scholarly journals Dehierarchizing Space: Performer-Audience Collaborations in Two Portuguese Performances of Shakespeare

2017 ◽  
Vol 15 (30) ◽  
pp. 27-41
Author(s):  
Francesca Rayner

This article addresses the key role of performance space in mediating between cultural locations. It discusses two Portuguese performances of Shakespeare where audiences were invited to become part of the performance and the ways in which this dehierarchization of the performance space framed a cross-cultural encounter between a globalized text and a localized performance context. In Teatro Oficina’s 2012 King Lear, both audience and performers sat around a large table in a production which reflected upon questions of individual and collective responsibility in Shakespearean tragedy and in the wider political sphere. In the middle of this performance space hung a large cube onto which the translated text was projected, setting up a spatial tension between text and performance that also foregrounded the translocation of the Shakespearean text to a Portuguese performance context. In Tiago Rodrigues’ 2013 By Heart, ten members of the audience were invited onstage to learn Shakespeare’s Sonnet 30 “by heart and not by brain.”1 In doing so, Rodrigues emphasized the cultural embeddedness of Shakespearean texts in a wider European cultural context and operated a subtle shift from texts to performance as a privileged repository for the cultural memory of Shakespeare. The article explores how these spatial shifts signaled the possibility of enabling cross-cultural identifications with Shakespeare through performance.

Author(s):  
Michael Prieler ◽  
Jounghwa Choi ◽  
Hye Eun Lee

The present study examined the relationship between appearance-related social comparison on social networking services (SNSs) and body esteem in a cross-cultural context (three European countries, i.e., Austria, Belgium, and Spain, versus one Asian country, i.e., South Korea). The role of self-worth contingency on others’ approval was considered to be a psychological and cultural factor. Utilizing a large-scale cross-national survey of early and middle adolescents in 2017, the responses of female adolescents (N = 981) were analyzed. The results generally support the findings from previous studies but also reveal cultural differences. Appearance comparison on Facebook negatively influenced girls’ body esteem in all European countries, but not in South Korea. Self-worth contingency on others’ approval negatively influenced girls’ body esteem across all four countries. Finally, a positive relationship between self-worth contingency on others’ approval and appearance comparison on Facebook was found in all European countries, but not among Korean girls. These findings suggest the importance of self-worth contingency on others’ approval and cultural contexts can be used to study the effects of body image-related SNS use.


2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 263-286 ◽  
Author(s):  
_ _

Abstract Using a case study of recently arrived Cantonese-speaking migrants, this article examines the role of guanxi in shaping Chinese newcomers’ economic activities and opportunities in South Africa. In Johannesburg, Cantonese-speaking migrants tend to be employed in restaurant and fahfee (gambling) sectors, which are partially inherited from the early generations of South African Chinese. Through narratives and stories, this article reveals that Cantonese newcomers often strengthen personal and employment relationships through the practice of guanxi, but that doing so can also constrain their employment decisions. Moreover, the ambiguous boundary between the act of bribery and the practice of guanxi may facilitate Chinese participation but can also result in the victimization of the newcomers.


2008 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 245-277 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin L. Berger

This article presents the argument that our understanding of the nature of the relationship between modern constitutionalism and religious difference has suffered with the success of the story of legal tolerance and multiculturalism. Taking up the Canadian case, in which the conventional narrative of legal multiculturalism has such purchase, this piece asks how the interaction of law and religion - and, in particular, the practices of legal tolerance - would look if we sought in earnest to understand law as a component, rather than a curator, of cultural diversity in modern liberal societies. Understanding the law as itself a cultural form forces us to think about the interaction of law and religion as an instance of cross-cultural encounter. Drawing from theoretical accounts of cross-cultural encounter and philosophical literature about the nature of toleration, and paying close attention to the shape of Canadian constitutional doctrine on religious freedom (law’s rules of cross-cultural engagement), this paper suggests that legal toleration is far less accommodative and far more assimilative than the conventional narrative lets on. Influential alternative theoretical accounts ultimately reproduce this dynamic because they similarly obscure the role of culture on both sides of the encounter of law and religion. Indeed, owing to the particular features of the culture of law’s rule, even the more thickly cultural "solutions" proposed in dialogic theory ultimately fail. In the end, this article exposes the very real cultural limits of legal tolerance.


2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 237-257 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valentina Rapetti

This article offers a critical reading of Desdemona (2012), a cross-cultural theatre adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Othello staged by American theatre and opera director Peter Sellars, with texts by African American Nobel laureate Toni Morrison and music and lyrics by Malian singer-songwriter Rokia Traoré. By drawing on early modern race studies and Marshall Sahlin’s notion of ‘mutuality of being’, the article discusses Morrison’s lyrical prose as well as Traoré’s songs and performance to show how they merge and amplify one another in Sellars’ meditative staging to jointly rearticulate early modern notions of race, kinship and family embedded in Othello. By questioning what lies dormant, unseen and unheard in the Shakespearean tragedy, Desdemona supplements it with what Imtiaz Habib has termed ‘imprints of the invisible’ and invites its readers and audiences to ponder the onset of European colonialism, the slave trade, colour-based racism and their global aftermath, positing theatre as a metaphor for other civic, shared spaces where honest conversations about race, gender and class inequalities can open up a path to healing and reconciliation.


