Less Is More: Audience Cognition of Comic Simplification in the Characters of Peking Opera

A simplified approach was used to determine if “Less is More” is still a trend in comics’ Peking opera characters. There were 225 website volunteers who took part in the study. Via a questionnaire survey and analysis, this study explored the feasibility of “simplification” in comedy. The results indicate that the proposed “simplifying” approach can be applied to the creation of dramatic characters, but the scale of simplification must be adjusted flexibly to suit different subjects. For audiences, there is not much recognition and sympathy for the works that are simplified in the extreme and the current symbolization. The simplification used in this study is merely the first step in testing the usefulness of simplification as an approach. It is used as a means of understanding the cognition of the audience to accept the simple features of Peking opera characters. In subsequent studies, the proposed “simplified” approach is necessary to adapt and improve with a view to practical application. It also requires an in-depth analysis of the cognitive differences of the different participants according to the cognitive and communication theories of artistic creation.

Blanche and Stanley, polar opposites. A pragmastylistic analysis of interactions from Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire

The paper is an attempt at demonstrating how the language used by fictional dramatic characters contributes to their characterization, that is, how the readers (audiences) perceive them based on inferences drawn from a variety of textual cues. These cues include explicit selfand other-presentation as well as implicit hints retrieved from conversation structure, aspects of turn-taking or features of the language used by the character. In this paper, Blanche DuBois and Stanley Kowalski from Tennessee Williams’ play The Streetcar Named Desire are analyzed and characterized as being polar opposites.

can you hear me? by Simona Semenič and the question of no-longer-dramatic writing

In the article, the author analyses three plays by Simona Semenič that were published in the book can you hear me? (2017). At first sight, the three pieces appear to be written in Semenič’s now-familiar writing style with no punctuation marks or upper-case initials and no apparent division between dialogues and stage directions. Content-wise, however, the three plays differ significantly from the bulk of the playwright’s opus as they represent autobiographical texts which once again establish the character and more or less distinct dramatic action. The article focuses on two questions: Are these still no-longer-dramatic texts? And, what is the status of representation and performativity in them? By analysing the formal and content properties of the three texts, more precisely, through an analysis of the drama character, the relationship between dialogue and monologue and dramatic action, the author shows that indeed these texts establish recognisable dramatic characters and relatively strong dramatic action. In this, they move away from no-longer- dramatic texts as defined by Gerda Poschmann, even though their legacy is still very much present, e.g., in the fragmented writing style.

Alan Bennett’s The Old Country (1977) and An Englishman Abroad (1983)

Theatre critic Michael Billington has spoken of Alan Bennett’s ‘peculiar radical nostalgia’ and described him as ‘a writer who believes in progress but who is irrevocably attached to his country’s cultural inheritance; and it’s specifically England, rather than Britain, that stirs his deepest sympathy’. This chapter analyses the radical nostalgia of two of Bennett’s dramatic characters, both traitors in exile: the Audenesque Hilary in The Old Country, who many people assumed was based on Kim Philby, and Guy Burgess in An Englishman Abroad. It probes the seeming paradox at the core of both plays, that these Soviet defectors continue imaginatively to inhabit, and long for, the country they betrayed. The chapter ends by quoting George Orwell’s essay The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius, in which he explains the nagging resilience of Englishness—something that leaves an indelible mark on the traveller and the traitor alike, the way Ithaca left its mark on Odysseus.

“Show the Clichés:” the Appearance of Happiness in Agnès Varda’s Le Bonheur

Le Bonheur, perhaps Agnès Varda’s most beautiful film, is also her most perplexing. The film’s insistently idyllic surface qualities, overtly beautiful imagery, and psychologically impenetrable, improbably content characters mystify and confuse. Of late, feminist scholars have clarified the situation, noting Varda’s incorporation of advertising and pop cultural visual rhetoric to implicate the social forces framing the picture and those insistently “happy” people: more like advertising ciphers than dramatic characters. Varda herself referenced Impressionist painting as a source of the film’s aesthetics. The purposes of this vivid, chromatic intertextual and intermedial source, in relation to the rhetoric of commercial and popular culture, demand attention. Varda studied art history and connected the milieu of Le Bonheur, the Parisian exurbs, their petit-bourgeois and working-class populace, and bucolic leisure, artisanal and industrial settings, to the modernity of 19th-century Impressionism. Le Bonheur uses an Impressionist picturesque dialectically, in relation to a pop contemporaneity, to observe and critique an ideological genealogy of capitalism and its oppression of women.

