scispace - formally typeset
Search or ask a question

Showing papers in "New Theatre Quarterly in 2012"


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Caroline Heim explores an avenue for the audience's contribution to the theatrical event that has emerged as increasingly important over the past decade as discussed by the authors, and presents case studies of post-performance discussions held after performances of Anne of the Thousand Days and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? which trialled a new model of audience co-creation.
Abstract: In this article Caroline Heim explores an avenue for the audience's contribution to the theatrical event that has emerged as increasingly important over the past decade: postperformance discussions. With the exception of theatres that actively encourage argument such as the Staatstheater Stuttgart, most extant audience discussions in Western mainstream theatres privilege the voice of the theatre expert. Caroline Heim presents case studies of post-performance discussions held after performances of Anne of the Thousand Days and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? which trialled a new model of audience co-creation. An audience text which informs the theatrical event was created, and a new role, that of audience critic, established in the process.

12 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Hudson as mentioned in this paper focuses on three of these works to explore how the plays engage with the debate through the medium of climate-change science, and makes an important and occasionally subversive contribution to the long-running discourse on the relationship between science, the ecosystem, and human beings.
Abstract: With a rich mix of theatrical material to bring to the table, the climate-change debate playing out in the public domain would seem well adapted to the stage, and has often been presented in docu-dramatic form, as in Al Gore's well-known film An Inconvenient Truth But until relatively recently climate change and the science relating to it have been conspicuous by their absence from the stage Early movers on the climate-change theatre scene included Caryl Churchill's 2006 climate-change libretto for the London Proms, We Turned on the Light, and John Godber's 2007 play Crown Prince Since then, interest has steadily increased In 2009 came Steve Waters's double bill The Contingency Plan (On the Beach and Resilience) This was quickly followed by Earthquakes in London by Mike Bartlett in 2010, and by three further plays in the spring of 2011: Greenland, the collaborative work of Moira Buffini, Matt Charman, Penelope Skinner, and Jack Thorne; The Heretic by Richard Bean; and Wastwater by Simon Stephens In this article Julie Hudson focuses on three of these works to explore how the plays engage with the debate through the medium of climate-change science As her article suggests, these British climate-change plays make an important and occasionally subversive contribution to the long-running discourse on the relationship between science, the ecosystem, and human beings In performance, they succeed in turning a subject that has been overplayed for effect in the public domain into compelling theatre Julie Hudson is currently a visiting fellow at the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, Oxford University

12 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Maples as mentioned in this paper examines how the controversy surrounding the ragtime dance craze in the United States allowed women to renegotiate acceptable gendered behaviour in the public sphere, and how women performed acts of rupture on their bodies and the urban cityscape, transforming social dancing into public statements of gendered resistance.
Abstract: In this article Holly Maples examines how the controversy surrounding the ragtime dance craze in the United States allowed women to renegotiate acceptable gendered behaviour in the public sphere. In the early 1910s many members of the public performed acts of resistance to convention by dancing in the workplace, on the street, and in public halls. Civic institutions and private organizations sought to censor and control both the public space of the dance hall and the bodies of its participants. The controlling of social dance was an attempt to restrain what those opposed to the dances saw as unrestrained and indecent physical behaviour by the nation's youth, primarily targeting ragtime dancing's ‘moral degradation’ of young women. It was not merely the public nature of the dancing that was seen as dangerous to women, however, but the dances themselves, many of which featured chaotic, off-centred choreography, with either highly sexualized behaviour, as seen in the tango and the apache dance, or clumsy, un-gendered movement, popular in the animal dances of the day. Through ragtime dancing, women performed acts of rupture on their bodies and the urban cityscape, transforming social dancing into public statements of gendered resistance. Holly Maples is a lecturer in Drama at the University of East Anglia. Both a theatre practitioner and a scholar, she trained as an actress at Central School of Speech and Drama in London and completed her PhD in Theatre Studies at Trinity College Dublin. Her book, Culture War: Conflict, Commemoration, and the Contemporary Abbey Theatre , has recently been published in the ‘Reimagining Ireland’ series by Peter Lang.

