Showing papers in "New Theatre Quarterly in 2006"
TL;DR: Hauptfleisch as mentioned in this paper discusses the nature, content, and impact of the Klein Karoo Nasionale Kunstefees in Oudtshoorn as a theatrical event, and explores the polysystemic nature of the festival phenomenon in general.
Abstract: Festivals have become a prominent feature of theatre in South Africa today. More than forty such annual events not only provide employment, but constitute a socio-cultural polysystem that serves to ‘eventify’ the output of theatre practitioners and turn everyday life patterns into a significant cultural occasion. Important for the present argument is the role of the festivals as events that foreground relevant social issues. This is well illustrated by the many linked Afrikaans-language festivals which arose after 1994, and which have become a major factor not only in creating, displaying, and eventifying Afrikaans writing and performance, but also in communicating a particular vision of the Afrikaans-speaking and ‘Afrikaner’ cultural context. Using the Klein Karoo Nasionale Kunstefees in Oudtshoorn as a case study, in this article Temple Hauptfleisch discusses the nature, content, and impact of this particular festival as a theatrical event, and goes on to explore the polysystemic nature of the festival phenomenon in general. Temple Hauptfleisch is a former head of the Centre for South African Theatre Research (CESAT) and Chair of the University of Stellenbosch Drama Department. He is currently the director of the Centre for Theatre and Performance Studies at Stellenbosch and editor of the South African Theatre Journal. His recent publications include Theatre and Society in South Africa: Reflections in a Fractured Mirror (1997), a chapter in Theatrical Events: Borders, Dynamics, Frames (2003), and one on South African theatre in Kreatives Afrika: Schriftstellerlnnen uber Literatur, Theater und Gesellschaft (2005).
25 citations
TL;DR: Lin et al. as discussed by the authors explored the importance of representation and presentation in the dramaturgy of Shakespeare and his contemporaries, and argued that the moments most privileged in the early modern playhouse were those that foregrounded the semiotic system through which actions presented onstage came to signify within the represented fiction.
Abstract: In this article, Erika T. Lin explores theatrical performance as a material medium by considering which elements might have been privileged in the dramaturgy of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. After considering the strengths and weaknesses of Robert Weimann’s influential concepts of locus and platea, she offers an alternative model for understanding the authority of performance in early modern England, in which stage geography and actor–audience interactivity, two key components of Weimann’s formulation, are less important than the interplay between representation and presentation. Through an analysis of specific scenes from a number of Shakespeare’s plays, she argues that the moments most privileged in the early modern playhouse were those that foregrounded the semiotic system through which actions presented onstage came to signify within the represented fiction. Erika T. Lin is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English at the University of Louisville. She is currently writing a book entitled Shakespeare and the Materiality of Performance, and is also beginning work on a new project which examines seasonal festivities, folk drama, and professional theatre in early modern England.
25 citations
TL;DR: Kershaw as mentioned in this paper reviewed two recent books on performance studies and found themselves in a Catch-22 situation: given the vast territories they claimed for the discipline, how could a short survey do them justice? And perplexing, how might a close analysis of their diffusive visions proceed, even in a longer essay?
Abstract: Invited by NTQ to review two recent books on performance studies – Jon McKenzie's Perform or Else: from Discipline to Performance and Richard Schechners's Performance Studies: an Introduction – Baz Kershaw found himself in a Catch-22 situation: given the vast territories they claimed for the discipline, how could a short survey do them justice? Yet more perplexing, how might a close analysis of their diffusive visions proceed, even in a longer essay? Struck by their common use of air disasters as denouements and their respective publication dates just six months before and after 9/11, he uses these and other homologies as a route into exploring the ethical and political implications for the new century of the arguments employed by the two texts. Drawing on the philosophical innovation of ‘dialetheism’, which deploys paradox to stretch the bounds of classical logic, he also considers the books' differences and suggests a kind of de-territorialized reconciliation through his notion of a ‘paradoxology’ of performance. He offers the resulting search for depth in surfaces, beginnings in endings, presence in absences, and truth in contradictions as an exemplification of philosopher Po-chang's aphorism about the quest for Buddha's nature: ‘It’s much like riding an ox in search of the ox.’ Baz Kershaw holds the Chair of Drama at Bristol University. His many publications include Engineers of the Imagination (Methuen, 1990), The Politics of Performance (Routledge, 1992), and The Radical in Performance (Routledge, 1999), and he is editor of The Cambridge History of British Theatre: Volume 3, Since 1895 (CUP, 2005). He is also Director of the AHRC-funded major research project PARIP – Practice as Research in Performance.
