Bali and Beyond: Eugenio Barba's Ur-Hamlet

2011 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 341-357 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vicki Ann Cremona
Keyword(s):  
International School ◽  
Associate Professor ◽  
Classical Antiquity ◽  
Cultural Perspectives ◽  
Cultural Specificity ◽  
Complex Process ◽  
History Of ◽  
East And West ◽  
And Performance ◽  
The University

In this article Vicki Ann Cremona traces the development of the complex process of montage used by Eugenio Barba for Ur-Hamlet, based on the oral tale Amleth, which Saxo Grammaticus included in his history of the Danes (circa 1216). Besides Odin Teatret, the project involved a large number of actors and musicians from Bali, Brazil, and Japan, and other participants and trainees with whom Barba had worked at the International School of Theatre Anthropology (ISTA). The author here recounts how the work was developed from different cultural perspectives, describing how the actors' physical scores were combined without their cultural specificity being modified in any way. Vicki Ann Cremona is an Associate Professor at the University of Malta, currently serving as Malta's Ambassador to Tunisia. Her co-edited texts include Costume in Malta: a History of Fabric, Form, and Fashion (1998) and Theatrical Events: Borders, Dynamics, Frames (2004). She updated, revised and edited Nicola Savarese's Eurasian Theatre: Drama and Performance between East and West from Classical Antiquity to the Present, translated from the Italian by Richard Fowler (Holstebro, Malta, Wrocław: Icarus Publishing, 2010).

scholarly journals An Editor's Wish List

2009 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 303-305
Author(s):  
Maria Shevtsova
Keyword(s):  
Graduate Studies ◽  
Theatre Arts ◽  
Robert Wilson ◽  
Jacobean Drama ◽  
Award Winning ◽  
Senior Research Fellow ◽  
Senior Research ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Performance ◽  
The University

The co-editors of New Theatre Quarterly take time out here to reflect on the milestone of the journal reaching its hundredth consecutive issue, in succession to the forty of the original Theatre Quarterly. Simon Trussler was one of the founding editors of the ‘old’ Theatre Quarterly in 1971. He is the author of numerous books on drama and theatre, including New Theatre Voices of the Seventies (1981), Shakespearean Concepts (1989), the award-winning Cambridge Illustrated History of British Theatre (1993), The Faber Guide to Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama (2006), and Will's Will (2007). Formerly Reader in Drama in the University of London, he is now Professor and Senior Research Fellow at Rose Bruford College. Maria Shevtsova, who has been co-editor of New Theatre Quarterly since 2003, is Professor of Drama and Theatre Arts and Director of Graduate Studies at Goldsmiths, University of London. The author of more than one hundred articles and chapters in collected volumes, her books include Dodin and the Maly Drama Theatre: Process to Performance (2004), Fifty Key Theatre Directors (co-edited with Shomit Mitter, 2005), Robert Wilson (2007), Directors/Directing: Conversations on Theatre (with Christopher Innes, 2009), and Sociology of Theatre and Performance (2009).

scholarly journals Pressurizing the Politics of The Crucible: a Brechtian Production of Arthur Miller’s Modern Classic

2019 ◽  
Vol 35 (04) ◽  
pp. 325-340
Author(s):  
David Barnett
Keyword(s):  
Theory And Practice ◽  
The Political ◽  
Arthur Miller ◽  
Research Project ◽  
Production History ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Theatre Theory ◽  
The University ◽  
Witch Hunts

In this article David Barnett documents a practice-as-research project that employed Brechtian approaches to stage dramatic material. The Crucible by Arthur Miller is a realist text in which the protagonist, John Proctor, redeems himself for the sin of adultery by taking a heroic stand against the Salem witch-hunts. Existing scholarship has revealed a series of gendered biases in the form and content of the play, yet these findings have never been systematically realized in performance. While appearing to defend democratic values, the play’s dramaturgical strategies coerce agreement, and this represents a fundamental contradiction. Brecht offers a method that preserves the written dialogue, but interprets it critically onstage, deploying a range of devices derived from a materialist and dialectical interpretation. The aim of the production was to re-present a play with a familiar production history and problematize the political bases on which it conventionally rested. The article discusses the rationale for the theory and practice of contemporary Brechtian theatre and offers the production as a model for future critical realizations of other realist plays. David Barnett is Professor of Theatre at the University of York. His publications include A History of the Berliner Ensemble (CUP, 2015), Brecht in Practice: Theatre, Theory and Performance (Bloomsbury, 2014), amd Rainer Werner Fassbinder and the German Theatre (CUP, 2005).