DRAMATIC EXPRESSIVENESS OF THE LANGUAGE OF FOLK CHARACTER DANCE IN CLASSICAL HERITAGE BALLETS

The article focuses on the phenomenon of folk character dance, which is a unique feature of Russian art, traces the key stages in the development of folk character dance in Russian ballet and identifies the sources that served as the basis for its figurative language. It is noted that the language of folk character dance is the creative fruit of many choreographers, whose works in the XXIst century are perceived as vivid examples of heritage. The author reviews the specificity of imagery in folk character dance currently existing in classical ballet repertoire. Significant attention is paid to the subtleties of depicting national characters when creating dance images of various ethnic groups. The author also considers the characteristic visualization in folk character dance, highlighting and describing distinctive features of a number of national characters more frequently implemented by the language of folk character dance in classical ballet and opera choreography of Russian music theatres. The article substantiates the idea that underestimating the potential of the language of folk character dance as means of expressiveness in ballet theatre leads to limitations for the new generation of choreographers striving to create realistic and truthful dramatic characters, depriving them of national distinction. In her research, the author aims to actualize the question of preservation of national character on the Russian ballet stage in the XXIst century.

A Probe into the Fate of Women in the Evolution of Society—A Brief Analysis of Amanda in Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie

Tennessee Williams is the most famous southern American playwright in twentieth century (Adler, 1994). He is known for his strong southern cultural background, especially southern women educated in a traditional gentlewoman style. The southern women of Tennessee believed that their traditional culture was the essence of human civilization and therefore of considerable value. However, such values could not be recognized in the modern industrial society. Most of these women were sensitive and tender, suffering from industrialized society, full of all sorts of evils, and they had turned to traditional culture to seek mental peace and shelter for the moment, so they again became a lonely and frustrated. While they refused to change their cultural identity, they had to live in a modern, industrialized society that did not belong to them. Therefore, they were regarded as people living in the cultural gap, and eventually became the victims of the confrontation between traditional southern culture and modern industrial culture. As one of the most contradictory and dramatic characters in the play, Amanda is also one of the unique images of women in American drama. As Tennessee said when introducing the characters in the play, “the portrayal of Amanda is by no means derived from a specific archetype”.

The Difficult Dialogues of Reforming Issues in Yemen’s Drama, A Case Study of TV Series Hami Hamak, And Foursa Akhirah: الحوارات الصعبة لقضايا الإصلاح في الدراما اليمنية، دراسة حالة لمسلسلي همي همك، وفرصة أخيرة

This study aimed to identify the reality of Yemeni TV drama, through the drama’s lens as an art form of reform issues via a difficult dialogue perspective, in order to monitor the hubs of difficult dialogues through reforming issues, qualitative approach of case study through the analytical observation of a total of eighty-seven episodes were used, the study has reached a number of results, most important of which were: the occupation of political reform issues had a prominent position in the dramatic presentation among the native drama production compared to other reforming issues such as economic or social reform issues, at the other hand self-empowerment of the other were the main expression between the dramatic characters axis of the main dialogues in both cases, while diversity has been noted in addressing verity of reform issues despite the genera differences, the major dialogues were reflected in the form of "What Happened?" in both cases. The study has concluded that; the Yemeni TV drama has reflected a multiple reforming issues in Yemen’s society, especially the political reform issues, by presenting difficult dialogues in a similar environment to the reality despite the differs of a reformist issues importance. the researcher has envisioned the future of Yemeni drama to remain presence locally before it gets the importunity to cross geographical boundaries at a significant level due to many factors, perhaps the most important one is the diversity of local dialects in Yemen.

Issues in preventing mother-to-child transmission of HIV: a liberal humanist reading of Song of a Goat

This article examines the issues in preventing mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT) of HIV in rural communities in Nigeria. It assesses the cultural practices that propel mother-to-child-transmission (MTCT) vis-à -vis their implications on development. It uses J.P Clark’s play, Song of a Goat as a premise to argue that the dramatic characters in the play as well as traditional symbols and idiolects embody diverse tropes which touch on the components of PMTCT such as stigmatisation, gender inequality and discrimination of persons living with HIV. It further contends that the in/action of the dramatic characters in the play’s plot as well as some aspects of the thematic thrusts convey diverse perspectives which community workers should consider in designing, with participation of beneficiary communities, communication strategies for effective public health awareness campaign and PMTCT intervention programmes. The paper uses liberal humanism as a theoretical bastion to maintain that cultural practices are catalysts that are capable of increasing or reducing PMTCT across rural communities in Nigeria. It concludes that intervention workers should as well look in the direction of play-texts to understand the cultural dynamics at play in apprehending the extant realities in communities and working with the people to reflect on their contexts with a view to forging ways that can instigate behavioural change. Keywords: PMTCT, Liberal humanism, Dramatic characters, HIV, Impotence, Infidelity

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.