scholarly journals Towards a Spectatorial Approach to Drama Analysis

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.

‘She will wear the britsch’: Masculinity and the iconography of Prince Albert

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 199-222
Author(s):  
Hannah Bradshaw
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Performance Studies ◽  
Art History ◽  
Male Body ◽  
Masculine Ideology ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Female Rule ◽  
And Performance

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.

Fashionable Figures: Narrative Roundels and Narrative Borders in Nineteenth-Century Han Chinese Women’s Dress

Costume ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-89 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel Silberstein
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Museum Collection ◽  
Late Qing ◽  
Royal Ontario Museum ◽  
Economic Context ◽  
Theatrical Performance ◽  
Close Relationship ◽  
Close Study ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Women's Dress

Figural motifs have received little attention in Chinese dress and textile history; typically interpreted as generic ‘figures in gardens’, they have long been overshadowed by auspicious symbols. Yet embroiderers, like other craftsmen and women in Qing dynasty China (1644–1911), sought inspiration from the vast array of narratives that circulated in print and performance. This paper explores the trend for the figural through the close study of two embroidered jackets from the Royal Ontario Museum collection featuring dramatic scenery embroidered upon ‘narrative roundels’ and ‘narrative borders’. I argue that three primary factors explain the appearance and popularity of narrative imagery in mid- to late Qing dress and textiles: the importance of theatrical performance and narratives in nineteenth-century life; the dissemination of narrative imagery in printed anthologies and popular prints; and the commercialization of embroidery. By placing the fashion for these jackets firmly within the socio-economic context of nineteenth-century China, the paper provides a novel way of understanding the phenomena of narrative figures on women’s dress through the close relationship between popular culture and fashion in nineteenth-century Chinese women’s dress.

The Philosophy of Theater

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Y. Bennett
Keyword(s):  
Performance Studies ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Audience Reception ◽  
The Past ◽  
Art Form ◽  
Theatrical Performance ◽  
Ontological Question ◽  
Dramatic Text ◽  
And Performance ◽  
The Relationship

Theater—i.e., traditional text-based theater—is often considered the art form that most closely resembles lived life: real bodies in space play out a story through the passage of time. Because of this, theater (or theatre) has long been a laboratory of, and for, philosophical thought and reflection. The study of philosophy and theater has a history that dates back to, and flourished in, ancient Greece and Rome. While philosophers over the centuries have revisited the study of theater, the past four decades in particular have seen a noted and substantial increase of scholarship investigating this intersection between philosophy and theater. “Philosophy of theater” is, on one hand, a “field” that is just starting to take shape and is barely over a decade old; on another hand, it is a recognized subfield both of aesthetics and of theater and performance studies. And finally, it is also an amorphous concept, either not yet fleshed out, or intentionally amorphous and proudly organic. Philosophy of theater is also sometimes referred to—or is argued to be subsumed, more broadly, in—“performance philosophy,” which also refers to a network of academics and practitioners that publishes a book series and a journal of the same name. Regardless of what it is called or how it is classified, scholarship has coalesced around some fundamental preoccupations, which are not too dissimilar to questions that arise in other philosophies of. . . (e.g., art, film, dance, etc.). The debates in philosophy of theater mostly fall into three of the main branches of philosophy: metaphysics, epistemology, and aesthetics. The major metaphysical debates center on an ontological question: What is theater? Epistemological studies tend to focus on audience reception and/or how meaning is made and/or transmitted. Finally, studies in aesthetics focus on two main questions: (1) What is theater as an art form? (2) What is the relationship between dramatic text and theatrical performance? This article is intentionally narrow in its scope, focusing on philosophy and theater traditions that came out of Greek theater and philosophy, in order to ensure a sufficient amount of depth, not (merely) breadth.

16Performance, Theater, Drama

2019 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 303-323
Author(s):  
Rebecca Kastleman
Keyword(s):  
Performance Studies ◽  
Subject Areas ◽  
Methodological Approaches ◽  
And Performance

Abstract The year 2018 was an especially fruitful and wide-ranging one for theater and performance studies. Several major monographs deepened discussion in established subject areas within the field, while new methodological approaches emerged, opening fresh directions in scholarship. This review focuses on four major areas of conversation that shaped the field in 2018: 1. Expanding Performance Aesthetics; 2. Economic and Material Contexts of Performance; 3. Enacting Public Justice; and 4. Performance on the Move.

