Theatrical Interpretation Research Articles

Women as Hamlet: performance and interpretation in theatre, film and fiction

List of illustrations Preface 1. Introduction: The drama of questions and the mystery of Hamlet Part I. The Women in Black: 2. Playing Hamlet, writing the self 3. 'Is this womanly?' 4. Virile spirits: Sarah Bernhardt and her inheritance Part II. Case Studies: Hamlet, the Actress and the Political Stage: 5. 'I am whom I play': Asta Nielsen 6. 'Why are you looking at me like that?': Zinaida Raikh 7. Behind the arras, through the Wall: Poland 1989 8. Hamlet from the margins: Spain, Turkey, Ireland Part III. Repression and Resurgence: 9. Films and fictions: Hamlet, men's eyes and the ages of woman 10. Women's voices in the cathedral of culture 11. Beyond silence, imagination Index.

Women as Hamlet: Performance and Interpretation in Theatre, Film and Fiction (review)

Women as Hamlet: Performance and Interpretation in Theatre, Film and Fiction (review)

STEREOTYPES AND CULTURAL MEMORY: ADAPTATIONS OF OSKAR LUTS’S SPRING IN THEATRE AND FILM

1. Introduction Stereotypes as social phenomena gain their power from everyday practice, social agreement, and tradition. Usually they have a lengthy historical background that gives the power of perpetual validity to symbolic and speech acts that are performed using stereotypes (see e.g. McConachie 1992). To attain a deeper level of generality, stereotypes must be explicitly or implicitly shared by an entire community. And the bigger is the community, the bigger the legitimacy of the figure. Both theatre and film provide stages for acts of collective commemoration, actors do so by embodying characters and performing stories and audience by perceiving and remembering them. Whereas films, once recorded, become part of the stable archive of collective memory, theatre as a series of embodied acts lacks preservable material artefacts. The primary carrier of a production is human memory: the memory of both the performers and the spectators. Thus, theatre can be considered an art of memory--an art of remembering, recalling, reminiscing and reiterating. In his book The Haunted Stage (2003), theatre researcher Marvin Carlson draws our attention to theatre's reiterative and preservative nature. According to Carlson, reiteration in theatre proceeds on at least four levels: spatial (theatre buildings), dramaturgic (plays), material (primarily actors) and the level of reception. Such repetitions also give rise to phenomena which we call stereotypes. Theatre buildings simply frame performances, although the stage in itself-unlike airplane black boxes or the many other places that function as memory banks-does not preserve anything, rather it is designed to be an empty place free of former connotations. But plays (especially classics) and actors are the main sources for the preservation and creation of stereotypes. Since theatre directors and actors are also members of the community, where particular stereotypes circulate, they can predict the reception of audiences and are therefore able either to strengthen or deconstruct stereotypes. Consequently, theatrical performances can become rituals of remembering - reproductions of the past, acts of recollection, which are at the same time attempts to impose interpretations on the past and to sculpt the mind, and through this to shape social identity (Burke 2003:48). In this article I will focus on stereotypes as cognitive phenomena for perceiving, collecting and memorizing new information, as well as on cultural mechanisms of representation and preservation of collective myths and traditional values. The phenomenology of stereotypes is exposed by studying their formation, petrifaction and decomposition more broadly in culture, and more specifically in theatre. As an empirical example I draw on the Estonian novel Spring by Oskar Luts, and on its interpretation in theatre and film. 2. Formation and function of stereotypes in cultural memory In scientific discourse, stereotype (Greek stereos 'solid, hard' + tupos 'print, figure') is a term most often used in psychology and sociology. Both social psychologists and cognitive psychologists state that generally people tend to simplify the reality, collecting knowledge rather at the molar level in unifying similarities than handling every single feature in its pure form. Thus the creation and application of complex fixed images, a form of cognitive figure usually defined as stereotypes, is one of the primary means for occupying the world. Stereotypes are mostly not created by an individual person, instead they are passed on from one person, group or generation to another through education and life practice. Thinking in stereotypes has gathered additional strength and functionality in an age where the grand myths and tales about the way the world operates have lost their validity and credibility. Stereotypes have much in common with mythologies: they primarily consider and explain the mystical Other, the strange, be it another nation or gender, the two concepts most closely associated with identifying a person and stereotypical thinking, but more broadly all unfamiliar features. …

Book Review: Tony Howard. <em>Women as Hamlet: Performance and Interpretation in Theatre, Film and Fiction</em>. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.

