Showing papers on "Postmodern theatre published in 2009"

Language, Asylum, and the National Order

Abstract: This paper discusses modernist reactions to postmodern realities. Asylum seekers in Western Europe—people typically inserted into postmodern processes of globalization—are routinely subjected to identification analyses that emphasize the national order. The paper documents the case of a Rwandan refugee in the United Kingdom whose nationality was disputed by the Home Office because of his “abnormal” linguistic repertoire. An analysis of that repertoire, however, supports the applicant's credibility. The theoretical problematic opposes two versions of sociolinguistics: a sociolinguistics of languages, used by the Home Office, and a sociolinguistics of speech and repertoires, used in this paper. The realities of modern reactions to postmodern phenomena must be taken into account as part of the postmodern phenomenology of language in society.

The Cambridge Introduction to Postmodern Fiction

Abstract: Postmodern fiction presents a challenge to the reader: instead of enjoying it passively, the reader has to work to understand its meanings, to think about what fiction is, and to question their own responses. Yet this very challenge makes postmodern writing so much fun to read and rewarding to study. Unlike most introductions to postmodernism and fiction, this book places the emphasis on literature rather than theory. It introduces the most prominent British and American novelists associated with postmodernism, from the 'pioneers', Beckett, Borges and Burroughs, to important post-war writers such as Pynchon, Carter, Atwood, Morrison, Gibson, Auster, DeLillo, and Ellis. Designed for students and clearly written, this Introduction explains the preoccupations, styles and techniques that unite postmodern authors. Their work is characterized by a self-reflexive acknowledgement of its status as fiction, and by the various ways in which it challenges readers to question common-sense and commonplace assumptions about literature.

Theatre and Audience

Abstract: What does theatre do for – and to – those who witness, watch, and participate in it? Theatre& Audience provides a provocative overview of the questions raised by theatrical encounters between performers and audiences. Focusing on European and North American theatre and its audiences in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, it explores belief in theatre's potential to influence, impact and transform. Illustrated by examples of performance which have sought to generate active audience involvement – from Brecht's epic theatre to the Blue Man Group – it seeks to unsettle any simple equation between audience participation and empowerment.

Toward a Sustainable Myth of Self An Existential Response to the Postmodern Condition

Abstract: The self has come under considerable attack in postmodern times. Amidst many deconstructions and reformulations of the self, various myths of self have lost their sustainability. This article reviews various theoretical perspectives on the self along with many postmodern challenges to the self. It is proposed that the self is a socially constructed entity which can be conceptualized from a variety of perspectives; however, not all myths of self are equal. In particular, premodern and modern myths of self are inadequate for postmodern times. Building from an existential–integrative perspective, we propose Schneider’s paradoxical self as a promising myth of self for postmodern times.

Alter-Globalism as Counter-Hegemony: Evaluating the ‘postmodern Prince’

Abstract: This article seeks to provide a critical analysis of the alter-globalisation movement as a potential ‘postmodern Prince’ as advanced by Stephen Gill. The article proposes that the social forces aligned under the rubric of alter-globalism have always had intractable difficulties articulating a postmodern Prince, and that in contrast to Gill's appropriation of Gramsci, these difficulties can be usefully understood through a reading of Gramsci which is attentive to the problems of collective political action. Recent debate among key participants at the World Social Forum (WSF) is used as a case study for analysing the possibility of formulating a common master-frame or strategy for social transformation. It is at the WSF that the problems of articulating a postmodern Prince have been most clearly confronted. It is shown that the weaknesses of alter-globalism can be understood, pace Gill, through Gramsci's own theory of social transformation as evinced in the modern Prince. This underlines the need for furthe...