9 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Overend as mentioned in this paper proposes a concept of audience that accounts for a complex process of fluctuation between observing or spectating performance as part of a wider group, and becoming part of the aesthetic.
Abstract: In this article David Overend proposes a concept of ‘audience’ that accounts for a complex process of fluctuation between observing or spectating performance as part of a wider group, and becoming part of the aesthetic – forming individual relationships with the artwork and its environment. It is proposed that developing Nicolas Bourriaud's concept of ‘relational aesthetics’ as a model for ‘relational theatre practice’ responds to the continually shifting modes of engagement of those encountering and becoming part of a performance event. Focusing on the Arches arts centre in Glasgow, and drawing on the theory of clubbing, Overend develops a performance for a club night, comparing the experience of the clubbing crowd to that of a theatre audience in order to interrogate the relationship of two cultural practices that remain largely autonomous within the day-to-day operations of the site. Midland Street (September 2009) was a one-off performance for ‘Death Disco’, the monthly electro club night at the Arches. Using cars parked outside the venue, a chaotic poker game, and an array of overtly theatrical characters, including a clown and a pack of urban animals, the performance attempted to move outside the boundaries of the theatre programme as well as the studio theatre space, entering another dynamic relational realm, which is central to the Arches' cultural identity and funding structures. Combining a practical and theoretical approach, this research interrogates Bourriaud's relational aesthetic model through its application to the development of theatre practice within the specific context of an arts venue.

8 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Laster examines the embodied-memory work undertaken by the Polish theatre director and performance researcher Jerzy Grotowski as discussed by the authors, who used body-memory as a tool in the actor's process of self-penetration and opening, serving as an instrument in the rediscovery of impulses and intentions of a past moment.
Abstract: In this article Dominika Laster examines the embodied-memory work undertaken by the Polish theatre director and performance researcher Jerzy Grotowski. While Grotowski approached work with memory – which in his practice necessarily implied body-memory – in a variety of ways, it was often as a mode of inquiry. For Grotowski, there were at least two different types of memory work, which emerge in two distinct phases of his research. The first was the use of body-memory undertaken during the Theatre of Production phase. Here, the work with body-memory was used as a tool in the actor's process of self-penetration and opening, serving as an instrument in the rediscovery of impulses and intentions of a past moment. This process of rediscovery is integral to the freeing of creativity and tapping into the obstructed internal resources of the actor. Another use of memory work, which became articulated in the phase of Grotowski's research known as Art as Vehicle, is that which facilitates the rediscovery of essence. Grotowski's practice of ‘active remembering’ functioned as a tool in the search for one's essence, understood as the most intimate, pre-cultural aspect of the self, which precedes difference and is at once the most singular and universal aspect of being. Dominika Laster is a Lecturer in Theatre. Her book A Bridge Made of Memory: Embodied Memory, Witnessing, and Transmission in the Grotowski Work and her edition of Loose Screws: Nine New Plays from Poland, are forthcoming from Seagull Press (distributed globally by the University of Chicago Press).

8 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Balfour et al. as discussed by the authors extended the consideration of performance and war to aesthetic projects that were located far removed from the centres of conflict, but that deeply connected with the affective impact of war.
Abstract: One of the most unusual statistics in the study of performance and war is that aesthetic activity often increases in times of conflict. In this article Michael Balfour extends the consideration of performance and war to aesthetic projects that were located far removed from the centres of conflict, but that deeply connected with the affective impact of war. As an illustration of performative practice, the examples demonstrate the ways in which place making can play with documenting and representing war experiences in different ways. The two examples – This is Camp X-Ray in Manchester (a temporary installation) and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington DC – were designed in separate contexts for very different purposes; but contribute to understanding the kinds of choices that artists make in representing the affective ‘truths’ of war experience. In both cases, the artists were interested in creating spaces that would make the wars more visible for an audience, and provide a tangible place in which experiences of war could be re-conceived and an affective connection made. Michael Balfour is Professor of Applied Theatre, Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia. His research expertise is in the social applications of theatre, in particular theatre and war, prison theatre, and arts and health. Major Australian Research Council-funded projects include The Difficult Return, on approaches to artsbased work with returning military personnel, and Captive Audiences, on the impact of performing arts programmes in prisons. His books include Theatre and War 1933–1945 and, most recently, Performance in Place of War, co-authored with James Thompson and Jenny Hughes (Seagull Press, 2010).

