Authentic Expertise: Andrej Babiš and the Technocratic Populist Performance During the COVID-19 Crisis

This article studies how a technocratic populist can visually perform the authenticity and connection to ‘the low’ that is key to a populist performance while also maintaining the performance of expertise that is central to technocratic populist success. It relies on the case study of Czech prime minister Andrej Babiš and uses Facebook data from his profile in March and September–October 2020, the two peak moments of the crisis in the first and second waves of the COVID-19 pandemic. After offering a timeline of the Czech COVID-19 epidemic in 2020, it applies a dramaturgical analysis to four representative photos from Babiš’ Facebook page. It finds that Babiš was able to simultaneously articulate both expertise and authenticity, thereby both creating a connection to ‘the people’ while also articulating himself as an expert capable of handling the pandemic. He articulated expertise through a technocratic bodily performance, presenting himself as a cosmopolitan leader with international symbols of power like neutral-colored suits and elegant surroundings. At the same time, he also articulated himself as an authentic politician by showing his Facebook followers backstage imagery like a disorganized table and by showing himself as a busy man and an exceptionally hard worker. By illuminating the visual performance of technocratic populism, it offers insight into how technocratic populists constitute the expertise that their success rests on and that can also pose a threat to democratic societies, especially in a time of crisis.

Interpretation Strategies of Contemporary Musical and Theatrical Art: Trends, Factors

Relevance of the study. The modern interpretive content main tendencies of the European and Ukrainian musical and theatrical art were analyzed. Forms of interpretation being were considered in the coordinates of the “composer-listener-performer” triad in the aspect of its correspondence to its time artistic intentions. The scientific novelty of the study is in the analysis of innovative projects most of which are not adapted to musicology and in the formulation of trends and factors of modern musical art’s interpretive policy. Main objective of the study is to determine the specifics and factors of the modern interpretations of a musical and theatrical art. Methodology. The following methods have been adapted: the interpretive — in relation to the analyzed opera projects; the hermeneutic-semantic — for the purpose of identify the interpreted works’ intonation-image specificity; the comparative — to juxtaposition the “interpretive behavior” of one work in different performance versions; the intonation-dramaturgical analysis — to study the specifics and factors of works’ interpretive versions. Results and conclusions. The modern interpretive reality initiates the emergence of radically new and the consolidation of existing non-standard trends in the work’s representation. These are: the instrumental performing theatricalization, significant expansion of the improvisation’s zone, abandonment of the opera genre canons with an emphasis on synthetic genres of performative nature and the use of bold audio, scenographic, color and light effects. The modern interpretative main trends are the actualization, the alienation and the emergence of working remote versions, the encroachment on the textual and intonational essence of a known work by adding the new material (the integral opus or the fragmentary inlay), the emergence of modern composer’s alternative role which is a co-author of a new hybrid product thanks to the connection to the work of the past. Findings of the research. The specifics and factors of work’s variant-interpretive realization are analytically argued. The main factors are the genre-intonation specificity, the synthetic and intertextual nature, the complexity and synergy of text semantic intentions, the recipient’s culturalhistorical awareness, the socio-cultural intentions’ balance of the author and his artistic will performers, the degree of text openness, the context. Prospects for further exploration in this direction. The following research areas are needed: 1) the development of new methods and terminological apparatus suitable for the modern artifacts’ analysis; 2) the analytical base’s expansion due to: a) the further accumulation of examples, b) the scientific adaptation of various genres’ works.

‘Waving through a window’: Nostalgia and prosthetic memory in Dear Evan Hansen

Dear Evan Hansen, a popular Broadway musical whose narrative centres on connectivity and the protagonist’s social anxiety, offers a disruptive potential to the otherwise standard nostalgic leanings of the contemporary American musical. Operating dramaturgically, nostalgia offers the audience an opportunity to recall an idealized past that imbues the musical they are witnessing with their own positive affect. Dear Evan Hansen’s use of prosthetic memory disrupts the nostalgic tradition of the contemporary musical. Using dramaturgical analysis to identify the narrative operation of nostalgia and prosthetic memory, this article situates the disruptive potential of Dear Evan Hansen as an intervention into the American musical theatre canon writ large.

Policing Interactions

This chapter discusses the interactional skills and strategies that police perform when engaging with members of the public cast in a variety of roles. In so doing, it seeks to work out the principal tenets of a dramaturgical analysis of Neighbourhood Policing, including how forms of ‘face work’ and the management of impressions are part of the art and craft of street policing. The authors entertain the idea of reframing the concept of police performance from its orthodox usage, referring to a set of measurement instruments applied to gauge police activity, to a more dramaturgically sensitive understanding of how and why police behave in particular ways in their interactions and encounters with citizens, that can influence the local social order.

The notion of the “foreigner” in contemporary Greek drama: “We” through the faces of the “others”

This article explores the dramaturgy of modern Greek playwrights, among others Vassilis Katsikonouris, Giannis Tsiros, Michalis Reppas, Thanasis Papathanasiou and Lena Kitsopoulou. It looks at how these dramatists approach the theme of “alterity” when in their dramatic productions it acquires the meaning of a different ethnic, religious, social and cultural element. It mainly reflects on the roles of the dramatic characters within the multiculturalist environment as it manifested in Greek society in the 1990s and at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The notion of “different” is also examined by drawing on political views of racist and nationalistic ideologies that emerge in the dramatic situations. The dramaturgical analysis is also comparatively combined with the way theatre reviewers and the audiences have received the productions, since the plays’ various interpretations by contemporary directors is considered of the utmost importance.