Medieval Theatre Research Articles

From Medieval Religious Pageantry to Contemporary Social Messaging: The Medieval Cycle Plays in Honduras’ Teatro La Fragua

Using medieval religious drama as a model, Honduras’ Teatro La Fragua has developed a Gospel dramatization program that both reflects the practices of medieval theater in style and expresses the issues of a modern-day world in message. Their vernacular cycle plays are performed in public spaces by local people, written by and for the community, and staged in the streets and public spaces for ordinary people in both urban and remote rural areas. Medieval vernacular drama thus maintains an enduring stylistic presence in a modern-day counterpart as it underscores the Gospel’s message of inclusion, equity, and diversity while incorporating elements of agency and native culture.

Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Representations of the Oberammergau Passion Play: Heredity, Eugenic Theatre, and “Epic Selection”

The Oberammergau Passion Play became internationally famous in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Beginning in the 1840s and 1850s and through the early twentieth century, English-speaking foreign tourists from Ireland and the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, and even Australia published a surprising number and variety of accounts of travel to the village and attendance at the Passion Play. Professional and amateur historians described the production as an evolutionary throwback or curious hybrid of ancient Greek and medieval theatre, regarding it as an object and event of antiquarian interest. Foreign female travelers attended the play in impressive numbers, and their accounts provide insight into contemporary women's readings of theatre, travel, spirituality, gender inequality, gendered spaces, and cultural difference. Protestant writers reflected uneasily on the play's communication of spiritual truth by means of images. And all of these accounts, whether published in the popular periodical press or as monographs, in turn encouraged increasing numbers of travelers to make the same journey—represented sometimes as a religious and sometimes as an artistic pilgrimage—to the isolated Bavarian village.

The formation of the literary canon of the French drama of the XVI century

This article examines the gradual formation of the literary canon of the French Renaissance theater, which subsequently largely predetermined the emergence and further evolution of classical drama. The subject of the study is the principles of dramatic art, which are formulated by poets and theorists of the XVI century in the framework of poetic texts and treatises. The purpose of the work is to identify possible stages of the formation of the theatrical canon in Renaissance France, to compare its principles with medieval theater, to determine to which stage the emergence of ideas about classical theater based on ancient models belongs, to identify the factors that influenced its development. В В The novelty of the research lies in an attempt to comprehensively analyze poetic texts and treatises, which make it possible to recreate the processes that took place in the XVI century in the field of French theater, as well as to compare them both with the medieval tradition and with gradually emerging classicism. The relevance of the work lies in the fact that in literary studies there is a need to understand how the classical principles of French drama are formed on the material of poetical works of the Renaissance. As a result, it is obvious that in the process of forming the canon of the French Renaissance theater, three stages can be distinguished. The first of them is connected with the publication of the manifesto of Joachin Du Bellay, which fixes a "gap" in the field of drama in French literature and calls for filling it. For the implementation of the second stage, the figure of Etienne Jodel, the author of the tragedy "Captive Cleopatra", who embodied an attempt to revive the ancient tragedy, and the comedy "Eugene", becomes decisive. So in France of the XVI century. there was a national theatrical tradition, which can be considered a literary canon. The third stage of its formation was the recognition of Jodel's achievements at the level of poetry theory. In 1555 Jacques Peletier in "Poetic Art" cited both works as examples of tragedy and comedy, which contributed to the consolidation of the canon.

Philip Butterworth and Katie Normington, eds., Medieval Theatre Performance: Actors, Dancers, Automata and Their Audiences. Woodbridge, UK: D. S. Brewer, 2017. Pp. xiv, 282; 18 black-and-white figures. $99. ISBN: 978-1-8438-4476-1. Table of contents available online at https://boydellandbrewer.com/medieval-theatre-performance.html.

Previous articleNext article No AccessReviewsPhilip Butterworth and Katie Normington, eds., Medieval Theatre Performance: Actors, Dancers, Automata and Their Audiences. Woodbridge, UK: D. S. Brewer, 2017. Pp. xiv, 282; 18 black-and-white figures. $99. ISBN: 978-1-8438-4476-1. Table of contents available online at https://boydellandbrewer.com/medieval-theatre-performance.html.Seeta ChagantiSeeta ChagantiUniversity of California, Davis Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Speculum Volume 95, Number 4October 2020 The journal of the Medieval Academy of America Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/710729 Views: 76Total views on this site Copyright 2020 by the Medieval Academy of America. All rights reserved. For permission to reuse, please contact [email protected]PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Binocular Vision

