Showing papers in "New Theatre Quarterly in 2020"

Staging the Unnatural: Zacky Pastrana and the Animal–Human Divide in the Victorian Melodrama For Ever

Abstract: The melodrama For Ever, by Paul Meritt and George Conquest, first performed at the Surrey Theatre on 2 October 1882, was a controversial late-Victorian stage production that fed the period’s appetite for dramatic histrionics, exotic displays, and monstrosity. An ephemeral piece that enjoyed no literary archetypes and few revivals, the play’s raison d’etre was Conquest’s portrayal of Zacky Pastrana, a ‘man-monkey’, and his unrequited love for the murderous Ruth – a theme unique in the context of simian-based drama. Central to the play’s infamy was the covert allusion to the age-old myth of unnatural unions between simians and humans, and, although condemned as absurd and revolting by some critics, and laughable by others, its notoriety ensured popular success. Drawing on the original script submitted to the Lord Chamberlain for licensing and censoring, and situating Pastrana among famous fictional monstrosities adapted from literature for the British stage, most significantly Caliban, this article is a thematic analysis of Conquest’s unique role. It highlights through a series of interrelated readings how Pastrana’s multidimensional otherness and hybrid fluidity serves as a site of conceptual contention located at the animal–human boundary, exposing the cultural tensions in late-Victorian Britain. Bernard Ince is an independent theatre historian who has contributed earlier studies of the Victorian and Edwardian theatre to NTQ.

The Staging of Ciudad Juárez’s Feminicides: Àlex Rigola and Angélica Liddell Speak for the Victims

Abstract: Tackling violence against women in the theatre is often a controversial matter. To identify the ethical risks that victim representation may entail, we conduct a comparative analysis of two works about Ciudad Juarez’s feminicides staged in Barcelona: 2666 (2007), an adaptation of Roberto Bolano’s novel directed by Alex Rigola, and House of Strength (2011) by Angelica Liddell. This article argues that while Rigola reduces victims to mere sexual objects with no narrative of their own, Liddell places the voice and resilience of Mexicans in the foreground and represents their bodies respectfully. Adriana Nicolau is completing her doctoral studies on ‘Feminisms in contemporary Catalan theatre’ at Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) in Barcelona. Her publications include articles for Feminismo/s. Teresa Iribarren is an assistant professor at UOC, where she is the Director of the Catalan Literature, Publishing, and Society research group. Her current research focuses on narratives of violence and the promotion of human rights in literature.

The Word is the Knife: Janus-Faced Communication in Sartre’s No Exit and Rose’s Twelve Angry Men

Abstract: In this article the authors offer an analysis of Jean-Paul Sartre’s 1946 play Huis Clos (No Exit) and Reginald Rose’s 1954 play Twelve Angry Men, with particular attention paid to exploring the insights from each theatrical text about communication. The process of communication may be ambivalent or Janus-faced, and one of the objectives of this analysis is to consider communication in terms of its duality and incisive power. In doing so, the aim is to explore its antithetical tensions by amplifying the mythological, deliberative and philosophical dimensions of communication praxis. In particular, the archetype of the knife provides a useful metaphor for understanding the potentials and pitfalls of communication in human interaction. Scott Haden Church is an Assistant Professor in the School of Communications at Brigham Young University. He has recently published in Critical Studies in Media Communication. Jesse King Jones is in the Masters Programme of the School of Communications at Brigham Young University.

‘Plays with Subjects that Matter’: Political Theatre and the Amateur Movement in the 1930s

Abstract: Thousands of amateur theatre groups performed regularly in Britain during the 1930s but their activities have generally been overlooked by historians. Important features of the amateur world were the regional and national festivals organized by the British Drama League and the Scottish Community Drama Association. In this article Don Watson examines how the festivals could provide opportunities for progressive drama by groups outside the organized Left, and considers the League in relation to the Left theatre movement of the time. It broadens our understanding of where politically engaged theatre took place in the 1930s and thus the appreciation of British amateur theatre as a whole. Don Watson is an independent historian and holds a PhD from Hull University. His theatre research has been published in Labour History Review, Media, Culture and Society, and North East Labour History.

