Jan Kott in Exile: Arden and Absolute Milan

2002 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 121-131
Author(s):  
Allen J. Kuharski
Keyword(s):  
Associate Editor ◽  
Swarthmore College ◽  
Witold Gombrowicz ◽  
American Theatre ◽  
The Tempest ◽  
As You Like It ◽  
The Us ◽  
Theatre Studies ◽  
Cross Dressing ◽  
Depth And Complexity

In this essay, Allen J. Kuharski discusses Jan Kott as an exiled Polish writer best known for his essays on Shakespeare's plays, and compares and contrasts his writings with those of a variety of other Polish émigré writers, notably Witold Gombrowicz. He argues that Kott's most important contribution was ultimately as a performance theorist, in the traditions of Wyspiański and Brecht, rather than as a traditional critic or scholar, and in consequence he reached a wider readership in English and other languages than any other Polish writer. His choice of Shakespeare as a subject belied the full depth and complexity of the Polish sources (often experiential) for his readings of the plays – sources not always acknowledged in his work. Kuharski uses Kott's own syncretic, archetypal methods to interpret his life and work, explaining his position as an exiled writer via Shakespearean characters such as Duke Senior in As You Like It and Prospero in The Tempest – and, closest to the experience of the émigré, the cross-dressing Rosalind, compelled to belie herself in order to express herself. Tracing the evolution of Kott's complex existential self-definition in various phases of his life and writing, Kuharski concludes that the key to Kott's various authorial personae is the influence of the inter-war Polish writer and critic Tadeusz Boy-Żeleński. Allen J. Kuharski, Associate Editor for Theatre Journal, is the Director of the Theatre Studies Program at Swarthmore College in Philadelphia, and has published extensively on Gombrowicz, Kott, and other aspects of contemporary Polish and American theatre in the US, UK, Poland, France, and the Netherlands. His translation and stage adaptation of Gombrowicz's novel Ferdydurke has been performed in various countries, winning a Fringe First at the Edinburgh Festival in 2001.

Shakespeare's Representation of Weather, Climate and Environment

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sophie Chiari
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Free Will ◽  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Romeo And Juliet ◽  
Midsummer Night's Dream ◽  
The Tempest ◽  
As You Like It ◽  
Ability To Act

While ecocritical approaches to literary texts receive more and more attention, climate-related issues remain fairly neglected, particularly in the field of Shakespeare studies. This monograph explores the importance of weather and changing skies in early modern England while acknowledging the fact that traditional representations and religious beliefs still fashioned people’s relations to meteorological phenomena. At the same time, a growing number of literati stood against determinism and defended free will, thereby insisting on man’s ability to act upon celestial forces. Yet, in doing so, they began to give precedence to a counter-intuitive approach to Nature. Sophie Chiari argues that Shakespeare reconciles the scholarly views of his time with more popular ideas rooted in superstition and that he promotes a sensitive, pragmatic understanding of climatic events. She pays particular attention to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Romeo and Juliet, As You Like It, Othello, King Lear, Anthony and Cleopatra, and The Tempest. Taking into account the influence of classical thought, each of the book’s seven chapters emphasises specific issues (e.g. cataclysmic disorders, the dog days’ influence, freezing temperatures, threatening storms) and considers the way climatic events were presented on stage and how they came to shape the production and reception of Shakespeare’s drama.

Internationalization of the State under US Hegemony and Japanese Quasi-Hegemony: Promoting Industrialization and Disciplining Labour, 1945–2000

2004 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jim Glassman
Keyword(s):  
Trade Unions ◽  
Industrial Development ◽  
Labour Force ◽  
The State ◽  
Industrial Transformation ◽  
Industrial Manufacturing ◽  
State Apparatus ◽  
The Us ◽  
Depth And Complexity ◽  
Us Intervention

