Theatrical Context Research Articles

Developing a dramatic analysis of conflict transformation: in what way can Stanislavski’s magic ‘if’ be a stimulus to peacebuilding?

ABSTRACT“Relationship, paradoxical curiosity, creativity and risk” are four elements identified John Paul Lederach as necessary for peacebuilding and conflict transformation. The ability to imagine a web of relationships, to be curious about people and their lives as well as being able to image the “other” and take risks are all qualities actors learn through studying Stanislavski’s methodology. Based on the first stage of a research project with LAMDA acting students in their second year of drama training this paper explores what Stanislavski’s teachings of “given circumstances” and the magic “if” can contribute to the world of conflict transformation. Actors learn to transfer their skills and apply them to work outside the theatre context, which in turn help them reflect on their own development as actors. This paper investigates the intersection of Stanislavski-based actor training and peacebuilding discovering actors’ transferable skills and exploring areas such as the multiple perspectives and complex interrelated dynamics of conflict, our positionality, the potential to transform interdependent relationships, and the tools to analyse and transform narratives. It examines how the magic “if” can stimulate deeper understanding and help make the imaginative creative leap necessary to find transcendent solutions to complex conflicts.

Andrea Pozzo and the Jesuit “Theatres” of the Seventeenth Century

Considered within the context of Jesuit theatre and liturgy, and within the broader culture of spectacle and ritual in the era of Counter-Reform, the works of art and architecture commissioned by the Jesuits in the seventeenth century can be read as “theatres” of religious performance. This concept is given an ideal case study in the work of Jesuit artist Andrea Pozzo (1642–1709). In this essay I present Pozzo’s work within the context of ritual and prayer for which it was produced, focusing on two of his religious scenographies and two of his lesser-known painting projects. As I consider their use of allegory, emblems and symbols, visual narratives, spatial illusions, and architecture, I argue that both the scenographies and the permanent church decorations achieve persuasion through the engagement of the observer as a performer in a ritual involving both internal and external performance.

Batch and data streaming classification models for detecting adverse events and understanding the influencing factors

Constructing effective models for detecting, reducing, and/or preventing adverse events is very important in domains such as aviation safety, healthcare, drug administration, and war theaters. This study presents batch and data streaming models to detecting adverse events using data from a war theater context. In all the previous studies, regression models and several machine learning techniques were used for predicting continuous values in an active theater of war, and the error values reported on the test sets were large. In order to overcome the shortcoming, this study investigates the effectiveness of batch and data streaming classification algorithms in detecting or classifying adverse events given infrastructure development spending data and other variables in an active theater of war in Afghanistan. By the feature selection, the valid input variables are obtained and their indexes show that the input variables are mainly the adverse events (t-1) at the previous month, the population densities and related project investments. From the country level, fewer of the 14 project investments affect the adverse events. From the region level, some projects with higher index values, such as Security in the South Western region, Energy and Emergency Assistance in the North Eastern region, and Education in the Eastern region are mainly affecting factors. Three batch classification methods and three data streaming classification methods were assessed for their ability to detect adverse events given infrastructure development data. The study uses cost-sensitive measures to address the very unbalanced nature of the data and it applies variable reduction techniques to identify significant variables. The three batch classification algorithms are C4.5, k-nearest Neighbor, and Support Vector Machine. The three data streaming algorithms are Naïve Bayes, Hoeffding Tree, and Single Classifier Drift. In general, the performance of the cost-sensitive methods in the batch setting is comparable to those in the data stream setting. However, in the batch setting the cost matrix needs to be adjusted manually. In contrast the data stream setting allows one to adjust the models based on the analysis of the classifiers’ performance over time and changing data distribution. The Kappa values using Naïve Bayes are the highest in the three data stream algorithms in the whole country and its regions. The Naïve Bayes classifier has the best global performance. By the Kappa statistic curve, we can observe the concept drifts. In a region level, many models have a better performance including more investments related to project compared with those in a country level. In addition as data distribution becomes more balanced, the classifiers in the data stream setting outperform in terms of the overall classification rates in comparison to the classifiers in the batch setting. The results thus demonstrate the potential of data streaming algorithms to significantly outperform when the data become less unbalanced, and can be used for detecting adverse events in similar areas.