Book Review: Tony Howard. <em>Women as Hamlet: Performance and Interpretation in Theatre, Film and Fiction</em>. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.

Women as Hamlet: Performance and Interpretation in Theatre, Film and Fiction (review)

Women as Hamlet: Performance and Interpretation in Theatre, Film and Fiction (review)

Haydn's Masses en masse

greatly'. Handel reallocated this to the tenor, in the only important discrepancy from what has become the generally accepted norm; as Guadagni was still available, his specially composed arias stayed put, and are magnificently sung here by lestyn Davies. His 'But who may abide' evokes the refiner's fire vividly yet without exaggeration, his ornamentation is neat and appropriate but not gaudy, and, above all, he imbues the piece with a wonderful sense of trepidation, typical of a reading of the whole oratorio which has clearly been meticulously thought through with the aim of bringing out all the meaning in the text of every number, from the simplest secco recitative to the most spectacular aria or the grandest chorus. From 'Every valleys sense of urgent excitement to the awed expressiveness of 'Behold a virgin shall conceive', the fearful anticipation of looming darkness in 'The people that walked', and the clear and forthright proclamation to the shepherds, all culminating in 'Glory to Gods electrifying paean of joy, Part I unfolds in a way which brings out, far more fully than many more overtly theatrical interpretations succeed in doing, all the latent drama underpinning this essentially meditative work-a process which continues even more impressively as the sufferings of the Passion are preceded by resurrection and redemption. Perhaps such a remarkably satisfying result could only be achieved within a collegiate context (Davies is the only adult soloist who is not a former member of the choir), where singers and conductor have long experience of working together and fitting their respective contributions into a coherent musical whole. The choir

Tony Howard: Women as Hamlet. Performance and Interpretation in Theatre, Film and Fiction

Tony Howard: Women as Hamlet. Performance and Interpretation in Theatre, Film and Fiction

TONY HOWARD. Women as Hamlet: Performance and Interpretation in Theatre, Film and Fiction.

TONY HOWARD. Women as Hamlet: Performance and Interpretation in Theatre, Film and Fiction.

Looking for Sex in Shakespeare (review)