2006 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 181-198 ◽  
Author(s):  
Temple Hauptfleisch

Festivals have become a prominent feature of theatre in South Africa today. More than forty such annual events not only provide employment, but constitute a socio-cultural polysystem that serves to ‘eventify’ the output of theatre practitioners and turn everyday life patterns into a significant cultural occasion. Important for the present argument is the role of the festivals as events that foreground relevant social issues. This is well illustrated by the many linked Afrikaans-language festivals which arose after 1994, and which have become a major factor not only in creating, displaying, and eventifying Afrikaans writing and performance, but also in communicating a particular vision of the Afrikaans-speaking and ‘Afrikaner’ cultural context. Using the Klein Karoo Nasionale Kunstefees in Oudtshoorn as a case study, in this article Temple Hauptfleisch discusses the nature, content, and impact of this particular festival as a theatrical event, and goes on to explore the polysystemic nature of the festival phenomenon in general. Temple Hauptfleisch is a former head of the Centre for South African Theatre Research (CESAT) and Chair of the University of Stellenbosch Drama Department. He is currently the director of the Centre for Theatre and Performance Studies at Stellenbosch and editor of the South African Theatre Journal. His recent publications include Theatre and Society in South Africa: Reflections in a Fractured Mirror (1997), a chapter in Theatrical Events: Borders, Dynamics, Frames (2003), and one on South African theatre in Kreatives Afrika: Schriftstellerlnnen über Literatur, Theater und Gesellschaft (2005).


Author(s):  
Olena Spolska

The purpose of the article is to present the activities of music societies in Eastern Galicia during the late nineteenth – first third of the twentieth century, which laid the foundations for the development of national professional music education and performance, including piano. The methodological basis of the publication is historical-stylistic and comparative approaches, methods of historical-cultural discourse (V. Cherkasov), fundamental historical-musicological positions (L. Korniy, L. Kianovska, etc.). Problems of musical culture, education, and performance were considered by Galician musicians of that time (S. Lyudkevych, V. Barvinsky, N. Nyzhankivsky, etc.) in the broader context of national and cultural life, cooperation of Ukrainian cultural and educational societies, the active position of composers, performers, and teachers, which contributed to the development of professional education and performance, music culture in general. This methodological approach was continued by modern musicologists (M. Zagaykevych, L. Kiyanovska, L. Korniy, L. Mazepa, M. Cherepanin, etc.), who interpret the cultural and artistic life of Galicia in the second half of the nineteenth - early twentieth century. as a turning point in the process of formation of professional musical culture, due to the adoption of the so-called "cultural autonomy" (1867). Scientific novelty. A significant role in this process was played by music centers founded by the Society for the Distribution of Music in Galicia, the Galician Music Society (hereinafter - the Polish Music Society), the GMT Conservatory (1854) as the main musical educational institution in Galicia in the second half of the nineteenth century. The role of Ukrainian music societies was important, most of all – the centers of "Boyan" and "Union of Boyans", Music Society M. Lysenko, which became the basis for the establishment of the Ukrainian professional music institution – Higher Music Institute (1903), then - Lysenko Higher Music Institute (VMIL), the activities of an extensive network of its branches in various cities of Galicia. Significant educational activities of cultural, educational, and musical societies have encouraged professional composers to create original musical works, arrangements of folk songs, compiling the appropriate professional repertoire. In turn, this necessitated the development of professional music criticism in the Ukrainian periodicals. Analyzing the socio-cultural context of music societies, we relied on the developed classifications of their activities (N. Kobrin). This allowed us to outline the role of numerous monographic and thematic concerts dedicated to Ukrainian and Western European composers, solo concerts of prominent Ukrainian vocalists, and instrumentalists in the growth of performing skills of Ukrainian artists of this period. Conclusions. Conclusions are made about the decisive role of the network of cultural, educational, and musical societies of Eastern Galicia in the late nineteenth - first third of the twentieth century. in the process of development in the region of musical performance and musical culture in general. Keywords: musical culture of Western Ukraine, end of XIX – first third of XX century, cultural-educational and musical societies, musical performance.


2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 124-130
Author(s):  
Roni Sya'roni ◽  
Didin Nuruddin Hidayat

This study aimed at analyzing the role of cross-cultural understanding in interpreting English recount texts. The data of this study were obtained by reviewing documents of a book entitled “Histories of Nations: How their identities were forged” (Furtado, 2017). As a qualitative content analysis, all the data were analyzed qualitatively by classifying, coding and interpreting the data gathered that led us to some conclusions and suggestions. The study found that there were some words and phrases in the recount text that requires cross cultural understanding in order to be able to interpret those texts accurately. Therefore, in interpreting the recount text, it is necessary to understand not only the text in literal meaning, but also the cultural context in a comprehensive way. This focuses on cultural context deals with the history of social organization and religion system. Cross cultural understanding eases the readers to interpret the recount text appropriately. The study suggests that cross cultural understanding should be an important topic to be learnt intensively in learning English language at least at university education level as it will enable students to be capable of understanding English discourses comprehensively.


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