Putting on the New Self

AbstractThis article argues that the principal background against which the clothing metaphor in Eph 4:22, 24 would have been understood by the letter’s original hearers is that of the theater, within which changes of costume signalled changes of identity, character, or fate. After a brief survey of recent scholarly commentaries (which pay surprisingly little attention to the possibility of a theatrical background to the metaphor in these verses) it highlights instances of similar expressions within Greco-Roman theatrical contexts, both literal and metaphorical, discusses the relevant aspects of ancient dramatic theory and practice, and explores the implications of this reading for theological interpretation of Ephesians.

Achieving a depth of character: long-form improv practices in US comedy podcast culture

This article examines the specificities of long-form improvised comedy performance (that is, long-form improv) within podcasting. It demonstrates how the podcast medium’s technologies, together with related cultural conventions, motivate performers to innovate long-form improv techniques distinct from those applied in theatrical contexts. So as to exemplify this process, the article draws on the content of the Los Angeles-based podcast network Earwolf, as well as from evidence of production pertaining to this content. With reference to Earwolf series including Comedy Bang! Bang!, Hollywood Handbook and With Special Guest Lauren Lapkus as examples, the article identifies and details three distinct long-form improv practices that podcasting contexts have influenced. These are: (1) the development of episode formats centred on interview and discussion; (2) the adoption of relaxed and informal approaches to performance; and, (3) the use of serialisation as a means to narratively link multiple separate recorded performances. Via this analysis, the article contributes to a nascent body of research concerning the increasingly prominent comedy podcast sector. Through examining long-form improv practices within podcasting contexts specifically, the article furthermore makes a unique contribution to the field of academic literature concerning improvised comedy.

Modern ethno-festivals of Kharkiv region: traditions, experience, today

The purpose of the article is to analyze the ethnic-festivals of Kharkiv region, to highlight the dynamics of development in the context of the modern festival movement of Ukraine. Methodology of the research lies in the use of such methods: cultural, comparative-historical; comparative and system analysis, which considers the festival as a complex structure, uses art-study approaches to the organization of festivals; elements of the art-study method for establishing the cultural-historical value of the festival as an artistic object; axiological, which is characterized by its specific focus on the development of value orientations of the audience, that determines the direction of human activity in the organization and holding of festival, the formulation of its goals and objectives. The scientific novelty of the results lies in formulation and study of the multifaceted problem of ethnic-festivals of the Kharkiv region, which requires a more detailed study of the Ukrainian art history science; in revealing the ratio of traditional culture and contemporary artistic practice. Conclusions. First, the analysis proved that Kharkiv occupies a special place in the general festival map of modern Ukraine. Second, the ethnocultural processes taking place in the region have already become an integral part of today's life; first of all, they are aimed at preserving the ethnic core of culture. Third, the ethnic-festivals of Kharkiv region have become a major event in the region, contributing to the restoration, revival, and preservation of the cultural heritage, in which the system of the unique, traditional culture of Slobozhanshchina is displayed and reconstructed. Fourth, the festival is a special type of artistic space, where the interconnection of different arts is realized, while traditional artistic forms and experimental forms of contemporary artistic practice interact simultaneously. Fifth, Ukrainian culture needs a review of current cultural processes, with a further interpretation of the best achievements of Ukrainian cultural heritage. Sixth, in the director’s creation of the general artistic imagery of the festivals, the theatrical context is a priority.