11 citations
TL;DR: Ben Lloyd as discussed by the authors used the work of the noted Swiss psychologist Alice Miller to propose a new archetype -the wounded actor, a person in the throes of a narcissistic disorder, as defined by Miller in her book The Drama of the Gifted Child.
Abstract: In the following article Benjamin Lloyd uses the work of the noted Swiss psychologist Alice Miller to propose a new archetype – ‘the wounded actor’, a person in the throes of a narcissistic disorder, as defined by Miller in her book The Drama of the Gifted Child. He suggests that conventional actor training will not help the wounded actor, but that the re-introduction of spirituality into the acting-class curriculum may do so. In this light he looks at Stanislavsky's writings about spirituality, focusing on the chapter in An Actor Prepares called ‘Communion’. Linking Stanislavsky's spirituality to the writings and thought of Leo Tolstoy, he explores the reasons why the spiritual nature of Stanislavsky's work has not been generally explored in the West, and suggests some ways in which acting teachers may introduce spiritual concerns into their curricula. Benjamin Lloyd teaches at Villanova University. His The Actor's Way: a Journal of Self-Discovery in Letters is due for publication later this year by Allworth Press, New York, and he is currently facilitating a workshop on possible intersections between Quaker spiritual practice and theatre-making called ‘Revival: Meetings for Theatre’.
10 citations
TL;DR: McEvoy as mentioned in this paper argues that the company was motivated both by a political agenda to make migrants more visible and a concern to investigate the ethical implications of its own creative processes, which led to a potential conflict between representing migrants directly on stage and a performance that reflected the company's worries about turning migrants' traumatic narratives into theatre and spectacle.
Abstract: Theatre du Soleil's latest production, Le Dernier Caravanserail (The Last Caravanserai), staged the stories and experiences of immigrants, refugees, and asylum-seekers from around the world. In this article, William McEvoy argues that the company was motivated both by a political agenda to make migrants more visible and a concern to investigate the ethical implications of its own creative processes. This led to a potential conflict between representing migrants directly on stage and a performance that reflected the company's worries about turning migrants' traumatic narratives into theatre and spectacle. Focusing on the concept of balance in the production, the article shows how Theatre du Soleil presented the ethical negotiations between creative self and represented other through exploring the links between text and performance, writing and the body, and manipulation and resistance.
10 citations
TL;DR: Katie Mitchell's career embraces a formidable repertoire of play and opera productions, and she has won the Evening Standard Best Director Award for Phoenician Women (1995) and Forty Winks (2004) as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: One of Britain's foremost directors, Katie Mitchell's career embraces a formidable repertoire of play and opera productions. She has a taste for Greek tragedy – her Phoenician Women (1995) won the Evening Standard Best Director Award – and takes in Gorky, Chekhov, Genet, and Beckett, as well as such contemporaries as Kevin Elyot, whose Forty Winks she directed at the Royal Court in 2004. She has worked in Dublin, Milan, and Stockholm, and is an Associate Director at the National Theatre. This interview with NTQ co-editor Maria Shevtsova shows Mitchell's lucid and passionate engagement with her craft. It took place in London in several stages from December 2004 to July 2005, during a period of intense activity for Mitchell. Maria Shevtsova wishes to thank her for so generously giving her time.
9 citations
TL;DR: Carlson argues that many of Granville Barker's productions should be seen, in part, as artistic extensions of suffrage activism, and explores the ways in which his support for the suffragists manifested itself on as well as off the stage.
