Fictional Drama Research Articles

Liberty Censored: Black Living Newspapers of the Federal Theatre Project

The living newspaper, a favorite genre of Hallie Flanagan, the Director of the Federal Theatre Project, was one of America's most ambitious theatrical efforts in the period between the world wars. Descended from the Soviet Red Army's Zhivaya Gazeta ('Alive' or 'Living Newspaper') and German and American agit-prop troupes (McDermott 83), the living newspaper used huge casts, spectacular sets, and film, vaudeville, and agit-prop techniques to depict contemporary political and social issues in theatrical terms. In the four years of the Federal Theatre's existence, from 1935 to 1939, living newspapers addressed issues as diverse and controversial as agricultural reform, labor relations, public ownership of utilities, housing problems, and public health. One issue, however, was pointedly not addressed publicly by the living newspaper was the status of African Americans. The Federal Theatre's fictional dramas often dealt with racial issues. J. A. Smith and Peter Morell's Turpentine (New York, 1936) exposed the wrongs of the Southern labor-camp system, while Theodore Browne's Natural Man (Seattle, 1937), about the legendary John Henry, showed African Americans being worked to death on labor gangs. Hughes Allison's courtroom drama The Trial of Dr. Beck (Newark, 1937) dealt with the implications of racial hatred and self-hatred. And Theodore Ward's Big White Fog (Chicago, 1938) depicted African American society as divided among belief in the American dream, the Marcus Garvey Back-to-Africa movement, and socialism. In fact, three living newspapers about African Americans were completed, and at least one more was proposed, but not a single one was produced. Were the authors too unknown? Was the quality of their work too low? Were their staging requirements too complex or expensive? Was there insufficient audience for them? Was there a problem with the living-newspaper form itself? And was there, officially or unofficially, consciously or unconsciously, some sort of racially based censorship? Elmer Rice, a Broadway director and the author of The Adding Machine (1923), Street Scene (1929), and other successful plays, proposed the first living newspaper about race relations. Rice, of Eastern European Jewish descent, was the first head of the New York office of the Federal Theatre, but he resigned in 1936 to protest the censorship by the government of the living newspaper Ethiopia, about Mussolini's invasion of country. Before his resignation, Rice proposed and wrote an outline for a living newspaper with contemporary American racial subject matter. He planned a show that would expose the common practice of lynching Negroes and also the plight of the sharecroppers (Abramson 65). The left-leaning director Joseph Losey also was probably involved in planning this play. The staff of the living newspaper office researched and put together a preliminary draft in twelve scenes: Called The South, it is clearly a work-in-progress. The play opens with Lincoln reading the Emancipation Proclamation, and closes with Angelo Herndon, a Black labor organizer, calling on his comrades - and the audience - to join in the fight of all workers against the international capitalist conspiracy. In between, it covers such racially charged matters as the Scottsboro case, separate-and-unequal educational allotments, the flogging of integrationists, and the Senate's anti-lynching bill; largely unconnected matters such as constitutional challenges to the Tennessee Valley Authority are treated as well. The draft of The South has none of the earmarks of the best living newspapers, such as a narrator, a common-man character who acts as the audience's representative on stage, or scenes put current issues into focus through vaudeville-like techniques. Unlike other living newspapers, the script contains no footnotes or bibliography, despite the fact virtually every one of its scenes quotes prominent political figures. …

Young children's perceptions of television reality: Determinants and developmental differences.

Five- and 7-year-old children judged factuality and social realism of favorite TV shows and test clips in pairs matched for content. In each pair one was news or documentary format, the other fictional drama. All children understood that fictional programs were not factual. Children correctly discriminated the purposes and intended audience of news from those of documentaries. Children discriminated factuality by genre of program, and genre of program by formal production features and by content. Age and vocabulary scores (Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised; PPVT-R) predicted accuracy of factuality judgments, but TV viewing history over the past 2 years did not. By contrast, judged social realism was predicted by viewing history and very little by age and PPVT-R. Older children better understood that fictional characters do not retain their roles in real life and that fictional shows are scripted and rehearsed