Theatricality and Absorption

How might theatricality and absorption, key terms of Michael Fried’s (1998 [1967]) Art and Objecthood, be repurposed in relation to developments in theatre practice and politics? Fried is concerned that theatricality is a problem for painting and sculpture, which should instead absorb the spectator into transcendence. Fried writes during a transition between modernist abstract expressionism and minimalism, approaches to visual art that he describes as respectively absorbing or distancing the spectator. Although Fried writes of painting and sculpture, his discourse has crucial implications for theatre. Soon after Art and Objecthood, The Wooster Group and Robert Wilson draw on a healthy context of anti-theatrical theatre as well as performance and visual art to develop new aesthetics. Rigorously analysing theatre practice rather than painting and sculpture alone reveals the paradoxical complexity of how theatricality and absorption are interrelated processes. The aesthetic analysis is here originally underpinned by a politics of representation in relation to more recent thinking concerning neurodiversity, ecology, racism and capitalist mediation. These four principles guide the politics of representation that create the conditions for theatricality and absorption. Following a brief reading of Art and Objecthood, analysis of practice by The Wooster Group and Robert Wilson provides insight into theatricality and absorption and their politics of representation. The intersections of aesthetic and political processes proliferate in such a way that requires a paradoxical appreciation of their different and changing systems. The significance of such insight is that theatricality and absorption operate interdependently in relation to political structures.

Un altro ordine del tempo

During the last decade there has been a radical rethink, in the European context of both theatre and performing arts, on how a performance or a spectacle is narrated and enjoyed. Artists like Milo Rau, Tino Sehgal, Marten Spangberg, Rabih Mrouè, Amir Reza Koohestani, and Richard Maxwell structure their practices on a reflection about the concept of time and on how it can be returned on stage. A different order of time is the second chapter of a three-parts essay focused on the analysis of the artists' works; the essay aims to create a dialogue between the artistic works and the actual point of the debate about time through a philosophical, scientific and social perspective. How does performing arts design the relationship between time and our evolution as individuals today? In which manner the collective tale configures itself through this artistic, utopian narrative? And what about the analysis tools we might need to effectively enjoy these works?

Perfume

This article provides an insight into my final-year project, Perfume, created as part of the Costume with Textiles course at the University of Huddersfield, comprising the design and construction of a costume for a theatre adaptation of Patrick Süskind’s novel Perfume: The Story of a Murderer. Initially, the analysis of the underlying literature, i.e. the script and its key themes, including the motives of identity and scent, built the foundation for the project Perfume. Additional literature research into cultural, historical and artistic influences, as well as practical experiments, influenced the design, textile and making process of a costume that uniquely unites both eighteenth-century period construction and interactive technology. Ultimately, the costume construction reaches completion in its final disintegration. This article explores this alleged contradiction and, as a result, the modifications necessary to make my project work in a practical theatre context. Despite these conflicts, the project succeeds in combining traditional and new craftsmanship, bridging the fields of costume, art and technology in an innovative way.

Jacqueries: Mind Games, Street Action, and the Art of the Heist

Choreographer, film-maker, and software developer Jacob Niedzwiecki describes the process of creating Jacqueries, a site-specific, promenade-style, dance/theatre work. Niedzwiecki reveals the discoveries made and the challenges faced by the project’s creative team as they applied the concept of information asymmetry in a theatrical context. The work’s vocabulary integrates movement from contemporary dance and parkour, as well as gestures from American Sign Language. Its dramaturgy has small groups of audience using a custom-built iPhone app to follow characters through dense urban spaces in a heist narrative with a political edge. Niedzwiecki’s Cohort code framework synchronizes playback of music (via headphones), video, and augmented reality on mobile devices for audience, cast, and crew. Jacqueries is an example of using off-the-shelf mobile technology to build an immersive, intimate theatrical experience in outdoor, urban locales.