Labours of Seduction in Immersive and Interactive Performance

Abstract: Much theatrical work that calls itself ‘immersive’ uses tropes of the erotic to achieve its intended effects. In this article Rose Biggin identifies structural and performative strategies in the use of the erotic in this genre. What does it mean to identify the process of performed seduction as central to much immersive dramaturgy? Through readings of contemporary productions that draw upon (or appropriate) pre-existing erotically charged environments, the inevitable responsibilities for makers working in this context of immersion are considered, as is the importance of considering the consequences for those working in immersive spaces. Stress is laid on the crucial role that this form of performative labour often plays in immersive performance, and a continued recognition of its influence is emphasized. Rose Biggin is an independent scholar and theatre artist based in London. She received her PhD from the University of Exeter, researching audience immersion and the work of Punchdrunk, and both writes and makes work on gender, history, and language. She is author of Immersive Theatre and Audience Experience (2017).

Staging The Delinquent, Edwardian Theatre, and The Hooligan

Abstract: W. S. Gilbert is best known as a dramatist and librettist who produced fourteen comic operas with his collaborator, composer Arthur Sullivan. Less familiar is his last work The Hooligan (1912), one of the first realist representations of the young urban working-class male seen on the twentieth-century British stage. This article explores the Edwardian conditions of social and cultural volatility reflected in the authoring and production of this play. It discusses the period as one where narratives of gender and class that underpin contemporary perspectives were shaped and contested. It demonstrates how hegemonic systems of cultural production created binary distinctions between the ‘ideal’ of the ‘Imperial Youth’ and the alien, working-class ‘other’. Gilbert’s authoring of the working-class male subject and his representation in a commercial theatre were subject to both market controls and middle-class ‘anxieties’. This historical perspective indicates continuities between these factors and the contemporary representation of the young urban working classes. Martin Heaney is a senior lecturer in Drama, Applied Theatre and Performance at the University of East London. He is co-director of the Centre of Applied and Participatory Arts and has published articles in various journals, including Research in Drama Education. His book chapter ‘Edward Bond and The Representation of Adolescence’ is forthcoming in The Routledge Guide to Theatre for Young People (2021).

Exception and the Rule: Agamben, Stuff Happens, and Representation in the Post-Truth Age

Abstract: The contemporary post-truth environment imposes limitations and ethical consid erations upon the political theatre-maker’s ability to highlight political leaders’ exceptional acts of deception. By unpacking and applying Giorgio Agamben’s writing on the State of Exception to post-truth political performances, Alex D. Wilson discusses in this article how political deception is an exceptional act of sovereign power and how the state of exception is an inherently performative phenomenon. The inherent challenges this state of affairs presents to the theatre are discussed with particular reference to David Hare’s Stuff Happens (2004), which, it is argued, falls into its own state of exception in terms of its approach to truth. Alex D. Wilson is a PhD candidate in Theatre Studies at the University of Otago, who recently completed an MA which explored ethical authorship of British theatrical work produced in response to the 2003 Invasion of Iraq. He is the artistic director of Arcade, a Dunedin-based performing arts company.

‘The Most Traditional and the Most Pioneering’: New Concept Kun Opera

Abstract: Featuring hybridity, transgression, and improvisation, New Concept Kun Opera refers to experimental performances by Ke Jun and other Kun Opera performers since the beginning of the twenty-first century. From telling the ancient stories to expressing the modern self, this new form marks the awakening of the performer’s subjectivity and develops a contemporary outlook by rebuilding close connections between Kun Opera and modern life. A synthetic use of intermedial resources contributes to its appeal to today’s audiences. Its experimentation succeeds in maintaining the most traditional while exploring the most pioneering, thus providing Kun Opera with the potential for renewal, as well as an alternative future for Chinese opera in general. Chengzhou He is a Yangtze River Distinguished Professor of English and Drama at the School of Foreign Studies and the School of Arts at Nanjing University. He has published widely on Western drama, intercultural theatre, and critical theory in both Chinese and English. Currently, he is the principal investigator for a national key-research project, ‘Theories in European and American Theatre and Performance Studies’.

