance space.
Abstract: In an earlier issue of New Theatre Quarterly, NTQ55 (August 1998), Marcia Blumberg examined the setting of the kitchen in performances by Bobby Baker and Jeanne Goosen, arguing for the 'transitional and transgressive' possibilities of this domesticum-performance space. Here, Elaine Aston returns to the 'kitchen' in Bobby Baker's performances of 'daily life.' The article examines Baker's 'language' of food which 'speaks' of domesticity, and her conjunction of comic playing and the hysterical marking of the body, to show how her performance work constitutes an angry, feminist protest at the lack of social transformation in women's lives.
TL;DR: Bella Merlin this article offers a critical dissection of Mamet's approach, drawing on the working knowledge of Stanislavsky's Method of Physical Actions, or Active Analysis, which she acquired at the State Institute of Cinematography in Moscow.
Abstract: David Mamet's book, True and False: Heresy and Common Sense for the Actor (Faber, 1998), is rapidly becoming recommended reading amongst the acting fraternity. In this article Bella Merlin offers a critical dissection of Mamet's approach, drawing on the working knowledge of Stanislavsky's Method of Physical Actions, or Active Analysis, which she acquired at the State Institute of Cinematography in Moscow. She underlines the fragility of Mamet's dismissal of Stanislavsky, and illustrates how much of his ‘common sense’ actually derives from the principles underlying the Method of Physical Actions. Bella Merlin is an actor and lectures in Drama and Theatre Arts at Birmingham University.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors focus on the role and nature of impersonation in these events, and examine the relationship between the forms, objectives, and contexts of the performances and the kinds of impersonations to be found in them.
Abstract: Few studies of African ritual and festival performance have been written from a theatrical perspective, and Sam Ukala believes that the richness of such events has yet to be fully explored by African dramatists – while most of the western paratheatrical experiments derived from them have been influenced more by anthroplogical models than aesthetic principles. In pursuit of a dramaturgical approach to the study of African rituals and festivals, he focuses on the role and nature of impersonation in these events, and examines the relationship between the forms, objectives, and contexts of the performances and the kinds of impersonation to be found in them. Distinguishing between the western actor and the African role-player, and between ‘intense impersonation’ and possession, he suggests also some generic parallels between western theatre and African performance. Sam Ukala is a Professor of Drama and Theatre Arts at Edo State University, Ekpoma, Nigeria. A theatre director and playwright, his published plays include The Slave Wife, The Log in Your Eye, Akpakaland, The Trails of Obiamaka Elema, Break a Boil, and Two Plays: The Placenta of Death and The Last Heroes. In 1998–99 he was resident writer and director at Horse and Bamboo Theatre in the United Kingdom, where, with Bob Frith, he wrote and directed Harvest of Ghosts, a first experiment with wordless visual theatre, an extension of his preoccupation with ‘folkism’, a dramaturgy based on folk compositional and performance aesthetics formulated in his article in NTQ47 (August 1996).
TL;DR: Margolies as mentioned in this paper relates Kantor's dramatic memorializing of the dead and his creative ambivalence towards theatrical illusion to the "intersection of mysticism and rationalism" in his Polish-Jewish background.
Abstract: Famously, the work of the Polish director Tadeusz Kantor drew much on his own past – and specifically on memories of the dead. No less famously, he himself took a ‘part apart’ in his work on stage, manipulating and orchestrating the plays in progress, simultaneously as actor and auteur. In the following article, Eleanor Margolies relates Kantor's dramatic memorializing of the dead and his creative ambivalence towards theatrical illusion to the ‘intersection of mysticism and rationalism’ in his Polish-Jewish background – notably, to the image of the dybbuk, through whom the spirits of the dead speak, as in Anski's play of that name. She relates this ventriloquial habitation by a strange voice with the work of the performance artist Fiona Templeton, whose Recognition interweaves past and present, the living and the dead, in analogous fashion. She suggests that, through very different philosophies and technologies, both Kantor and Templeton ‘transmit a sensual understanding of the past’ to their audiences – through whose own responses the past is ultimately made to speak.
TL;DR: Barba as mentioned in this paper explores the differences in approaches to the training of the actor, distinguishing between "acculturation" as the usual point of departure in eastern traditions, and "inculturation'' as the dominant western mode.