Hearing Hope: Metatheatrical Utopias in the ‘Staging’ of Radio Drama

2010 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-60
Author(s):  
Jenn Stephenson
Keyword(s):  
Associate Professor ◽  
Radio Drama ◽  
University Of Toronto ◽  
Canadian Theatre ◽  
Theory And Criticism ◽  
German Speaking ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Radio Play ◽  
And Performance ◽  
The University

The radio play has long survived the competition from television in Britain, and also has a long tradition in the German-speaking world in the form of the Hörspiel – but its strength has lain precisely in demanding a visual contribution from the listener's imagination. What happens when a radio play is ‘staged’ before a live audience? In 2005, under commission from the Royal Festival Hall, the composer Carter Burwell proposed writing a sound score for new plays; and under the banner of Theatre of the New Ear, he recruited his long-time collaborators on film, Charlie Kaufman and Joel and Ethan Coen, to write specifically for sound-only. In this article Jenn Stephenson describes the experience of ‘watching’ a radio play, and offers a theorization of its qualities and the effects on its audience. Jenn Stephenson received her PhD from the University of Toronto in 2003 and is now Associate Professor of Drama at Queen's University in Kingston, Canada. Her recent publications include articles in Theatre Journal, Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, Studies in Theatre and Performance, and Theatre Research in Canada. She is co-editor of the ‘Views and Reviews’ section of Canadian Theatre Review.

‘Yours Neutrally, Habitational Action’: Performance between Theatre and Dance

2013 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 247-263
Author(s):  
Frank Camilleri
Keyword(s):  
A Priori ◽  
Associate Professor ◽  
Actor Training ◽  
Central Aspect ◽  
Theatre Studies ◽  
The Cross ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Performance Project ◽  
The University ◽  
Artistic Director

A milestone development in a practice-as-research investigation led to the identification of ‘habitational action’ as a term that resists a priori restrictions of inner–outer problematics when discussing performer processes. In this article Frank Camilleri cross-references the term with ‘neutral action’ to locate it conceptually and historically; first with Jacques Lecoq's pedagogical mask work, and then with Yvonne Rainer's conceptualization of the ‘neutral doer’. The cross-referencing to specific theatre and dance contexts is also intended to problematize psychophysicality as a central aspect of current actor training discourse. Frank Camilleri is Associate Professor in Theatre Studies at the University of Malta and Artistic Director of Icarus Performance Project. In 2007 he co-founded Icarus Publishing with Odin Teatret and the Grotowski Institute. He is also Visiting Professor in Theatre and Performance at the University of Huddersfield.

scholarly journals Resisting the Irish Other: the Berliner Ensemble's Production of The Playboy of the Western World

2017 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 156-168
Author(s):  
David Barnett
Keyword(s):  
Bertolt Brecht ◽  
Western World ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
Production History ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Material Conditions ◽  
Theatre Theory ◽  
The University

In this article David Barnett explores the Berliner Ensemble's production in 1956 of Synge's classic The Playboy of the Western World. Although it was directed by Peter Palitzsch and Manfred Wekwerth, Bertolt Brecht, the company's co-founder, loomed large in planning and rehearsal. This staging serves as an example of how a politicized approach to theatre-making can bring out relationships, material conditions, and power structures that the play's production history has often ignored. In addition, Barnett aims to show how Brechtian methods can be applied more generally to plays not written in the Brechtian tradition and the effects they can achieve. David Barnett is Professor of Theatre at the University of York. He is the author of Heiner Müller's ‘The Hamletmachine’ (Routledge, 2016), A History of the Berliner Ensemble (Cambrige, 2015) and Brecht in Practice: Theatre, Theory, and Performance (Bloomsbury, 2014). His recent AHRC-funded ‘Brecht in Practice: Staging Drama Dialectically’, led to a Brechtian production of Patrick Marber's Closer, and he offers theatre-makers and teachers workshops on using Brecht's method on stage and in the classroom.

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