Masked Interaction: The Case for an Enactive View of Commedia dell’Arte (and the Italian Renaissance)

2019 ◽  
pp. 153-170
Author(s):  
Jan Söffner
Keyword(s):  
Performance Studies ◽  
Performing Arts ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Cultural Analysis ◽  
Italian Renaissance ◽  
Commedia Dell'arte ◽  
Renaissance Humanism ◽  
Renaissance Studies ◽  
And Performance

This chapter presents a case study for the use of enactivist phenomenology as a paradigm for Cultural Analysis and Renaissance Studies. It begins by describing a mask used in commedia dell’arte, first as a simple object and then as embedded in an acting praxis. The focus then turns to Renaissance cultures of the performing arts, fiction, and the constitution of subjectivity. Finally, the chapter considers what the mask has to say about sixteenth-century Italy, comparing the outcomes of this analysis with those of more conventional approaches, which are mostly focused on Renaissance humanism. The line of argumentation follows a bottom-up methodology based on enactivist assumptions. By the end the chapter will render the adopted approach theoretically explicit and offer closing remarks about the use of enactivist phenomenology for cultural analysis, by comparing it with neighbouring theories and methods in Cultural Studies (especially Praxeology, Actor-Network-Theory, studies on Material Cultures, and Performance Studies).

Robot Double

2013 ◽  
pp. 680-702
Author(s):  
Yuji Sone
Keyword(s):  
Performance Studies ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Culturally Specific ◽  
Human Identity ◽  
Physical Movement ◽  
Self And Identity ◽  
Japanese Studies ◽  
And Performance

This chapter discusses Japanese roboticist Hiroshi Ishiguro’s performance experiments with robotic machines (humanoid and android) as a case study for this book’s theme, “the techno-self.” Ishiguro’s robots are highly sophisticated pieces of engineering intended to replicate human physical movement and appearance. In addition to claims relevant to robot engineering, for Ishiguro, these machines are reflexive tools for investigations into questions of human identity. In Ishiguro’s thinking I identify what I call a “reflexive anthropomorphism,” a notion of the self’s relation to the other that is tied equally to Buddhism and Japanese mythology. Using concepts from Japanese studies and theatre and performance studies, this chapter examines one culturally specific way of thinking about concepts of the self and identity through Ishiguro’s discussion of the human-robot relation.

Making Knowledge/Playing Culture

2020 ◽  
Vol 40 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 83-101
Author(s):  
Antje Budde ◽  
Sebastian Samur
Keyword(s):  
Experiential Learning ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Performance Studies ◽  
Performing Arts ◽  
Undergraduate Research ◽  
Theoretical Background ◽  
Comparative Approach ◽  
University Of Toronto ◽  
And Performance ◽  
The University

(A project of the Digital Dramaturgy Lab at the Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies, University of Toronto) This article discusses the 2017 festival-based undergraduate course, “Theatre Criticism and Festival Dramaturgy in the Digital Age in the Context of Globalization—A Cultural-Comparative Approach” as a platform for experiential learning. The course, hosted by the University of Toronto’s Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies, and based on principles of our Digital Dramaturgy Lab, invited a small group of undergraduate students to critically investigate two festivals—the Toronto Fringe Festival and the Festival d’Avignon—in order to engage as festival observers in criticism and analysis of both individual performances and festival programming/event dramaturgy. We argue that site-specific modes of experiential learning employed in such a project can contribute in meaningful ways to, and expand, current discourses on festivalising/festivalization and eventification through undergraduate research. We focus on three modes of experiential learning: nomadic learning (learning on the move, digital mobility), embodied knowledge (learning through participation, experience, and feeling), and critical making (learning through a combination of critical thinking and physical making). The article begins with a brief practical and theoretical background to the course. It then examines historical conceptions of experiential learning in the performing arts, including theoriesadvanced by Burnet Hobgood, David Kolb and Ronald Fry, and Nancy Kindelan. The importance of the festival site is then discussed, followed by an examination of how the festivals supported thethree modes of experiential learning. Samples of student works are used to support this analysis.

Spectacles of Ethnicities

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miriam Phillips
Keyword(s):  
San Francisco ◽  
Performing Arts ◽  
Performance Standards ◽  
Diverse Populations ◽  
Culturally Appropriate ◽  
Arts Festivals ◽  
Production Values ◽  
And Performance ◽  
American Cities

Performing arts festivals featuring artists representing distinct world dance traditions have proliferated in American cities since the 1980s. Often arranged in a potpourri format, these performances demonstrate a city’s multicultural make-up and proclaim dance to show unity between diverse populations. However, what happens when these dances each with distinct production and performance standards get placed with other dances onto a stage dominated by Western theatrical aesthetics? How do culturally specific production values become skewed and how do power relations play out when people outside the cultures represented produce the performances? Using one of America’s more prominent festivals, The San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival as a case study, this chapter explores issues around the politics of representation and highlights some misconceptions about diversity that are presumed in these types of multicultural spectacles. The chapter also considers possible methods to create more culturally appropriate world dance events.