Dialogue for Empowerment: Jana Sanskriti’s Experiment with the Method of the Theatre of the Oppressed in Rural Bengal

Abstract: Since the 1970s, belief in the importance of participatory empowerment has been constantly asserted through various mass-inclusive developmental strategies. The growing interest in theatre for generating socio-political capacity-building among people gave rise to the Theatre of the Oppressed, conceptualized and developed by Augusto Boal. This article provides a brief outline of the modus operandi of Boal’s practice, and focuses on investigating the theoretical and practical methodology of Jana Sanskriti, the West Bengal group of practitioners of Theatre of the Oppressed. The article investigates the dialogical relationship between actors and audience in the three phases of the group’s theatre-making process: pre-performance; during the performance; and after it. It proposes an illustrative model of Jana Sanskriti’s dialogical approach towards experiencing a developmental surge in society. Shubhra Ghoshal is a research scholar at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Indian Institute of Technology (Indian School of Mines) in Dhanbad, India. Nirban Manna is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology (Indian School of Mines) in Dhanbad.

Flexible Characterization: Herstorical Performance in Heritage Sites

Abstract: This article explores how performance and character can be used to represent the lives of real women in spaces of heritage. It focuses on two different site-specific performances created by the author in the South Ayrshire region of Scotland: CauseWay: The Story of the Alloway Suffragettes and In Hidden Spaces: The Untold Stories of the Women of Rozelle House. These were created with a practice-as-research methodology and aim to offer new models for the use of character in site-specific performance practice. The article explores the variety of methods and techniques used, including verbatim writing, spatial exploration, and Herstorical research, in order to demonstrate the ways in which women’s narratives were represented in a theoretically informed, site-specific manner. Drawing on Phil Smith’s mythogeography, and responding to Laurajane Smith’s work on gender and heritage, the conflicting tensions of identity, performance, and authenticity are drawn together to offer flexible characterization as a new model for the creation of feminist heritage performance. Victoria Bianchi is a theatre-maker and academic in the School of Education at the University of Glasgow. Her work explores the relationship between space, feminism, and identity. She has written and performed work for the National Trust for Scotland, Camden People’s Theatre, and Assembly at Edinburgh, among other institutions.

Silent Cicadas and Noisy Burrowers: Kafka Inside Out in Thailand

Abstract: In 2015, the Unfolding Kafka Festival was initiated by Thai dancer/choreographer Jitti Chompee, exploring the writings of Franz Kafka as a source of creativity for performers in Thailand and the Southeast Asian region. Three of the presented artworks focus on the concept of metamorphosis, and the body’s interaction with the environments it both creates and inhabits. Inspired by Isabelle Schad’s dance Der Bau (The Burrow), Chompee and visual artist/scenographer Yoko Seyama created Silence of the Insects, which adopted the cicada as a model of bodily transformation. Together, the two dances and the installation form an assemblage that can be considered under the rubric of Una Chaudhuri’s concept of a ‘theatre of species’. Catherine Diamond is Professor of Theatre and Environmental Literature at Soochow University in Taiwan, and is the director/playwright of the Kinnari Ecological Theatre Project, creating new plays addressing environmental issues in Southeast Asia.

Representing the Unrepresentable in South Korean Activist Performances

Abstract: On 16 April 2014, the Sewol Ferry capsized in the southern region of South Korea: 304 passengers died, including 250 high school students. Despite an international outcry, there has not yet been a comprehensive investigation into what caused the Sewol to sink and why the passengers were not rescued promptly. This article discusses how performance can represent something that defies explanation because we do not know how or why it happened. Yellow Ribbon’s Talent Show, Namsan Arts Centre’s From Pluto, and Camino de Ansan performed the role of the students who died. Taking these three case studies, this article analyzes the ways in which they strive to represent the unrepresentable as they attempt to document the sinking and achieve justice, while memorializing the victims and arguing for the necessity of a more safety-conscious society. Areum Jeong is Assistant Professor in Humanities at Sichuan University-Pittsburgh Institute. Jeong’s research takes a transnational approach to Korean and Korean-American film, literature, theatre, and performance. Her current book project explores how performance documents death, loss, and memory in South Korean and diasporic communities.