Ruskin, the theatre and Victorian visual culture

Abstract: Contents Acknowledgements Notes on contributors Introduction: The Victorian Stage and Visual Culture K.Newey PART I: RUSKIN AND THE THEATRE John Ruskin, Olympian Painters and the Amateur Stage J.Richards Ruskin at the Savoy T.Hilton Ruskinian Moral Authority and Theatre's Ideal Woman R.Dickinson Re-interpreting Ruskin and Browning's Dramatic 'Art-poems' A.Leng Ruskin and the National Theatre A.Heinrich The First Theatrical Pre-Raphaelite? Ruskin's Moliere A.Tate PART II: THE THEATRE AND THE VISUAL ARTS IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY The Britannia Theatre: Visual Culture and the Repertoire of a Popular Theatre J.Norwood Supernumeraries: decorating the late-Victorian stage with lots (& lots& lots) of live bodies D.Mayer 'A truer peep at Old Venice'. The Merchant of Venice on the Victorian stage R.Foulkes The Photographic Portraiture of Henry Irving and Ellen Terry S.West 'Auntie, can you do that?' or 'Ibsen in Brixton': Representing the Victorian Stage through Cartoon and Caricature J.Davis Bibliography Index

Gender Politics and Neoliberalism in China: Ann Hui's The Postmodern Life of My Aunt

Abstract: The Hong Kong filmmaker Ann Hui's The Postmodern Life of My Aunt [2006] mirrors the neoliberal conditions of contemporary China, which have had a devastating impact on women in the People's Republic. The film vertiginously crosses genres, and the narrative moves from light comedy to melodrama as its style vacillates between Pop Art excess and social realism. This essay looks at what makes The Postmodern Life of My Aunt “postmodern” within the context of post-Mao, post-Deng China. It also considers how transnational Chinese cinema opens a space for criticism from female filmmakers with a particular vision of Chinese women within global film culture.

Theatre, performance studies and photography, a history of permanent contamination

Abstract: From its very beginning photography has always held a tense relation with theatre practice, both media influencing and contaminating each other in a permanent and systematic way. At the same time, both are traditionally situated at opposite ends of a continuum in which the degree of medium specificity is taken as a pivotal point of reference. Under the influence of performance studies on the one hand, and the accelerating hybridisation of theatre practice on the other, this traditional twofold distinction has been increasingly questioned. Within theatre history and performance studies (the scope of which is not solely defined by contemporary forms of theatricality), photography and more specifically theatre photography occupy a privileged place: they are no longer considered to be a theatrical ‘residue’, but are, on the contrary, regarded as an integral part of a visual history, of a cultural history, which mainly focuses on the place of theatre in society. At the same time, theatre photography is an inte...

Creative inclusion in community theatre: a journey with Odyssey Theatre

Abstract: What does ‘inclusion’ mean in practice? This article considers the work of Odyssey Theatre, a group of learning-disabled and non-learning-disabled performers as they put together a production with the support of professional theatre workers. Working processes are examined and the balance of empowerment and professional leadership considered. It is argued that the outcome is an art form with its own artistic and social validity. Inclusive theatre will be unlike other community theatre or professional theatre just as an inclusive society will be different from the one that we currently share.

Embodied Think Thanks: Practicing Citizenship through Legislative Theatre

Abstract: While policy think tank discourses have often privileged “detached” expertise, legislative theatre attaches the breathing, emotionally rich body to the function of the think tank. This article explores how one 2004 legislative theatre project, Headlines Theatre's Practicing Democracy (inspired by Augusto Boal's legislative theatre work in Brazil in the 1990s), constituted an embodied social services think tank. The author argues that Practicing Democracy's forum theatre performances constructed collaborative, dialogic exchange of expertise as a vital citizenship practice. Ultimately, the article pans out to identify questions of power and access that beg consideration when deploying forum theatre as legislative theatre methodology.

Writing Everyday Theatre: applied theatre, or just TIE rides again?

Abstract: The centre of this article is a critical description of the development and production of Everyday Theatre's performed pretext, called replay@timeout, including a detailed account of the devising process and the programme's content. The programme is located within the history and traditions both of theatre in education (TIE) and process drama, as well as contemporary practice in applied theatre. The author demonstrates that the principles and practice underlying all the decisions, aesthetic, pedagogical and logistic, consciously sprang from, and occasionally differed from, these interwoven and complementary traditions, in a complex blend. The opportunities given to the team, and some of the strengths of the programme, are identified, along with some of its constraints, weaknesses and casualties. Together with the company's director, the author identified the programme's essential aesthetic and pedagogical principles, and these then had to be realised through negotiation with the company since the programm...

