scholarly journals The First Female Performers: Tumblers, Flute-girls, and Mime Actresses

2015 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 129-143 ◽  
Author(s):  
Live Hov
Keyword(s):  
Professional Activities ◽  
National Theatre ◽  
The Gaze ◽  
Women In Theatre ◽  
History Of ◽  
Theatre Studies ◽  
And Performance ◽  
And Function ◽  
University Of Oslo ◽  
The University

Recovering the ‘lost’ female tradition has been one of the explicit goals of feminist scholarship in theatre history. Live Hov’s essay is a contribution to that line of research, focusing on the first female performers in the ‘illegitimate’ genres of Greek and Roman theatre. By surveying a number of relevant texts, she shows how these important ‘firsts’ are a neglected area in the theatre and performance studies curriculum. Specialized works by classical scholars provide more evidence on the matter, however, and in the second part of the essay Hov sketches the professional activities and social status of the first female performers. Finally she views the topic through the concept of the gaze, showing how the female performers of antiquity were the first ‘objects’ of the gaze, which in turn contributed to the persistent notion of the promiscuous actress. Live Hov is Professor of Theatre Studies at the University of Oslo, formerly holding a similar position at the University of Copenhagen. Prior to her academic studies she was trained as an actor at the National Theatre School, Norway. Most of her publications (mainly in Norwegian and Danish) pertain to the history and function of women in theatre, to the history of opera production, and to Henrik Ibsen as a man of the theatre.

Hospitality and the Ethics of Improvisation in the Work of Ingemar Lindh

2008 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 246-259 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank Camilleri
Keyword(s):  
Ongoing Research ◽  
Holistic Understanding ◽  
History Of ◽  
Theatre Studies ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Performance Project ◽  
Key Aspects ◽  
The University ◽  
Artistic Director ◽  
Collective Improvisation

Ingemar Lindh's work on the principles of collective improvisation has crucial implications for the history of twentieth-century laboratory theatre. His early work with Étienne Decroux and Jerzy Grotowski contributed to the development of a unique practice that resists directorial montage, fixed scores, and choreography; and the ethical dimension that accompanies Lindh's research on collective improvisation is illuminating for a more holistic understanding of the technical and aesthetic considerations in theatre. In this article, Frank Camilleri discusses some of the key aspects of this dimension, notably the dynamics of hospitality and encounter that inform Lindh's approach and the question of responsibility in the actor's work. Frank Camilleri is Lecturer in Drama and Theatre Studies at the University of Kent. From 2004 to 2008 he was Academic Coordinator of Theatre Studies at the University of Malta. He is also Artistic Director of Icarus Performance Project – an ongoing research laboratory that investigates the intermediary space between training and performance processes. Camilleri's work with Lindh in the mid-1990s was instrumental for the development of this research practice.

scholarly journals Picturing Nineteenth-Century Female Theatre Managers: the Iconology of Eliza Vestris and Sara Lane

2017 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-21
Author(s):  
Janice Norwood
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
English Literature ◽  
Theatre History ◽  
Senior Lecturer ◽  
Personal Lives ◽  
Professional Activities ◽  
Theatrical Management ◽  
Aesthetic Practice ◽  
Theatre Studies ◽  
The University

Lucia Elizabeth Vestris (1797–1856) and Sara Lane (1822–99) were two pioneering women in nineteenth-century theatre history. Both were accomplished singers who made their names initially in comic and breeches roles and, during periods when theatrical management was almost exclusively confined to men, both ran successful theatre companies in London. Despite these parallels in their professional activities, there are substantial disparities in the scrutiny to which their personal lives were subjected and in how their contemporaries and posterity have memorialized them. In this article, Janice Norwood examines a range of portraits and cartoons of the two women, revealing how the images created and reflected the women's public identities, as well as recording changes in aesthetic practice and social attitudes. She argues that the women's iconology was fundamentally shaped by the contemporary discourse of gender difference. Janice Norwood is Senior Lecturer in English Literature, Drama, and Theatre Studies at the University of Hertfordshire. She has published on various aspects of nineteenth-century theatre history and edited a volume on Vestris for the Lives of Shakespearian Actors series (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2011).

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).

