Archives and Anecdotes

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Menzer
Keyword(s):  
Performance Studies ◽  
Theatre History ◽  
Working Through ◽  
History Of ◽  
Historical Syntax

‘Archives and Anecdotes’ pursues a historical syntax that can parse both words, since the two have traditionally been understood to exercise independently if not to outright antagonize one another. This chapter argues, however, that theatre anecdotes have at least as much to say about performance as they do about theatre history and myths; therefore it moves away from an assessment of the role anecdotes play in traditional historiography and towards an exploration of how they function in performance studies. Working through several examples, ‘Archives and Anecdotes’ ultimately argues that theatre anecdotes prove prophetic and thus are beholden less to the history of Shakespeare in performance than to its future.

Music as Performance: Living in the Immaterial World

2006 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 261-269 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Auslander
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Studies ◽  
Performance Studies ◽  
Musical Performance ◽  
Musical Form ◽  
Theatre History ◽  
Actual Performance ◽  
Theatrical Representation ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Performance Behavior

As a performance scholar and music lover, I find it strange that the fields of theatre and performance studies historically have been reluctant to engage with musical performance. Even as theatrical a musical form as opera is generally excluded from the history of theatre, on the grounds that “the predominant force in opera was the music rather than the words,” as Vera Mowry Roberts, my theatre history professor, puts the case.1 Roberts points to the nonliterary character of music as the reason for the exclusion; I speculate that the perception of music not only as nonliterary but, more broadly, as nonmimetic may seem to place it outside the realm of theatrical representation. While performance-oriented scholars spurn music, music-oriented scholars generally spurn performance. Traditional musicologists remain focused on the textual dimensions of musical compositions, whereas scholars who look at music from the perspective of cultural studies are generally more concerned with audience and reception than with the actual performance behavior of musicians.

scholarly journals Cultural History, Ritual and Performance: George L. Mosse in Context

2021 ◽  
pp. 002200942094003
Author(s):  
Peter Burke
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Performance Studies ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
History Of ◽  
Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries ◽  
Modern Europe ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Cultural Turn

George L. Mosse took a ‘cultural turn’ in the latter part of his career, but still early enough to make a pioneering contribution to the study of political culture and in particular what he called political ‘liturgy’, including marches, processions, and practices of commemoration. He adapted to the study of nationalism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the approach to the history of ritual developed by historians of medieval and early modern Europe, among them his friend Ernst Kantorowicz. More recently, the concept of ritual, whether religious or secular, has been criticized by some cultural historians on the grounds that it implies a fixed ‘script’ in situations that were actually marked by fluidity and improvisation. In this respect cultural historians have been part of a wider trend that includes sociologists and anthropologists as well as theatre scholars and has been institutionalized as Performance Studies. Some recent studies of contemporary nationalism in Tanzania, Venezuela and elsewhere have adopted this perspective, emphasizing that the same performance may have different meanings for different sections of the audience. It is only to be regretted that Mosse did not live long enough to respond to these studies and that their authors seem unaware of his work.

The Achievements of the Douglass Company in North America: 1758–1774

1982 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 141-149 ◽  
Author(s):  
David D. Mays
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
North America ◽  
West Indies ◽  
Theatre History ◽  
The West ◽  
American Theatre ◽  
History Of ◽  
American Theatre History ◽  
A Company

On Monday, October 16, 1758., Hugh Gaine reported a novelty. “Friday last,” he told his readers in the New-York Mercury, “arrived here from the West Indies, a Company of Comedians; some Part of which were here in the Year 1753.” This brief notice, which went on to assure its readers that the company had “an ample Certificate of their Private as well as publick Qualifications,” marks the beginning of the most significant event in American theatre history: the establishment of the professional theatre on this continent. The achievements of the Company of Comedians during its sixteen-year residence in North America are virtually without parallel in the history of the theatre, and have not received sufficient recognition by historians and scholars.

Unofficial Wars: The Politics of Disappearance

2014 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 642-651
Author(s):  
Gabriele Schwab
Keyword(s):  
Sri Lanka ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Global Level ◽  
Working Through ◽  
Local Setting ◽  
State Terrorism ◽  
Anil's Ghost ◽  
History Of

This article examines Michael Ondaatje’s 2001 novelAnil’s Ghost, placing it within the context of a history of disappearance as a form of state terrorism on a global level. It contests the controversial response that Ondaatje’s work received, which alleged lack of political engagement in the novel on account of what critics saw as its ‘Westernised approach’. Instead, what is argued here is thatAnil’s Ghostpresents a particular form of ‘working through’, first by approaching disappearances through the embedded lives and subjectivities of targeted populations, and second by using the specific historical and local setting in Sri Lanka to explore the politics of disappearances as a global phenomenon.