Abstract: The importance of Granville Barker’s association with J. E. Vedrenne in the seminal Court seasons of 1904-1907 is one of the ‘givens’ of twentieth-century theatre history, as are Barker’s later, groundbreaking productions of Shakespeare at the Savoy. Yet these and much of his intervening work were also in many ways collaborative achievements, now in association with his wife, the actress Lillah McCarthy – their later divorce helping to rewrite the history of their partnership. Lillah McCarthy was also a prominent suffragist, and Granville Barker allied himself with many other men and women who were working actively in support of the extended franchise. Susan Carlson argues that many of Granville Barker’s productions should be seen, in part, as artistic extensions of suffrage activism, and in this article she explores the ways in which his support for the suffragists manifested itself on as well as off the stage. Susan Carlson, Associate Provost and Professor of English at Iowa State University, has most recently published essays on suffrage theatre, focusing on its political use of comedy and its connections to productions of Shakespeare.
7 citations
TL;DR: Loukes as discussed by the authors explores the practice of German psychophysical awareness practitioner Elsa Gindler (1885-1961), whose work influenced twentieth-century performance in a range of ways, but has not previously been documented in this context.
Abstract: In this article Rebecca Loukes explores the practice of German psychophysical awareness practitioner Elsa Gindler (1885–1961), whose work influenced twentieth-century performance in a range of ways, but has not previously been documented in this context. Loukes situates Gindler's training and early work amongst key early twentieth-century Gymnastik practitioners before tracing developments in her life and work, drawing from Gindler's 1926 article, her unpublished class notes, and her students' memories. She discusses what Gindler meant by cultivating a state of ‘concentration’, and how this related to breathing, tension, and relaxation, both in the studio and daily life. She then indicates how this can usefully be applied to contemporary pre-performance training or work on the ‘beginning state of the actor’. Rebecca Loukes is a practitioner, performer, and researcher in the area of actor training and psychophysical awareness. She has been training in practices derived from Gindler's work for over ten years. Her recent writing includes ‘Body Awareness in Performer Training: the Hidden Legacy of Gertrud Falke-Heller (1891–1984)’ for Dance Research Journal (in press). She is Lecturer in Performance Practice at the University of Exeter.
6 citations
TL;DR: Sara Freeman analyzes the branching relationships of these terms, arguing the need to develop useful rather than funerary or bewildered historiographical approaches to the 1980s and 1990s as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: In the third volume of The Cambridge History of British Theatre (2004), editor Baz Kershaw initiates his chapter ‘Alternative Theatres, 1946–2000’ with a short discussion of ‘contesting terms’ used by commentators to describe theatre outside the mainstream in the second half of the twentieth century. Kershaw's discussion serves as a necessary preface to ground his use of multiple historiographical strategies to address the subject with necessary brevity. But teasing out the terminology used to describe alternative theatre remains a fascinatingly complex task, constitutive of precisely the issues at stake in the variant historiographical approaches to the post-war period. Using a genealogical approach inspired by Foucault, and drawing on first-person interviews with artists who worked with alternative theatre companies such as Joint Stock/Out of Joint, Gay Sweatshop, and Women's Theatre Group/The Sphinx across the closing decades of the twentieth century, Sara Freeman analyzes the branching relationships of these terms, arguing the need to develop useful rather than funerary or bewildered historiographical approaches to the 1980s and 1990s. Sara Freeman is Assistant Professor of Theatre at Illinois Wesleyan University. Her research focuses on contemporary women playwrights and British alternative theatre, and she has published articles and reviews in Theatre Survey, Modern Drama, Comparative Drama, New England Theatre Journal, and Theatre Journal. Work on this article was supported by an Artistic and Scholarly Development Grant from Illinois Wesleyan University.
6 citations
TL;DR: Eugenio Barba delivered this address when he received the title of Doctor Honoris Causa from the University of Plymouth on 27 October 2005 as discussed by the authors, and explored anew several images for the theatre that recur in his writings, notably Beyond the Floating Islands (1986, a new version of The Floating Islands, 1979) and The Paper Canoe (1994).
