Amy Holzapfel,Art, Vision, and the Nineteenth-Century Stage: Acts of Seeingamy holzapfel.Art, Vision, and the Nineteenth-Century Stage: Acts of Seeing. Advances in Theatre and Performance Studies Series. London: Routledge, 2014. Pp. 227, illustrated. $140.00 (Hb).

This article examines the early representations of Prince Albert that either satirize or attempt to reconcile the hierarchical ambiguities and issue of threatened masculinity that resulted from unconventional male consortship and female rule. It concludes that the latter was achieved through the development of a suitable and legible iconography for a nineteenth-century male consort in adherence with British iconographic tradition and values. Drawing from methods in nineteenth-century art history as well as gender and performance studies and anthropology, it argues that images of the male body play a fundamental role in the construction and perpetuation of masculine ideology and subjectivity through the creation of the semblance of an innate and axiomatic masculine archetype. In doing so, this article problematizes and historicizes masculinity by illuminating the plurality of expressions of masculinity and rejecting the essentialist narrative of masculinity as something measurable or quantifiable, as well as ahistorical, atemporal, apolitical and heteronormative.

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Towards a Spectatorial Approach to Drama Analysis

Nordic Theatre Studies ◽

10.7146/nts.v30i2.112950 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 30 (2) ◽

pp. 22-39

Author(s):

Ulla Kallenbach ◽

Annelis Kuhlmann

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

Performance Studies ◽

Creative Processes ◽

Wide Range ◽

Theatrical Performance ◽

Historical Investigation ◽

Methodological Approaches ◽

The Spectator ◽

And Performance ◽

Analytical Practice

In recent years, the concept of dramaturgy has been expanded to include a wide range of new fields that rarely concern the analysis of the drama text itself, but rather the facilitation of creative processes. This article investigates dramaturgy as an analytical practice. The article provides an analytical, historical investigation of methodological approaches to drama analysis. The aim is to examine how drama analysis came to be regarded as a literary discipline that rarely considers aspects of performance and the material, scenic context for which the play was written. The study of drama thus became regarded as being distinct from theatre and performance studies. This approach, which has its roots in nineteenth century dramaturgy, effectively eliminated the spectator from its perspective in favour of a character and plot centred dramaturgy. It is the authors’ assertion that the drama text and theatrical performance should, nevertheless, be regarded as intrinsically interconnected and that the spectator must be “re-inserted” in the analysis of the written drama. The authors explore how we might re-think the field of dramaturgy as drama analysis by emphasizing the corporeal, spatial, performative, and cognitive aspects of the drama text together with an emphasis on the historical and scenic context.

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Colonial Theatricality

The Oxford Handbook of Politics and Performance ◽

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190863456.013.31 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 26-42

Author(s):

Lisa Skwirblies

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

Political Science ◽

Performance Studies ◽

The Political ◽

Colonial Discourse ◽

Social Domain ◽

The Cross ◽

And Performance ◽

Political Realm

This chapter argues that references to the theater are never merely innocent metaphors but instead are historically and culturally determined modes of perception that allow us to see certain problems in the political realm such as authenticity, representation, and spectatorship as essentially theatrical problems. This is particularly the case in nineteenth century colonial discourse with its technique of theatricalizing the colonized people and places. As a “travelling concept,” theatricality is not bound exclusively to the realm of the theater nor to the discourses of theater and performance studies; it holds meaning and potential as an instrument for analysis in the field of political science as well. The cross-disciplinary possibilities of the term theatricality lie in the term’s applicability for a better understanding of both the theater-like character of the political and social domain as well as of the grammar of performance as an aesthetic medium.

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Performance, Theater, Drama

The Year s Work in Critical and Cultural Theory ◽

10.1093/ywcct/mbaa006 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Rebecca Kastleman

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

Lived Experience ◽

Performance Studies ◽

Modern Drama ◽

Fourth Section ◽

The Third ◽

The Past ◽

Experience Of Time ◽

And Performance ◽

Performance Theater

Abstract This year saw the continued expansion of four vibrant conversations within the field of theater and performance studies. The first section of this review, ‘World Stages and Their Borders’, features scholarship that explores how theaters represent worlds beyond the nation’s territorial and symbolic boundaries. The second section, ‘Performing Critical Temporalities’, considers studies of minoritarian performance that engage with the lived experience of time. In the third section, ‘Theater After Liveness’, I discuss scholarship on modern drama that is in dialogue with theories of performance as a live event. A fourth section considers new works on the nineteenth-century theater, showing how ‘Celebrity, Publicity, and Amateurism’ are entwined. Finally, a brief concluding note outlines significant biographies and reference works released within the past year.

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Cultural Labour

10.1093/oso/9780199490813.001.0001 ◽

2019 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Brahma Prakash

Keyword(s):

Conceptual Framework ◽

Performance Studies ◽

Life Experience ◽

Social Hierarchies ◽

Folk Performance ◽

And Performance ◽

The Relationship

Folk performances reflect the life-worlds of a vast section of subaltern communities in India. What is the philosophy that drives these performances, the vision that enables as well as enslaves these communities to present what they feel, think, imagine, and want to see? Can such performances challenge social hierarchies and ensure justice in a caste-ridden society? In Cultural Labour, the author studies bhuiyan puja (land worship), bidesia (theatre of migrant labourers), Reshma-Chuharmal (Dalit ballads), dugola (singing duels) from Bihar, and the songs and performances of Gaddar, who was associated with Jana Natya Mandali, Telangana: he examines various ways in which meanings and behaviour are engendered in communities through rituals, theatre, and enactments. Focusing on various motifs of landscape, materiality, and performance, the author looks at the relationship between culture and labour in its immediate contexts. Based on an extensive ethnography and the author’s own life experience as a member of such a community, the book offers a new conceptual framework to understand the politics and aesthetics of folk performance in the light of contemporary theories of theatre and performance studies.

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

Journal of Contemporary History ◽

10.1177/0022009420940033 ◽

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.

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