Abstract This essay deploys Bruno Latour’s An Inquiry into the Modes of Existence and Bert States’s Great Reckonings in Little Rooms to analyze the pyrotechnics used in mystery plays to symbolize supernatural truths. On the one hand, these effects cultivated aesthetic immersion, allowing audiences to perceive stage illusions as real. On the other hand, they drew attention to their own artfulness, inviting spectators to marvel at human achievement and contemplate the possibility of misfire. This paradox encapsulates the theological ambiguities of medieval religious theater, which asked spectators to suspend disbelief in the name of conversion even as they maintained skepticism about sacred simulacra. Latour’s metaphysics allows us to see how mystery plays deployed multiple modes of existence, each of which mediated the others but could not reduce or explain them. States’s theater phenomenology shows us how mystery plays used self-given realities like flame to shuttle between human and nonhuman standpoints. If Latour rejects phenomenology for its refusal to consider the agency of the nonhuman, States’s focus on reality as resistance offers an implicit retort. I propose a rapprochement by showing that theater phenomenologists and medieval effects masters are both willing to embrace the ontological work of nonhuman actants.

Philip Butterworth and Katie Normington, eds. Medieval Theatre Performance: Actors, Dancers, Automata and their Audiences. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2017. Pp 296. Hardback £60.00 ISBN: 9781843844761.

This review considers Medieval Theatre Performance: Actors, Dancers, Automata and their Audiences.

Philip Butterworth and Katie Normington (eds.), Medieval Theatre Performance: Actors, Dancers, Automata and their Audiences

Philip Butterworth and Katie Normington (eds.), <i>Medieval Theatre Performance: Actors, Dancers, Automata and their Audiences</i>

Medieval Theatre Performance: Actors, Dancers, Automata and their Audiences ed. by Philip Butterworth and Katie Normington

Medieval Theatre Performance: Actors, Dancers, Automata and their Audiences ed. by Philip Butterworth and Katie Normington

ПРОСТОРОВО-ТЕХНІЧНЕ ЗАБЕЗПЕЧЕННЯ УКРАЇНСЬКОГО ТЕАТРУ ЕПОХИ СЕРЕДНЬОВІЧЧЯ

Мета дослідження – з’ясувати особливості сценічного дизайну українського театру та його просторово-технічне забезпечення в епоху Середньовіччя. Основну увагу в історії середньовічного театру автор зосереджує саме на діяльності мандрівних середньовічних артистів та на художньо-постановочних особливостях організації церковного театру. Для досягнення поставленої мети було застосовано наступні методи: критичного аналізу – опрацювання наукової літератури з історії театрального мистецтва, архітектури та сценічного дизайну з метою виокремлення інформації щодо теми дослідження «Дизайн театральної сцени: генезис, історична еволюція, сучасні тенденції»; мистецтвознавчого аналізу – для визначення залежності художності сценічної постановки від її просторово-технічного забезпечення; синтезу – для поєднання різних характеристик просторово-технічного забезпечення українського театру епохи Середньовіччя як складової в еволюції дизайну сцени; індукційний – для вивчення хоч і фрагментарних, але типових прикладів просторово-технічного забезпечення вистав скоморохів та постановок літургійної драми; гіпотетичний, системний та узагальнюючий підходи – для висування на основі наукового припущення про значення в еволюції дизайну сцени мандрівного способу організації діяльності середньовічних професійних акторів та архітектури культових споруд, де зародилась середньовічна літургійна драма Наукова новизна даної публікації полягає в тому, що вперше виконано системний мистецтвознавчий аналіз поступу просторово-технічного забезпечення вистав українського середньовічного театру в контексті загальноєвропейських процесів. Зокрема, у відповідному художньо-постановочному ключі висвітлено діяльність середньовічних мандрівних артистів та вистави церковного театру. Висновки. У результаті проведеної наукової розвідки авторка стверджує: мандрівний спосіб життя середньовічних артистів спонукав до широкого використання ними мобільних способів облаштування публічного простору для показу вистав; особливості архітектури церкви, де показувались вистави середньовічної літургійної драми, вплинули на сучасний умовний тридільний поділ сценічного простору на нижню, основну та верхню сцени; церковний театр вплинув на розвиток дизайну сцени засобами художньо-декораційного оформлення, освітлення та іншої постановочної техніки, а також костюмування.