The Video Documentation of Theatrical Performance

1994 ◽  
Vol 10 (38) ◽  
pp. 183-194 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gay McAuley
Keyword(s):  
Performance Studies ◽  
Video Technology ◽  
Previous Generation ◽  
Theatrical Performance ◽  
Video Documentation ◽  
Video Archives ◽  
And Performance ◽  
The University

Video technology has been widely available for the last twenty years, and offers possibilities for the documentation of theatrical performance that no previous generation has possessed. What are we doing with these possibilities? Why is it that we are only now taking some timid first steps towards the establishment of national or regional video archives? This article reports some findings from ten years of experimentation with recording formats and analysis, and urges the need for action by theatre practitioners, funding authorities, and university researchers to ensure that the theatrical output of another generation is not lost. The author, Gay McAuley, teaches in French and Performance Studies and is Director of the Interdisciplinary Centre for Performance Studies at the University of Sydney. Her research in recent years has focused on the semiotics of performance and, in particular, the ways actors use text in the construction of performance. She is currently writing a book called Space in Performance.

Performing Gestures at Protests and Other Sites

2021 ◽  
pp. 516-530
Author(s):  
Bishnupriya Dutt
Keyword(s):  
Performance Studies ◽  
Freedom Of Expression ◽  
Bertolt Brecht ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
The Public ◽  
Methodological Approaches ◽  
The Difference ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Religious Festival ◽  
Large Corpus

Performative manifestation of protests in recent times in India and elsewhere in the world are identified by gestures, which often emerge from protest sites, circulate in the public domain, and are seen as democratic articulations and dissent, particularly when right-wing state powers are trying to curb freedom of expression and subvert democratic practices. This chapter argues that the power of the gestural idiom surpasses the marginality of its location and has resulted in a large corpus of scholarly works focusing on theatrical gestures as protest dramaturgies and transgressive and agentive bodily idioms. In contrast to the growing right-wing rhetoric and cultural mobilization in spaces of mass congregations, which adopts stereotypical gestural rhetoric, these gestures of dissent can be read as self-critical, coming from theatrical practices, particularly those elaborated by Bertolt Brecht, influential in Europe and the postcolonial world. In addition, the chapter attempts to initiate a dialogue between theater and performance studies and studies in politics as common sites of performing dissent. The chapter further argues that, despite the difference in methodological approaches, there are potentials of critical dialogues across the disciplines. Case studies from contemporary India, relevant to the academic debates, describe and analyze religious festival and pilgrimage, instrumentalized for political electoral gains and a protest performance in civil society on the eve of the 2019 elections.

Colonial Theatricality

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.

Performance, Theater, Drama

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.

The Alchemy of Rasa in the Performer–Spectator Interaction

2013 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 336-348
Author(s):  
Scheherazaad Cooper
Keyword(s):  
Performance Studies ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Cultural Barriers ◽  
Doctoral Thesis ◽  
Access Points ◽  
Classical Dance ◽  
Cultural Specificity ◽  
The Spectator ◽  
Indian Classical Dance ◽  
And Performance

Born from its usage in the Natyasastra, rasa, as both concept and experience, is notoriously difficult to define. As an experience, rasa is generated within performance but cannot be contrived. However, the conditions for its coming into being can be prepared for by both practitioner and spectator, who generate rasa together within the performance. Rooted in a deeply specific cultural context, rasa is the Indian classical contribution to the particular area of performance studies research that seeks to explore and discuss the ineffable experience of the spectator in performance. However, the concept gains traction in the understanding of and engagement with its cultural specificity, and therefore serves as a poignant example of how cultural specificity is a way through cultural barriers in performance. Scheherazaad Cooper has recently completed her PhD in practice-as-research at Goldsmiths, University of London, focusing on the contemporary Odissi Indian classical dance practitioner's cultivation of access points in performance. This article is developed from the research undertaken for her doctoral thesis, inspired and informed by Maria Shevtsova's work in the sociology of theatre and performance.

A Comparison of Rate-Controlled Constrained-Equilibrium Formulations

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fatemeh Hadi ◽  
Mohammad Janbozorgi ◽  
M. Reza H. Sheikhi
Keyword(s):  
Performance Studies ◽  
Turbulent Combustion ◽  
Gas Mixtures ◽  
Direct Integration ◽  
Stirred Reactor ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Constrained Equilibrium ◽  
Rate Controlled ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Detailed Kinetics

In this study, constraint potential and constraint forms of the Rate-Controlled Constrained-Equilibrium (RCCE) method have been investigated in terms of accuracy and performance. Although the two formulations are equivalent mathematically, they show quite different performances from the computational standpoint. The main objective of this work is to determine the most efficient implementation of RCCE to be used in turbulent combustion simulations. Simulations are conducted of an adiabatic, isobaric stirred reactor. The kinetics includes methane oxygen combustion using 133 reaction steps and 29 species. RCCE calculations are performed by 12 constraints. The simulations are carried out over a wide range of initial temperatures for stoichiometric gas mixtures. Performance studies of the two RCCE formulations are carried out and the results are compared with those obtained by direct integration of detailed kinetics.

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