Abstract: Eugenio Barba delivered this address when he received the title of Doctor Honoris Causa from the University of Plymouth on 27 October 2005. Eugenio Barba founded the Odin Teatret in Oslo in 1964, taking it to Holstebro in Denmark in 1966 where, ever since, he and his collaborators have explored and reinvented the vocal and corporeal possibilities of performance. In the speech which follows, he explores anew several images for the theatre that recur in his writings, notably Beyond the Floating Islands (1986, a new version of The Floating Islands, 1979) and The Paper Canoe (1994). Here they resurface in the all-embracing trope of the sea, accompanied by Barba’s reflections on multiculturalism and diversity in the theatre. Other familiar concerns of Barba’s writings and the Odin’s work such as exile and the search for community are crystallized in this speech in Barba’s lapidary ‘The country in which I dwell is the theatre.’ During Odin Teatret’s UK tour in the autumn of 2005, documented in the ‘Reports and Announcements’ section of this issue, Eugenio Barba opened the new Library at Rose Bruford College, named in memory of former NTQ Co-Editor, Clive Barker.
5 citations
TL;DR: Irobi as discussed by the authors offers a detailed response to Bell Hooks's observation (in Black Looks: Race and Representation, 1992) that in the work of postcolonial critics, there is a continued fascination with the way white minds, particularly the colonial imperialist traveller, perceive blackness, and very little expressed interest in representations of whiteness in the black imagination.
Abstract: Europe’s colonial presence on the African continent from 1885 to the 1960s produced complex discourses about race and its representation. Whereas the Europeans constructed their putative images of Africans as inferior beings through radio, television, film, and print, for a predominantly literate sector, Africans deployed a more complex and mixed set of literacies. As well as conventional forms of literature, Africans used iconographic, kinaesthetic, proxemic, sonic, linguistic, tactile, calligraphic and sartorial literacies in their indigenous festivals and ritual theatres to resist, historicize, and domesticate colonial whiteness from the nineteenth century to the present day. In this article, Esiaba Irobi offers a detailed response to Bell Hooks’s observation (in Black Looks: Race and Representation , 1992) that in the work of postcolonial critics ‘there is a continued fascination with the way white minds, particularly the colonial imperialist traveller, perceive blackness, and very little expressed interest in representations of whiteness in the black imagination’. Esiaba Irobi is an Associate Professor of International Theatre at Ohio University, Athens. Born in the Republic of Biafra, he has lived in exile in Nigeria, Britain, and the USA. His African Festival and Ritual Theatre: Resisting Globalization on the Continent and Diaspora since 1492 is due for publication by Palgrave Macmillan in 2007.
TL;DR: Watson as mentioned in this paper considers how the now-ritualized debates between the main contenders in American presidential elections are stage-managed to enhance what their supporters suppose to be their candidate's most sympathetic features.
Abstract: The fictionalized account in the recent film The Queen of Tony Blair's coaching of Her Majesty into a more voter-friendly response to the death of Princess Diana, largely through the medium of television, is a pertinent reminder of how the presentation of self on television subtly modifies the presentation of self in everyday life. In this article, Ian Watson considers how the now-ritualized debates between the main contenders in American presidential elections are stage-managed to enhance what their supporters suppose to be their candidate's most sympathetic features – supposedly learning the lessons of the first such debate, between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon, which displayed Nixon in such an unappealing light. However, what are ostensibly strengths or weaknesses may be read as quite other by an audience attuned to reading signifiers in film or television drama – or simply empathic towards what others perceive as failings, as in the case of reactions to George W. Bush's inarticulacies, awkward mannerisms, and failed jokes, which some read not as signs of ineptness but of an endearing humanity. Ian Watson, who is a Contributing Editor of New Theatre Quarterly, teaches at Rutgers University, Newark, where he is the Acting Chair of the Department of Visual and Performing Arts. He is author of Towards a Third Theatre: Eugenio Barba and the Odin Teatret (Routledge, 1993) and of Negotiating Cultures: Eugenio Barba and the Intercultural Debate (Manchester University Press, 2002). He edited Performer Training across Cultures (Routledge, 2001), and has published numerous articles on theatre in scholarly journals.
TL;DR: The appeal of the puppet lies partly in its dual nature: it is at once a representative object without life while at the same time it enacts the imagined life with which it is endowed by the puppeteer as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: The appeal of the puppet lies partly in its dual nature: it is at once a representative object without life while at the same time it enacts the imagined life with which it is endowed by the puppeteer. Marie Kruger argues that this duality makes puppetry a uniquely effective way of questioning the very traditional values it appears to embody, and so of stimulating a sense of the need for social change. She relates her argument to the long tradition of puppetry among the Bamana people of Mali, and specifically to the performance of the Bin Sogo bo, an animal masquerade in which the ‘characters’ adumbrate human qualities with effective ambiguity. Marie Kruger is Chair of the Department of Drama at the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa, where puppetry is offered as a performance option. She is the author of Puppetry: a Guide for Beginners and has also published in the South Africa Theatre Journal. Over the past twenty years she has directed numerous puppet productions for all ages, and is currently leading a research project to document the nature and application of African puppet traditions.