Social Studies in the Postmodern World: An Essay Review

Abstract: Social Studies—The Next Generation:Re-searching in the Postmodern is an edited anthology of seminal articles aimed at providing poststructrual foundations to social studies research and teaching. The editors, and the contributors, are seriously concerned with the present status of social studies research that is rooted in the principles of modernity, which sees truth and knowledge as ―objective,‖ ―uniperspectival,‖ ―hard,‖ ―attainable,‖ and ―transmissible.‖ Social studies, editors argue, has been in a theoretical ―time warp,‖ excluding itself from some of the more interesting conversations (postmodern, postcolonial, poststructuralist, critical feminism, and cultural studies) going on in academia (and beyond) since the 1980s. The editors urge social studies scholars to consider more inclusive, reflexive, and democratic approaches to research and teaching. The main objective of this volume, according to the editors, is to broaden the imagination within social studies education by highlighting current, cutting-edge scholarship incorporating critical discourses. The volume brings together the works of those social studies scholars who have been influenced by post discourses and in turn incorporating diverse themes, methodologies, and theoretical frameworks. The contributors intend to explain the need for problematizing the assumptions of modernity regarding " knowledge " and " truth " and the hitherto taken-for-granted notions of nation, state, sovereignty, citizenship, and several others key concepts in social studies. 2 According to the authors, none of these categories is fixed and stable and all of them need to be critically examined, with reference to those dominant discursive practices and regimes of truth that give rise to and perpetuate them. Social Studies—The Next Generation is divided into four parts, with a total of twenty-two chapters: Part I ―Introduction and Context‖ contains two valuable introductory chapters by the editors to orient readers to the features of postmodernism and what it offers to social studies education; Part II ―Postmodern Propositions‖ has 11 chapters, each representing a distinct theme and its postmodern treatment aimed at illustrating the relevance of post lens to understand social issues; Part III ―Responses‖ consists of six reviews of the anthology by established scholars in the field; and Part IV ―Afterwords‖ provides a concluding overview. declares that the ―essays in this volume are bold and varied departures‖ from the social studies education of the beginning of the twenty first century. He briefly discusses the need and relevance of postmodernism and poststructuralism in the wake of growing discontentment with positivism and scientism that view truth as absolute and uniperspectival. He …

Re-Inventing Memory And Reforming Performances: A Genealogy Of Panic Theatre In Zimbabwe

Abstract: This dissertation examines the emerging aesthetics of panic theatre and shows how it uses memory and nostalgia to communicate with its hoped-for-but-often-absent audience. Using a theoretical approach that is informed by Maurice Vambe, Joseph Roach, and Marvin Carlson and their work regarding memory and performance, the dissertation examines how theatre artists use their memories or experiences of Theatre for Development (TfD), the pungwe or bira, to create a means to entertain and communicate with their prospective audiences during Zimbabwe's current crisis that surfaced around a constitutional crisis and land reform in the late 1990s and is yet to be resolved (in 2009). Panic theatre, I argue, emerged out of Zimbabwe's multivalent crises. As such, it uses these older forms of performance to raise a clarion call for help. Panic theatre uses reformative performance forms and their hidden texts to call for help and change using memories of these past performances. Memories of these forms and their role in policing and reforming abuses of authority give agency to theatre groups to do the same. Theatre groups can use the nhimbe and bira and other forms to mock those in authority and shame them and hopefully reform them. This dissertation is based off of field research funded by Fulbright-Hays Dissertation Fellowship and conducted from October 2004-2005.

The Cambridge Introduction to Modern British Theatre

Abstract: British theatre has long been regarded as a world-leader in terms of its quality, creativity and range. Starting in 1900, this book introduces the features that characterise modern and current British theatre. These features include experimental performances under motorways alongside plays by Stoppard and Ayckbourn, amateur theatre and virtual spaces, the emergence of the director, the changing role of writers and political and community shows. The book is clearly divided into four sections: where it happens, who does it, what they make and why they do it. It discusses theatre buildings and theatre which refuses buildings; company organisation, ensembles and collectives, and different sorts of acting. A large section describes the major work done for the stage, from Shaw through to Complicite, via poetic drama, different sorts of realism and documentary drama. The Introduction stands apart from other accounts of modern British theatre by bringing together buildings, people and plays.

