Theatre Director Research Articles

WP5.3 - Rejuvenating the golden patient protocol in a tertiary centre general surgical emergency theatre

Abstract Aims Poor patient flow and complex sub-specialty decision making discussions lengthened time to operation of lower priority operations e.g. appendicectomy/abscesses. By prioritising start times and registrar patient selection for low complexity cases/day case discharge, we rejuvenated the golden patient protocol (GPP) and assessed the implementation and impact of a novel GPP in a tertiary centre emergency list on surgical wait times and overall theatre flow. Methods The GPP was agreed between surgical/anaesthetic night registrars and theatre staff which took into consideration the urgency of the surgery, fitness of patient and anaesthetic/technical difficulties. Eligible patients were identified prior to 08:00 and scheduled as the first case of the day to be huddled and sent for by 08:30. Two cycles were conducted, one month before and after GPP introduction, using the trust theatre management system (TMIS). Results Time series analysis was conducted for patient sent-for, anaesthetic room entry, and procedure start times during both cycles. Results indicated a median decrease of 11-minutes in patient sent-for time (Cycle 1: 08:56, Cycle 2: 08:45) and a 12-minute reduction in median procedure start time (Cycle 1: 09:42, Cycle 2: 09:30). The proportion of low complexity cases performed first-on-list also increased by 22.5% (Cycle 1: 35.5%, Cycle 2: 58.0%). Conclusions This analysis demonstrates a positive change by starting theatre faster with lower complexity cases, developing surgical registrar independence, improving time to treatment without complex discussions delaying first send.

SP7.7 - A 6-month retrospective re-audit of “Code Red” trauma requiring surgical intervention in a regional major trauma centre

Abstract Aim Major trauma (MT) is a significant cause of morbidity and mortality in the United Kingdom, with an estimated incidence of 20,000 cases annually in England. A certain proportion of patients presenting following MT require immediate operative intervention. This study is a re-audit of the process for managing these patients in order to assess the impact of introduction of a Damage Control Surgery (DCS) pathway. Methods Data were reviewed for all patients presenting as Code Red MT and requiring immediate operative intervention from May to November 2023. This accounts for all patients since the implementation of the DCS pathway. Patient details were taken from a MT database, Electronic Care Records were used to determine aetiologies of trauma and outcomes, and Theatre Management System software was used to determine timings. Results 9 patients were identified, with a median age of 30.33. 89% of patients underwent preoperative CT imaging, with an average time to CT of 15 minutes (range 5 to 57 minutes). Median time to theatre was 88 minutes (range 39 to 325 minutes). Specialties involved included General Surgery, Vascular, Cardiothoracics and Trauma and Orthopaedics, with multispecialty involvement in some cases. Overall mortality was 22%. Seven cases were the result of road traffic collisions. Conclusions MT remains a significant cause of mortality in our cohort, but implementation of a DCS pathway has led to significant improvements in both time to CT and time to theatre compared with our initial audit cycle (32 minutes/144.5 minutes).

On Writing a Translator's Biography: Bringing Barbara Bray out of the Archives

Barbara Bray (1924-2010) was an outstanding woman of letters – radio producer and editor in the 1950s, writer and journalist in the 1960s, screenwriter in the 1970s, theatre director in the 1990s, and translator during all that time. Even though Bray played a crucial part in Beckett's creative process across three decades, she was also one of his most obscure collaborators. In this essay, I reflect upon the writing of her biography, focusing on some of the theoretical points that surfaced when trying to make a female creator come out of the shadows. I discuss the methodological and ethical choices made in the composition of the monograph, and highight the feminist intention presiding over its writing as well as the paradoxes revealed while doing so.

The Phases Of Showalter’s Feminist Criticism Prefigured In Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House