Reviewed by: Looking for Sex in Shakespeare Jeff Wax Looking for Sex in Shakespeare. By Stanley Wells. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 2004; pp. v + 111. $15.99 cloth. Stanley Wells crafts a pertinent examination of a subject scholars and theatre artists have focused on, particularly in recent years: the function and substance of sex in the works of Shakespeare. In bringing this topic to the fore, Wells provides an intriguing text that contemplates new issues of formal and lexical semantics pertaining to the sexual connotations in Shakespeare. Challenging prevailing expectations and interpretations, Wells examines sexual innuendo in Shakespeare's work and tracks its implications by relating his findings to modern productions. His analysis of criticism and adaptations provides insights into both the scriptsthemselves and culture in general. Wells's study presumes that desires of contemporary Shakespeare audiences must be fulfilled. Theatergoers want to be seduced, and Wells finds that Shakespeare's labyrinthine sexual meanings, once revealed, will tantalize audiences in ways suppressed in earlier treatments. He emphasizes that productions succeed when they bring to light the previously obscured erotic potential of Shakespeare's texts. Historiographically, Wells's detailed textual analysis focuses on images of licentiousness and allusions to sex in productions of Shakespeare's plays over the past four centuries. His scrutiny of earlier Shakespeare historians consolidates antecedent studies, the plays, the sonnets, and postmodern criticism of discussions (and controversies therein) of homoeroticism in Shakespeare. Wells persuasively argues that, historically, scholars and critics of Shakespeare have often neglected or arbitrarily suppressed sexual meanings found within the plays, counteracting the ability of readers and spectators to discover valuable inferences and meanings related to sexuality. The opening lines of Wells's introduction state: "So much sex is readily apparent in Shakespeare that it might seem surprising that anyone should look for more," and concisely cover what he refers to as "fundamental questions about theatrical interpretation" (1). He intimates that how scholars represent the text is the catalyst for what effect representations will have upon "the minds of those who experience" these dramatizations (2). According to Wells, the symbiotic relationship that exists between text, performer, and audience facilitates an opportunity to reconstitute archaic connotation with avant-garde meaning. Wells draws upon several well-known plays. At the center is his analysis of A Midsummer Night's Dream, a script frequently hallowed as ethereal, but in fact a primer for the study of Shakespeare's bawdy, holding hidden connotations related to the topic of savage anal intercourse. Supporting this contention, Wells points us to "'Bestial Buggery' in A Midsummer Night's Dream" (1994) by Bruce Thomas Boehrer (31), which illustrates how Oberon punishes Titania for withholding sex by subjugating her into a prurient object of sexual enslavement by Bottom. This inferential correlation underscores the suitability of contemporary treatments of this spectacle. Indeed, Wells's critique provides compelling justification for the interpretation and staging of these characters as engaged in explicit acts of carnal knowledge. Wells's chapter entitled "Lewd Interpreters" offers additional examples of licentiousness, to posit a radical departure from the erstwhile manner in which they have been interpreted prior to the twentieth century. This chapter considers heterosexual bawdiness in Romeo and Juliet, the climactic moment of Antony and Cleopatra, and innuendos in Love's Labours Lost. Wells constellates this discussion [End Page 328] with one on homosexuality, pointing to Antonio and Bassanio in the Merchant of Venice, Iago in Othello, and Richard II, identifying potential homosexual readings, and carefully raises the question of how these characters' sexuality should be staged. While the overriding focus of Wells's examination of Shakespeare is on sex in general, he investigates key issues of homosexuality and same-sex relationships in Shakespeare in the chapter "Men loving men in Shakespeare's plays," using Coriolanus,Twelfth Night, and The Merchant of Venice as primary texts. However, the clearest example is in Troilus and Cressida,dealing with the "legendary friendship" between Achilles and Patroclus, which is, in Wells's estimation, the "only unquestionable allusion" to homoerotic relationships in Shakespeare. Although Patroclus neither accepts nor denies Thersites' charge that "thou art thought to be Achilles' 'male varlet'" (his masculine whore), Wells suggests that "Achilles and Patroclus might be lovers without...

King Richard III by Gillian Day, and: The Merchant of Venice by Miriam Gilbert, and: The Winter’s Tale by Patricia E. Tatspaugh (review)