TL;DR: Clive Mendus as mentioned in this paper discusses aspects of his work at the Ecole Jacques Lecoq School, while his account of playing with Complicite, particularly in The Street of Crocodiles (1992) and Measure for Measure (2003), sheds light on the improvisation processes which are characteristic of the company, as well as on Mendus's sense of himself as an actor.
Abstract: Clive Mendus joined Theatre de Complicite a year after its formation by Simon McBurney in 1983. Born in Cumbria in 1954, he shared classes with McBurney during training at the Ecole Jacques Lecoq in Paris, before returning to Britain to develop his acting career. In this interview with NTQ Co-Editor Maria Shevtsova, held in London in December 2004, Clive Mendus discusses aspects of his work at the Lecoq School, while his account of playing with Complicite – particularly in The Street of Crocodiles (1992) and Measure for Measure (2003) – sheds light on the improvisation processes which are characteristic of the company, as well as on Mendus’s sense of himself as an actor. Measure for Measure toured Wroclaw, Madrid, Mumbai, Bangalore, Milan, Grenoble, and Berlin in 2005. Apart from accumulating a range of theatre experiences, Mendus has worked in film and television, including such television series as EastEnders and The Bill.
TL;DR: Smith as discussed by the authors examined the influence of Bertolt Brecht and the Berliner Ensemble on British theatre and found that the UK government was involved in monitoring and censoring Brecht, both in Britain and overseas, and also making active attempts to block the visits of Brecht.
Abstract: It is well known that Bertolt Brecht, during his time in the United States of America, attracted the surveillance of anti-communist forces, with Brecht's sly testimony to the House Committee on Un-American Activities becoming one of his most famous public performances. Recently declassified files from Her Majesty's Government reveal that Britain, too, undertook extensive campaigns to monitor and censor Brecht and the Berliner Ensemble. James Smith considers material from British governmental agencies such as MI5, the Foreign Office, and the Cabinet Office, which detail the activities undertaken by the British government concerning Brecht and the Ensemble. Such activities took the form not only of monitoring Brecht and his circle, both in Britain and overseas, but also of active attempts to block the visits of Brecht and the Ensemble, and to pressure theatre festivals and promoters into refusing to facilitate tours. The issue of the Berliner Ensemble caused debates at the highest levels of Whitehall, influencing the delicate area of British and NATO policy regarding the diplomatic status of East Germany during the Cold War. James Smith has completed a doctoral dissertation at Cambridge examining the influence of Brecht on British theatre. He currently teaches modern drama in the Faculty of Education and at Homerton College, Cambridge.
TL;DR: The role of ballet in the culture of the former Soviet Union occasionally leads to some embarrassment for those who think the arts represent freedom; and here the symbolic power of the nation's most political theatre, the Bolshoi, is examined at the point of its renovation.
Abstract: The economic and political transition of the old Soviet Union into Putin's Russia has been given plenty of attention over the past few years, with emphasis on free markets and democratic choice much in evidence. In this essay Gregory Sporton discusses the less often considered difficulties of the social transition towards a New Russia. The role of ballet in the culture of the Soviet Union occasionally leads to some embarrassment for those who think the arts represent freedom; and here the symbolic power of the nation's most political theatre, the Bolshoi, is examined at the point of its renovation. How the company has adapted to the new political realities, to the challenge of attracting audiences, and to its own complicity with the old regime is observed against the backdrop of May Day celebrations in 2004. Gregory Sporton is Director of the Visualisation Research Unit in the Department of Art at the Birmingham Institute of Art and Design. Since 2004 he has been a frequent visitor to Russia, studying a range of aspects of Russian culture under the Soviets from ballet to architecture, education and the visual arts. His study trip in 2004 was funded by the Elisabeth Barker Fund from the British Academy.