Public-sector reforms and balanced scorecard adoption: an Ethiopian case study

2017 ◽  
Vol 30 (6) ◽  
pp. 1230-1256 ◽  
Author(s):  
Belete Jember Bobe ◽  
Dessalegn Getie Mihret ◽  
Degefe Duressa Obo
Keyword(s):  
Public Sector ◽  
Balanced Scorecard ◽  
Political Ideology ◽  
Performance Monitoring ◽  
Management Practices ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Public Sector Reforms ◽  
And Performance

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine adoption of the balanced scorecard (BSC) by a large public-sector health organisation in an African country, Ethiopia as part of a programme to implement a unified sector-wide strategic planning and performance monitoring system. The study explains how this trans-organisational role of the BSC is constituted, and explores how it operates in practice at the sector-and organisation-levels. Design/methodology/approach The study employs the case-study method. Semi-structured interview data and documentary evidence are analysed by drawing on the concept of translation from actor-network theory. Findings The case-study organisation adopted the BSC as a part of broader public-sector reforms driven by political ideology. Through a centralised government decision, the BSC was framed as a sector-wide system aimed at: aligning the health sector’s strategic policy goals with strategic priorities and operational objectives of organisations in the sector; and unifying performance-monitoring of the sector’s organisations by enabling aggregation of performance information to a sector level in a timely manner to facilitate health sector policy implementation. While the political ideology facilitated BSC adoption for trans-organisational use, it provided little organisational discretion to integrate financial administration and human resource management practices to the BSC framework. Further, inadequate piloting of information system use for the anticipated BSC model, originating from the top-down approach followed in the BSC implementation, inhibited implementation of the BSC with a balanced emphasis between the planning and performance monitoring roles of the BSC. As a result, the BSC underwent a pragmatic shift in emphasis and was reconceptualised as a system of enhancing strategic alignment through integrated planning, compared to the balanced emphasis between the planning and performance monitoring roles initially anticipated. Originality/value The study provides a theory-based explanation of how politico-ideological contexts might facilitate the framing of novel roles for the BSC and how the roles translate into practice.

scholarly journals Magic on Wheels: A Study of Re-engagement, Re-enactment and Re-staging the Stereotypes of Performativity and Performance of Persons with Disabilities in the Choreography of Syed Sallauddin Pasha

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Radhika Sharma ◽  
◽  
Nagendra Kumar ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Disability Studies ◽  
Performance Studies ◽  
Performing Arts ◽  
The Body ◽  
Disabled People ◽  
Negative Stereotypes ◽  
Persons With Disabilities ◽  
The Disabled ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Art And Activism

Amidst society’s segregation of the people among minorities on the basis of gender, race, caste and creed, it is difficult to locate the position of another extreme social minority, i.e. persons with disabilities. But the turn of the century has validated some art and activism performed by persons with disabilities due to which the disabled have marked their position in literature, film and media to some extent, yet they have not secured a position of dignity in the mainstream. To make disabled people visible, Syed Sallauddin Pasha (the father of Indian dance therapy for persons with disabilities) initiates his own Natya Shastra i.e. Classical Wheelchair Dances for differently-abled artists. Drawing upon Syed Sallauddin Pasha’s therapeutic dance choreography, the present paper studies performance arts in the context of differently-abled people, and for this, the paper explores the intersection of Performance Studies and Disability Studies. In performing arts (or dance in particular), the body is the medium of representation, likewise, the body defines the identity in the context of disabled people. Therefore, the paper by studying the intersection of Disability Studies and Performance Studies, explores the stereotypes related to the body by scrutinising the disabled dance bodies on the stage. The paper further attempts to explore the idea of accessibility for persons with disabilities by taking into account the assistive devices and accessible architecture. The study then goes into an analysis of spectators’ response, stare and gaze towards disability dance performances. In a broader context, the paper offers to scrutinise the negative stereotypes attached to disability and disabled dancing bodies on stage by exploring the nuances in Syed Sallauddin Pasha’s choreography.

