Toward Theatrical Communitas

The term communitas, introduced into anthropological discourse by Victor Turner in the late 1960s, returned to humanist debates at the threshold of the twenty-first century by way of Roberto Esposito. Referring to Esposito’s concept of communitas, this essay brings out the anthropological tradition in thinking about the common, which Esposito had marginalized. The present author emphasized the importance of processuality and antistructural dimensions of egalitarian forms of togetherness, along with their potential to liberate human capacities of creativity. Examining the relation between munus and ludus, she shows theatricality residing immanently in the root of communitas. Focusing on the aesthetic and creative dimensions of togetherness helps in detecting multiple forms of commonality, and indicates various models of theatrical communitas. Exploring a nonnormative, transformative potential in experimental theater (Jerzy Grotowski, Sarah Kane, Ron Athey, Krzysztof Garbaczewski), she emphasizes collective, temporal, and excessive natures of theater that eschews the market-driven economy, along with the importance of a transversal communitas where the human being is only one of many actors. Some threads of the argumentation are expanded upon in a conversation with Leszek Kolankiewicz, included as an appendix.

The locus of the house and images of the main characters in the play “Moscow” by Andrey Bely: towards a problem statement

The relevance of the article is based on the fact that over the past decades of the XXI century it has become the urgent need in philology to examine innovative methods, stylistic decisions, new narrative strategies used by the poet, writer, publicist, aesthete and philosopher Andrey Bely (1880–1934) in his last (Soviet) working period. The article considers the issue how in the 30s of the XX century Andrey Bely, being under the great influence of V. Meyerhold’s experimental theater, turned the first and second chapters of the novel “Moscow” (“The Moscow Eccentric” and “Moscow under Siege”) into the drama “Moscow” which wasn’t on the stage. A question is raised about Andrey Bely’s innovation as a playwright and some methods of the stage performance of the play “Moscow” are identified in the article. Special attention is paid to the locus of the house in the novel and drama, the question of transformation is raised: from the closed, protected, inner and personal space to the opened, hostile, unlocked one where hostile and mystic forces invade. The fight between two main antagonists — Korobkin, a scientist, and Mandro, a spy — is given in a wide mythological, christian and antroposophical context. The author of the article presents her many years experience on various approaches to understanding of not fully researched works (novel and play “Moscow”) by Andrey Bely.

Fetish, Demolition, Ruins

This article compares the video Reinforced Concrete (2012) by Lucas Ferraço Nassif, begun during Antje Ehmann and Harun Farocki's 2011 workshop-based project Labour in a Single Shot in Rio de Janeiro, and the performance Bustox (2014), which was carried out by the Brazilian experimental theater collective ERRO Grupo in Florianópolis. Each artwork can be read as an attempt to defetishize an idol of Brazilian capitalism, former billionaire Eike Batista. Moreover, Ehmann and Farocki's workshop can be seen as an attack on the process of fetishizing products of labor, fetishization being one of the main characteristics of capitalist society. Ehmann and Farocki's project, and consequently Nassif's video, are connected to the work of theoreticians such as Jacques Derrida and Giorgio Agamben concerning the themes of improvisation and profanation. The concept of the fetish is also revitalized by taking into consideration Latin American thinkers Fernando Ortiz and Osório César.

Gertrude Stein and the Metaphysical Avant-Garde

When American metaphysical religion appears onstage, it most often manifests in the subject matter and dramaturgies of experimental theater. In the artistic ferment of the 1960s and 1970s counterculture, theater-makers looked both to alternative dramaturgies and alternative religions to create radical works of political, social, and spiritual transformation. While the ritual experiments of European avant-garde artists like Artaud and Grotowski informed their work, American theater-makers also found inspiration in the dramas of Gertrude Stein, and many of these companies (the Living Theatre and the Wooster Group, most notably) either staged her work or claimed a direct influence (like Richard Foreman). Stein herself, though not a practitioner of metaphysical religion, spent formative years in Cambridge, Massachusetts, at Radcliffe under the tutelage of William James. Cambridge, at the turn of the twentieth century, was a hotbed of spiritualism, theosophy, alternative healing modalities, and James, in addition to running the psychology lab in which Stein studied, ran a multitude of investigations on extrasensory and paranormal phenomena. This article traces a web of associations connecting Ralph Waldo Emerson, Transcendentalism, and liberal Protestantism to Gertrude Stein and landscape dramaturgy to the midcentury avant-garde, the countercultural religious seeking of the 1960s and 1970s, and the Off-Off-Broadway movement.

The Oxford Encyclopedia of Asian American Literature and Culture

In the past four decades the field of Asian American literary and cultural studies has grown enormously, expanding its areas of inquiry beyond the reflections on national identity and citizenship to encompass such issues as transnational and diasporic identities and communities; the workings of imperialism; the intersectionality of race, gender, and sexuality; and social justice/human rights in a global context. This project is the largest and most comprehensive collection of scholarship on Asian American literature and culture to date. From Asian American literary classics to experimental theater, from K-pop to online gaming, the Oxford Encyclopedia of Asian American Literature and Culture guides both established scholars and readers new to this study through the extensive landscape of Asian American writing and cultural production. More than one hundred essays on varied historical periods, geographical locales, and artistic modes offer an extensive examination of racial representation and activism, interdisciplinary and comparative approaches to literary work, ethnic communities, space and place, transnational and transpacific flows, and genres such as speculative fiction, the detective novel, and melodrama. Along with literary works from the late-19th century to the 21st century, the Oxford Encyclopedia of Asian American Literature and Culture covers a wide-ranging selection of Asian American theatre, dance, music, visual arts, film, television, and media. With its illuminating and profound commentary on Asian American writing and artistic practice, the volumes survey the historical foundations of this rich field, showing the exciting and profound new directions that currently drive the study of Asian American literary and cultural traditions.

Theater Without a Script—Improvisation and the Experimental Stage of the Early Mid-Twentieth Century in the United States

It was in the mid-twentieth century that the independent theatrical form based entirely on improvisation, known now as improvisational/improvised theatre, impro or improv, came into existence and took shape. Viola Spolin, the intellectual and the logician behind the improvisational movement, first used her improvised games as a WPA worker running theater classes for underprivileged youth in Chicago in 1939. But it was not until 1955 that her son, Paul Sills, together with a college theater group, the Compass Players, used Spolin’s games on stage. In the 1970s Sills made the format famous with his other project, the Second City. Since the emergence of improv in the US coincides with the renaissance of improvisation in theater, in this paper, I will look back at what may have prepared and propelled the emergence of improvised theater in the United States. Hence, this article is an attempt to look at the use of improvisation in theater and performing arts in the United States in the second half of the 20th century in order to highlight the various roles and functions of improvisation in the experimental theater of the day by analyzing how some of the most influential experimental theaters used improvisation as a means of play development, a component of actor training and an important element of the rehearsal process.