Tadashi Suzuki’s The Trojan Women as Cross-Cultural Theatre

Abstract: This article analyzes Suzuki Tadashi’s version of Euripides’ The Trojan Women, staged multiple times during the past forty years. While this cross-cultural production carries specific socio-cultural signs and juxtaposes different traditional Japanese styles (Noh, Kabuki, and Shingeki), it aims to create a third object that does not belong specifically to any of these traditions but is composed of the sum of their specificities. It argues that The Trojan Women was created by Suzuki and his company as a response to the state of culture and society in Japan during the 1970s, breaking with old and new fashions in an effort to revitalize Japanese contemporary theatre. Offering a socio-cultural analysis and drawing on the writings of Michael Bakhtin and Pierre Bourdieu, it sheds light on Suzuki’s humanistic quest for a universalism pursued through the re-discovery and transformation of traditional styles together with an appropriation of Western texts. Lorenzo Montanini is a theatre director whose work investigates the boundaries of theatre and live performance in a multicultural context. He has taught for more than fifteen years in universities in Italy, including RomaTre, Universita di Macerata, and Universita l’Orientale di Napoli.

LIFT and the GLC versus Thatcher: London’s Cultural Battleground in 1981

Abstract: In 1981 Rose Fenton and Lucy Neal established the London International Festival of Theatre (LIFT). While the Festival is generally recognized as having been highly influential in the field of British theatre over the past twenty-five years, it has received little academic attention. In this article Phoebe Patey-Ferguson examines the founding of the event, arguing that the specific socio-political circumstances of its early years gave shape to the innovative form of a city-based international theatre festival. The bureaucratic conflict between Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government and Ken Livingstone’s Greater London Council (GLC) is identified as a central factor in the creation of LIFT, with reference to Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of the bureaucratic field and Loic Wacquant’s development of this model in relation to neoliberal market capitalism. The article is derived from Phoebe Patey-Ferguson’s recently completed PhD on LIFT in its social, cultural, and political context at the Department of Theatre and Performance, Goldsmiths, University of London.1

The Shtetl in the Hebrew Theatre of Mandatory Palestine during the 1930s

Abstract: During the 1930s, the two Hebrew repertoire theatre companies in Palestine – the Habima and the Ohel – performed a large corpus of plays dealing with the landscapes of the Eastern European Jewish shtetl. Their fascination with the shtetl is surprising, considering the fact that these two companies were deeply committed to the Zionist project, whose ethos was building a new society in Eretz-Israel and negating the diasporic condition of Jewish existence. This article explores the landscapes of the shtetl as they were presented on the Hebrew stage of the 1930s and analyzes their aesthetic and cultural meaning for their audiences at that time. It shows that the shtetl plays formed a memory landscape that served the formation of a modern, consolidated, ethnic Jewish collective in Palestine, which shared a unified narrative of its past, as well as national aspirations for the future. Shelly Zer-Zion is a lecturer of theatre at the University of Haifa and was previously a Fulbright post-doctoral scholar at New York University. Her recent publications include Habima in Berlin: The Institutionalization of a Zionist Theatre (Magness Press, 2015), and her research is currently supported by the Israeli Science Foundation.

Ostermeier’s Ein Volksfeind on the Anniversary of Turkey’s Gezi Park Protests

Abstract: In this article Hanife Schulte discusses Thomas Ostermeier’s Ein Volksfeind , a German version of Henrik Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People that toured to the International Istanbul Theatre Festival in 2014. In borrowing Maria Shevtsova’s notion of the sociology of performance, Hanife Schulte offers a sociological examination of Ein Volksfeind’ s Istanbul performances and demonstrates how the first anniversary of Turkey’s Gezi Park protests at the time of the festival influenced the performances. These protests, which began in 2013, were in resistance to the Turkish government’s urban development plan for Istanbul’s Taksim Park. In her examination of the dramaturgy and stage design of the production and its Turkish reception, Schulte argues that Ein Volksfeind’ s political dramaturgy-in-progress allowed Ostermeier to adapt its touring performances in Istanbul and transform them into events in which the Turkish audiences became fellow performers and adaptors who reflected on the Gezi Park protests. She also suggests that Ostermeier showed solidarity with the Turkish people resisting political violence and oppression in tackling their local politics. Hanife Schulte has completed three years of doctoral research in Theatre and Performance Studies at Tufts University and is an alumna of the Mellon School of Theater and Performance Research at Harvard University, where she participated in the 2019 Session on Migrations.