‘Not the obstacle but the means’: Film history and the postmodern challenge

Abstract: This article consists of two main parts. The first part provides a brief summary of the historico-philosophical debate between so-called modernist and postmodernist historians, before moving on to an investigation of how film historians have responded to the challenge posed by postmodern historiography. As it turns out, they have very rarely taken into account the epistemological issues raised by postmodern historians, possibly because the field of film history for so long was rather out of sync with most other kinds of history, relying as it did on anecdotal accounts of heroic individuals. Only after turning to methodical, archive-based research in the early 1980s could postmodern historiography become an issue, for presumably there has to be a body of accumulated knowledge to critique and be reflexive about in the first place. The second part of the article considers the possible practical consequences of postmodern historiography by looking at two competing accounts of the transition in American cinema...

Theatre as Interplay: Processes of Collective Creativity in Theatre for Young Audiences

Abstract: This article focuses on the interplay between actors and audience members, an important aspect in the current discourse of advanced theatre practitioners and scholars that is part and parcel of children's theatre's genuine understanding of itself. It also discusses the simultaneous asymmetry of interaction between actors and audience in theatre. Is the collective creativity between artists and children only a theoretical construct or a requirement? What participatory opportunities does theatre actually offer its audience members? The article addresses a fundamental difficulty in the participatory idea: Does lack of focus on the part of audience members constitute expression; is it part of collective creativity because in such cases the asymmetry of interaction in the theatre is breaking down? Or is it an indication of a failure of collective creativity because those present do not relate to one another sufficiently?

Post-Memories of the Holocaust in Contemporary Austrian Theatre: Projects against Forgetting

Abstract: This dissertation examines contemporary responses by Austrian theatre makers from the free theatre sector, that is, those working outside of the state theatre establishment, to the outcome of what came to be known as ‘the big lie’ on which Austrian national identity was built following liberation from German rule by the Allied forces in 1945. The ensuing problem for the post-war generations of having to claim a past that was buried under the carefully constructed official version of history but mediated through the silence of their parents and grandparents – shaping their (inner) lives – and possibilities for representing such experience through the medium of theatre are core issues explored in this study. The main focus of the dissertation is analysis of a selection of three pieces of theatre produced by two free theatre companies in Austria, Auf der Suche nach Jakob / Searching for Jacob / Szukajac Jakuba, and Pola, both by the Projekttheater Studio based in Vienna, and Speaking Stones: images, voices, fragments... from that which comes after by Theater Asou in Graz, Styria. Apart from contextualization of the central thematic concerns of the selected pieces of theatre within the historical events of 20 century Austria, and discussion of the theoretical framework within which the pieces are analysed, this study also offers a consideration of the phenomenon of the free theatre sector in contemporary Austria as a complement and an alternative to the state theatre sector, its roots and development since the post WWII period through to the early 21 century. Interviews with theatre artists, arts administrators and a Holocaust eye witness are also drawn upon to investigate how free theatre can provide a medium though which memory-work, the subtleties of damage and the inexpressible, and the difficult task of claiming the past

Political Theatre in Post-Thatcher Britain: New Writing 1995–2005

Abstract: splicing, for example, Greek and Brechtian theatrical modes and the writing of Virginia Woolf with contemporary international examples. This analysis does not, however, follow the path of a traditional theatrical canon and is further developed with historical analyses of Mexican, Chinese and Greek feminine experience in the domain of the everyday. Case’s international examples of feminist performance wisely remain wary of criticisms of cultural imperialism and she is sure to highlight the tendency of ‘terms such as ‘‘intercultural’’ [to] obfuscate the dynamics of capital and gender hierarchies at work in cultural trade’ (p. 132). The section ends with further historical reconsideration in ‘The Screens of Time: Feminist Memories and Hopes’, in which Case locates her strongly personal style in earlier feminist and psychoanalytic writings, most effectively in the application of Jacques Lacan’s objet petit a, where ‘the ‘‘I’’ is an archive of the past and a site of possible identificatory streaming’ (p. 137). Case also brings Ernst Bloch’s theories of utopian function to bear on her historicising feminist analysis, as she struggles to imagine ‘any kind of promising or feminist future’ (p. 142) in the current political climate, prefacing her engagement with themes of environmental decay and cybernetic avatars in the following chapter. In Part Three, ‘Gendered Performance and New Technologies’, Case explores the ways in which technological developments have necessitated a reconfiguring of international identity and spectatorship, creating ‘a new cultural imaginary of the body, which we might call ‘‘theatres of the flesh’’’ (p. 150). This section draws on Case’s Performing Science and the Virtual (2007) and facilitates dialogue as it suggests an imaginative route for feminist and queer performance writing in the digital age. By way of her strong writing style, Case leaves the over-determined space of an abstracted feminism for an international and multidisciplinary stage, foregrounding questions of race, class and sexual identity that lead into her more recent work on a non-essentialist eco-feminism, outlined in the introduction to this volume. Case’s insistence on interactivity and performativity across disciplines and cultural borders throughout these essays demonstrates how her commitment to socio-political themes on an international scale is part of a broader praxis. The motivation for not subtitling this volume ‘collected essays’ becomes clear: ‘I tried to imagine how it would be if the past, if history [. . .] is actually here in the present, as is the future. Then we could not longer doubt the efficacy of past deeds because they would be helping to form the very shapes we see, and we could no longer doubt activism, as it brings the future into the present. In this way, I could imagine something like ‘‘hope’’’ (p. 14).