7 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Vervain this article considers some of the practical issues involved in a masked staging of the plays today, drawing specifically on her experience of directing the Bacchae and the Antigone.
Abstract: Chris Vervain is a mask maker who has for a number of years directed masked Greek drama. On the basis of the research she has undertaken using her own masks, in this article she considers some of the practical issues involved in a masked staging of the plays today, drawing specifically on her experience of directing the Bacchae and the Antigone. Here she extends the discussion started previously in ‘Performing Ancient Drama in Mask: the Case of Greek New Comedy’ in NTQ 79 (August 2004). Earlier, with David Wiles, she contributed ‘The Masks of Greek Tragedy as Point of Departure for Modern Performance’ to NTQ 67 (August 2001). In 2008 she completed a doctorate on masks in Greek tragedy at Royal Holloway, University of London.

7 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Arrighi et al. as discussed by the authors explored the conflict between the constructions of childhood and their political/legal implications in the context of the entertainment business, as related to the demands imposed upon children by parents and theatre managers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Abstract: This article explores the conflict between the constructions of childhood and their political/legal implications in the context of the entertainment business, as related to the demands imposed upon children by parents and theatre managers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Once children could move freely both within and between countries, these conflicts and concerns assumed a global dimension. Through a number of case studies, the authors offer some fresh observations about how legal and social imperatives affected the transmission of values about children employed as entertainers between Britain and Australasia during the period from 1870 to the start of the First World War – from the Education Acts of the 1870s to the legislation of 1910–1913 restricting the export of child entertainers. Gillian Arrighi is a Lecturer in Drama at the University of Newcastle, Australia. She has recently published articles in Theatre Journal (Dec 2008), Australasian Drama Studies (April 2009 and Oct 2010), and in Impact of the Modern: Vernacular Modernities in Australia 1870s–1960s (Sydney, 2008). She is associate editor of the e-journal Popular Entertainment Studies. Victor Emeljanow is Emeritus Professor of Drama at the University of Newcastle, Australia, and General Editor of the e-journal Popular Entertainment Studies. He has published widely on subjects ranging from the reception of Chekhov in Britain and the career of Theodore Kommisarjevsky, to Victorian popular dramatists. He co-wrote with Jim Davis the award-winning Reflecting the Audience: London Theatregoing 1840–1880 in 2001, and his chapter on staging the pirate in the nineteenth century was included in Swashbucklers and Swindlers: Pirates and Mutineers in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture, edited by Grace Moore (2011).

6 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Schmitt as discussed by the authors used the only collection of commedia dell'arte scenarios to have been published in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is that of the actor-manager Flaminio Scala, in 1611.
Abstract: The only collection of commedia dell'arte scenarios to have been published in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is that of the actor-manager Flaminio Scala, in 1611. This can serve, among other things, as a primary source of information about the style of acting in commedia dell'arte performance in its golden age, from 1570 to 1630. While English drama of the same period provides us, in the main, with only the words the actors were to have spoken, the Scala collection rarely provides us with these, but rather, with a wealth of descriptions of actions and emotions. These descriptions enable us to make inferences about the style in which they were acted – that is, about the particular way in which the stories the actors presented were said, performed, or expressed. Natalie Crohn Schmitt is Professor of Theatre, Emerita, University of Illinois at Chicago. She has published on commedia dell'arte in Viator, Renaissance Drama, and Text and Performance Quarterly, and previously in New Theatre Quarterly on Stanislavsky (NTQ 8), on theatre in its historic moment (NTQ 23), and on John Cage (NTQ 41).

6 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Burt as discussed by the authors examined the directorial work of Harley Granville Barker, arguing that his plans for a permanent ensemble company were rooted in his position as a member of the Fabian Society.
Abstract: While the dialogical relationship between the early twentieth-century British theatre and the rise of socialism is well documented, analysis has tended to focus on the role of the playwright in the dissemination of socialist ideas. As a contrast, in this article Philippa Burt examines the directorial work of Harley Granville Barker, arguing that his plans for a permanent ensemble company were rooted in his position as a member of the Fabian Society. With reference to Pierre Bourdieu's concept of habitus and Maria Shevtsova's development of it in reference to the theatre, this article identifies a correlation between Barker's political and artistic approaches through extrapolating the central tenets of his theory on ensemble theatre and analyzing them alongside the central tenets of Fabianism. Philippa Burt is currently completing her PhD in the Department of Theatre and Performance at Goldsmiths, University of London. This article is developed from a paper presented at the conference on ‘Politics, Performance, and Popular Culture in Nineteenth-Century Britain’ at the University of Lancaster in July 2011.

