An Age of Transition: Restaging Brecht’s Encounter with Beijing Opera

The scene is Moscow, 1935. A who’s who of the European avant-garde has gathered to see the work of their foremost Chinese colleague: the Beijing opera master Mei Lanfang. Among them is the German playwright Bertolt Brecht, who sees in Mei’s performances the aesthetic effect he aims to develop in his own work: an effect he will soon call the ‘alienation effect.’ In 1936, Brecht pens his famous essay “On Chinese Acting,” in which he argues—approvingly—that Chinese theatre alienates the actor and audience from a play’s narrative by smashing the fourth wall and championing symbolism over realism. But did Brecht get it right? In this essay, I examine this remarkable episode in global theatre history. I argue that Brecht misunderstood Beijing opera’s theatre aesthetics, yet nonetheless meaningfully engaged with Chinese culture. A renewed encounter between Brechtian theatre and Beijing opera, I suggest, opens up intriguing possibilities in dramatic performance and theatre aesthetics.

‘Coi libri o col mondo?’

‘With books or with the world?’ Alienation effects without disorientation in Viaggio e maravigliose avventure d’un veneziano by Francesco Contarini This paper investigates the forms and effects of displacement in Viaggio e maravigliose avventure d’un veneziano ch’esce per la prima volta dalle lagune e si reca a Padova e a Milano, published anonymously in Milan in 1818. According to Luigi Catucci, the author is Francesco Contarini, who translated many travel books for the editor Sonzogno between 1816 and 1817: this would explain the noticeable intertextual dialogue between the Viaggio and other travel writings, both fictional and non-fictional. Some allusions to Vasco de Gama’s and James Cook’s geographical explorations reveal the author’s interest in travel as an anthropological experience, while quotations from Swift and De Maistre suggest a familiarity with the literary conventions and the most recent renewal of the European novel. From a theoretical point of view, the essay examines the interaction between travel literature, (anti-)novel, récit excentrique, and parody, in order to show that literary contamination works as an estrangement device. At the same time, this theoretical interpretation is evaluated (from an analytical and interpretative point of view) in relation to the narrative techniques through which Contarini expresses the alienation-effect of the first-person dramatized narrator, prompting a strong sense of disorientation in the reader (but not in the main character).

ART SPACE OF CONTEMPORARY DRAMA

Sokolovska S. F.The study of the modern literary situation, in particular, new trends in drama, is a relevant task for literary criticism. The work of playwrights of the 90s of the twentieth century deserves special attention since the literary practice of this generation of artists caused a number of significant shifts in various formally substantive areas of drama. Indicative in this respect are the works of the modern German author R. Schimmelpfennig. In the process of literary study of the play «The Golden Dragon», an analytical model of a literary text has been built, which is correlated with the interpretation model of a literary work. The chronotope and structure of the narrative reflect the artistic picture of the world and the concept of personality. Creating these aspects of artistic reality, the playwright turns to the aesthetics of B. Brecht’s epic theater. First of all, this is the alienation effect, which occurs through seventeen roles that are distributed among five actors. However, the characters are not puppet heroes, human beings without identity, they play the role of storytellers, report events, addressing directly to the audience. The author’s presence is being augmented, which is realized in the epization of a dramatic text, in the author’s direct description of the characters, in the spatio-temporal organization of the work. The reality that the world of a multi-storey building reproduces in the play does not allow a person to realize themselves. Such a manifestation becomes possible in an imaginary world, in human consciousness. The acquisition of personal uniqueness, the establishment of deep, essential connections with other people occurs in an open, unlimited mental space.

BRECHT’S THEATER: GENRE DIVERSITY AND BASIC CONCEPTS

The article is devoted to the drama of Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956), the peculiarities of its genre palette and analysis of the main factors of the playwright's artistic method. To achieve this goal, the following research methods were used: descriptive; matching method; literary analysis and synthesis. The Brecht Theater is represented by genre varieties of theatrical forms: expressionist drama, musical, opera, operetta, Lehrstück, epic and dialectic theater. The article proves that dialectics is the ideological soil and the conceptual core of the Brecht Theater. The dialectic poetics of a playwright should be understood as the method of analysis and argumentation presented by the Hegelian triad: thesis – antithesis – synthesis. In accordance with the dialectical concept, the Brecht theater puts in the center primarily the principle of contradiction, aimed at a multifaceted understanding of phenomena, overcoming a frozen, ossified way of thinking. The study defines the key concepts and principles of creating the drama of Bertolt Brecht, namely the «alienation effect» (Verfremdungseffekt) and assemblage (composition). The principle of the «alienation effect» is that a familiar phenomenon appears in the theater from an unexpected perspective, and therefore requires awareness of the viewer’s novelty. The means of this is the constant violation of theatrical illusion, the reality of what is happening on stage. The assemblage stipulates that the theatrical action is not a homogeneous system, but is a «made», «constructed» plane of various heterogeneous «materials»: dialogical discourse is interrupted by lyro-epic components (songs); in the musical plan, which is designed in the same style, jazz elements are suddenly «mounted», actors exchange roles during the performance, elements of the cinema «penetrate» the event plane, the causal course of the events depicted is interrupted by the demonstration of banners or posters with provocative appeals. The prospects for further research are the literary analysis of post-Brecht theater, that is, drama, which appeared as an imitation or negation of the dramatic principles of Brecht's theater.

