Dramatic Authors Research Articles

Arthur Rimbaud et l’expressionnisme dramatique

Arthur Rimbaud and Dramatic Expressionism The aim of this paper is to analyse some characteristics of the art of poetry by Rimbaud in the context of dramatic expressionism. The expressionist movement seems in fact to have inherited some concepts and motifs from the new aesthetic introduced by Rimbaud (poetic language revolution, a very personal vision of art where all the elements of the fictional world seem subordinated to fluctuations of the author’s psyche, subjectivism which abolishes the rules of the Aristotle’s mimesis, etc.). This new analytic perspective is particularly interesting because we can easily find realisation of the Rimbaudian vision of the new art of poetry in some pieces by such expressionist dramatic authors as Strindberg, Lenormand or Pellerin.

Um Carro, queimado, na berma da estrada: a experiência de um laboratório de escrita para teatro

Este texto faz o balanço do Laboratório de Escrita para Teatro, promovido pelo Teatro Nacional D. Maria II (Lisboa), que coordenei de Setembro de 2015 a Setembro de 2019. Nesses quatro anos foram escritos vinte e três textos originais para teatro por vinte e três novos autores. O projecto surge integrado num programa mais lato de apoio a dramaturgias emergentes e ao incentivo à nova dramaturgia portuguesa, consistindo, neste caso, na aproximação de jovens autores dramáticos a processos de partilha, experimentação e colaboração que possam desafiar, influenciar e estimular a escrita original de um texto para teatro. Na primeira edição (2015/16) andámos em torno de “Um estado de excepção permanente”, sob a égide de Terry Eagleton (2003) e da ideia de que a dramaturgia contemporânea não tem outra hipótese senão dar conta do estado de guerra – um estado de excepção permanente – entre os indivíduos e as instituições de poder. Na segunda edição (2016/17) fomos questionando “A política de tudo”, num gesto de homenagem aos cem anos da Revolução de Outubro e de uma inquirição das contradições do século XX, inspirados pela lição de Alain Badiou (2005). Na terceira edição (2017/18) demorámo-nos n’ “O quotidiano do homem comum e outras coisas sem importância”, conduzidos pela reflexão de Jean-Pierre Sarrazac em torno da poética da dramaturgia contemporânea e das suas “microepopeias dos anónimos”. Na quarta edição (2018/19), quisemos “Interromper o real para a ele regressar”, confiando nos possíveis gestos políticos que o teatro pode compreender.

Le « théâtre d’évasion » de Gaston Baty, ou comment dépasser la sécularité

THE “ESCAPE THEATRE” OF GASTON BATY OR HOW TO OVERCOME SECULARITY In this article, we study the works of French playwrights from the 1920s and 1930s who adhere to Gaston Baty’s theatrical aesthetics, without explicitly declaring themselves as believers. While remaining wary of dogmas symbolized by the Church, writers such as Henri-René Lenormand, Simon Gantillon and Jean-Victor Pellerin note the loss of transcendence that inevitably leads “modern man” to his downfall. The rejection of the teaching of institutionalized religion does not mean a total disappearance of the sacred in their texts. In the face of demonic civilization, dramatic authors make a somewhat pessimistic diagnosis in search of remedies likely to fill the “ontological vacuum.” Undoubtedly, according to these writers, drama is the place where expectations and religious disappointments that agitate this tormented generation of the interwar period crystallize.

L’impossible réconciliation avec le passé : Desaparecido d’Enrique Lozano

This article consists in the study of a dramatic work considered as representative of the transition period that Colombia currently faces : Desaparecido, written in 2008 by Enrique Lozano, a contemporary author who won two national dramatic prizes. This play deals with the problem of reconciling the past from both in a dramatic and historical perspective. By its theme, it foreshadows some of the new issues brought by the signature of the peace deal – especially the reinsertion and the redemption of guerilleros– while refusing to engage in a definitive meaning. It is therefore symptomatic of the uncertainty of this historical time, but also of the artistic transition led by the new generation of dramatic authors to whom the playwright belongs, the generation of the constitution of 1991, that distances itself from the activist plays and leaves room for ambiguity.