5 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Storey as discussed by the authors examined the relationship between practice and policy in the development of new writing in post-war British theatre, and forms part of the AHRC-funded project ‘Giving Voice to the Nation: The Arts Council of Great Britain and the Development of Theatre and Performance in Britain 1945-1995’.
Abstract: Taryn Storey believes that a series of letters recently discovered in the archive of the Arts Council of Great Britain (ACGB) makes it important that we reassess the genesis of the English Stage Company at the Royal Court. Dating from November 1952, the correspondence between George Devine and William Emrys Williams, the Secretary General of the ACGB, offers an insight into a professional and personal relationship that was to have a profound influence on the emerging Arts Council policy for drama. Storey makes the case that in 1953 Devine not only shaped his Royal Court proposal to fit the priorities of the ACGB Drama Panel, but that Devine and senior members of the ACGB then collaborated to ensure that the proposal became a key part of Arts Council strategic planning. Furthermore, she puts forward the argument that the relationship between Devine and Williams was instrumental to new writing and innovation becoming central to the future rationale for state subsidy to the theatre. Taryn Storey is a doctoral student at the University of Reading. Her PhD thesis examines the relationship between practice and policy in the development of new writing in post-war British theatre, and forms part of the AHRC-funded project ‘Giving Voice to the Nation: The Arts Council of Great Britain and the Development of Theatre and Performance in Britain 1945–1995’, a collaboration between the University of Reading and the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Gregory as discussed by the authors examines the influences behind this choice, including the actress's own experience of mental illness and the notorious "rest cure" and concludes that Campbell's performance of Ophelia can be read as a "witness account" of neurasthenia and the'rest cure' to stand alongside texts such as Charlotte Perkins Gilman's story ‘The Yellow Wallpaper'.
Abstract: In 1897 audiences welcomed Johnston Forbes-Robertson's new interpretation of Hamlet to the London stage, and his sane, intelligent Prince was received as an exciting departure from tradition. Mrs Patrick Campbell's own experiments with the role of Ophelia in this production were not so warmly greeted, critics describing her playing as ‘curiously weak’ and ‘unconvincing and unimpressive’. Campbell had rejected the conventional model of the character as emblematic of the prettiness and pathos exemplified by Ellen Terry, and instead offered a vacant, depressive, ‘beaten’ Ophelia. In this article, Fiona Gregory examines the influences behind this choice, including the actress's own experience of mental illness and the notorious ‘rest cure’. The reception of the performance is read in terms of contemporary attitudes to Ophelia and mental illness, as well as of responses to Campbell and her celebrity identity in the visual arts. Ultimately, Campbell's performance of Ophelia can be read as a ‘witness account’ of neurasthenia and the ‘rest cure’, to stand alongside texts such as Charlotte Perkins Gilman's story ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’. Fiona Gregory lectures in the Centre for Theatre and Performance at Monash University, and has published work on the career of actress Judith Anderson, Australian cultural history, and Victorian and Edwardian writers. She is currently undertaking a wide-ranging study of actresses and mental illness from the nineteenth century to the present day, drawing on historical examples and literary and cultural representations to consider the intersections of ‘hysteria’ and the ‘histrionic’.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Gindt as discussed by the authors discusses Ingmar Bergman's 1951 production of Tennessee Williams's The Rose Tattoo in the small Swedish town of Norrkoping, demonstrating how Bergman methodically ignored the tragicomic nature of the play in order to develop and exaggerate its comic and grotesque elements.
Abstract: In this article Dirk Gindt discusses Ingmar Bergman’s 1951 production of Tennessee Williams’s The Rose Tattoo in the small Swedish town of Norrkoping, demonstrating how Bergman methodically ignored the tragicomic nature of the play in order to develop and exaggerate its comic and grotesque elements. After extensive cuts and alterations in the script, the character Serafina delle Rose became even more overpowering than in the original text and dominated the action from beginning to end. Karin Kavli, a leading lady in Swedish post-war theatre and a frequent collaborator with Bergman, played the character not as a mourning widow but as a possessed disciple of Dionysus in an unabashedly entertaining and sexualized production which, despite reservations from critics, became a success with audiences.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Heinrich as discussed by the authors showed that the effect of the Nazi claims on Shakespeare was substantial, and the official efforts that went into realizing these in productions were considerable, and argued that the Nazis established a particular reading of Shakespeare, which lasted well into the 1960s and dominated the aesthetics of West German productions of his drama.