Medieval Theatre Performance: Actors, Dancers, Automata, and Their Audiences. Edited by Philip Butterworth and Katie Normington. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2017; pp. xiv + 282, 18 illustrations. $99 cloth, $99 e-book.

Medieval Theatre Performance: Actors, Dancers, Automata, and Their Audiences. Edited by Philip Butterworth and Katie Normington. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2017; pp. xiv + 282, 18 illustrations. $99 cloth, $99 e-book.

Philip Butterworth and Katie Normington, eds. Medieval Theatre Performance: Actors, Dancers, Automata and their Audiences. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2017. Pp. 296. $99 (cloth).

Philip Butterworth and Katie Normington, eds. Medieval Theatre Performance: Actors, Dancers, Automata and their Audiences. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2017. Pp. 296. $99 (cloth).

Gabriella Mazzon, Pathos in Late-Medieval Religious Drama and Art. A Communicative Strategy, Ludus. Medieval and Early Renaissance Theatre and Drama, 15, Leiden-Boston, Brill-Rodopi, 2018

Gabriella Mazzon, Pathos in Late-Medieval Religious Drama and Art. A Communicative Strategy, Ludus. Medieval and Early Renaissance Theatre and Drama, 15, Leiden-Boston, Brill-Rodopi, 2018

Liturgical Drama and the Reimagining of Medieval Theater. By Michael Norton. Early Drama, Art, and Music. Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2017. x + 272 pp. $99.00 hardcover.

Liturgical Drama and the Reimagining of Medieval Theater. By Michael Norton. Early Drama, Art, and Music. Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2017. x + 272 pp. $99.00 hardcover.

Farces and Sotties. Performance Practice, Print Practice, and Manuscript Practice

At the heart of our enquiry is the debate about what we can really learn from documentation about medieval theatre. Pleased as they may have been to uncover some traces of this production, historians of medieval theatre have not sufficiently considered the nature and the logic of these documents nor how representative they might be. What documents have come down to us and why they have been preserved determine, however, what we can and cannot say about the subject. What is actually documented by our sources? The main problem is the inconsistency of our sources and their relationship to what has been lost. For example, a printed play is an anomaly that needs explication; it is not a gift from heaven. Thus, when someone writes down a play, we need to explain why it happened, keeping in mind that archival sources speak of theatre only when something went wrong or when there was some financial matter to be settled.

All 'Metatheatre' is Not Created Equal: The Knight of the Burning Pestle, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and the Navigation of the Spectrum of Dramatic Representation

All 'Metatheatre' is Not Created Equal:The Knight of the Burning Pestle, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and the Navigation of the Spectrum of Dramatic Representation Nathaniel C. Leonard CITIZEN … and now you call your play The London Merchant. Down with your title, boy, down with your title! Beaumont, The Knight of the Burning Pestle Induction, 8–9 QUINCE Marry, our play is The Most Lamentable Comedy and Most Cruel Death of Pyramus and Thisbe. Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream, 1.2.9–11 Both Francis Beaumont's The Knight of the Burning Pestle (1607) and Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream (c. 1595) use the comic presentation of a play as a central element in their overall dramatic plots, but to meaningfully different ends. Beaumont's play stages an intruding audience that frames and shapes the play's narrative and places one of its own members in a starring role, while Shakespeare's "rude mechanicals" serve as a low comic subplot through the preparation of their own play that they in turn present to the protagonists of the central romantic plot and which acts as a coda for the play as a whole. But what are the formal functions that these seemingly similar, but also clearly distinct, dramatic techniques fulfill? And, perhaps more importantly, how are we, as readers or viewers of early modern English drama, meant to understand and discuss those techniques? The standard answer to such questions in the current critical conversation has been to begin by labeling such techniques as "metatheatrical." The problem with this easy label is that, [End Page 49] since the term's coining by Lionel Abel in 1960, it has become a catch-all for reflexive dramaturgy with regard to both genre and technique. The term has become so ubiquitous that it can be applied to almost any play, early modern or otherwise. Many critical discussions use metatheatre to connect a series of reflexive dramatic strategies—like soliloquy, chorus, dumbshow, the-play-within-the-play, prologue, and epilogue—and assume that because these tropes all involve the play's apparent awareness of its own theatrical nature they all have similar dramaturgical functions. But, as A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Knight of the Burning Pestle demonstrate, metatheatrical tropes have the ability to generate a variety of efficacies and representational logics based on how those reflexive strategies are utilized. Beaumont's Knight of the Burning Pestle's theatricalization of the actual audience through the introduction of the Citizen, the Citizen's Wife, and Rafe collapses the easy distinction between audience and performance. Knight uses this metatheatrical intervention early in the plot to generate competing fictional worlds, which are effectively inset within the performance of the audience and represent competing generic logics. Midsummer, on the other hand, uses the parallels between scenes to evoke the metatheatrical, which consistently asks the viewer to re-imagine their relationship to the staged action and to live performance more generally. The "tragical mirth" (Shakespeare 5.1.57) of the play-within asks the viewer to reevaluate their categorization of Midsummer as simply a comedy, instead suggesting that a play's position in a genre or between genres has as much to do with its execution in performance as its plot. In order to discuss these issues in Knight and Midsummer, this essay will elaborate on some of the specific dramaturgical ramifications of the metatheatrical by exploring the term's slippery nature and offering a working definition of the term. In addition, this article will propose an alternative strategy for describing the devices under the aegis of metatheatre by positing an approach to naming and distinguishing between the layers of dramatic representation generated by metatheatre and other similar techniques. In order to describe this spectrum of dramatic layering, I use Robert Weimann's concepts of locus and platea as a starting point for distinguishing between these representational strata. Weimann's terminology, based on the representational structure of medieval theater, offers a solid foundation for new terminology that will allow for a more specific and nuanced discussion of metatheatrical structure and dramatic texts more generally. In order to begin this process, I will introduce two new terms...