Troy, Carthage and the Victorians: The Drama of Classical Ruins in the Nineteenth-Century Imagination by Rachel Bryant Davies

Reviewed by: Troy, Carthage and the Victorians: The Drama of Classical Ruins in the Nineteenth-Century Imagination by Rachel Bryant Davies David Mayer TROY, CARTHAGE AND THE VICTORIANS: THE DRAMA OF CLASSICAL RUINS IN THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY IMAGINATION. By Rachel Bryant Davies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018; pp. 402. Rachel Bryant Davies's Troy, Carthage and the Victorians is best recognized as a significant work of British cultural history. Davies has set herself the task of illuminating how the milieux and characters described in Homer's Iliad and Virgil's Aeneid percolated into varying levels of British understandings of the ancient world—both before and after Heinrich Schliemann identified the site of Troy in 1873. Her timeline extends from 1715 to 1912, from Alexander Pope's translation of the first volume of the Iliad to the publication of Mary Macgregor's The Story of Rome for Boys and Girls. Davies accomplishes her mission by concurrently interrogating, first, the debate as to whether historic Troy ever existed or whether it was the stuff of myth and poetic imagination; and, second, given this uncertainty, whether public money should be spent funding excavations. In pursuit of these concerns, she cites early maps which explicitly follow Homer's topography and discusses how these first attempts to locate Troy fed into scientific speculations about the new protocols of archaeology. She also explores how these concerns manifested in journalism and a range of publications—some reaching highbrow, formally educated readers, some leveled at middle-class and working-class readers—and in later chapters considers how painters and sculptors incorporated Troy and Carthage in their works. At the base of her cultural model is the British popular theatre. Here, she chronicles the diffusion and awareness of Troy and Carthage as they were depicted in numerous burlesque dramas. These stage pieces, set in the ancient classical world, were performed at venues ranging from the Surrey Theatre and Astley's Amphitheatre on the Thames' Southbank to the Olympic, Lyceum, Adelphi, and Strand theatres. These burlesques, intended to mock and parody dramas at the West End's "legitimate" playhouses, often travestied the behaviour and genders of Homeric heroes and deities, and often set transgressive lyrics to well-known airs and melodies from recent operas. An inevitable response to these parodies came from irate critics who questioned the education and class of the dramatic authors whom they repeatedly found grossly deficient in knowledge of Homer and Virgil. Indignant journalist-critics then went on to question the social classes of the audiences these dramas attracted. While some more understanding critics applauded the burlesques, other critics were overtly snobbish in their attacks upon dramatists and audiences. In response to the more hostile of these journalists, Davies is able to note the increase in educated or partly educated middle classes in the theatres—spectators who to some extent knew of the Iliad and for whom knowledge of the ancient world was too serious to ridicule. Yet to view onstage what was ordinarily revered suddenly turned into a matter of fun and mockery briefly condoned shocked relief and laughter. Davies understands that although these parodies mocked and to some degree temporarily diminished the original works, parodies also recovered and preserved and updated their subjects. This is a path marked by classicists Maria Wyke and Fiona Macintosh, by British historian Jeffrey Richards and, dare I say it, myself. All have found the British stage a means of integrating the ancient classical world within the Victorian topocosm. However, much of this earlier work focuses on the biblical world and on the Roman Empire. Davies is unique in concentrating on Troy and Carthage and, [End Page 400] although these cities had already been referenced in tragedy, such as Ambrose Philips's The Distress'd Mother, and opera in Henry Purcell and Nahum Tate's Dido and Aeneas, she is also unique in choosing burlesque dramas as the lens through which to view the diffusion of Homeric and Virgilian narratives. The material available for such a study is not uniformly available or necessarily reliable as evidence of how productions were staged. Burlesques written before the Theatres Act of 1843 were licensed by local magistrates rather than the Lord Chamberlain...

New Dramaturgies in Contemporary Vienna: Wiener Wortstaetten, Elfriede Jelinek’s Die Schutzbefohlenen, and Die schweigende Mehrheit

This article presents three distinct examples of Viennese theatre’s engagement with recent waves of migration and refuge-seeking: the collective Wiener Wortstaetten offers migrants and refugees a platform on which to present themselves as the authors of their own stories; Elfriede Jelinek’s Die Schutzbefohlenen, a rewriting of Aeschylus’s The Suppliants, was inspired by the eviction of refugees from the Votivkirche in Vienna; and the artistic collective Die schweigende Mehrheit opened up the stage to refugees as co-creators and actors in their production of Jelinek’s text. While these three cases represent different positions in the contemporary theatre scene and display distinct views on dramatic authorship, each demonstrates a firm belief in the theatre as a site of intercultural speech agency, particularly suited to reflect on the lived experiences of mobility, migration, and refuge. Moreover, all three cases interrogate the status of German as a stage language and its adoption by non-German speakers.