Elaine Showalter (1941- ) is one of the most influential American literary critics and feminists who influenced feminist literary criticism by developing the concept and practice of gyno-criticism. She published A Literature of Their Own: British Women Novelists From Brontë to Lessing in 1977 and whose expanded edition came out in 1999. By and large this book explicates Showalter’s groundwork to revive the interest in long-forgotten women writers in British literature history. It was a monumental work, indeed a kind of rediscovery, mapping widely rather than mining deeply the territory of women’s writing. In a sense, feminist criticism came of age with this book. Showalter suggests that women themselves were slowly growing aware of their separateness from men and leaving a record of that awareness in their works. It is the growth of a collective selfconsciousness—the history of a distinct literary subculture—that A Literature of Their Own sets out to record. ‘Towards a Feminist Poetics’ (1979) is one of her well known essays that focused on the feminist literary criticism of the literature. In this essay, Showalter has rejected the inevitability of the male theories and male models by tracing the history of women’s literature in the present writing. 'Toward a Feminist Poetics' by Showalter also refers to the three phases of feminist literary criticism. The first phase is the feminine phase where women aimed to compete with male writers, and compared their craft with that of their male contemporaries. The second phase is the feminist phase where the critics focus on the injustices and wrongs done to women in literary texts, and reject the conventional roles of females. Finally, the female phase is independent of the dependency on and obsession with the male literature. It instead aims to focus on creating a female literary tradition that includes women's internal experiences and personal history. This theoretical literary presentation of Showalter can be dramatically viewed in the evolution of character Nora in A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen (1828 -1906). Ibsen was a Norwegian playwright and theatre director. He was one of the founders of modernism in theatre and often called “the father of realism” and the most influential playwright of the 19th century. A Doll’s House is a three acts play through which Ibsen challenged the stereotypical representation of women in literature with his female characters and remains a great contribution to feminist literature

A multiobjective [formula omitted]-constraint based approach for the robust master surgical schedule under multiple uncertainties

The efficient scheduling of elective surgeries in hospitals is critical for ensuring patient satisfaction, cost-effectiveness, and overall operational efficiency. However, operating theater (OT) managers face complex and competing scheduling problems due to numerous sources of uncertainty and the impact of the proposed schedule on downstream recovery units, such as the intensive care unit (ICU). To address these challenges, this study develops a multiobjective robust planning model for the weekly Master Surgical Schedule (MSS) under multiple uncertainties. The model takes into account patient priority, assignment cost and workload balancing, while also considering the constraints of the OT, surgeon availabilities, downstream resources, and the uncertainty of surgery duration and patients’ length of stay (LOS) in the ICU. To evaluate the robust solutions, a Monte Carlo simulation is used to calculate the risk of constraint violations, and an adapted ϵ-constraint algorithm is used for the four-objective problem to compute the Pareto front and calculate the hypervolume for every degree of uncertainty. This provides a comprehensive decision tool for OT decision makers and allows for the comparison of various scenarios in terms of the number of scheduled patients, canceled patients, and the utilization rate of the OT.

Nora Helmer and Thora Helmer: Henrik Ibsen at Play with the Vaudeville

ABSTRACT This article gives evidence for considering the vaudeville genre as a factor that complicates our received understanding of the plays of Norwegian dramatist Henrik Ibsen. It situates Ibsen’s activity as a theater practitioner in relation to both the prolific French dramatist Eugène Scribe and the Danish theater director and dramatist Johan Ludvig Heiberg, explores Ibsen’s own critical writing about the popular theater, and then traces intertextual resonances with the work of yet another Danish dramatist, Erik Bøgh. In particular, the author links Bøgh’s all-but-forgotten 1853 vaudeville, Et enfoldigt Pigebarn (A Guileless Girl) with Ibsen’s universally acclaimed modern dramas, Et Dukkehjem (1879; A Doll’s House) and Hedda Gabler (1890; Hedda Gabler). What this re-contextualization reveals, is an Ibsen who was far more oriented toward and influenced by transnational popular theater genres than previous scholarship has recognized.

Film, Medicine and Freemasonry: Jenő Janovics and the Transylvanian “Hollywood”

This study highlights the life and work of Jenő Janovics, a renowned Hungarian theater director in Cluj, the capital of Transylvania. Janovics was a multi-talented figure, excelling as a film director and actor, and was also a freemason. Often hailed as the creator of Transylvanian “Hollywood”, he directed a total of 66 films. One of them, “The Horror of the World” (Hu: “Világrém”, 1920), focuses on medicine and its preventive role in safeguarding societal health. Using cinematography, Janovics expressed the concerns of both the physicians and the freemasons of Cluj regarding the detrimental impact of immorality and veneral diseases on the individual and the nation. At a time of profound political, territorial and social changes, this silent movie highlights the importance of medicine in society.

Perkembangan Istana Budaya Sebagai Sebuah Panggung Negara di Malaysia (1999–2019)

Since the establishment of Istana Budaya (IB) in 1999 as the national theatre house of Malaysia, its function has changed from a production house to a receiving house. Up to 2019, IB had been administered by six different ministries and led by five different directors. Both these changes have influenced the type of performance and production mode at IB as a world class performing arts centre. In the field of theatre management, this article studies IB under the sub-field of management of a performing arts institution. This article focuses on the reason for a performing arts institution to change its function and how this change has influenced its’ operation as a national theatre. Thus, this article aims to answer the question “How does the changes of ministry and the leadership of IB influence its production mode as the national theatre?”. Data for this study were obtained by employing the historical approach and oral history method. The data were obtained from books, journals, theses, annual reports, meetings’ minutes and policy papers. Furthermore, interviews were conducted with some of the former directors and senior officers of the national theatre. Two major findings that were obtained from this study are the function of the national theatre transformed in accordance with the ministry that led the organisation. Visionary and adept leaders ensured its operation and productivity achieved the national theatre’s vision and mission. For the past two decades, the ministry responsible for the national theatre and its leadership had influenced its operation mode and productivity as the national performing arts institution of Malaysia.