Silhouettes analysis: a posthuman method for visualizing and examining the material world

In recent decades, postmodern, poststructuralist, and social constructivist theories, and the methodologies and methods they have informed, have been criticized for focusing primarily on human actors, discourses, and actions. Simultaneously, so-called posthuman theories have been developed that decentralize the human, reject an unquestioned use of the dualism of human/nonhuman, and emphasize the importance of the material world in the production of the social. A key concern for current qualitative inquiry is to develop methods that contribute to the critique of human-centered analysis. In this article, I explore what we learn about the material world when we do not use verbal methods or written data but image details of moveable formations, which are made into silhouettes using Karen Barad’s agential realism. After introducing posthuman methodology I perform a silhouettes analysis focusing on old age. The intention is to demonstrate that silhouettes analysis makes it possible to gain new insights into the features of materialities of old age in a way that classical image analysis would not allow. In addition, silhouettes analysis produces an alienation effect that disturbs practiced viewing habits and assumptions, and can thus serve as a research tool promoting reflection. I conclude with a discussion of the advantages and limitations of silhouettes analysis for gerontological and posthuman research.

Alienation Effect in Kee Thuan Chye’s Wayang Kulit Adaptations in 1984 Here and Now and The Big Purge

Existing studies have acknowledged the respective influence of Brechtian epic theatre and the adaptation of wayang kulit in Kee Thuan Chye’s plays, though largely keeping them as two separate entities. This paper focuses on Kee’s adaptation of wayang kulit in his first two published plays, namely 1984 Here and Now and The Big Purge to examine its functions in generating the Brechtian alienation effect in the selected plays. The rationales behind the increased scale of wayang kulit adaptation in The Big Purge compared to 1984 Here and Now is also explored in tandem with Kee’s alleged increase in theatrical subtlety. In the findings, the adaptation of wayang kulit in the selected plays correlates to the Brechtian alienation effect through the means of the incongruity of the wayang kulit, the role of the dalang or puppeteer and the fragmented plot structure of the wayang kulit metadrama. In The Big Purge, Kee’s increased scale of wayang kulit adaptation reflects his swerve to a more subtle style of writing as a reaction to the public perception of 1984 Here and Now and his first wayang adaptation in the play.

Translocalities of Sadness

This chapter explores how Hou Xiaoxian and Jia Zhangke have responded critically and reflexively to the commoditization and neoliberal redevelopment of place by challenging their own notions of authenticity and realism in two iconic shooting locations: Jiufen and Chongqing. By the production of Goodbye South, Goodbye (1996), Jiufen has transformed into what Urry calls a “tourist place,” a nostalgia themed space where film-induced tourism has all but overwhelmed the historical aura so cherished by Hou. I argue that the film’s disruptions of Hou’s realist style are reflexive responses to his own sense of complicity in transforming Jiufen into a tourist place. Operating like an alienation effect, moments of spectacular excess expose how the spectator’s perception of Jiufen is far from natural, but mediated through images popularized by Hou’s own films. Whereas Hou seems unable to experience Jiufen outside the dichotomy of authenticity and inauthenticity, Jia makes meaningful sense of his hometown's neoliberal redevelopment through a critical lens shaped, surprisingly, by none other than Hou's cinema. It is with this translocal, cinephilic, and reflexive framework of place making that Jia Zhangke re-imagines the decimated landscapes of Chongqing in Still Life (2006). Rather than simply lament the disappearance of authenticity, the film carefully observes the place making practices of China's "floating population," who must depend on their resourcefulness to navigate a geography of ecological ruin. Importantly, these unexpected modes of agency show Jia's departure from the authoritative, detached, and privileged modes of place making institutionalized by Fifth Generation auteurs.

Brechtian Methodology in Wise’s The Sound of Music: Insights into Theatre in Education

Methods are problem solving devices for the benefit of education in society. When a method assumes regimental fixations, society suffers hackneyed bouts of limitation and contention necessitating flux. This paper examines issues of regimentalism as they affect society in Robert Wise’s The Sound of Music, and the staccato notes of change inevitably mobilizing a Brechtian methodological reading amplifying social change, in a Theatre in Education performance. Bertolt Brecht (1898-1965), accomplished German director, playwright and theorist, mobilized theatre for social change by setting up Marxist dialectics in pursuit of retrenchment of total empathy; giving free reign to critical consciousness in theatrical productions. This paper has investigated analytically, the representations of this Brechtian methodology in The Sound of Music with the manifest result that the experiment in the movie has produced a healthier and better organized society than the German regimental machine. Key Words: Education, Theatre in Education, Brecht, Alienation Effect, Social Change, Family, Critical, Learning and Socialization