Conrad’s Drama: Contemporary Reviews and Observations ed. by John G. Peters

Reviewed by: Conrad’s Drama: Contemporary Reviews and Observations ed. by John G. Peters Agnieszka Adamowicz-Pośpiech (bio) Conrad’s Drama: Contemporary Reviews and Observations. Edited by John G. Peters. Leiden and Boston: Brill Rodopi, 2019; xxxii + 483 pp. ISBN: 9799004399099. The indispensable “Conrad Studies” series from Brill Rodopi has become one of two key publishing sources for Conradians, the other being Cambridge University Press. Now has arrived the eleventh volume of the series entitled Conrad’s Drama, edited by John G. Peters. The name of the editor needs no introduction. Suffice it to say that he has produced such invaluable compendia [End Page 117] as Joseph Conrad’s Critical Reception and The Cambridge Introduction to Joseph Conrad, among others. At the start of the book, Peters notes that it is “meant as companion to Joseph Conrad: The Contemporary Reviews” (xxvii) for which he edited the second volume. Indeed, Conrad’s Drama is a supplement to this series but first and foremost it is the continuation of the pioneering research in the field of Conrad’s playwriting and its reception carried out by Richard Hand and published as Victory: The Play and Reviews (2009). Hand’s monograph comprises annotated contemporary reviews, the censor’s report, and production photographs, and was published as the fourth volume of Rodopi’s Conrad Studies series. The present volume is clearly organized according to publication or performance of the play and, within these divisions, by geography, including United Kingdom, United States, and elsewhere (and indeed we do get reviews from all over the world, except Poland, which I shall discuss later). It also provides several production photographs. One point that needs to be clarified at the outset is the qualifier “contemporary,” which for the editor posed “a vexed problem” (xxvii). Contrary to The Contemporary Reviews series, Peters adopted a broader understanding of the word which permitted him to include later reviews and notices. It seems a wise decision since the readers receive an almost complete compilation of all the reviews published as late as 1935. What is more, even later performances and their reviews (up to 2003) are listed in an appendix (426–37) to guide scholars interested in later reception. Unlike the Cambridge series, Peters minutely annotated the reviews, providing extensive explanatory notes clarifying the names of the actors/actresses, theater directors and producers, playwrights, novelists, and critics as well as numerous titles of books, plays, magazines, etc. While hardly anyone today knows who Edward William Betts or Edmonia Nolley were, the explanation of such names as Chekhov, Ibsen, or Strindberg comes as a surprise. Similarly, explicating such rudimentary drama terms as the Aristotelian unities or a well-made play seems unnecessary. Yet the majority of the notes attest to the impeccable scholarship of Peters and open a window for the readers through which they can observe and fully understand the theatrical, literary, and critical contexts of Britain at the beginning of the twentieth century. The book compiles the reviews and notices of stage and radio performances and publications of three plays: One Day More, The Secret Agent, and Laughing Anne. Moreover, there are reviews referring to Conrad’s translation of Winawer’s drama The Book of Job. The volume’s chapter-headings provide a clear indication of the subject covered, e.g.: One Day More: BBC Radio Production 1929; [End Page 118] The Secret Agent: Benrimo and Associates (London) 1922; Laughing Anne & One Day More: John Castle 1924, Doubleday 1925. The Introduction opens with a rather baffling statement that Conrad as a dramatist “attracted only modest attention from scholars inspiring only a handful of articles and one monograph” (xxx), which, to my mind, is not the case and can be easily contradicted by the bibliography provided at the end of the volume. Since 2000, we can observe a steady growth of interest in Conrad’s plays, starting with Hand’s texts (“Conrad and The Reviewers” [2001], “Producing Laughing Anne” [2002], “Conrad’s Drama in a World Theatrical Context” [2005], among others), his groundbreaking monograph The Theatre of Joseph Conrad (2005), followed by Conrad’s Victory, and the co-edited collection of essays Joseph Conrad and the Performing Arts (2009); as well as...