MLRy 99.1, 2004 165 contrast with modern reader expectations as to identify the factors that created the original texts. An anti-modernizer, he argues for 'critical old-spelling editions [. . .] in order to bring out the formative role of individual reading acts in the creation of historically specific meanings' (p. 135). Above all he asks for better contextual infor? mation, using what he calls 'the not-yet-existingbody of Historical Reader-Response Criticism'. That, he says, is 'the best hope forscholarship'. In effecteach essay in the book provides an exemplar of such criticism fordifferenttexts. It is a scholar's book. University of Reading Andrew Gurr King Richard III. By Gillian Day. (Shakespeare at Stratford, published by The Arden Shakespeare in association with The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust) Lon? don: Thomson Learning. 2002. xiii + 259pp. ?!5-99- ISBN 1-903436-12-5. The Merchant of Venice. By Miriam Gilbert. (Shakespeare at Stratford, published by The Arden Shakespeare in association with The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust) London: Thomson Learning. 2002. xv+183 pp. ?*5-99- ISBN 1903436 -I3-3The Winter's Tale. By Patricia E. Tatspaugh. (Shakespeare at Stratford, published by The Arden Shakespeare in association with The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust) London: Thomson Learning. 2002. xv + 240 pp. ?15.99. ISBN 1903436 -16-8. These three titles comprise the first in a new series that examines Shakespeare's plays in performance. As general editor Robert Smallwood notes in his two-page preface (variously paginated), the theatre archive located in Stratford's Shakespeare Centre Library contains an embarrassment of riches: 'promptbooks, press reviews, photographs in their hundreds of thousands, [. . .] archival video recordings, [. . .] theatre programmes, costume designs, stage managers' performance reports [. . .]'. This concentration of resources has often given 'general performance histories of Shakespeare's plays an unintentional Stratford bias; the aim of the Shakespeare at Stratford series is to exploit, and indeed revel in, the archive's riches'. Each volume, then, focuses on the post-1945 Stratford performance history of a particular play, a concentration furtherjustified by Smallwood's claim that Stratford productions offer 'a representative cross-section ofthe main trends in [a play's] theatrical interpretation in the second half of the twentieth century'. However, each volume opens 'with an introduction that sets this Stratford half-century in the wider context of the main trends of its play's performance history before this period and of significant produc? tions elsewhere during it'. These first three volumes illustrate both the worth and the limitations of such a project, as well as how far its own aims have been realized. With a close focus on the Stratford productions themselves and (presumably) a strict word-count, the supposedly contextualizing introductions prove rather sketchy: anyone wanting really to understand how the Stratford productions fitinto the plays' overall performance histories will need to look elsewhere. Miriam Gilbert, for example, begins with a series of useful questions about The Merchant of Venice, 'both those asked within the play and those it insistently raises for actors, directors, designers and audiences' (p. 2), before moving on to a two-paragraph long consideration of pre-war Stratford productions and the continuing influence of Henry Irving's portrayal of Shylock; the rest of her introduction focuses, first,on the way programmes for the thirteen post? war productions she considers helped to shape responses to the play and, second, on how photographs reveal 'how much the look of the play keeps changing' (p. 20). She 166 Reviews also briefly introduces Jonathan Miller's 1970 National Theatre production, rightly calling it 'a ground-breaking interpretation in a number ofways' and 'one that haunts the imagination still' (pp. 23-24). The fact that it does so marks one ofthe limitations ofthe series: in her ensuing examination of Stratford productions, although Gilbert continues to referto aspects of Miller's production that proved influential, she seems in some places to ignore Stratford's indebtedness to it. For example, she notes that Roger Michell's 1986 touring production 'seemed to have derived its Victorian look [. . .] from its opening scene at a cafe table to its formally clad Shylock' from John Barton's second production of the play in 1981 (p. 31). Why credit Barton when Miller was there first?The centrality...

Towards a Generative Theory of Interpretation for Performance Modeling

Performance structure is described in terms of segmentation and classification of segments. Types of segments are associated with specific execution techniques. Similarly to speech, segments are shown by “performance waves” in timing and dynamics with a single common peak. Performance waves are arranged in a hierarchy corresponding to the form of the piece which can be understood rather subjectively. The interpretation score may look as an orchestral arrangement, where segments are classified with respect to their type and/or execution techniques (as if played by different instruments). We apply our approach to theatrical interpretation as well. Each character is described by means of several “basic types” (love, hate, sincerity, hypocrisy, etc.) associated with specified intonation and gesture. Then the role is split into segments, each being associated with one of the basic types ( cf. with switching from one execution technique to another in a musical performance). It is a further development of the interpretation technique in the theater of Ancient Greece where the actors changed masks (of anger, joy, melancholy, etc.) to show emotions. The approach is intended for developing music software as well as for music and theatrical education.

Shakespeare and Classical Comedy: The Influence of Plautus and Terence

This book surveys Shakespeare's comedies, charting the influence upon them of the ancient playwrights, Plautus and Terence. Robert Miola analyses these sources, and places the comedies in their Renaissance context, as well as in the larger context of European theatre. Discovering new indebtedness, and discerning new patterns in previously attested borrowings, Shakespeare and Classical Comedy presents an integrated and comprehensive assessment of the complex interactions of the Classical, Shakesparian, and other Renaissance theatres. Robert Miola re-evaluates Plautus and Terence in the light of the Greek antecedents, and gives special attention to Renaissance translations and commentaries, Italian theorists, and playwrights, as well as contemporary dramtist such as Middleton, Joson, Heywood, and Chapman. Four broad catergories organize the discussion - New Comedic errors, intrigue, alazoneia, and romance - and each is illustrated by illuminating readings of individual Shakespearian plays. The author keeps in view Shakespeare's eclecticism, his habit of combining disparate sources and traditions, as well as the rich history of literary criticism and theatrical interpretation. The book concludes by discussing the presence of New Comedy in tragedy, in Hamlet and King Lear. Robert Miola's thoroughly researched book ranges over a vast amount of European drama, from Aristophanes to Beckett and Ionesco. It makes an important contribution to our understanding not only of Shakespeare and of his foremost antecedents, but also of his artistry and achievement.