Mitterer, Wolfgang (1958--)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aaron Cassidy
Keyword(s):  
Chamber Music ◽  
Performing Arts ◽  
Electroacoustic Music ◽  
Live Electronics ◽  
Performance Events ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Orchestra Music ◽  
And Function ◽  
Granular Layers ◽  
The University

Wolfgang Mitterer (1958--) is an Austrian composer and organist noted for his work with live electronics and improvisation. Born on 6 June, 1958 in Lienz, East Tyrol, Mitterer studied organ and composition at the University of Music and the Performing Arts Vienna, followed by a year-long residency at the studio for electroacoustic music (EMS) in Stockholm. An exceptionally prolific composer, Mitterer’s output spans a staggeringly broad range of approaches to music making, including works for tape, chamber music of various formations, experimental pop songs (Sopop), works for large orchestra, music for theatre and opera, music for film, and sprawling site-specific installations and performance events (turmbau zu babel, for example, is scored for 4,200 singers, 22 drums, 48 brass players, and 8-channel tape). His works list includes over 200 entries and demonstrates a particularly catholic, pluralistic, non-dogmatic approach to instrumentation, duration, venue, scale, and function. Despite this diversity, Mitterer’s work maintains several important central tendencies: stylistically, the music is often characterized by layers of crackles, twitches, clicks, and pops (both electronic and acoustic), with a rustling, flickering, chirping, gestural energy. These more fragmented, granular layers are quite often combined with gradual, elongated, atmospheric, and lyrical material, though generally a sense of instability and unpredictability remains.

The Red Theatre under the Bed

1987 ◽  
Vol 3 (11) ◽  
pp. 195-201 ◽  
Author(s):  
Howard Brenton
Keyword(s):  
New South ◽  
New South Wales ◽  
The Political ◽  
National Theatre ◽  
South Wales ◽  
Dario Fo ◽  
Political Impact ◽  
Theatre Studies ◽  
The University

Howard Brenton began his theatrical career in the late 'sixties as one of the ‘Portable playwrights’, but quickly felt the need to utilize the resources available on larger stages-without compromising the political impact of his plays. Now established as one of the leading playwrights of his generation, Brenton works regularly with the National Theatre, and in the interview which follows the discussion ranges from his feelings about the ‘scandal’ worked up by the production there of The Romans in Britain to how his feelings about Brecht were affected by preparing their version of The Life of Galileo, and also covers his recent collaboration with David Hare, creating a monstrous press baron, in Pravda. Touching on other recent plays such as The Genius and Bloody Poetry, the discussion thus complements an earlier Theatre Quarterly interview with Howard Brenton, included in TQ17 (1975) and reprinted in New Theatre Voices of the Seventies, edited by Simon Trussler (Methuen, 1981). The interviewer, Tony Mitchell, currently teaches in the School of Theatre Studies at the University of New South Wales, and is the author of Dario Fo: People's Court Jester (Methuen. 1984). His Methuen ‘Writer-File’ on Howard Brenton is due for publication in 1988.

Censoring the Uncensored: the Case of ‘Children in Uniform’

2000 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 219-226 ◽  
Author(s):  
John F. Deeney
Keyword(s):  
New Work ◽  
Women Playwrights ◽  
Culturally Specific ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
Critical Success ◽  
Area Of Interest ◽  
Theatre Studies ◽  
And Performance ◽  
The University ◽  
The Relationship

British theatre between the two world wars has been a neglected area of interest for contemporary scholars and theatre historians, but a growing body of work in this field has of late begun to challenge the orthodoxies. Much of the new work has focused on the reclamation and repositioning of the work of ‘forgotten’ women playwrights and commercially successful gay playwrights such as Noël Coward and Terence Rattigan. Here, John Deeney examines how the Lord Chamberlain's licensing of Christa Winsloe's lesbian-themedChildren in Uniform, and the commercial and critical success of its production at the Duchess Theatre in 1932–33, invites a reassessment of the possibilities open to women playwrights for exploring ‘deviancy’; and how contemporary theoretical positions too frequently ignore the challenge of the historically and culturally specific. John Deeney is Lecturer and Course Director in Theatre Studies at the University of Ulster at Coleraine. He is the editor ofWriting Live: an Investigation of the Relationship between Writing and Live Art(New Playwrights Trust, 1998) and a contributor to the forthcomingWomen, Theatre and Performance: New Histories/New Historiographies(Manchester University Press) andBritish Theatre between the Wars(Cambridge University Press).