Traditional games and child-centred development: affirming disabled and female bodies in applied theatre projects in Zimbabwe

Traditional/indigenous children’s games are yet to be appreciated as sites of critical engagement. The limited available literature on traditional children’s games is mainly focused on the deployment of traditional games in the teaching of conventional curriculum subjects. On the other hand, applied theatre projects appear to mainly rely on ‘foreign’ games. Curiously, there seems to be bias towards theatre games from North America, South America and Western Europe. We concede that, to an extent, the deployment of foreign games has revolutionized and radicalized applied theatre practice in Zimbabwe. However, there is hardly any serious scholarship that examines implications of infusing traditional children’s games within gender and disability discourse for child-centred development. This article addresses the extent to which applied theatre practitioners may appropriate traditional children’s games in the quest to deploy theatre as a site of critical engagement against pervasive hegemonies such as masculinity, neo-colonialism and ableism that may impede on human-/child-centred development. Drawing from Africana Womanism and Critical Disability Theory, we argue that although currently few applied theatre practitioners are deploying traditional children’s games, there is scope for appropriating and contextualizing traditional games in subverting imposed ableist and gendered hegemonies. Applied theatre projects can offer space to recover the rich intangible heritage that is embodied in traditional games. Having established that indigenous African children’s games affirm the material body in general, we recognize the potential of applied theatre contexts to act as sites of taping from the wisdom of the past in order to invent the future in which Africa/Zimbabwean children are proud of their bodily realities as centres of human growth and self-construction.

Time to compile: A performance installation as human-robot interaction study examining self-evaluation and perceived control

Abstract Embodied art installations embed interactive elements within theatrical contexts and allow participating audience members to experience art in an active, kinesthetic manner. These experiences can exemplify, probe, or question how humans think about objects, each other, and themselves. This paper presents work using installations to explore human perceptions of robot and human capabilities. The paper documents an installation, developed over several months and activated at distinct venues, where user studies were conducted in parallel to a robotic art installation. A set of best practices for successful collection of data over the course of these trials is developed. Results of the studies are presented, giving insight into human opinions of a variety of natural and artificial systems. In particular, after experiencing the art installation, participants were more likely to attribute action of distinct system elements to non-human entities. Post treatment survey responses revealed a direct relationship between predicted difficulty and perceived success. Qualitative responses give insight into viewers’ experiences watching human performers alongside technologies. This work lays a framework for measuring human perceptions of humanoid systems – and factors that influence the perception of whether a natural or artificial agent is controlling a given movement behavior – inside robotic art installations.

Сегодня мы импровизируем: метод Н. Ф. Скарской в контексте раннесоветской театральной самодеятельности

Сегодня мы импровизируем: метод Н. Ф. Скарской в контексте раннесоветской театральной самодеятельности

On the Question of the History of the First Professional Theatre in Slovakia

The article is devoted to the history of the birth and formation of the first professional theater in Slovakia – the Slovak national theater, covering the period from 1918 to 1938. The author focuses on the activities of the first leaders and directors who formed the artistic image and concept of the theater, as well as the influence that various foreign directors and theater schools had on it. The author emphasizes the role of Czech theatrical figures (Bedřich Jeřabek and the troupe of his East Bohemian Theatre, Milan Zuna, Oskar Nedbal, Viktor Šulc, etc.) in the formation of drama and opera troupes of the Slovak national theater, and in their choice of repertoire and artistic language. It was extremely important for the first Slovak theater to build a repertoire in the national language, but this process was quite slow because of the small number of original Slovak dramas and high-quality translations of foreign plays. Only after the arrival in the theater in the second half of the twenties of director Václav Jiřikovský, head of the literary part of Tido J. Gaspar, and later actor and director Janko Borodač, did the Slovak repertoire began to expand significantly. The very cosmopolitan cultural environment of Bratislava, as well as the division of the dramatic troupe of the theater into Slovak and Czech (1932) caused rivalry, surprise and provocation among the directors and artists. As a result, the Slovak theatre itself was gradually formed, and the first Slovak theatrical figures became known. In the future, this allowed the young Slovak theater to join the broad context of the European avant-garde theater and ensure that its original voice was finally heard throughout the world.