Stage Direction in Romania. The Postdramatic Perspective

Abstract The last fifty years of theatre have put us closer to one of the most spectacular facts of this art: every generation of theatre makers managed – we do not know if programmatically – to build its own repertoire based on its own reality. In other words, every new wave of stage directors claimed that the dramatic authors define a new formula for the stage text and the reverse. This new reality also acted on a revisiting of the classical text or of the modern text deemed classical.

Literary and Dramatic Disputes in Shakespeare’s Time

Disputes over literary works and plays — between one authors and another, one publisher and another, and between authors and publishers — have arisen since the ancient world. This is to be expected, since publishing poems and plays and producing theatrical performances can have significant economic, political, and emotional implications all at the same time. The nature and legal frameworks governing these disputes have changed dramatically over the centuries, however, particularly with regard to the proprietary rights involved. Though modern copyright law did not exist at the time, the Elizabethan age saw a high degree of professionalism of theatrical performance, book publishing, and dramatic authorship. When audiences are clamoring for novel entertainments, authorship is becoming a professional activity, and profits are to be made, customs and traditions inevitably arise — as do violations of those customs and traditions. This article discusses the framework of authorship and publishing in Shakespeare’s time and examines some of the disputes that arose and how they were resolved in a context where the legal remedies were limited. Methods from patronage to private guild “courts” to theft to public denunciation to outright violence were employed in attempts to maintain profitable businesses in publishing and theatre.

Le théâtre comme laboratoire des sciences de l’esprit : Alfred Binet, psychologue dramatique et dramaturge amateur

Theater was at the heart of the life and works of French psychologist Alfred Binet (1857–1911). Prior to his involvement in writing and staging plays with the dramatist Andre de Lorde (1869–1942), the famous inventor of the first metric scale of intelligence had, in fact, conducted an extensive psychological study on the doubling of personalities experienced by actors and dramatic authors. By returning to his psychological and dramatic works, and detailing the links between them, this article intends to show how Binet made theater into the veritable laboratory of his scientific psychology.

A TEMPEST IN A TEAPOT

The presence of dramatic authors on stage has been reaffirmed in recent years. They have begun to deal with feminine themes such as the importance of the body in art. This article proposes a dramatic score to become aware of the power of the body without the anguish that is too often, the female gender in society.

Moving Targets: Constructing Canons, 2013–2014

This review essay considers early modern dramatic authorship and canons in the context of two recent publications: an anthology of plays -- William Shakespeare and Others: Collaborative Plays (2013), edited by Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen as a companion volume to the RSC Complete Works -- and a monograph study -- Jeremy Lopez's Constructing the Canon of Early Modern Drama (2014).

Talking Machines

ABSTRACT From the beginning of Shaw's career as a publishing playwright, he struggled to imprint the sound of his characters' speech on the page. Convinced that the Roman alphabet was incapable of delivering crucial paralinguistic information to actors and readers, Shaw hoped that the new manual and mechanical phonographic writing technologies of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries would serve as more satisfactory mediums for his “word-music.” Drawing on media history and theory, the author argues that Shaw's actual and imagined uses of phonetic shorthands and sound recording devices as theatrical media mark his drama, his dramaturgy, and his vision of the author-actor relationship as products of the modern machine age. While Shaw sometimes indulged in the techno-fantasy of a gramophone-like actor who would mechanically reproduce his authorial inscriptions, the author contends that the ideal Shavian actor is both a talking machine and an exceptionally vital human being. The author reads Pygmalion, along with Shaw's writings on dramatic authorship and acting, as critical meditations on the complex processes and mixed consequences of conceptualizing spoken language, its notation, and its performance as mere data.