Variations of Temptation —: Václav Havel's Politics of Language

Variations of Temptation Vaclav Havel's Politics of Language MARKETA GOETZ-STANKIEWICZ .. , truth is not merely what we are thinking. but also why, to whom and under what circumstances we say it. (Temptation, Scene 6) When approaching a play by V~clav Havel, a critic or commentator is bound to have certain preconceptions. He knows that Havel is one of the most famous "dissidents" of the Communist regime in Czechoslovakia, that none of his plays has been performed in official theatres there, that he has been harassed and imprisoned several times during the last dozen years. (In 1979-1983 he was incarcerated for four years; in early 1989 he was imprisoned again, after being charged with "incitement".) Despite all tbis (or is it because of it?), his eloquent politico-philosophical essays as well as his plays have been translated into and performed in many languages. Here, critics are bound to argue, we obviously have a literary figure whose life and writings are so closely interwoven with the political situation in his country that we have a ready-made package-deal guide to the interpretation of his works. Journalists, reviewers, and academic commentators have seemed to follow this obvious approach and discussed Havel's writings largely as the direct outcome of what he has been observing in his own society. The "dissident playwright"label has stuck hard and fast to Havel's image. But does it do him justice? In this essay I propose to peel off the label and let the reader decide whether he wishes to stick it back on again after - and if - he or she has read my remarks. In true Havelesque spirit we must first clarify some assumptions: What is "political theatre"? Is not drama, dealing mostly with human conflicts and tensions, "political" by its very nature? However, as we wisely put aside this vast question, other related questions begin to sprout like mushrooms after a warm rain. Let us take some examples. Is Hamlet a political play? Brecht certainly thought so. Is Medea's monomania a political statement made by Euripides, as 94 MARKETA GOETZ-STANKlEWICZ Jan Kott felt it was? Is Hochhuth's The Deputy a political play? "Of course," answers the fictional drama critic to whom we now give the floor; "after all, it deals with Pope Pius XII's collaboration with Hitler." Camus's Le Malentendu? "Yes, because it portrays characters whose hope for a better existence drives them to murder." Tom Stoppard's Professiollal Foul? "Yes, ofcourse; the play features a smuggled manuscript, a philosophical text that was considered subversive by a totalitarian government." Peter Handke's Kaspar? "Yes indeed, because it shows the process by which an innocent mind is moulded to perceive the world in a way approved of by an ailing society." Peter Shaffer's Amadeus? "Why certainly; after all, it shows how a genius is ignored by a stupid and bigoted regime while a mediocre musical hack is allowed to flourish... It is clear that these admittedly random references will not lead us anywhere. But neither, let it be said, do many of the numerous volumes that have been written on "political theatre." In his impressive Geschichte des politischen Theaters, which is perhaps most useful in our context, Siegfried Melchinger argues that plays from the past deserve to be called "political theatre" only if they are still playahle, in other words meaningful, today. This, Melchinger stresses, does not mean that "political theatre" treats politics in the light of "eternal values"; I it must concretely show whatever we mean by "politics" (power, ruling systems, war, violence) and must make the audience go through the process of recognizing an experience by seeing it acted out. In Havel's case, the audience that would "recognize" its own experience in his plays has not been able to see a play by Havel for the last twenty years. But this does not mean that we, his contemporaries under another political system, do not undergo some process of recognizing our own experience. To explore this, let us first go back to Havel and to a more pragmatic beginning. In the afterword to a selection of his plays written in 1976 Havel ironically defines...

True Soap Story Proves More Successful Than Any Fictional Drama

True Soap Story Proves More Successful Than Any Fictional Drama

Pornography Defined

Unlike a single erotic image, imagery within a story provides a context to judge whether a product is pornographic. Pornography is defined as a commercial product in the form of fictional drama designed to elicit or enhance sexual arousal. It embodies a sexual fantasy of an intended audience by presenting explicit sexual activities between predominantly sexually motivated (and to a lesser extent power-motivated) characters whose mission is to experience erotic reality without the constraints of everyday reality, social norms, and conventional morality. The protagonist overcomes apparent obstacles (taboos on deviant sexual objects or linkages) to the sexual mission with ease, and thus, fails to undergo a transformation in character in the process of pursuing the mission. Mosher's (1980) sexual involvement theory posits that subjective response to pornography is a function of the match to the person's sexual script. Deep involvement in the pornographic image or fantasy requires goodness-of-fit to preferre...

Fiksionaliteit in die Dramawêreld

The fictional drama world differs from the fictional world encountered in other literary genres, and the difference can be traced back to the link of the text with the performance.A general, traditional view is that the fictional world of the dramatic text takes place in a fictional “here and now” .Elam has postulated a theory following a study of the fictional drama world. He uses a term from logical semantics, viz. the “theory of possible worlds” and adjusts this to enable him to speak of a dramatic possible world. Elam mentions three aspects which help towards the establishment of the fictional drama world, viz.the discovery of this world in medias res; the making specific of this world through the fictional characters; and the representation of this world in the performance.Elam’s exposition still does not indicate which aspects of the fictional drama world within the text coincide with or differ from those in the performance. The fictionality of the drama world is linked to the aspect of the ostensible, and it is this link (implied in the text and edited in the performance) which characterizes the specific nature of the fictional in the drama genre and which distinguishes this genre from other literary genres.

The Silence of Pope Pius XII

It Is hardly surprising that the play Der Stellvertreter (The Deputy) by the young German author Rolf Hochhuth should have aroused controversy ever since its first performance in February, 1963, in Berlin. For it aims to depict not merely historical characters in a fictional drama, but historical characters in a historical setting of almost unprecedented significance and consequence. The use of the drama as a vehicle for political attack is nothing new; but it is rare for the author to append, in the published version of his text, a historical essay of forty pages, seeking to give the evidence upon which his drama is based. Nor is it surprising that so pejorative is the portrayal in the play of the late Pope Pius XII that many of those who served under him during the nineteen years of his pontificate, as well as many others who came in touch with him through his literally thousands of private or public audiences, have sought to come to his defense, in challenging the historical accuracy of Hochhuth's portrayal.