Robot Opera: Bridging the Anthropocentric and the Mechanized Eccentric

Abstract The recent emergence of robot opera, in which robots and robotic entities have served polyvalent and at times ontologically ambiguous roles, has challenged the distinction made by Bauhaus artist László Moholy-Nagy between anthropocentric and mechanized eccentric theater, as is outlined in his 1924 essay “Theater, Circus, Variety.” When incorporated into the context of music theater, is the robot dimension intended to replace human activities and modes of expression; to augment, disembody or dislocate them; or rather to absorb them, such that the robot becomes an ersatz human presence in and of itself? If the latter, does the robot adequately emulate human attributes of musical expression, or does it establish its own artificial expressive mode and set of performance techniques? With Moholy-Nagy's criteria for a so-called Theater of Totality and these leading questions in the background, salient robot opera examples of the past several years will be discussed. Repertoire examples include Tod Machover's pioneering Death and the Powers (2010), the Komische Oper Berlin production My Square Lady (2015), Keiichiro Shibuya's Scary Beauty (2018), and works emerging from the University of Sussex Centre for Research in Opera and Music Theatre Robot Opera Mini Symposium, held in 2017.

A afetividade e ludicidade nos estudos étnico-raciais nas escolas municipais de Beberibe-CE: uma desconstrução do preconceito racial

Este artigo tem como objetivo discutir o preconceito étnico-racial por meio da afetividade e ludicidade no contexto educativo do teatro. Ao participarem da encenação das peças teatrais, os alunos ficam motivados a aprender, o que lhes permitem construir seus próprios conhecimentos, e, ao mesmo tempo, se identificarem com a história e cultura da população negra. As escolas municipais incentivadas pelo Projeto Beberibe Multicor desenvolvem o teatro como uma ferramenta educativa, que tem contribuído com a autoafirmação das identidades dos sujeitos e melhoria da autoestima, e, por conseguinte, da aprendizagem. Acredita-se que seja possível desconstruir por meio da afetividade e ludicidade as práticas racistas e preconceituosas nas escolas. Por fim, é necessário que tomemos consciência dessa triste realidade que ainda vivenciam os negros e afro-brasileiros nessa sociedade que exclui pela diferença.

Race and politics in the twentieth-century Black American play: Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun

The article is written in the light of critical whiteness studies and the critical discourse regarding the political implications of literary works. It deals with Lorraine Hansberry’s play A Raisin in the Sun, which I position within the context of black American radical theatre. In particular, the article will show how Hansberry’s theatrical rhetoric challenges the public dynamics of racial separation and performs an ongoing role in destabilising the assumptions about the legitimacy of the reproduction of colonial differences.

Merging the arts of song and dance

To learn, acquire knowledge, and develop skills is an embodied process. In this article, the authors argue that merging the fields of song and dance is dependent on a deeper understanding of how the mind and the body interact, and they utilize the concept of enactive cognition to explain these processes. The authors maintain that students need insight into these processes in order to improve their learning and, consequently, their performance. Retrospective examples taken from three educational situations within the musical theatre context elucidate the discussion of the concepts of alignment and breathing. These frequently used concepts are often a source of confusion and misunderstanding for the student. To alleviate this, a stronger, interdisciplinary dialogue among the singing and dance teachers who are involved in the genre of musical theatre needs to be developed. The authors suggest collaborative teaching as a means to develop the teaching methods and as the pathway to attaining a common base when integrating the skills of singing and dancing.

Слепая Красавица: судьба актрисы

This paper offers a study of the theatrical context of Boris Pasternak’s unfinished play Blind Beauty (Slepaia Krasavitsa, 1959–1960). One of the storylines of the play is the history of two actors (man and woman) of a Russian serf theatre in 1860. I examine the serf actress Stepanida Surep’eva, first, as model for a female destiny and poetic art à la Tsvetaeva; and, second, as a figure whose life and theatrical art are associated with the lives and roles of two of the best known actresses of Soviet theatre of the 1930s–1950s: Alisa Koonen (Phaedra) and Zinaida Reich (Marguerite Gautier in La dame aux camélias).