We are all postmodernists now! african philosophy and the postmodern agenda

Abstract: This essay is an attempt to critically understand the utility of the concept of postmodernism in African philosophy, and by extension the analysis of the postcolonial African predicament. Its urgency derives from the growing literature on the interpretation of the postmodern in African studies. For those I will call the “detractors”, there is a certain conceptual absurdity in the idea of postmodernism in a continent that is just grappling with the exigencies of modernity. Thus, Africa cannot be postmodern before being modern. For the “champions” of the necessity of postmodern theorizing in Africa, postmodernism offer an avenue to escape out of the cul de sac of intellectual nativism that has precluded Africa from the benefits of global open space of ideas. The essay argues that these critical interpretations emanate from an attempt to read too much into what I will call the postmodern minima. This strategy has the advantage, I contend, of giving African philosophers a leeway— beyond the mere critique of Eurocentrism—for confronting the twin problem of African identity and African development.

A Semiotic Reading and Discourse Analysis of Postmodern Street Performance

Abstract: Postmodern street art operates under a set of references that requires art educators and researchers to adopt alternative analytical frameworks in order to understand its meanings. In this article, we describe social semiotics, critical discourse analysis, and postmodern street performance as well as the relevance of the former two in interpreting the latter. To illustrate how the meaning of postmodern street performance is a socially constructed fluid variable that is situated, generated, and utilized in a particular context of discourse, we provide examples of analysis of street performances by Berlin-based artist Aram Bartholl. Finally, by garnering insights from this discourse analysis, we offer several conclusions. In the end, we propose the employment of social semiotics and discourse analysis as a more reflexive way of understanding postmodern street art practices.

Navigating the Shifting Sands of Social Work Terrain: Social Work Practice in Postmodern Conditions

Abstract: Underlying the shift from modern to postmodern conditions is a shift from the apparent stability of the post-World War II economic era to an economy of instability and unpredictability (Harvey, 1989). Although the effects on society are different for modernism and postmodernism, the crisis is still one of the instability of capitalism. The results include an increase in part-time and subcontracted work combined with a quickening in the pace of life and the blurring of boundaries between reality and fiction. This leads to identity issues for individuals, families, and communities. This article argues that social workers need to have an understanding of the macro-level issues of postmodern conditions in order to be effective in direct practice.

Postmodernism/postmodern geography

Abstract: In the last few decades, the postmodern debate has literally transformed the cultural and intellectual scene across a whole range of disciplines, from literary criticism, the visual arts, and architecture, to large portions of philosophy and the social sciences, all of which witnessed an unprecedented series of theoretical innovations and critical ‘streams’, commonly brought together under the ‘postmodern’ umbrella. Human geography, especially in the English-speaking world, was deeply marked by this revolutionary set of events. On the one hand, the generalized ‘rediscovery’ of the spatial dimension in social theory and philosophy brought by the postmodern turn drew new attention to geographical thought and the geographical tradition; on the other hand, the postmodern contributed in an important way to the ‘return’ of geography to the mainstream of the social sciences, paving the way to a new and highly prolific interdisciplinary dialog. The postmodern has by now become an integral part of the geographical tradition and it is widely accepted that its advent has significantly contributed to revitalizing disciplinary debates and opening geographers' eyes to a whole series of new research avenues and approaches.