Arctic Drama to Sámi Theatre – Cultural Clashes Towards Decolonisation: In Shared Dialogic Spaces

Summary This article deals with the concept of Arctic Drama, which is about how there is a relationship between drama and cultural clashes in the perspective of shared cultures in the northern Scandinavian area, which is defined as arctic in the geographical sense. In this vast area the Sámi people historically and to the present day have been living from reindeer herding in a nomadic lifestyle, giving them a close relationship to nature. Norwegians and Swedes colonised this area historically, especially the coast for fishing.There have been strong cultural clashes since the Viking ages, but colonisation mainly started later by introducing Christianity by force in the 16th century. Since the Romantic age, these ethno-cultural clashes have been reflected in drama and theatre, and some plays by Henrik Ibsen and Knut Hamsun echo these tensions. An independent theatre of the Sámi people as well as of other indigenous people in Greenland and Canada, like the Inuits, would also develop some theatrical strategies based in a dramaturgy that could be described as a “spiral dramaturgy”. Cultural independence has contributed to a decolonisation process, contributing to even out the cultural clashes in theatre and drama, which could be defined as postcolonial towards decolonisation. This article focuses on the area of arctic Scandinavia.

“Un Geste Suffit”? Unpacking the Inconvenient Truths about Al Gore’s Celebrity Activism

The present work interrogates Al Gore’s persona as a climate change activist with reference to a process we describe with the neologism “personafication”: the act of constructing/presenting a public persona in order to cultivate impressions that enable public figures to consolidate authoritative reputations. The formation of such a commanding persona requires the circulation of three forms of symbolic capital: cultural, celebrity, and reputational capital as well as the performance of overtly theatrical strategies calculated to establish an empathetic relationship between performer and audience. In 2006, former Vice President Al Gore released the award-winning documentary, An Inconvenient Truth. This film subsequently functioned as a catalyst for various forms of climate change activism. This paper unpacks the contradictory ideological and cultural work performed by the film with reference to what we describe as un geste suffit; that is, those gestures that merely perform individual agency in order to connect the formulation of personal ethical identity to communal forms of political activism like environmentalism. Through a close reading of the presentation of Gore’s persona in the film itself, and research which tracks the reception and political efficacy of the film, the paper contributes to the growing body of scholarship on the politics of environmental/scientific communication. Finally, we locate our reading of Gore’s film within a contemporary context by making reference to the way An Inconvenient Truth is both resistant to and complicit with the environmental policies of the Trump administration.

The Bernhardt of Scandinavia: Betty Nansen’s Modern Breakthrough

The cinema of the 1910s witnessed the birth of the film star, modelled after theatrical strategies that were spearheaded by actresses of international renown such as Sarah Bernhardt. She can be seen to have given birth to the notion of ‘famous players in famous plays’ in 1912, though in Denmark, the influential Nordisk Films Kompagni had already invested more extensively in marketing the appeal of theatrical stars that crossed over into the realm of film by this time. I will trace how Nordic drama was marketed internationally by analysing the trajectory of one of the most important, yet undervalued, actresses of the time, Betty Nansen (1873–1943) – also known as the Bernhardt of Scandinavia. Nansen was the model for the new ‘post-Ibsen’ female in Scandinavian society, both on and off the stage, and additionally a key example of how theatre and film uniquely managed to bridge the gap in Denmark. Betty Nansen’s stage and screen work reinforced each other, from the Danish Royal Theatre to the American Fox Film Corporation, and to managing her own theatre in Copenhagen, the still extant Betty Nansen Teatret.

Deeptime: Breath and the Look of Non-Art

The first chapter charts a chronological parallel between Samuel Beckett’s piece Breath (1969), as a representative piece of minimalism in the theatre (one of the shortest stage pieces ever written and staged), and Fried’s writing in 1967 of “Art and Objecthood” in an attempt to formulate a basic framework for thinking about the intersection of critical discourses on theatricality in the visual arts and the theatre, specifically about the notion of anti-theatricalism in the theatre and the modernist anti-theatrical impulse in the visual arts. The chapter demonstrates these claims by juxtaposing Michael Fried's polemics of theatricality and Beckett's anti-theatrical strategies. Samuel Beckett is a playwright who attempted to formulate an art theory and Michael Fried is perceived as a modernist art critic, who has written about the theatre and has criticized theatricality. The focus of this chapter is on how the “Three Dialogues” can be applied to a work like Breath, so as to illuminate specific aspects of the playlet, principally, Beckett's decision to eradicate the text and the human figure, hence, the interest lies in the ways that Beckettian aesthetics translates into practice.

Brecht’s Anti-Theatricality? Reflections on Brecht’s Place in Michael Fried’s Conceptual Framework

In ‘Art and Objecthood’ (1967), Michael Fried articulates an uncompromising rejection of the theatre. His critique reaches as far as to expel the theatre from the realm of the arts and excludes it from the Modernist project. However, he exempts two theatre vanguardists from his argument, Bertolt Brecht and Antonin Artaud, who in his view developed anti-theatrical strategies as part of their aspirations to reform the theatre. This article examines whether Fried’s inclusion of Brecht into his anti-theatrical paradigm was justified or whether it was mere appropriation. It furthermore probes into Fried’s category of anti-theatricality within the conceptual framework of Brecht’s dramaturgical reflections and its validity as a key marker of Modernism.

Terrorist Puzzle

Focusing on Małgorzata Sikorska-Miszczuk's play "Death of the Squirrel-Man," the article traces the complex relationship between terror, theatre, and the archive, as well as the power of the myth of the Red Army Faction. The author analyzes the theatrical strategies of reusing archival materials and the potential of using them critically.

Community Building within a Festival Frame: Working-Class Celebrations in Germany, 1918–1933

The concept of festival can help to understand the framework within which political community building took place in Germany in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century and the methods employed in doing so. Political communities were established within different kinds of cultural performances such as gatherings, demonstrations, party conventions, and – most frequently – political celebrations, which obtained a festival-like structure. Referring to examples from the labour movement, this article examines different techniques of creating communities and discusses the impact of theatrical strategies and certain types of theatre in this crucial field of modern politics.

“We Know We Belong to the Land”: The Theatricality of Assimilation in Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma!

In the early twentieth century, a period of mass immigration, Jewish assimilation into mainstream American society was largely a theatrical venture. The musical theater, a predominantly Jewish field that portrayed a variety of American experiences, offers powerful illustrations of theatrical strategies of Jewish assimilation. The groundbreaking Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Oklahoma! (1943), created during one of the most anti-Semitic periods in United States history, exemplifies how ethnic outsiders demonized a racial other in an effort to be considered white and thus to be included in the utopian (theatrical) community of America.