Abstract: Eugenio Barba is founder and director of Odin Teatret, and of the International School of Theatre Anthropology. A longstanding Advisory Editor of NTQ, he is also a prolific writer on the nature of acting and the actor, with a special concern for what is shared by and what divides the traditions and styles of East and West. In the following article he explores the fundamental differences in approaches to the training of the aspirant actor, distinguishing between ‘acculturation’ as the usual point of departure in eastern traditions, and ‘inculturation’ as the dominant western mode. He explores the differing natures of the young actor's apprenticeship which have historically derived from these traditions, and the consequences of new emphases and social movements in the twentieth century which threaten the future of the ‘accultured’ approach, while requiring a new range of responses from the ‘incultured’. This article was first presented at the international symposium ‘Tacit Knowledge – Heritage and Waste’ which was held in Holstebro from 22 to 26 September 1999, on the occasion of Odin Teatret's thirty-fifth anniversary. Eugenio Barba's most recent publications are Land of Ashes and Diamonds: My Apprenticeship in Poland , including a long correspondence from Jerzy Grotowski, and Theatre: Solitude, Craft, Revolt , both from Black Mountain Press.
TL;DR: The Silent Shakespeare video as mentioned in this paper was shot on stage in Stratford-upon-Avon, using stock scenery from the Memorial Theatre, and it is a unique document of Shakespearean production in the period.
Abstract: The film of F. R. Benson's company in scenes from Richard III, released in 1911 and now available on the BFI's Silent Shakespeare video, was shot on stage in Stratford-upon-Avon, using stock scenery from the Memorial Theatre. Because of this, it is a unique document of Shakespearean production in the period, exemplifying the uneasy relationship between stage and film. The settings can be documented from a number of other sources: the original designs; a photograph of the stage set with the medieval street which appears in two episodes; and a series of postcards – the latter apparently ‘production stills’ of the film. Macbeth, The Taming of the Shrew, and Julius Caesar were also filmed, but have not survived, though the Stratford archives contain some photographic evidence of them. Russell Jackson is Deputy Director of the Shakespeare Institute, the University of Birmingham's graduate school of Shakespeare studies in Stratford-upon-Avon. Recently he has published a translation of a work by Theodor Fontane, Shakespeare in the London Theatre, 1855–58 (Society for Theatre Research, 1999), and he is editor of the forthcoming Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Film.
TL;DR: The Intelligent Stage as discussed by the authors is a theatre space that registers sensory input through video and audio, and responds through lights, sound, video, animation, and robotics, allowing artists to create interactive mediated works.
Abstract: How can computer intelligence best be employed in the theatre? Imagine that a computer is given the ability to control electronically all the media of the stage, and is able to sense and understand in an abstract way what is happening in that space. Furthermore, suppose that the computer is given the ability to reason about what is happening and could construct abstract responses through media. What would it be possible for the computer to do? The theatrical space is the computer's body, the electronic media the limbs, cameras and microphones used as sensors are the eyes and ears, a speech generation program the mouth, and the CPUs and internal programming are the brains, used to interact with the physical world. The space that holds the performance becomes an environment generated from behaviours of the computer, responding to and shaped by performers, designers, and technicians. Robb E. Lovell describes how this kind of intelligent environment can expand the expressive potential of traditional theatre in many ways, and considers how this will affect the viewers' and performers' perceptions, setting out some of the pros and cons of the involvement of computer intelligence in performance settings. Computer involvement is not, he argues, about the death of traditional theatre forms, but rather about their growth into new realms of expressiveness. Robb Lovell is a resident artist/technologist at the Institute for Studies in the Arts (ISA) at Arizona State University. He is co-creator of the Intelligent Stage, a theatrical space that registers sensory input through video and audio, and responds through lights, sound, video, animation, and robotics. He is currently creating tools for artists and technicians based on the technology of the Intelligent Stage – tools that allow artists to create interactive mediated works. He is working on a practical PhD in Interactive Theatre Design through the Institute for New Media Performance Research.
TL;DR: Forkbeard Fantasy as mentioned in this paper is one of Britain's oldest ‘alternative’ performance companies, which was often daringly experimental yet refreshingly tongue-in-cheek.