‘The Power of Attraction’: the Staging of Wilde and his Contemporaries at the St James's Theatre, 1892–1895

The actor-manager system remained pivotal to West End production throughout the later nineteenth century. Focusing on one actor-manager, George Alexander, and using records of his expenditure on productions during the early 1890s, Lucie Sutherland demonstrates how financial data can be used to examine evolving relationships between industry leaders and dramatic authors in this era. She argues that this kind of evidence demonstrates not only the fiscal dimension to such relationships – level of investment per production, percentage of royalties paid – but also that the data may be analyzed to ascertain the responsiveness of an actor-manager to income generated. Here, significant attention is paid to box-office revenue and expenditure for the first productions of Lady Windermere's Fan and The Importance of Being Earnest, exploring the income Alexander achieved by staging Wilde's drama prior to the arrest and trials of 1895. The use of quantitative data allows for close scrutiny of the work undertaken by prominent figures in the professional theatre; familiar narratives can be contested and endorsed through engagement with this type of material. Lucie Sutherland is a Teaching Associate in Drama and Performance at the University of Nottingham. She has written on aspects of nineteenth- and twentieth-century British theatre, including regional performance cultures and the impact of increasing professional regulation (for example the emergence of an actors' union) upon commercial theatre. She is currently completing a critical biography of Alexander.

Le Nouveau Théâtre (1950–1968) by Marie-Claude Hubert

570 Reviews thrownness in theworld and Freud's uncanny. Anne Simon examines identity and the gap between familiar and unfamiliar images of the self.Eugene Nicole analyses the strange and tortuous ways inwhich the protagonist isdesignated. Joseph Brami offersa genetic explanation for the displacement of Jewishness in the text.Benhaim looks at the novelties of the Exposition Universelle, and in particular, with the anecdote of the Sinhalese man, the ethnographic exhibitions, raising the question of race more generally. Given their common interest inLeonardo da Vinci's Santa Anna Metterza, Raymonde Coudert examines Proustian and Freudian interpret ations of the triangular relationship ofmother, grandmother, and child. Christie McDonald explores the enigma of the self and argues that the quest for subject ive unity is built up through disjunctive memory. Michael Wood examines the oddities of time and necromancy in the debate between cinema and photography. Antoine Compagnon analyses the perversion of truth and justice in the text.Bowie argues that the structuring device of superimposition means that on the one hand, passages resonate and are brought together, while on the other, paradoxes and undecidables are maintained. Incompatible states, as exemplified by the fable of Schodinger's Cat, simultaneously dead and alive inside a sealed box, are made to coexist. Reminding us again of the importance of close reading in Proust, Bowie concludes that 'it isperhaps inhis handling of little local things thathe is themost strange' (p. 133). Certainly, in their attentiveness to detail, all of the articles in this volume provide exciting new insights into amuch-studied text. University of Edinburgh Sarah Tribout-Joseph Le Nouveau Theatre (1950-1968). ByMarie-Claude Hubert. Paris: Champion. 2008. 413 pp. 72. ISBN 978-2-7453-1649-3. This detailed and comprehensive survey catalogues the achievements of a French theatre impregnated by both the disturbing realities of post-Second World War Europe and the inspiring artistic freedom and opportunity that arose from the decentralization policy of late twentieth-century French government. This period of exhilarating, experimental theatrical activity is presented in the context of the apathy of the contemporary public and the tardiness of critical recognition within France of the emergence of a new school of dramatic writing and a new mode of production designed to bring thatmaterial to lifeon stage. The impressive thoroughness and scope of the survey ismanifest in the user friendly indices of dramatists, productions, directors, and critics that follow the book's bibliography. At times the sheer amount of information provided within the text itself, the names named, and productions referenced, can overcome any but themost avid reader. However, the authors decision to focus awhile on individual case studies, such as Eugene Ionesco, clears some space for amore refreshing kind of critical enquiry. Ionesco isdefined as one of themost literate and communicative of dramatic authors, prepared to engage with critical reflection on his work and to grapple with the ineptitude of generic descriptors such as theAbsurd. His challenge to those critics and members of the public who sought to label his work is echoed MLR, 105.2, 2010 571 in a quotation fromArthur Adamov, who comments: 'La vie n'etait pas absurde, difficile, tres difficile seulement. Rien qui ne demandat des efforts immenses, dis proportion's' (p. 9). In general, the choice and application of quotation in this volume develop the potential for critical engagement with thematerial discussed in a particularly rewarding manner. Despite the fact that this study is framed as a testimony of, and testimonial to, the theatre under discussion, rather than as a sustained, analytical enquiry, some useful definitions of particular trends in the theatrical modes of the years 1950-68 are suggested. One such example is themapping of the transformation that gradually undermined public commitment to JeanVilar's vision of theatre as a venue from which the transmission of a cultural heritage was possible. His understanding of theatre as ameans of education, a space for reflection thatbrings citizens together, was eventually overtaken by amore explicitly political vision of a Brechtian model of theatre that deliberately set out to divide opinion and instigate action. The six chapters divide the theatre under discussion into categories broad enough to guide a reader without restricting individual lines of enquiry or interest...