Robot Double

2019 ◽  
pp. 432-455
Author(s):  
Yuji Sone
Keyword(s):  
Performance Studies ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Culturally Specific ◽  
Human Identity ◽  
Physical Movement ◽  
Self And Identity ◽  
Japanese Studies ◽  
And Performance

This chapter discusses Japanese roboticist Hiroshi Ishiguro's performance experiments with robotic machines (humanoid and android) as a case study for this book's theme, “the techno-self.” Ishiguro's robots are highly sophisticated pieces of engineering intended to replicate human physical movement and appearance. In addition to claims relevant to robot engineering, for Ishiguro, these machines are reflexive tools for investigations into questions of human identity. In Ishiguro's thinking I identify what I call a “reflexive anthropomorphism,” a notion of the self's relation to the other that is tied equally to Buddhism and Japanese mythology. Using concepts from Japanese studies and theatre and performance studies, this chapter examines one culturally specific way of thinking about concepts of the self and identity through Ishiguro's discussion of the human-robot relation.

scholarly journals Active Experiencing in Postdramatic Performance: Affective Memory and Quarantine Theatre's Wallflower

2018 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 145-159
Author(s):  
Tracy Crossley
Keyword(s):  
Performance Studies ◽  
Cognitive Neuroscience ◽  
Binary Opposition ◽  
Senior Lecturer ◽  
Performance Traditions ◽  
And Performance ◽  
The University

Postdramatic approaches to performance and Stanislavsky's methodology seemingly occupy divergent performance traditions. Nonetheless, both traditions often require performers to mine their own lives (albeit to different ends) and operate in an experiential realm that demands responsiveness to and within the live moment of performing. Tracy Crossley explores this realm through an analysis of Quarantine Theatre's Wallflower (2015), an example of postdramatic practice that blends a poetics of failure with a psycho - physical dramaturgical approach that can be aligned with Stanislavsky's concepts of affective memory and active analysis.Wallflower provides a useful case study of practice that challenges the binary opposition between the dramatic and postdramatic prevalent in theatre and performance studies scholarship. Aspects of Stanislavsky's system, nuanced by cognitive neuroscience, can expand the theorization of postdramatic theatre, which in turn generates techniques that can prove valuable in the rehearsal of dramatic theatre itself. Tracy Crossley is a Senior Lecturer in Theatre and Performance at the University of Salford, Manchester. She is currently developing a practical handbook, Making Postdramatic Theatre, for Digital Theatre Plus.

scholarly journals 'Putting on a Show' Non-Placement WIL in the Performing Arts: Documenting Professional Rehearsal And Performance Using Eportfolio Reflections

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 62-79
Author(s):  
Narelle Yeo ◽  
◽  
Jennifer Rowley ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Performing Arts ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Career Readiness ◽  
Music Students ◽  
Innovative Teaching ◽  
Direct Benefit ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Creative Artists ◽  
Study Participants

his study explores the utility of employing a student-created experiential narrative ePortfolio as a multimodal tool for reflective practice in WIL. It does so by examining a case study situated within the performing arts, where WIL discourses are rarely adopted, and few examples are present in the literature. This paper introduces a circular mentoring framework that extends Kolb’s experiential learning model, whereby learning is facilitated through the interchange of roles through rehearsal and reflection. In this study, participants prepared and performed an opera in a professional venue over a five-day period of intense creative studio work. The 2017 and 2018 Inclusion Project is an innovative teaching and learning opportunity that offered authentic industry-based experience to undergraduate music students in a closely monitored, non-placement WIL setting. Participants (n=18) undertaking a semester long elective, reported their experience through online journaling in an ePortfolio allowing them to create narrative responses. A qualitative analysis using narrative inquiry on the ePortfolio reflections indicated a direct benefit for student’s career readiness as creative artists.

Performing Epic and Reading Homer

2018 ◽  
pp. 16-30
Author(s):  
Barbara Graziosi
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Performance Studies ◽  
Performing Arts ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Definition Of

There are two long-recognized obstacles to dramatic performances of epic. The first is scale and the second is portrayal of the gods. This chapter argues that both these features have been important for the definition of what literature is—i.e. what is characteristic of literature as opposed to the performing arts. The first section of the chapter offers a close reading of Aristotle, because he identified scale and the gods as issues that differentiate epic from tragedy, and because his Poetics was foundational for the later development of both literary criticism and performance studies. The second section of this chapter discusses the place of Homer in relation to both literature and the performing arts—by focusing again on scale and the gods, and the history of their reception. The final section considers Simon Armitage’s versions of the Iliad and the Odyssey for the theatre and for BBC Radio.

Implementing an Outcome-Based Assessment Portfolio

2011 ◽  
pp. 539-550 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Wagner ◽  
Elizabeth Lamoureux
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Performance Studies ◽  
Program Effectiveness ◽  
Program Assessment ◽  
Qualitative Research Methods ◽  
Buena Vista ◽  
Vista University ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Program Requirement

This case study examines the introduction of an ePortfolio requirement as a means of assessing student learning and program effectiveness. The Communication and Performance Studies major at Buena Vista University in Storm Lake, Iowa, began piloting the use of an assessment ePortfolio in the spring of 2003 and has since fully implemented it as a program requirement. Although the potential of ePortfolios is still being realized, research suggests the benefit of involving students in program assessment. Case studies are helpful to further define and articulate the emerging literature on assessment ePortfolios. Using qualitative research methods, strengths and weaknesses of this ePortfolio implementation are identified, and areas of improvement are discussed.

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