Abstract: Forkbeard Fantasy is one of Britain's oldest ‘alternative’ performance companies. Founded in 1974 by the brothers Tim and Chris Britton, who have continued to work with the company ever since, Forkbeard's practice may be identified with a peculiarly British variant on performance art, which dates from the mid-sixties. Influenced as much by elements of variety entertainment as by early twentieth-century avant-garde movements in the visual arts, it produced a unique form of integrated performance which was often daringly experimental yet refreshingly tongue-in-cheek. In the Spring of 1999, Nicolas Whybrow, then teaching at Lancaster University, observed the company's residency in Morecambe, on the Lancashire coast, over a period of three weeks. Here, he presents his impressions based on a consideration of Morecambe's identity as a place and the nature of Forkbeard's relationship to that place as residential visitors. His analysis takes into account the activities he observed – including his daily trips into Morecambe by train, media ‘takes’ on the town, informal conversations with contributors to the residency, and a formal interview with the company itself, represented here by interjections into the text. Nicolas Whybrow is now Senior Lecturer at De Montfort University, Leicester.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present a personal response to the experience of attending the symposium and performance, and records a variety of attitudes towards myth-making, re-creation, and the potential and problems of documentation.
Abstract: The premiere of The Carrier Frequency took place in 1984, the result of a collaboration between Leeds-based Impact Theatre Cooperative and the novelist Russell Hoban. Impact was founded in 1978 by Claire MacDonald, Pete Brooks, Steve Schill, Graeme Miller, Tyrone Huggins, and Richard Hawley, with Nikki Johnson and Heather Ackroyd joining in subsequent years. Many companies since have cited Impact as a major inspiration, with The Carrier Frequency in particular achieving almost mythic status. Today, Impact has long since disbanded, and little documentation of their work remains to enable their legacy to be passed on. In April 1999, the theatre company Stan's Cafe (none of whom had seen the original show) decided to restage The Carrier Frequency as part of Birmingham's ‘Towards the Millennium’ festival; in association with this project, a symposium was held on the subject of ‘Archaeology, Repertory, and Theatre Inheritance’. What follows is a personal response to the experience of attending the symposium and performance, and records a variety of attitudes towards myth-making, re-creation, and the potential and problems of documentation. Frances Babbage lectures in Theatre Studies at the University of Leeds.
TL;DR: Klaver as discussed by the authors explores the epistemological gaze of autopsy and its ironic effect on subjectivity through a variety of dramatic practices: Vesalius's Fabrica, the O. J. Simpson trial, and plays by Samuel Beckett.
Abstract: Is performing an autopsy on a dead body simply an objective, mutilating act – and a particularly powerful example of subject/object mastery? Demonstrating the intersection between scientific, medico-legal practice, and literary-artistic tropologies, Elizabeth Klaver explores in this essay the epistemological gaze of autopsy and its ironic effect on subjectivity through a variety of dramatic practices: Vesalius's Fabrica, the O. J. Simpson trial, and plays by Samuel Beckett. Elizabeth Klaver is Associate Professor of English at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. Her book, Performing Television: Contemporary Drama and the Media Culture is forthcoming from the Popular Press, and the present article will form part of her book in progress, Authorized Personnel Only: Sites of Autopsy in Postmodern Literature.
TL;DR: The work of Carolee Schneemann, who celebrated her sixtieth birthday last year, has from the first challenged suppressive sexual and other taboos, and placed her own body as an artist into a fluent relationship with her art as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: The work of Carolee Schneemann, who celebrated her sixtieth birthday last year, has from the first challenged suppressive sexual and other taboos, and placed her own body as an artist into a fluent relationship with her art. She both pioneered and in her new work continues to energize forms of what we now call performance art. The retrospective of her works from 1963 to 1996, recently seen at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, affirmed her recognition as a major artist – yet threatened also to ‘fix’ her art, which remains very much ‘in progress’. The exhibition included the installation Mortal Coils (1993–94), in which a slide projection system is combined with motorized ropes, flour, and sand to explore taboos of death and loss; Up to and Including Her Limits (1979), a video installation depicting the actions which produced surrounding wall drawings; and Video Rocks (1989), in which a hundred hand-sculptured rocks merge into a wall of seven monitors on which feet walk back and forth over virtual rocks. Vulva's Morphia (1995), a colour grid of photographs with text and motorized components, was exhibited at the Pompidou Centre in 1995, and her multi-media installation Known/Unknown – Plague Column (1996), was seen in New York and Montreal in 1996. Schneemann's published books include Parts of a Body: House Book (1972); Cézanne, She Was a Great Painter (1976); ABC: We Print Anything – in the Cards (1977); Video Burn (1992); and More Than Meat Joy: Performance Works and Selected Writings (1997). Her Body Politics: Notes and Essays of Carolee Schneemann is forthcoming from MIT Press, and a selection of her letters from Johns Hopkins University Press. Alison Oddey, Professor of Drama at Loughborough University, interviewed Carolee Schneemann on 29 August 1997 in her Manhattan loft in New York, and what follows is an edited version of that interview, which focuses on her more recent performative work.