Abstract: That the Nazis tried to claim Shakespeare as a Germanic playwright has been well documented, but recently theatre historians have claimed that their ‘success’ was rather limited. Instead, commentators have asserted that plays such as Othello, Antony and Cleopatra, and The Merchant of Venice offended National Socialist precepts and were sidelined. This article attempts a re-evaluation and shows that the effect of the Nazi claims on Shakespeare was substantial, and the official efforts that went into realizing these in productions were considerable. It is also argued that the Nazis established a particular reading of Shakespeare, which lasted well into the 1960s and dominated the aesthetics of West German productions of his drama. Anselm Heinrich is Lecturer and Head of Theatre Studies at the University of Glasgow. He is the author of Entertainment, Education, Propaganda: Regional Theatres in Germany and Britain Between 1918 and 1945 (2007), and has co-edited a collection of essays on Ruskin, the Theatre, and Victorian Visual Culture (2009). His new monograph on theatre in Westphalia and Yorkshire for the German publishers Schoeningh is forthcoming.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Woo et al. as discussed by the authors proposed the concept of 18 multimedia architectural music theatre 19 (MAMT), which he later investigated through a series of performances focusing on three masters of modern architecture 13 Louis I. Kahn, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and Le Corbusier.
Abstract: In 2001 Mathias Woo, a trained architect and co-artistic director of Hong Kong's foremost performing arts group, Zuni Icosahedron, proposed the concept of 18multimedia architectural music theatre 19 (MAMT), which he later investigated through a series of performances focusing on three masters of modern architecture 13 Louis I. Kahn, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and Le Corbusier. This article traces the development of Woo's architectural theatre aesthetics by examining the most ambitious work in the series, 'Looking for Mies', premiered in 2002 and revived in 2009 and 2011. This links Hong Kong's twenty-first-century postmodernist theatre to early twentieth-century European modernism, particularly the Bauhaus, and international examples of architecture-centred performance. 'Looking for Mies' unearths connections between theatre and architecture, and explores the relations between tradition and technology, man and machine, live performance and digitally mediated experience on the modern stage.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Fo's play First Miracle of the Christ Child (from Tale of a Tiger and Other Stories ) and Johan Padan Discovers America as mentioned in this paper use apocryphal texts as a basis to illustrate the father/son dichotomy, and to contest hegemonic dominance.
Abstract: For over half a century the Italian Nobel playwright and performer Dario Fo (b. 1926) developed a theatre that challenged the authority of hegemonic culture, while promoting the validity and dignity of folk and popular cultures. In his satire of the Catholic Church, Fo presents the paternalistic God the Father as an instrument of suppression, while showing Jesus as being closer to the hearts of the folk. His references to apocryphal gospels – the gospels of early Christianity that were rejected by the Roman Church – play into this schema. In two of his plays, First Miracle of the Christ Child (from Tale of a Tiger and Other Stories ) and Johan Padan Discovers America , Fo borrows elements from various apocryphal texts as a basis to underscore his father/son dichotomy, and to contest hegemonic dominance. At the same time, he presents a human Jesus who is more akin to the Jesus of certain apocrypha than to official gospels. Antonio Scuderi is Professor of Italian at Truman State University in Missouri, where he founded the Italian programme. His interdisciplinary articles on Italian performance traditions have been published in leading journals of theatre, folklore and literary studies, and in essays for books. He is the author of Dario Fo and Popular Performance (Legas, 1998) and co-editor of Dario Fo: Stage, Text, and Tradition (Southern Illinois UP, 2000). His latest book, Dario Fo: Framing, Festival, and the Folkloric Imagination (Lexington Books, 2011), examines the influence of concepts derived from folk culture, anthropology, and Gramscian Marxism on the development of Fo's theatrical praxis.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, D'Cruz's paper juxtaposes two disparate but connected registers of writing: an open letter to a deceased Australian playwright, Vicki Reynolds, and a critical reflection on the politics of the archive with reference to Derrida's account of archive fever, which he characterizes as an ‘irrepressible desire to return to the origin, a homesickness, a nostalgia for the most archaic place of absolute commencement’.
Abstract: ’Nothing is less reliable, nothing is less clear today than the word “archive”,’ observed Jacques Derrida in his book Archive Fever: a Freudian Impression (1996). This paper reflects on the unsettling process of establishing (or commencing) an archive for the Melbourne Workers Theatre, to form part of the AusStage digital archive which records information on live performance in Australia. Glenn D'Cruz's paper juxtaposes two disparate but connected registers of writing: an open letter to a deceased Australian playwright, Vicki Reynolds, and a critical reflection on the politics of the archive with reference to Derrida's account of archive fever, which he characterizes as an ‘irrepressible desire to return to the origin, a homesickness, a nostalgia for the return to the most archaic place of absolute commencement’. Using Derrida's commentary on questions of memory, authority, inscription, hauntology, and heritage to identify some of the philosophical and ethical aporias he encountered while working on the project, D’Cruz pays particular attention to what Derrida calls the spectral structure of the archive, and stages a conversation with the ghosts that haunt the digitized Melbourne Workers Theatre documents. He also unpacks the logic of Derrida's so-called messianic account of the archive, which ‘opens out of the future’, thereby affirming the future-to-come, and unsettling the normative notion of the archive as a repository for what has passed. Glenn D’Cruz teaches at Deakin University, Australia. He is the author of Midnight's Orphans: Anglo-Indians in Post/Colonial Literature (Peter Lang, 2006) and editor of Class Act: Melbourne Workers Theatre 1987–2007 (Vulgar Press, 2007).