TL;DR: Cockett as mentioned in this paper argues that Shakespeare wrote the parts of Touchstone, Feste, and the Fool in King Lear for Robert Armin, one of the principal actors of Shakespeare plays named in the First Folio.
Abstract: Robert Armin, one of the ‘principal actors’ of Shakespeare’s plays named in the First Folio, probably joined the Lord Chamberlain’s Men in 1599 to take the place of Will Kempe as the company’s clown; and it was for him that Shakespeare wrote the parts of Touchstone, Feste, and the Fool in King Lear . Received wisdom, in part extrapolated from the nature of Armin’s roles, sees him as a more serious, even morose character than his predecessor, and he took his clowning seriously enough to write a book on ‘natural’ fools, Foole Upon Foole (1600), in addition to some minor verse, and a play, The History of the Two Maids of More-clacke , whence the only known illustration of him in performance derives. Although virtually disregarded by critics as little more than a jest book, Foole Upon Foole was also, argues Peter Cockett, a serious attempt to survey the variety of qualities and conditions of natural folly. It not only reveals much about Armin’s likely approach to his roles, but questions the conventional distinctions between the natural and the artificial fool. With close reference to Armin’s description of one of his subjects, Lean Leanard, Peter Cockett compares what this tells us about Armin’s possible approach to the role of Touchstone with the problems faced by the actor, David Tennant, in the RSC As You Like It of 1996. The author is a professional actor who emigrated to Canada in 1994. He now teaches acting and directing at McMaster University, Ontario, and is working with the University of Toronto’s medieval and renaissance players on a two-year project on the work and repertoire of the Queen’s Men.
TL;DR: Woods as mentioned in this paper explores the breakdown of a partnership that launched one man on a course to oblivion and the other on a path to greater glory in the first decade of the new century.
Abstract: Once Arnold Daly and Bernard Shaw had got through their baptisms of fire in the transatlantic theatre of the 1890s, the circumstances for their future collaboration must have seemed propitious to them both. However, the Irish-American's inflexibility and the Anglo-Irishman's passion for control led to the fracturing of the relationship within the span of a few years in the first decade of the new century. The exposure of their work – in tandem in American vaudeville and later as competitors on the English variety stage – marked points of their disagreement and quirks in their difficult personalities as they scrambled for audiences who rarely appreciated them as much as both felt they deserved. Leigh Woods, Head of Theatre Studies at the University of Michigan, explores the breakdown of a partnership that launched one man on a course to oblivion and the other on a path to greater glory.
TL;DR: The No Boys Cricket Club won the Writers' Guild New Writer of the Year award in 1996 and won three major awards: the John Whiting Award for Best New Play, an EMMA (Ethnic Multicultural Media Awards) for Best Play, and the first Alfred Fagon Award for theatre in English by writers with Caribbean connections.
Abstract: Roy Williams is one of the outstanding new voices in contemporary British theatre. Born in Fulham, south-west London, in 1968, he has already, by his mid-thirties, won a shelf-full of awards, with plays staged at the National Theatre and Royal Court. His debut, The No Boys Cricket Club, won the Writers' Guild New Writer of the Year award in 1996. Two years later, his follow-up, Starstruck, won three major awards: the John Whiting Award for Best New Play, an EMMA (Ethnic Multicultural Media Awards) for Best Play, and the first Alfred Fagon Award, for theatre in English by writers with Caribbean connections. In 2000, Lift Off was joint winner of the George Devine Award, and in 2001 Clubland received the Evening Standard Award for Most Promising Playwright. In 2002, Williams received a best school drama BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) for Offside (BBC), and in 2004 he won the first Arts Council Decibel Award, given to black or Asian artists in recognition of their contribution to the arts. His most recent play, Little Sweet Thing, was a 2005 co-production between Ipswich’s New Wolsey Theatre, Nottingham Playhouse, and Birmingham Rep. What follows is an edited transcript of Aleks Sierz’s ‘In Conversation with Roy Williams’, part of the ‘Other Voices’ symposium at Rose Bruford College, Sidcup, Kent, in May 2004, organized by Nesta Jones. Williams is a graduate and now a Fellow of the college.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present a book review of the journal, Theatre notebook (© Society for Theatre Research) it is also available electronically at: http://lion.chadwyck.co.uk/searchFulltext.do?id=R03889510&divLevel=0&area=abell&forward=critref_ft
