How far does the sound of a Pipa carry? Broadway adaptation of a Chinese classical drama

The 1946 Broadway premiere of Lute Song represents a milestone in reception of the Chinese dramatic tradition in the United States. Despite its yellowface and ‘Oriental pageantry’, it must be situated at the beginnings of a more respectful relationship to China and Chinese people, as the American stage began to move beyond treatments of China dominated by racist vaudeville or fantastical fairy tales. Instead, Lute Song emerged from a classic text, the long drama Pipa ji ‐ even as its own casting and staging inherited some of the same problematic habits of representing Asia. Lute Song, one of several indirect adaptations of Chinese dramas in the American mid-century, represents a milestone as the first Broadway show inspired by American immigrant Chinatown theatre and the first Broadway musical to be based on Chinese classical drama, mediated through European Sinology.

The content values of Tuong art performance in the Southern area before 1945

Has been existed for a long time in the Southern area of Vietnam, Tuong art performance became the only unique spiritual dish in many centuries and leaving dozens of scripts of literary value. However, Tuong art performance is gradually losing its position due to many objective and subjective reasons. By studying the content values of classical drama, we can feel the beauty of Tuong art performance and understand more about this type of art. The content values of Tuong art performance have been interested in many researchers; however, they only stopped at studying Vietnamese Tuong generally or specific in some works such as Kim Thach ky duyen, Son hau… The researchers haven’t been a focus on exploiting the issues of the content values of Tuong art performance in the Southern area in general. So in this article, we want to have a general view of the content values of Tuong art performance in this area. The content values of Tuong art performance in the Southern area before 1945 was divided into three following parts: Elevating the values of loyalty, filial piety, virtuous wife, benevolence and righteousness; Criticizing the moral degeneracy of people in the society; Prasing the loyal love in the troubled times. But, because of material limitations, we just studied the content of Tuong in general based on existing documents, this article can not avoid shortcomings and limitations.

Translating Commonplace Marks in Gascoigne and Kinwelmersh's Jocasta

This essay locates the moment at which commonplace marks were ‘translated’ from printed classical texts into English vernacular drama in a manuscript of Gascoigne and Kinwelmersh's Jocasta, dated 1568. Based on a survey of the use of printed commonplace marks in classical drama between 1500 and 1568, it demonstrates that this typographical symbol was strongly associated with Greek tragedy, particularly Sophocles and Euripides, and hardly at all with Seneca. In light of this, it argues that the commonplace marks in the Jocasta manuscript should be read as a deliberate visual gesture towards Euripides. In this period, commonplace marks evoked printed Greek rather than Latin tragedy, and early modern readers might bring such associations to the English dramatic texts in which these marks also appeared, including the First Quarto of Hamlet (1603).

Michail Ugarov’s philosophy of theatre in his pre-doc plays (“The newspaper ‘Russian invalid’ dated july 18” and “The death of Ilya Ilyich”)

The article makes an attempt to analyze some selected plays of Mikhail Ugarov, the founder of the documentary Teatr.doc and the New Drama movement (“The Newspaper ‘Russian Invalid’ Dated July 18” and “The Death of Ilya Ilyich”). Although these plays were written in the so called «pre-doc» period and seem to be entirely different with respect to style and content from verbatim and New Drama aesthetics, they express Ugarov’s most important views on dramatic and theatre art formulated later. In these texts one can find philosophical ideas which subsequently formed the basis of documentary and modern dramatic theory. The author concludes that Ugarov’s early plays have mainly a metaliterary character and can be analyzed as an artistic manifesto in which the playwright elaborates the following ideas: negation of classical drama features (composition, action, character); the horizontal structure of the literary work; “zero-position”; cancellation of an event; rejection of grand narratives; rejection of the author’s will and self-expression; negating art as an entertainment; the documentary approach (attention to the details of everyday life). The author indicates that there is a certain contradiction in Ugarov’s doctrine – on the one hand, he admitted the primacy of the dramatic text over the director, on the other hand, - along with his work as a director and a teacher in the Teatr. doc, he ceased to write plays (after “The Death of Ilya Ilyich” Ugarov wrote only a remake-play, “The Masquerade”, in 2013). During this period he created mostly scenarios based on verbatim material. Therefore, the principle of a traditional dramatic work serving as basis for the theatre performance was being deconstructed, which makes it reasonable to relate the theatre aesthetics of Mikhail Ugarov to the postdramatic paradigm.

“THE CHERRY ORCHARD” BY ANTON CHEKHOV AND “THE ATONEMENT” BY IGNATY POTAPENKO: THE ARTISTIC INTERDEPENDENCE AND THE PLOT CORRESPONDENCE

It is generally recognized that the dramaturgy of Anton Chekhov had a significant impact on the theatre of the 20th century. At the same time, the question of the writer’s role in the playwright’s work of the turn of the 19th–20th centuries has been little studied in literature. Ignaty Potapenko is one of the most popular writers of the 1890s and a friend of Anton Chekhov. The article presents a comparative analysis of the plays – “The Cherry Orchard” by Anton Chekhov and “The Atonement” by Ignaty Potapenko – in which the same topic is revealed: the old nobiliary manors destruction. The plot and the conflict as the elements of writer’s dramatic method are considered. The main motifs of the plays are analysed. It is noted that the conflict of Ignaty Potapenkoʼs play is psychological and traditional for classical drama. There is no conflict between characters in “The Cherry Orchard”. The conflict is philosophical. The role of the double-characters in both plays is considered. It is proved that both plays are united by the motif of foreboding disaster, catastrophe. It is proved that both plays are united by the motif of disaster and catastrophe premonition, existence of the internal and external plot. The ideological and thematic unity of the plays, the interconnection of some motifs, plot and compositional elements were discovered. It is shown that in the play by Ignaty Potapenko there are elements of both classical drama and the “new drama”.

THE ANCIENT RECEPTION OF AESCHYLEAN SATYR PLAY

In this article, I first discuss the reception of Aeschylus’ satyr plays in classical drama, the evidence for their reperformance, and their place in ancient criticism and scholarship. In the final section, I analyze the factors that contributed to the positive reputation of Aeschylean satyr play. Although the evidence is often very limited, I attempt to establish a framework for understanding this ancient reception. Here I propose that the importance placed on satyr play in Aeschylus’ reception in antiquity can be viewed as an extension of his image as the father of tragedy, through both the association of satyr play with the origins of tragedy and its place in the tetralogy.

An Interlude

There are two phenomena that are most frequently mentioned in discussions of the fourth-century dramatic chorus: the presence of a scribal mark, χοροῦ‎ or χοροῦ μέλος‎, in the traditions of textual transmission of later classical drama, and Aristotle’s criticism of choral odes, labelling them embolima. Chapters 1 to 4 displayed all the positive evidence for the presence and activity of the chorus in fourth-century drama, and Chapter 5 considers these two phenomena in a new light. Returning to the very basics of how both χοροῦ‎ and embolimon might be understood, and noting how and why traditional interpretations of the terms have come about, this chapter seeks to reconfigure current understanding of the development of the fourth-century dramatic chorus. It is seen that it is possible to reinterpret the two phenomena and align their use in antiquity with the rest of the book’s positive evidence.