La escena del siglo XIX, «domicilio de todas las artes»

La evolución literaria y técnica de la escena a lo largo del siglo XIX, convierte el teatro en el espacio de todas las artes. Bajo el concepto de teatro podemos encontrar no sólo a los autores dramáticos y sus obras, sino también la arquitectura del espacio, la evolución de la escenografía, o el mundo complejo del actor. Además, en el siglo XIX el teatro se convierte en uno de los espacios privilegiados de la sociabilidad burguesa y en uno de los referentes más claros y uniformes de la cultura europea.

Images of the Migrant Worker in Contemporary Macedonian Drama

The topic of this paper is one of the frequent motives in Macedonian contemporary drama: a voluntary exile from one's own country and the desire for better and more fortunate life. “A desire for distance' (Walter Benjamin) is attractive and frightening at the same time. The myth of the attraction of the other place is one of the oldest myths in history. From Homer to the Romantics, from the philosophy of Existentialism to a feeling of being a stranger today, this myth has not lost anything. Working away from one's native place as a condition of Otherness reveals certain relations between home and foreign country, but also, between Me and not-Me (Me as the Other). The problem of a person's identity, but also the problem of national and gender identity, have transformed the myth of the other place into the myth of the home. Paradoxically the exile in space becomes an exile of human soul. The literary practice of the contemporary Macedonian dramatic authors: Goran Stefanovski, Kole Chashule, Jugoslav Petrovski and others, illustrate the already mentioned stereotypes and images of the “self' and the “other'.

"A Supplement to Public Laws": Arthur Murphy, David Garrick, and Hamlet, with Alterations

The career of Arthur Murphy (1727-1805) bears exceptional witness not only to the precarious financial and legal condition of dramatic authors in Georgian England, but also—and more importantly—to the theatre's capacity to reconceive the author's position within the burgeoning culture of print. Murphy, who was both a playwright and a practicing barrister, spent his entire career trying to redefine the professional status of dramatic authors. He failed in the law; he succeeded in the drama. The unlikely vehicle for his success was Hamlet, with Alterations (1772)—a play neither published nor performed in its author's lifetime. The play, a parody of Garrick's radical adaptation of Hamlet, succeeded not in changing the law but in changing the discourse about the relationship between a dramatic author and the commodity of a dramatic text.

Notes on The Tempest

Giorgio Strehler (1921-1997) established the Piccolo Teatro di Milano in 1947 with a production of Carlo Goldoni's Servant of Two Masters that went on to international acclaim and created the directors reputation as the leader of Italian theatre in postwar Europe. Over four decades he produced definitive versions of Shakespeare (Lear and Measure for Measure along with two productions of The Tempest), Brecht (The Threepenny Opera and The Good Woman of Setzuan), and the great Italian dramatic authors (especially Goldoni's The Villeggiatura Trilogy, and Pirandellos Henry IV andThe Mountain Giants). His first version of The Tempest was performed in the Boboli Gardens in Florence in 1948 with a translation by the poet Salvatore Quasimodo, and featured characters who emerged from the Gardens famous fountains and reflecting pools. The second production, from which the following text derives, was initially staged in 1978 with a translation by longtime collaborator Agostino Lombardo, and performed in the United States in 1984. In this piece Strehler re-imagines the first twenty minutes of The Tempest through the eyes and mind of a spectator. This piece, Shakespeare, oltre La Tempesta wasfirst published in La Nuova Rivista Europea, Vol. 2, No. 5, May-June 1978, 23-40; and then again in the volume Inscenare Shakespeare by Giorgio Strehler, Rome: Bulzoni Editore, 1992, pp. 106-131.