TL;DR: Grotowski was accompanied by his protege and collaborator, Thomas Richards, and went to great lengths to establish Richards's equal and often major contribution to the laboratory work at Pontedera in Italy, which they had been jointly leading since 1986.
Abstract: After fifteen years absence, Jerzy Grotowski returned to Wroclaw on 6 March 1997, for the presentation of an award for his contribution to Polish Culture made by the Cultural Foundation's chairman, Stefan Starczewski. Grotowski was accompanied by his protege and collaborator, Thomas Richards, and went to great lengths to establish Richards's equal and often major contribution to the laboratory work at Pontedera in Italy, which they had been jointly leading since 1986. This work has eschewed publicity, has never sought an audience, and has only been witnessed by chosen groups of sympathetic experts, who have been felt necessary at times for its validation. Initiated and sustained because of the reputation which had accrued to Grotowski during the various phases of his earlier career, the danger was that it might cease to attract support on the demise of its principal validator – which, as one of Grotowski's replies at the Wroclaw meeting anticipated, sadly occurred last year. By acknowledging the functional and artistic importance of Thomas Richards, Grotowski here establishes the argument for his work – described in detail in Richards's own At Work with Grotowski on Physical Actions (Routledge, 1995) – to be continued, as the status of the old master passes to the new. Joanna Ostrowska, who is currently working at the Institute of Cultural Studies, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan, here offers her own impressions of the Wroclaw meeting.
TL;DR: The Burmese zat pwe, an exuberant variety show involving almost every kind of performing art, has fascinated foreign visitors to Myanmar for the past hundred years.
Abstract: The Burmese zat pwe, an exuberant variety show involving almost every kind of performing art, has fascinated foreign visitors to Myanmar for the past hundred years. It continues today as a vibrant amalgam of singing, dancing, acting, and comic improvisation, still performed annually at pagoda festivals. As Burmese scholars have noted, the Burmese performer is primarily a singer and dancer rather than a dramatic actor, and therefore tends to use plays as frameworks for demonstrating virtuosity in these areas. This is reinforced by the training given at the two State Schools of Music and Dance, and while the Drama Department at the University of Culture does acquaint students with dramatic acting, the emphasis remains on music and dance. Moreover, the scripted drama, especially the classical drama, which reached a peak in the mid-nineteenth century, is increasingly omitted from the pwe programme, having gradually been displaced by the pop music that is considered necessary to attract young audiences. Despite such changes, which alarm traditionalists, the pwe performance has shown a resilient flexibility to adapt to audience preferences and remains a lively highlight at the festivals. Catherine Diamond – who has previously written for NTQ on Vietnamese and Turkish theatre, and on oriental approaches to classical tragedy – is a dancer and drama professor who is currently directing for the Thalie Theatre, the only English-language theatre in Taiwan.