Abstract: This is a book review. It was published in the journal, Theatre notebook (© Society for Theatre Research)it is also available electronically at: http://lion.chadwyck.co.uk/searchFulltext.do?id=R03889510&divLevel=0&area=abell&forward=critref_ft
TL;DR: Brandt traces Schiller's troubled breakthrough into professional theatre as a young man with his first play, The Robbers, which, while significantly different from his later work, does anticipate his lifelong preoccupation with the theme of freedom as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: Friedrich Schiller – poet, historian, and philosopher as well as dramatist – is acknowledged to be a towering figure in German-language theatre, yet has had only a fitful impact on the stages of the English-speaking world, where such of his works as Don Carlos, Intrigue and Love (Luisa Miller in the operatic version) and William Tell are better known through the filters of Verdi and Rossini than in their original form. But there were signs in 2005 – the bicentenary of Schiller's death at the tragically early age of forty-five – that the English theatre was taking more notice of this major playwright, with Phyllida Lloyd's production of Mary Stuart and Michael Grandage's of Don Carlos both well received. In the article which follows, George W. Brandt traces Schiller's troubled breakthrough into professional theatre as a young man with his first play, The Robbers – which, while significantly different from his later work, does anticipate his lifelong preoccupation with the theme of freedom. George W. Brandt, Senior Research Fellow and Professor Emeritus in the Drama Department of the University of Bristol, has previously contributed to NTQ with articles on Bristol's Shakespeare at the Tobacco Factory Company (NTQ 72), and Iffland's 1796 guest performance in the Weimar of Goethe and Schiller (NTQ 77).
TL;DR: Faye Chunfang Fei as mentioned in this paper gave a keynote address at the Michael Chekhov Symposium, "Theatre of the Future?" at the Dartington Hall, where the actor and director Huang Zuolin worked under Chekhova's guidance, an experience which helped to shape his lifelong work in uniting the best in western theatrical traditions with those of his native China.
Abstract: The folllowing article is a revised and edited version of a keynote address given by Faye Chunfang Fei at the Michael Chekhov Symposium, ‘Theatre of the Future?’, in November 2005 – held at Dartington Hall, where the actor and director Huang Zuolin worked under Chekhov’s guidance in 1936, an experience which helped to shape his lifelong work in uniting the best in western theatrical traditions with those of his native China. Faye Chunfang Fei traces this formative influence, along with those of Stanislavsky, of Brechtian Epic Theatre, and of traditional and modern Chinese forms, in shaping some of the major productions of probably the most influential figure in the Chinese theatre of the later twentieth century. Faye Chunfang Fei received her doctorate in Theatre Studies from the Graduate Center of City University of New York in 1991, and taught theatre in the United States for nine years before taking her present position of Professor of English and Drama at East China Normal University, Shanghai. Her publications include Chinese Theories of Theatre and Performance from Confucius to the Present (University of Michigan Press, 1999), and she is also an internationally produced playwright.
TL;DR: Martin Crimp is one of the most exciting British playwrights to have emerged since the 1980s: his work is characterized by its vision of contemporary society as a place of social decay, moral compromise, and barely suppressed violence.
Abstract: Martin Crimp is one of the most exciting British playwrights to have emerged since the 1980s: his work is characterized by its vision of contemporary society as a place of social decay, moral compromise, and barely suppressed violence. He is also a writer whose work engages with both British and European theatre traditions. He started his career in 1981 at the Orange Tree Theatre, a fringe venue in Richmond, and this theatre produced all his early work, including Dealing with Clair and Play with Repeats. But it was when he became a Royal Court playwright in 1990, with No One Sees the Video, that he achieved international success and recognition. Three plays in particular – The Treatment, Attempts on Her Life and The Country – have become recognized masterpieces. Crimp has also pursued a parallel career as a translator and adapter of classics such as Moliere's The Misanthrope and Sophocles' The Women of Trachis (as Cruel and Tender). The interview with Aleks Sierz which follows is assembled from conversations with Martin Crimp in London during February and March 2006, and the NTQ Checklist of Crimp's work on page 361 is derived from materials assembled by Sierz for his forthcoming book from Methuen, The Theatre of Martin Crimp.