Pop Culture/Visual Culture

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Wanzo
Keyword(s):  
Visual Culture ◽  
Performance Studies ◽  
Art History ◽  
Film Studies ◽  
Pop Culture ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
The Gaze ◽  
Feminist Study ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Performance

Feminist scholars in fields as varied as art history, film studies, cultural studies, literary studies, sociology, communications, and performance studies have made important contributions to discussions about representations of gender and sexuality in everyday life. This chapter examines themes and issues in the feminist study of popular culture and visual culture, including: the history of sexist representation; the gendered nature of the “gaze” and the instability of that concept; the question of whether or not representation has effects; the anxieties surrounding consumption of “women’s texts”; and the challenges in deciphering women’s agency and authorship given constraints produced by institutions and ideology.

scholarly journals ‘Out Vile Jelly’: Sarah Kane's ‘Blasted’ and Shakespeare's ‘King Lear’

2004 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-78 ◽  
Author(s):  
Graham Saunders
Keyword(s):  
King Lear ◽  
Senior Lecturer ◽  
The Past ◽  
Radical Structure ◽  
Dramatic Form ◽  
History Of ◽  
Theatre Studies ◽  
Sarah Kane ◽  
Contemporary Reality ◽  
The University

Sarah Kane's notorious 1995 debut, Blasted, has been widely though belatedly recognized as a defining example of experiential or ‘in-yer-face’ theatre. However, Graham Saunders here argues that the best playwrights not only innovate in use of language and dramatic form, but also rewrite the classic plays of the past. He believes that too much stress has been placed on the play's radical structure and contemporary sensibility, with the effect of obscuring the influence of Shakespearean tradition on its genesis and content. He clarifies Kane's gradually dawning awareness of the influence of Shakespeare's King Lear on her work and how elements of that tragedy were rewritten in terms of dialogue, recast thematically, and reworked in terms of theatrical image. He sees Blasted as both a response to contemporary reality and an engagement with the history of drama. Graham Saunders is Senior Lecturer in Theatre Studies at the University of the West of England, Bristol, and author of the first full-length study of Kane's work: ‘Love Me or Kill Me’: Sarah Kane and the Theatre of Extremes (Manchester University Press, 2002). An earlier version of this article was given as a paper at the ‘Crucible of Cultures: Anglophone Drama at the Dawn of a New Millennium’ conference in Brussels, May 2001. Saunders is currently working on articles about Samuel Beckett and Edward Bond.

Echt Brecht? ‘Mother Courage‘at the Citizens,1990

1991 ◽  
Vol 7 (28) ◽  
pp. 303-314
Author(s):  
Margaret Eddershaw
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Senior Lecturer ◽  
History Of ◽  
Theatre Studies ◽  
The University

The Citizens Theatre in Glasgow has a long and honourable tradition of serving its neighbourhood and its city, and a directorial team which remarkably combines professional distinction with loyalty to their theatre. In view of its reputation for productions of great visual brilliance, it is surprising to be reminded that, of all British repertory theatres, ‘national’ or regional, it has also the strongest continuous tradition of playing Brecht. Margaret Eddershaw, Senior Lecturer in Theatre Studies in the University of Lancaster, outlines the history of this tradition, which stretches back even beyond the present triumviral management, and proceeds to look at the most recent encounter of ‘the Cits’ with Brecht, Philip Prowse's 1990 production of Mother Courage. This was significant not only for the director's attitude to Brechtian theory, theatrical and political, in the aftermath of the previous year's events in Eastern Europe, but for its inclusion of an international ‘star’, Glenda Jackson, within the Cits' usually close-knit ensemble – its consequences also, arguably, of ‘political’ as well as theatrical interest.

A Cultural History of Theatre: A Prospectus

2015 ◽  
Vol 56 (3) ◽  
pp. 402-421 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Balme ◽  
Tracy C. Davis
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Social History ◽  
Theatre History ◽  
Special Effects ◽  
Technical Developments ◽  
Performance Techniques ◽  
New Directions ◽  
History Of ◽  
Theatre Studies ◽  
And Performance

If theatre historians had been paying attention to the proceedings at a Gilbert and Sullivan conference in Lawrence, Kansas in 1970, they would have heard a gauntlet strike the ground when Michael R. Booth delivered “Research Opportunities in Nineteenth-Century Drama and Theatre.” He called for research on audiences (“cultural levels, class origins, income, tastes, and development”), performance in the hinterlands (“we know that in 1866 60% of the theatre seats in metropolitan London were outside the West End”), economics (“theatre profits and losses, actors' wages, authors' income, management and organization, the pricing of seats”), and performance techniques (“technical developments in set construction, staging, lighting, traps, and special effects” as well as acting style). This cri de coeur to break the hegemony of literary teleologies is recognizable, in 2015, as a mandate to reorient inquiry toward how repertoires were delivered rather than how authorial talent was paramount, what buttressed profitability rather than what constituted fame, and who sustained a gamut of theatres rather than what demarcated elite taste. It set the agenda for aligning theatre studies in wholly new directions, and without citing a single source or calling out any particular historian it inventoried how theatre history could come into line with social history.

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