Perioada nord-americană

The purpose of this article is to bring to the forefront the theatrical activity carried out for eight years by Theodor-Cristian Popescu in the North American cultural landscape. Following the path of the Romanian theatre director, the article presents the performances he directed during his master’s degree at the University of Montana and also the theatrical events he staged in Montréal and Toronto, once he moved to Canada. Drawing on a variety of sources (press articles – reviews, interviews, press releases –, as well as program booklets, grant applications or evaluations of his teaching activity), the article aims to provide the Romanian public with a detailed presentation of Theodor-Cristian Popescu’s theatrical activity abroad (theatrical animator, director, teacher).

Directing the Contemporary Theatre: The Case of Oki’s Night of Ijalo

In contemporary times, the sophistication of media gadgets coupled with the development of the media-savvy audience has necessitated the theatre to devise alternative ways to sustain audience attention and interest. This has required theatre directors to revisit their approach to interpreting contemporary performance by engaging several elements of aesthetic communication to enhance the overall outlook of the performance and boost show business. Contemporary theatre directors, as the example of Olumide Oki (2023) illustrates, have identified this need by establishing a deliberate use of media elements and thus birthing techniques essential for the creation and interpretation of the contemporary performance. This paper engages Hans-Thies Lehmann’s post-dramatic theatre as a theoretical framework. It is a descriptive study that secures its data through participant observation of the 2023 production of Night of Ijalo by the Zion Royal Theatre. Based on the perception that the media has become an intrinsic part of the daily routines of the contemporary audience, Oki prioritizes the need to create a media-intensive theatre experience for the media-savvy audience. Hence, he adopts a mixed-media technique to boost his directorial interpretation and provide a seamless connection with the audience's demand through the deliberate use of aesthetic communication, intermediality, sound prerecording, mediation and mediatisation, and spectacle. With the mixed-media technique which includes the use of several media elements, Oki presents the media as a quintessential part of the contemporary performance and recommends it to theatre directors as a valuable technique for enhancing directorial interpretation and creating a media-oriented theatre experience.

Сценичность рассказов Раймонда Карвера

The interest of theater directors in R. Carver’s short stories and their adaptability to the demands of the stage opens up new frontiers for the study of his novellas. The texts meet the demands of the stage/screen due to several features. The writer preferred a “dramatized” way of reflecting reality. The aim of this research is to identify the stage characteristics of R. Carver’s texts. The scientific novelty of the paper consists, on the one hand, in identifying the unique thematic and stylistic features of Carver’s writings, his place in American literature, as well as in the context of world literature, and, on the other hand, the paper expands the boundaries of the literary canon, enriching the cultural experience of researchers in Russia. The uniqueness of the research lies in advancing our understanding of the literary genre. By expanding the boundaries of the genre, clarifying its historical evolution, analyzing reader reception, exploring intertextual connections, and assessing literary influence, such a paper makes a valuable contribution to the field of literary studies. The research findings have shown that R. Carver’s experiments with drama and screenplays were reflected in his prose works and manifested themselves in the creation of the “stage story”. The elements of drama used in short stories help recreate an atmosphere of mystery and arouse interest in what is happening off-screen. Dramatic techniques are found at various levels of the narrative: in the composition of the material, in the construction of dialogues of the stories, in attention to the inner life of the characters, expressed in the external, for example, in the description of gestures.

Traumatic Native Hip Dislocations: An Audit at a Major Trauma Centre and Assessment of Clinical Practice at Centres Across the United Kingdom.