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Aragay and Escoda as discussed by the authors examined James Macdonald's Royal Court Theatre production of Martin Crimp's triptych Fewer Emergencies (2005) in the wake of recent critical assessments of the work in relation to Hans-Thies Lehmann's post-dramatic paradigm.
Abstract: In this article Mireia Aragay and Clara Escoda examine James Macdonald's Royal Court Theatre production of Martin Crimp's triptych Fewer Emergencies (2005) in the wake of recent critical assessments of Crimp's work in relation to Hans-Thies Lehmann's postdramatic paradigm. By focusing on light design, the authors suggest that Macdonald's staging of the play productively enhanced the tension inherent in Crimp's text between dramatic and postdramatic elements. Light was conceived in postdramatic terms as a major component of the mise-en-scene, synaesthetically interacting with the linguistic material in a way that necessitated the spectators’ active processing of all onstage signs and, ultimately, their critical examination of their own ethical and political positioning with respect to the late-capitalist social and cultural order. Mireia Aragay is a Senior Lecturer in English drama and theatre at the University of Barcelona. She is co-editor of British Theatre of the 1990s: Interviews with Directors, Playwrights, Critics, and Academics (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007). Clara Escoda has recently completed a PhD thesis on Martin Crimp's theatre at the University of Barcelona, where she lectures in English literature.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Owen Holland as discussed by the authors examines Ewan MacColl's early work in agit-prop theatre and his later activity as a songwriter, performer, and collector in the second British folk revival.
Abstract: In this article Owen Holland examines Ewan MacColl's early work in agit-prop theatre and his later activity as a songwriter, performer, and collector in the second British folk revival. He argues that his experience in the theatre provides a necessary route into understanding the problems of his later work – and what unites the ‘two halves’ is MacColl's consistent sense of the function of art (specifically his preferred media of drama and song) within a wider politico-cultural praxis. There is a contradiction in MacColl's praxis, however, in that while he wanted to create a popular culture of participation, his dogmatic textual strategies and exclusivist tendencies often became coercive enough to undermine his intentions. The discussion of MacColl's writing is situated within a critique of the problems that appear in his wider praxis, and Holland concludes by asserting that MacColl's agency as a writer was achieved through the development of a performance-oriented aesthetic. Owen Holland is a PhD candidate in the English Faculty at the University of Cambridge, affiliated to St Catharine's College. His research focuses on utopian fiction in the late nineteenth century, with a particular interest in William Morris.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In Mnemonic, a play conceived and directed by Simon McBurney and devised by Theatre de Complicite, words are not only time capsules in which different fictionalized memories are preserved, but also mnemonic objects in their own right as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: In Mnemonic, a play conceived and directed by Simon McBurney and devised by Theatre de Complicite, words are not only time capsules in which different fictionalized memories are preserved, but also mnemonic objects in their own right. The playtext they conform acts, of course, as a reminder of the show that this British company created in 1999 for the Salzburg Festival, and that toured internationally again in 2002: at the same time, the published text of the work contains the perspectives and potential techniques from which the notion of memory – and of individual and collective forms of remembrance associated with it – can be explored and semiotized. Nuria Casado-Gual's article looks at the dramaturgical strategies and theatrical techniques used by the company in their particular theatricalization of memory. Mnemonic, she contends, is not only relevant as an outstanding piece of contemporary theatre, but also as a ‘memorable’ text that helps us decipher our enigmatic selves in apparently oblivious and eroding postmodern times. Nuria Casado-Gual lectures in English language, literature, and theatre at the University of Lleida, Catalonia, Spain. She is author of a PhD thesis on the the Caribbean playwright Edgar Nkosi White, and combines her academic work with creative theatrical projects as both playwright and performer with the company Nurosfera.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present eight arguments against the study of world theatre history from a global perspective, arguing that the academic disinclination toward it is self-defeating for theatre studies.
Abstract: Few people would suggest that theatre historians should categorically avoid studying the theatre of lands that are conventionally spoken of as “non-Western,” but it is apparent that world theatre history is frequently taken to be problematic in one or more ways. This chapter examines why that might be so, presenting eight arguments against world theatre history. Anyone interested in the global perspective needs to understand these arguments, if only to be able to contest them. The first four arguments are practical in nature and concern the difficulties of studying theatre history on a global scale. The following four arguments are ideological, attacking the very idea of world theatre history from a variety of perspectives. While discussing and rebutting these eight arguments, the chapter offers further clarification on what world theatre history entails, and why the academic disinclination toward it is self-defeating for theatre studies.