TL;DR: In the first of two essays which use academic discourses of cultural exchange to examine the intra-cultural situation in contemporary British society, Barnaby King analyzes the relationship between Black arts and mainstream arts on both a professional and community level, focusing on particular examples of practice in the Leeds and Kirklees region as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: In the first of two essays which use academic discourses of cultural exchange to examine the intra-cultural situation in contemporary British society, Barnaby King analyzes the relationship between Black arts and mainstream arts on both a professional and community level, focusing on particular examples of practice in the Leeds and Kirklees region in which he lives and works. This first essay looks specifically at the Asian situation, reviewing the history of Arts Council policy on ethnic minority arts, and analyzing how this has shaped – and is reflected in – current practice. In the context of professional theatre, he uses the examples of the Tara and Tamasha companies, then explores the work of CHOL Theatre in Huddersfield as exemplifying multi-cultural work in the community. He also looks at the provision made by Yorkshire and Humberside Arts for the cultural needs of their Asian populations. In the second essay, to appear in NTQ62, he will be taking a similar approach towards African-Caribbean theatre in Britain. Barnaby King is a theatre practitioner based in Leeds, who completed his postgraduate studies at the University of Leeds Workshop Theatre in 1998. He is now working with theatre companies and small-scale venues – currently the Blah Blah Blah company and the Studio Theatre at Leeds Metropolitan University – to develop community participation in theatre and drama-based activities.
TL;DR: In this paper, the Italian director Pino DiBuduo visited the Newark, New Jersey, campus of Rutgers University on the occasion of the major international conference, "Arts Transforming the Urban Environment" for the purpose of transforming a bleakly concrete teaching block on the Newark campus into a site for the latest of his Invisible Cities projects, which had originated in his Teatro Potlach company's residency in the Italian village of Fara Sabina in 1991.
Abstract: In October 1998 the Italian director Pino DiBuduo visited the Newark, New Jersey, campus of Rutgers University on the occasion of the major international conference, ‘Arts Transforming the Urban Environment’ For the occasion, he transformed a bleakly concrete teaching block on the Newark campus into a site for the latest of his Invisible Cities projects These had originated in his Teatro Potlach company's residency in the Italian village of Fara Sabina in 1991, where DiBudo's intention – as in a number of site-specific variations on Invisible Cities since – was to render ‘visible’ aspects of the everyday urban environment which we no longer have the imagination or the patience to ‘see’ While Deborah Saivetz looks also at this original Italian project, and at a later version in Klagenfurt, Austria, she concentrates here on the Newark production, whose development she recorded – in this opening article in her own and DiBuduo's words, and in the following piece through the experiences and recollections of the participants Deborah Saivetz holds a doctorate in Performance Studies from Northwestern University, and is currently Assistant Professor of Theater in the Department of Visual and Performing Arts at the Newark campus of Rutgers University Her directorial work includes productions for the New Jersey Shakespeare Festival, the Drama League of New York's Directors’ Project, New York's Alchemy Courthouse Theater, and the Parallax Theater Company in Chicago She has also worked with JoAnne Akalaitis as assistant director on John Ford's ‘Tis Pity She's a Whore at Chicago's Goodman Theatre, and created original theatre pieces with Chicago's Industrial Theater and Oxygen Jukebox
TL;DR: Carnicke and Benedetti as mentioned in this paper have elucidated central concepts which affect the application of the method of physical actions, such as zadacha, which Hapgood mistranslated as 'objective', and deistvie, which is inconsistently rendered.
Abstract: stances that surrounded the Elizabeth Hapgood translations, and led to the production of 'a questionable bible'. There are significant differences in the translation of terms such as zadacha, 'task', which Hapgood mistranslated as 'objective', and deistvie, 'action', which is inconsistently rendered. In clarifying these terms, and re-examining the Method of Physical Actions, Carnicke and Benedetti have elucidated central concepts which affect the application of the System. The most original insights into Stanislavsky's work occur in the third section of the book, where Carnicke debates the varied possibilities of 'Stanislavsky's lost term', perezhivanie 'experiencing' and also anchors the System's use of emotion in his interest in Ribot and Eastern yoga traditions, thus dissociating Stanislavsky from ideas of affective memory. There is also a very interesting, although too brief, discussion of the relationship to Symbolist and Formalist concerns. Stanislavsky in Focus in practice focuses upon the relationship between the Russian innovator and his American exponents, and, having worked as an interpreter for Lee Strasberg and a visiting director from the Moscow Art Theatre in the 1970s, Carnicke is well placed to elucidate this issue. Though Jean Benedetti's Stanislavski and the Actor is a better practical handbook for the application of the System, this book is a valuable contribution to the process of re-examination of the Stanislavsky heritage. KATIE NORMINGTON