A text in the eyes of the beholder: Four theatrical interpretations of Kanafani'smen in the sun

(1995). A text in the eyes of the beholder: Four theatrical interpretations of Kanafani's men in the sun. Contemporary Theatre Review: Vol. 3, No. 2, pp. 157-174.

Local semiosis and theatrical interpretation

Local semiosis and theatrical interpretation

'This Island's mine': Caliban and Colonialism

The political and colonial themes of The Tempest excited a considerable degree of theatrical interest in Britain, both in the later part of the nineteenth century, at a time when Social Darwinian ideas and Imperialistic doctrines were making a major impact on the British public, and in the I970s, when the retreat from Empire permitted a very different view of the relationship between Prospero and Caliban. In this paper I propose to trace such politico-colonial interpretations of The Tempest, and critics' responses to them from their beginnings in the nineteenth century to the present day. In so doing, I do not wish to suggest that a theatrical or critical interpretation of The Tempest which gives prominence to the play's specifically colonial elements has more or less intrinsic worth than one that does not. Nor will I

Staging ‘The Master's’ Works: Wagner, Appia, and Theatrical Abuse

Recent productions of Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen, especially those by Patrice Chereau at Bayreuth and Peter Stein at the Paris Opera, have caused the greatest hue and cry from audiences since Wieland Wagner first presented his controversial interpretations of his grandfather's works. Once again, the distressing knee-jerk reaction from many critics has been to admonish today's directors and scenic designers to ‘go back to Wagner's original intentions’ and restore the illusionism prescribed in his stage directions. The debate over the proper performance of Wagner's works is tied to the larger and inherently unresolvable question concerning the proper domain of theatrical interpretation. It is very appropriate for one of the most heated arguments on this subject to center around Wagner because his music dramas were the springboard of the modern scenographic revolution, and there has been a tendency to brand Wagner as one of the prime movers behind twentieth century theatrical abuse. At the end of the last century a Swiss Wagnerite named Adolphe Appia changed the art of scenic interpretation through his stagings of The Ring and Tristan und Isolde. As every student of theatre history knows, Appia's designs and writings published in his book Die Musik und die Inscenierung (1899) form the basis of modern scenography. What most people fail to recognize, however, is that Appia's book is an immensely valuable study of Wagner. His ideas for staging The Ring influenced the most important Wagner interpreters of the twentieth century, and his analysis of the ‘profound significance’ of the music dramas anticipated most of literary studies about Wagner published in recent years.

Contradictory Characters: An Interpretation of the Modern Theatre

Contradictory Characters: An Interpretation of the Modern Theatre

Medical Knowledge and Theatrical Interpretation

To the Editor:— theater benefits when actors bring to the stage principles of modern medicine and psychiatry, as illustrated in Leon J. Saul's interesting paper (Othello: Projection in Art,JAMA200:39-40, 1967). Lawrence Olivier's presentation of an Oedipal Hamlet, reflecting the Ernest Jones analysis of the play, is an example of new insight into characterization being stimulated by 20th-century psychiatry. Olivier has also provided a legitimate medical etiology for the otherwise arbitrary fourth-act swoon of Othello by giving him a dramatically effective hyperventilation syndrome. Shakespeare character most in need of fresh appraisal has been King Lear. His words in the storm scenes are those of a senile, paranoid, and depressed old man without delusions of grandeur ( eg, Here I stand your slave, a poor, infirm, weak and despised old man. The little dogs and all... see, they bark at me.) Yet he is commonly