From State Security to Security State: Performing Control and Claustrophobia in Hungarian Theatre

Abstract: This article examines how the exchanges of archival and artistic practices in Central European and, more precisely, in Hungarian theatre and performance can create performative sites calling attention to the continuities and recurring reflexes of pre- and post-1989 realities. The genre of re-performance allows performance artists to comment on their own experience with the communist regimes, as well as to enact the continuing political and aesthetic potentials of past performances. In 1986, a recently founded performance group, the Collective of Natural Disasters, premiered its piece Living Space in Budapest, considered to be an iconic production in the history of Hungarian dance theatre, and earning international success. The solo performer (Yvette Bozsik) was set in a small glass box, suggesting the claustrophobic atmosphere of the 1980s in the country. In 2012, the group re-interpreted the 1986 production with considerable critical changes under the title (In)Finity. The new solo performer (Rita Gobi) was locked in a similar glass box. However, the group refashioned the main question about freedom by offering a mediatized landscape on stage where the recurring experience of claustrophobia was seen through technical innovations forming new regimes and forms of surveillance. Kornelia Deres is a Humboldt Research Fellow in the Institute of Media Culture and Theatre at the University of Cologne. Between 2015 and 2018 she was an assistant professor at Karoli University (Budapest), and since 2017 has been a lecturer at ELTE University in Budapest. She is co-editor of five books and the author of Hammer for Images (2016), as well as two volumes of poetry.

Archive, Repertory, Supplement: Thinking Theatre through Intersections

Abstract: This article discusses the relationship between drama and performance, using the Derridean concept of ‘supplement’ in theatre, which exceeds polarities and attempts a more dialectic approach. A review of Marvin Carlson’s theories of illustration, separation, translation, and fulfilment is a starting point for a comprehensive analysis of the views that encourage the binary drama-performance. This is examined in combination with Diane Taylor’s distinction between the ‘archive’, which preserves and bears all the written culture, and the ‘repertory’, which contains the world of performance. The ‘supplement’ holds two meanings: as a supplement, an external addition-to, and as a complement, a supplement-of, that comes in to fill a gap. One example is used to present the relationship between archive, repertory, and supplement: Brecht’s The Downfall of the Egotist Johann Fatzer. Theatre can be thought of in formations of heteropoietic sequence, through chains of supplements, including the texts, the performances, the rehearsal devices, the publication context, and the director’s notebooks. George P. Pefanis is a Professor in the Department of Theatre Studies at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, and also teaches theatre and cinema history at the Open University of Greece and Cyprus. His publications include Adventures of Representation: Scenes of Theory II, Spectres of Theatre: Scenes of Theory III (both 2013), and Theatre Adherents and Philosophers (2016). In 2006, he received the award for the best book in the study of theatre for The Kingdom of Eugena (2005).

Ajax in America, or Catharsis in the Time of Terrorism

Abstract: Originally funded by the US Department of Defense in 2009, Theater of War Productions’ first project, Theater of War, performs dramatic readings of Ajax at military bases, hospitals, and academic institutions throughout the United States. Developed by Bryan Doerries, Theater of War brings awareness to the epidemic of suicide and other forms of violence committed by American military service members in the wake of the United States’ so-called ‘war on terror’. But like Ajax, American military personnel typically turn to violence only after being betrayed by the institutions that they served. This article follows how Ajax’s more modern manifestation disrupts the tragic protagonist’s status as a sacrificial victim whose death precipitates tragedy’s cathartic effect, and challenges what Rene Girard calls the ‘scapegoat mechanism’ and its socio-political function. It argues that Ajax’s appearance as a cathartic figure in American society provokes spectators and artists to reckon with the conditions that can cause military personnel to act violently, and inspires protests against broader hegemonic socio-political structures and the military culture that sustains them. Matthew Roberts is Assistant Professor and Librarian for Comparative and World Literature, English, and Drama at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.