TL;DR: Tucker as discussed by the authors examines Alan Ayckbourn's two linked plays, House & Garden, in the context of an entire career exploring the limits and boundaries of theatrical conventions, and argues that this experiment forces audiences to re-examine preconceived notions concerning theatre's relationship to the real world.
Abstract: This article examines Alan Ayckbourn’s two linked plays, House & Garden, in the context of an entire career exploring the limits and boundaries of theatrical conventions. As the driving force and artistic director of the Stephen Joseph Theatre, a complex which houses two theatres – a proscenium stage and a theatre-in-the-round – the playwright/director has a flexible, state-of-the-art laboratory in which to experiment with theatrical elements which have always fascinated him. In House & Garden, Ayckbourn stretches stage boundaries in unprecedented ways by writing two plays to be performed simultaneously in two adjacent auditoria – a comedy of manners for the proscenium and a carnivalesque farce for the round. Stephanie Tucker analyzes how this unprecedented dramatic diptych exploits the possibilities of theatrical space, on and offstage, whilst appropriating elements from traditions as various as Greek satyr plays and nineteenth-century drama, and from venues as disparate as the carnival square and the drawing room. This experiment, she argues, forces audiences to re-examine preconceived notions concerning theatre’s relationship to the ‘real’ world, a theme which runs through Ayckbourn’s opus. Stephanie Tucker, who teaches at California State University, Sacramento, has published articles on various aspects of contemporary British and American theatre and is presently engaged upon a book-length study of Ayckbourn’s drama and stagecraft.
TL;DR: Kirillov as discussed by the authors argued that Chekhov's ideas have not yet been fully assimilated, pointing out that merely to follow his exercises without understanding their connection to the actor's imagination and meditative as well as spiritual dimensions is to fail fully to understand him.
Abstract: In a keynote address delivered at the Michael Chekhov symposium ‘Theatre of the Future?’, held at Dartington Hall in November 2005, Andrei Kirillov argued that Chekhov’s ideas have not yet been fully assimilated, pointing out that merely to follow his exercises without understanding their connection to the actor’s imagination and meditative as well as spiritual dimensions is to fail fully to understand him. Andrei Kirillov is a researcher and Assistant Chair at the Theatre Department of the Russian Institute of the History of the Arts. His numerous publications on the history and theory of Russian theatre include Michael Chekhov: the Path of the Actor, co-edited with Bella Merlin (2005), and Teatr Mikhaila Chekhova: Russkoye Akterskoye Iskusstvo XX veca (The Theatre of Michael Chekhov: the Art of Russian Acting in the Twentieth Century, 1993). Bella Merlin originally enhanced the English-language version of this lecture, and with the author’s approval it has been further edited by NTQ for publication.
TL;DR: Friedman as mentioned in this paper sets the play in the context of western attitudes towards death and the nature of an afterworld, and relates these to Johnson's own journey after his funeral through rewindings of his past life towards some sort of reconciliation with its ending.
Abstract: Just as the imminence of the Second World War overshadowed the first production of J. B. Priestley's ‘modern morality play’, Johnson Over Jordan , in 1939, so did the disaster of 9/11 its only major revival, at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in 2001. Both productions boasted a major actor – respectively Ralph Richardson and Patrick Stewart – in the title role of a play which continued Priestley's search to find a theatrical style for his own metaphysical enquiries into the nature of time and the boundaries of human mortality. In this article, Alan W. Friedman sets the play in the context of western attitudes towards death and the nature of an afterworld, and relates these to Johnson's own journey after his funeral through rewindings of his past life towards some sort of reconciliation with its ending. Alan W. Friedman is Thaman Professor of English in the University of Texas, Austin, and has also taught at universities in England, Ireland, and France. He has published numerous articles and books, the latter including Multivalence: the Moral Quality of Form in the Modern Novel (Louisiana State UP, 1978), William Faulkner (Frederick Ungar, 1984), Fictional Death and the Modernist Enterprise (Cambridge UP, 1995), and (edited with Charles Rossman and Dina Sherzer) Beckett Translating/Translating Beckett (Pennsylvania State UP, 1987).