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Senelick as mentioned in this paper traces the many ups and downs of Gerasim Stepanovich Lebedev's career, and argues that his theatrical activities are a cynosure for the controlling urges of his age.
Abstract: Was the father of Bengali theatre a Russian? Or were the brief adventures in India of Gerasim Stepanovich Lebedev (1749–1817) ‘a mere blip on the screen of Bengali performance history’? Already widely travelled in Europe, Lebedev, influenced by the then current belief that India was the cradle of civilization, arrived in Madras in 1785 during the virtual hegemony of the East India Company in the sub-continent. Inspired by his attempts to master the ancient Sanskrit tongue, he eventually set up a Bengali company in opposition to the New Playhouse in Calcutta, which staged English plays for audiences of colonists. Initial success was tempered when Lebedev's company found itself the target of attack from the Playhouse, and subject to continuous legal harassment. Forced to take flight from his supposed creditors, Lebedev found security only when, under the more tolerant regime which followed the accession of Tsar Alexander I in 1801, he returned to his native land, where he laid the foundations for the scientific study of India in Russia. Laurence Senelick here traces the many ups and downs of Lebedev's career, and argues that ‘his theatrical activities are a cynosure for the controlling urges of his age’.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The Craiova International Shakespeare Festival as mentioned in this paper has been a major touchstone in Europe for theatre artists, theatregoers, and scholars for nearly two decades, and has been widely recognized as one of the most popular Shakespeare festivals in the world.
Abstract: The Craiova International Shakespeare Festival has been a major touchstone in Europe for theatre artists, theatregoers, and scholars for nearly two decades. This overview briefly situates the Festival historically, indicating the ideals and perspectives developed for it by its founder Emil Boroghina, former director of the National Theatre of Craiova. It identifies as well a number of the Festival's many highlights over the years, Romanian as well as international, and focuses on examples from the 2012 programme, including Silviu Purcarte's The Tempest and Robert Wilson's Shakespeare's Sonnets performed by the Berliner Ensemble. Attention is drawn to the presence at the successive editions of the Festival of productions directed by Purcarete, who established his career at the National Theatre of Craiova, to which Boroghina had invited him, and who won international fame after performances of his Ubu Rex with Scenes from Macbeth at the 1991 Edinburgh Festival.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Thomas Irmer as discussed by the authors focused on the actors' troupe in the play, performed by former neo-Nazis, asking whether an audience would accept the reintegration of people who were determined to leave this extremist group with the support of the German government.
Abstract: Christoph Schlingensief (1960–2010) was a filmmaker, theatre director, and performance artist. In his Hamlet at the Schauspielhaus in Zurich in 2001 – his only staging of a classic – Schlingensief deployed the strategies of intervention typical of his whole work. In this article Thomas Irmer focuses on the actors' troupe in the play, performed by former neo-Nazis. Schlingensief was asking whether an audience would accept the reintegration of people who were determined to leave this extremist group with the support of the German government. At the same time, Schlingensief referred to a historical performance of Hamlet by Gustaf Grundgens, whose career in Nazi and post-war Germany is played in counterpoint against the neo-Nazi outsiders potentially to be reintegrated. Schlingensief's ambivalence here challenged ready-made opinions about overlap between political and aesthetic experience. Thomas Irmer is a scholar, theatre critic, and co-director of four documentary films on theatre, including Die Buhnenrepublik: Theatre in the GDR (2003) and Heiner Muller: a Biographical Portrait (2009). He teaches American theatre at the John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies at the Freie Universitat in Berlin. He is a regular contributor to Theater Heute , editor of the book Castorf's Volksbuhne (2003), and author of the forthcoming Life and Times of Andrzej T. Wirth .