From Playhouse to Printing House: Drama and Authorship in Early Modern England

List of illustrations Preface Acknowledgements Prologue 'Thou grewst to govern the whole Stage alone': dramas of authorship in early modern England 1. 'A toy brought to the Presse': marketing printed drama in early modern London 2. 'So disfigured with scrapings & blotting out': Sir John Oldcastle and the construction of Shakespeare's authorship 3. 'If he be at his book, disturb him not': the two Jonson folios of 1616 4. 'What strange Production is at last displaid': dramatic authorship and the dilemma of collaboration 5. 'So wronged in beeing publisht': Thomas Heywood and the discourse of perilous publication Epilogue 'Why not Malevole in folio with vs': the after-birth of the author Notes Bibliography Index.

Dramatic Authorship and the Honor of Men of Letters in Eighteenth-Century France

Dramatic Authorship and the Honor of Men of Letters in Eighteenth-Century France GREGORY S. BROWN "When [the Minister] learned that I had rushed into print, he . . . had me removed from his employ, on the pretext that a love for letters is incompatible with a mind for business. . . . When I returned to Madrid, I wanted to try again my literary talents, and the theater appeared to me a field of honor." Figaro, in Le Barbier de Seville' In traditional literary historiography, the above citation would be evidence of the subordinated position of writers in eighteenth-century French society and of their desire for autonomy from such protectors as "the Minister" who Umits what his client could write and prevents him from taking his work into print and onto the literary marketplace. Such a reading then would explain Figaro's tum to the theater as a move towards greater independence as a writer, since presumably playwrights could present their work directly to a commercial public and thereby escape subordination to an elite patron.2 Yet Figaro goes on to equate theater not with the writer's independence, but with his "honor," suggesting that as a writer, he sought not the potential for economic autonomy offered by the market for print, but recognition of his social prominence or honorabilité, which could come only from elites.3 Figaro's creator, Pierre-Augustin Carón de Beaumarchais, exemplified an Old Regime bourgeois who sought social prominence through dramatic 259 260 / BROWN authorship. From his own life, Beaumarchais understood that recognition as a man of letters in eighteenth-century France depended less on actual literary production than on conducting oneself according to specifically elite norms of behavior, so as to be recognized as "honorable." At the same time, Beaumarchais—more than most of his contemporaries—understood that the emergence of a more socially heterogeneous "public" of theater spectators and readers of print created a new form of social prominence, which differed from the prominence conferred by elite protectors.4 Most of all, Beaumarchais realized that playwriting for the royal theater, the Comédie-Française, offered a unique opportunity for an aspiring man of letters to demonstrate his adherence to elite norms (by showing disdain for the idea of writing for material gain rather than glory), while at the same time reaching a broad public (through commercial performances and subsequent, printed editions of his plays). This paper, therefore, explores the strategies of Beaumarchais and other aspiring writers to reposition themselves more prominently in literary life by becoming identified publicly as playwrights for the Comédie-Française. First, it explains why being a playwright for the Comédie-Française was important in the latter half of the century. Then, it considers who these would-be writers were by developing a sociological profile of those seeking to be identified as playwrights for the royal theater. Next, it explores writers' strategies for identifying themselves publicly with the Comédie-Française. Finally, it places their strategies in the context of Old Regime society, before offering conclusions about the history and historiography of writers generally in eighteenth -century Europe. I During the reign of Louis XIV, literary patronage in France had been largely consolidated into the court at Versailles; concomitantly, writers were pulled away from their traditional patrons among the provincial nobility, who had sponsored salons, circles and provincial academies and theaters in the early and mid-seventeenth century. This centralization, while limiting the number of writers who could benefit, increased the prestige available to those few who did enjoy elite sponsorship.5 The result was heightened competition among those seeking to identify themselves as writers through royal sinecures , royal academic memberships, and other visible links to the court and the crown. However, in the latter decades of the Old Regime, this centralization trend was reversed, and royal patronage itself declined—thereby reducing the number of writers who could use it to ensure their prominence as honorable. No longer able to depend on provincial aristocrats and distanced Dramatic Authorship and the Honor of Men of tetters / 261 from the royal court, later eighteenth-century writers had to find new ways to identify themselves as "men of letters...