Native hip dislocations are defined as traumatic dislocations of the hip, typically high-energy and associated with polytrauma. The majority of these injuries occur following motor vehicle accidents (MVAs). Due to the inherent stability of the hip joint, a significant force is required to cause dislocation. It is critical that such injuries are managed and reduced in a timely manner. We evaluated the current practice in a major trauma centre (MTC) in Cardiff and gathered information from emergency departments (EDs) in Wales and MTCs around the United Kingdom (UK). We did an evaluation of the current practice with a retrospective audit of all traumatic native hip dislocations presenting to the MTC at Cardiff from August 2018 to February 2021. Data was obtained from Trauma Audit and Research Network (TARN), medical records, radiology and theatre management systems. An online survey was developed and disseminated to EDs in Wales and MTCs across the UK. There were 15 traumatic hip dislocation cases over the period evaluated. Sixty percentof cases were due to MVA. Eighty-six percent of patients had an associated fracture, with one Pipkin type IV fracture dislocation. The mean time to reduction from injury was 532 minutes (240-804 minutes), with 28.6% reduced within 6 hours and 71.4% reduced within 12 hours. Two patients had reduction performed in the ED (mean time to reduction, 275 minutes). There was one occurrence of avascular necrosis (AVN) and one of chondrolysis at the follow-up. The response rate to the survey was 80% and 83% in Wales and MTCs nationally, respectively. The majority (82%) of departments did not have an established pathway in place for managing traumatic native hip dislocations with a preference for reduction in the operating theatre. Native hip dislocations are rare, high-energy injuries associated with significant morbidity. The available evidence suggests time to reduction is imperative in reducing the risk of future complications. The establishment of a pathway to guide management and having a mechanism to perform reductions in the ED may produce significant reductions in this time, impacting outcomes.

Vive la république européenne? Reading The European Balcony Project as artistic counter-public

ABSTRACT The article first contextualizes the European Balcony Project (EBP), a manifesto written by authors Ulrike Guérot, Robert Menasse, and theatre director Milo Rau who subsequently put it up for discussion in various public fora. On 10 November 2018, artists and citizens performed the manifesto and proclaimed the European Republic from (theatre) balconies and public places in 25 European countries. They encouraged a dialogue that sought to promote a more diverse public sphere. In my reading, the EBP emerges as a contemporary version of Oskar Negt’s and Alexander Kluge’s public counter sphere, as a real and imaginary community in which political participation is enacted through the medium of talk in an arena of discursive interaction and democratic practice. By reading the texts in the context of a political avantgarde project, I show how the interventions aim to set a counterpoint to the resurgence of nationalism and promote a vision of a democratic continent based in shared values. My article thus illustrates how public art performances such as the EBP contribute to the thickening of imaginative relations throughout Europe and might aid in the construction of a larger European cultural identity.

Creating the Contemporary Christian Theatre: An X-Ray of Sight & Sound Theatres

The proliferation of media technologies has redefined theatre performance in contemporary times. This modification which includes mixed-media and mediatization; interactive media; social media; aesthetic communication and spectacle have resulted in a high level of change. As audiences visit the theatre with an increased level of aesthetic taste and newer lens to view performance, theatre directors and designers struggle to find newer methods to tell the dramatic story and create performances to meet the high demand. Sadly, for Christian theatres, especially in Nigeria, the handful of theatre directors and designers actually embracing these new developments have barely scratched the surface of the ongoing renaissance in theatre performance. And this is due to a dearth of documentation on the modus operandi necessary for the creation of these contemporary Christian theatre performances. Sight & Sound Theatres (USA), is a faith-based Christian Theatre in the league of Broadway Theatre with several biblical stories presented on sophisticated stages. This paper engages Ole Thyssen’s ‘Aesthetic Communication theory’ as theoretical framework. It is a descriptive study which engages a content analysis of Sight & Sound’s performance of “Joseph”, and documents the technical details of creating contemporary Christian performances with the example of “Joseph”. Observably, Sight & Sound Theatres prioritizes the inclusion of media and technical elements into performance to enhance performance quality and ensure effective communication of the dramatic story. Hence, by documenting these elements, Sight & Sound Theatres provide a template for the creation of performance in contemporary times, indeed, Christian theatrical productions around the globe.

Excerpts from Einar Schleef’s "Droge Faust Parsifal" (Drugs Faust Parsifal)

Arguably the most important books by Einar Schleef (1944-2001) are his novel Gertrud, a monologue narrated by his fictionalized mother, his diaries, and the work excerpted here, Droge Faust Parsifal (Drugs Faust Parsifal, 1997). Schleef also wrote plays and short stories, and was a theater director, set and costume designer, actor, illustrator, painter, and photographer. His work deserves a wide readership, yet only a story and a play have been translated into English (Buchner 1982, 130-138; Vivis 1987). Drugs Faust Parsifal’s 500 pages are autobiography, theater history, dramaturgy and cultural essay in one. It won the City of Bremen Literature Prize in 1998 and was adapted for the stage in 2011 by Armin Petras. The selected passages from Drugs, which are somewhat anomalous in a book mainly about dramaturgy, concern Schleef’s personal struggles; they have historical relevance and show his linguistic dexterity, articulated in his “suffering language, a language for suffering” (Windrich 2009, 481). Both as child and adult, he is an observer of a postwar society divided against itself.