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The Prague Quadrennial 2011 as discussed by the authors report on the Czech Republic is presented in Table 1 : The Prague Quadrangular 2011, p. 5.1.1].
Abstract: Report on the Prague Quadrennial, 2011.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Andegna (The First) as mentioned in this paper was developed and performed during the fall and winter of 2009-10 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, with the goal of revealing social, political, and cultural trauma and becoming an act of affirmation.
Abstract: Andegna (The First) was developed and performed during the fall and winter of 2009–10 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. This article examines the complex social, political, and cultural contexts that informed the training, workshops, and process of creating an ensemble and performance in a time of national transformation. Urbanization and the crossing currents of Africa, Islam, Christian Orthodoxy, capitalism, the West, and technology prompted the re-conceptualization of performance, its function, and expression. In this article Thomas Riccio highlights the methodologies of reinventing an indigenous performance that is respectful of local traditions yet contemporary and accessible. He discusses how performance provides a forum for revealing social, political, and cultural trauma, and itself becomes an act of affirmation – an assertion of protest and healing that makes visible, immediate, and tactile the histories and unresolved issues haunting modern Ethiopia. Thomas Riccio, is Professor of Performance and Aesthetic Studies at the University of Texas at Dallas, having previously been Professor of Theatre at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, Artistic Director of Chicago's Organic Theater Company, Resident Director and Dramaturg, the Cleveland Play House, Assistant Literary Director at the American Repertory Theatre, Visiting Professor at the University of Dar es Salaam and the Korean National University for the Arts, and Artistic Director of Tuma Theatre, an Alaska Native performance group. He has worked extensively in the area of indigenous performance, ritual, and shamanism, conducting workshops, research, and devising numerous performances in Africa, Russia, Siberia, Korea, China, Vietnam, and Alaska. He was declared a ‘Cultural Hero’ of the Sakha Republic in central Siberia.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A Symposium on the work of Teatr Pieśn Kozla (Song of the Goat Theatre) was held at the Barbican Centre, London, on 20 November 2010 as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: Symposium on the work of Teatr Pieśn Kozla (Song of the Goat Theatre), held at the Barbican Centre, London, on 20 November 2010.