The fashion in which the Thai peasantry was captured has heavily conditioned the development of the industrial labour process and labour markets. Thai workers did not simply appear at the factory gates when and where they were needed and in possession of the requisite skills. Rather, new streams of marginalized peasants began to join older streams of immigrant Sino-Thai workers as the capitalist transformation of agriculture proceeded, and the ways in which these new streams entered the industrial labour force depended in part upon the ways they were removed from agriculture. Beyond this, the state did not merely passively witness the absorption of former peasants into the industrial labour force but actively abetted the process through a variety of measures, ranging from state promotion of industrial development to investment in education and training of workers. The Thai state also actively shaped the labour market through its alternating suppression and promotion of trade unions, a matter addressed in this chapter. The state functions that are integral to the industrial transformation described here were carried out by internationalized segments of the Thai state, including one—the Department of Labour—that would typically be associated with national corporatism, thus illustrating the depth and complexity of the internationalization process. The internationalization of capital and the state around industrial manufacturing development has been more complicated than the internationalization of capital and state in the capture of the peasantry both because of this depth and complexity and because of the overlapping roles played by two hegemons. Whereas the capture of the peasantry was the product of collaboration between Thai and US elites, the disciplining of the industrial labour force involves more multifaceted collaboration among Thai, US, and Japanese elites—as well as transnational statist institutions. Furthermore, there has been some historical phasing of the relative influence of the two hegemons, with US influence declining after the mid-1970s and Japanese influence increasing. Finally, whereas the US intervention in Thailand aimed directly at transforming the structures of state power along with the economy, the Japanese state has been more inclined to make use of the existing state apparatus and to transform its functions, where necessary, through sheer economic power.

The Theatre of Bernard-Marie Koltès and the ‘Other Spaces’ of Translation

2001 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 141-160 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Delgado ◽  
David Fancy
Keyword(s):  
English Translation ◽  
The Other ◽  
Senior Lecturer ◽  
American Theatre ◽  
The Us ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
The One ◽  
The Uk

The work of the French playwright Bernard-Marie Koltès, although phenomenally successful in continental Europe, has been staged less frequently in Anglo-American theatres; and a major feature on his work in NTQ49 in February 1997, and the publication by Methuen later in the same year of a collection of three of his plays in English translation, brought him only belated recognition in print. In this paper, first presented at a recent gathering in France to mark the tenth anniversary of Koltès's death, Maria Delgado and David Fancy trace the trajectory of a number of his plays through the space of translation, including Roberto Zucco, Dans la solitude des champs de coton (In the Solitude of the Cottonfields), Quai Ouest (Quay West), and Combat de nègre et de chiens (Black Battles with Dogs). Koltès asserted in 1986 that ‘I have always somewhat disliked the theatre because theatre is the opposite of life; but I always come back to it and love it because it is the one place where you can say: this is not life’; and the poetic specificity of his work has posed significant challenges for an Anglo-American theatre culture imbued with actors' identification with character. Relying on testimonials from a variety of directors, translators, and actors, as well as evidence from productions in the UK, Ireland, and the US, the authors, who are both Koltès translators, trace the challenges that have faced English-speaking artists wishing to stage this demanding writer. Maria Delgado is Senior Lecturer in Drama at Queen Mary, University of London, and David Fancy is a freelance director based in Canada who is currently completing a PhD on Koltès's work.

As You Like It, and: The Tempest (review)

2011 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-92
Author(s):  
Michael J. Collins
Keyword(s):  
The Tempest ◽  
As You Like It

Exploring Space at Play: the Making of the Theatrical Event

1996 ◽  
Vol 12 (47) ◽  
pp. 229-236 ◽  
Author(s):  
Deborah Warner
Keyword(s):  
King Lear ◽  
Richard Ii ◽  
Good Person ◽  
Titus Andronicus ◽  
The Waste Land ◽  
Hedda Gabler ◽  
The Tempest ◽  
Theatre Company ◽  
Theatre Studies ◽  
Future Work

Deborah Warner is one of the most exciting of the generation of directors who emerged during the 'eighties – incidentally claiming for women a natural entrance into a profession previously dominated by men. In 1980 she formed the Kick Theatre Company, with whom over the following, formative years of her career she directed The Good Person of Szechwan, The Tempest, Measure for Measure, King Lear, Coriolanus, and Woyzeck. In 1988, following a production for the RSC of Titus Andronicus in the previous year, she became one of the company's resident directors, staging King John and Electra before moving in 1990 as an associate director to the National, where her first two productions were of The Good Person with Fiona Shaw and King Lear with Brian Cox. During the 'nineties, she has extended both the nature and the range of her work, directing Shaw in Hedda Gabler in Dublin, Coriolanus in German at the Salzburg Festival, Don Giovanni at Glyndbourne – and, in 1994–95, the season she discusses below, a revival of Beckett's Footfalls at the Garrick, controversially banned by the Beckett Estate, a dramatization of Eliot's seminal inter-war poem The Waste Land, premiered in Brussels, Richard II at the Cottesloe, with a woman, Fiona Shaw, in the title-role, and a project for the London International Festival of Theatre site-specific to the old railway hotel at St. Pancras. In September 1995 she discussed her recent and future work with Geraldine Cousin, who teaches Theatre Studies in the University of Warwick, where she has just completed a study of contemporary plays by women entitled Women in Dramatic Place and Time.

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