Groove Theory

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tony Bolden
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Performance Studies ◽  
Black Musicians ◽  
Cultural Artifact ◽  
Social Perspectives ◽  
The Status ◽  
History Of ◽  
American Intellectual History

Tony Bolden presents an innovative history of funk music focused on the performers, regarding them as intellectuals who fashioned a new aesthetic. Utilizing musicology, literary studies, performance studies, and African American intellectual history, Bolden explores what it means for music, or any cultural artifact, to be funky. Multitudes of African American musicians and dancers created aesthetic frameworks with artistic principles and cultural politics that proved transformative. Bolden approaches the study of funk and black musicians by examining aesthetics, poetics, cultural history, and intellectual history. The study traces the concept of funk from early blues culture to a metamorphosis into a full-fledged artistic framework and a named musical genre in the 1970s, and thereby Bolden presents an alternative reading of the blues tradition. Funk artists, like their blues relatives, tended to contest and contextualize racialized notions of blackness, sexualized notions of gender, and bourgeois notions of artistic value. Funk artists displayed contempt for the status quo and conveyed alternative stylistic concepts and social perspectives through multimedia expression. Bolden argues that on this road to cultural recognition, funk accentuated many of the qualities of black expression that had been stigmatized throughout much of American history.

scholarly journals Collaborative Innovation: Exploring the Intersections among Theater, Art and Business in the Classroom

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 52 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara Beckman ◽  
Stacy Scott ◽  
Lisa Wymore
Keyword(s):  
Student Development ◽  
Performance Studies ◽  
Personal Development ◽  
Art Practice ◽  
Art Business ◽  
Socially Engaged Art ◽  
Problem Framing ◽  
Collaborative Innovation ◽  
History Of ◽  
Transformational Experiences

There is a long history of conversations about integrating business and arts-based learning, but they are taking on more urgency today as technology-induced change and global interconnectivity are altering how humans learn, create, and construct new knowledge in unprecedented ways. However, there is much still to be learned about how the disciplines might be integrated and in what ways they can jointly serve the development not only of university students, but of how professional practice itself is defined. Over the past three years, faculty from the Theater and Dance Performance Studies, Art Practice, and Business disciplines at UC Berkeley have collaborated to create a course, Collaborative Innovation, that explores both collaboration and innovation at the intersection of these three fields. This paper presents a framework for a genuinely integrated interdisciplinary class that interweaves personal development and growth with problem framing and solving skills, and diverse-team participation and leadership. Quotes from student reflection papers bring alive the transformational experiences students went through in this course. The integration of socially engaged art, business, and theater/performance through collaborative teamwork tackling important and challenging social problems opens unexpected potential for student development as future contributors to society.

The Punk Show: Queering heritage in the Black diaspora

2014 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 327-345 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alix Chapman
Keyword(s):  
New Orleans ◽  
Cultural Politics ◽  
Performance Studies ◽  
Life Histories ◽  
Black Diaspora ◽  
Communal Memory ◽  
Race And Sexuality ◽  
History Of ◽  
Black Queer ◽  
Ways Of Life

This article presents ethnography of Black cultural politics in post-flood New Orleans during the summer and fall of 2009. I engage in three interrelated subjects: (1) life histories and oral narratives in which I trace a history of Black queer performances locally referred to as “Punk Shows”; (2) my observations of a community play in which heritage, Black queer subjectivity, and the struggle over communal memory intersect; and (3) a broader discussion of the ways power is constituted by the shaping of history and communal memory to narrate race and sexuality. I argue that some ways of life are constructed as timeless, recuperable, and productive to the nation rather than ephemeral and contradictory. In arguing for a theory of Black queer generation, I deploy performance studies to valorize the “ephemeral” history of their cultural labor.

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.

‘Know Whence You Came’: Dramatic Art and Black British Identity

2007 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 253-263 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kwame Kwei-Armah
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Considerable Influence ◽  
Theatre History ◽  
British Identity ◽  
National Theatre ◽  
Black British ◽  
Center Stage ◽  
History Of

Kwame Kwei-Armah's play Elmina's Kitchen was a landmark in British theatre history as the first drama by an indigenous black writer to be staged in London's commercial West End. The play's success since its premiere at the Royal National Theatre included a national tour and a season at Center Stage, Baltimore, directed by August Wilson's director Marion McClinton. In this interview with Deirdre Osborne, Kwei-Armah testifies to Wilson's considerable influence and the inspiration he derives from Wilson's project to account for the history of black people's experience in every decade of the twentieth century. Deirdre Osborne is a lecturer in drama at Goldsmiths College, University of London, and has published essays on the work of black British dramatists and poets including Kwame Kwei-Armah, Dona Daley, debbie tucker green, Lemn Sissay, SuAndi, and Roy Williams.

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