Reclaiming the Silenced History of LGBTIQA+ Activism and the HIV/AIDS Crisis through Irish Theatre. An Interview with Phillip McMahon

The playwright and theatre director Phillip McMahon is also co-founder and co-director of THISISPOPBABY, a Dublin arts company founded in 2007 and said to have redefined modern Irish theatre, ripping up the space between popular culture, counterculture and high art. Their shows have played and toured around Ireland, the United Kingdom, Australia, and beyond. THISISPOPBABY voices queer culture on stage making space for the history and stories of the LGBTIQA+ Irish community positioning itself between performance and politics. The first play written by McMahon purely with LGBTIQA+ characters is Once Before I Go (2021), in which he explores and examines the legacy of the AIDS crisis in Irish queer lives. McMahon does not only voice the community’s historic pain, shame, and stigma, but he also foregrounds the fact that, despite marriage equality, the LGBTIQA+ rights movement has not come to an end. In fact, he claims that, after the COVID-19 pandemic, a wider society is ready to hear stories that have been long buried, forgotten, and suppressed.

Theory on Stage: The Paradox of Anthropocene Spectatorship in Latour and Aït-Touati’s Inside and Moving Earths

Theory on Stage: The Paradox of Anthropocene Spectatorship in Latour and Aït-Touati’s <i>Inside</i> and <i>Moving Earths</i>

Supporting Staged Intimacy: A Practical Guide for Theatre Creatives, Managers, and Crew by Alexis Black and Tina M (review)

Supporting Staged Intimacy: A Practical Guide for Theatre Creatives, Managers, and Crew by Alexis Black and Tina M (review)

Koptā kritika sociālo tīklu laikmetā

The article analyses the situation of professional theatre criticism in the contemporary theatre environment and the reflection of current stage processes in performance reviews. The aim of the study is to identify changes in the purposes, form and content of professional theatre criticism at a time when social networks have become popular and are used both as a platform for discussion and as a platform for self-expression. In order to distinguish between reviews of performances written by professionally trained experts and other written reviews, the author of the article uses the term “cultivated criticism”. The research sources are the Latvian professional media Teātra Vēstnesis and www.kroders.lv, as well as the social network Facebook. The media content is analysed using the insights of art criticism theorists from the beginning of the 20th century to the current day and comparing the common and different principles of reviewing in the pre-digital and digital age. The professional standards of the review authors are also addressed. The author of the article has chosen the principles of theatre criticism from the works of the American theatre director and critic Harold Clurman (1901–1980) and the Scottish theatre critic and cultural journalist Mark Fisher as a theoretical framework. The findings of these experts are related to the opinions of Latvian and Lithuanian practising theatre critics on the meaning of reviews. The content analysis of the reviews looks for intersections with the American art critic Ben Davis’s concept of post-descriptive criticism, which, according to Davis, changes the descriptive nature of traditional, ekphrastic criticism. The research confirms Davis’s thesis that the transformation of a visual image into a verbal image is changing along with the changes in the artistic and informational environment. Regardless of the form of the review, theatre criticism remains an essential tool for the study of theatrical processes. At the same time, it is concluded that media content analysis does not provide a clear answer to the question of how to make cultivated criticism seen by theatre practitioners as respectable feedback and suggestions for professional development. These findings suggest that the paper’s topic is open for further research and discussion.

Come perenne metamorfosi. Orazio Costa e la mimesi

&#x0D; &#x0D; &#x0D; Orazio Costa, theater director and teacher for over thirty years at the National Academy of Dramatic Arts in Rome, is the author of a pedagogical system called mimic method. It consisted of a theory and a practice aimed at revitalizing the concept of mimesis. The practice included exercises on identification with natural phenomena, necessary for staging dramas respectful of human nature and poetic inspiration. While Avant-gardes rejected art as imitation of an object, and the new theatrical forms refused the value of the dramaturgical text within the performance, Costa defended the role of literature and the representation of human events in the theatrical ritual. Despite the accusations of traditionalism, his idea of mimesis is absolutely in line with the twentieth- century reception of the notion. Like authors such as Benjamin, Adorno, Ricoeur, the director has analyzed mimesis as an innate behavior, and he based his aesthetic positions on this conception. For Costa, art is the wonderful metaphor of the encounter between the individual and nature, which pushes towards forms of expressions comprehensible to the community.&#x0D; &#x0D; &#x0D;