Medieval Theatre Performance. Actors, Dancers, Automata and their Audiences ed. by Philip Butterworth, and Katie Normington

Reviewed by: Medieval Theatre Performance. Actors, Dancers, Automata and their Audiences ed. by Philip Butterworth, and Katie Normington Eleanor Bloomfield Butterworth, Philip, and Katie Normington, eds, Medieval Theatre Performance. Actors, Dancers, Automata and their Audiences (Medieval Literature), Cambridge, D. S. Brewer, 2017; hardback; pp. 296; 11 b/w, 7 line illustrations; R.R.P. £60.00; ISBN 9781843844761. This is a vibrant and fascinating addition to the field of medieval performance. Engaging and enjoyable, the book consists of twelve essays prefaced by the editors' introduction. The latter makes clear that 'it is performance and not performance context with which [they] are concerned' (p. 1). This is both refreshing—in the scholarly canon, performance context does often overshadow the actual conditions of medieval drama—and brave: there is so much we do not know, and never can know, about the actualities of medieval performance. Claire Sponsler, whose essay opens the volume, begins by acknowledging the difference between '"What we know" and "What we do not know"' (p. 1). An awareness of this, together with the tacit realization that understanding of certain aspects of medieval performance remains irrevocably lost, runs through all twelve contributing essays, 'driv[ing] original research that […] lead[s] to significant contributions to knowledge' (p. 1). Brief synopses of each chapter are listed at the end of the introduction, which are very helpful for quick reference. The essays are weighted towards focusing on the late medieval period but are wide-encompassing in their scope. Discussions range from theatrical clothing and costuming (Katie Normington) to scenery (Nerida Newbigin), and from dancing (Jennifer Neville, Kathryn Dickason) and 'what happens' within medieval theatrical performance (Bart Ramakers, Tom Pettitt and Femke Kramer) to automata and animated statues (Max Harris, Leanne Groeneveld, Philip Butterworth). For this reviewer, the chapters on dance, probing the audience/performer relationship, and questioning when and how one becomes the other, were particularly innovative. The outstanding essay, however, is Claire Sponsler's 'From Archive to Repertoire: The Disguising at Hereford and Performance Practices'. Sponsler takes a post-positive approach, arguing that 'we can never know the "past" in its fullness or with any certainty' (p. 17). Yet, she argues, [End Page 152] 'that view does not prevent us from trying to understand the past' (p. 17). While fully acknowledging the necessity of 'tap[ping] as many sources of knowledge as possible […], whether […] written text, painted image, material artefact, oral testimony, embodied memory, or other means of transmission' (p. 17), she simultaneously raises the question of practice-as-research. Confronting head-on the concerns of some scholars regarding this—it does not fit easily within 'established research paradigms' (p. 31), applying methodology and rigour can be difficult, and some see it simply as 'fun' instead of 'serious' scholarly research—, she nevertheless argues strongly that investigating medieval performance practice in this way 'can expand our search for both fuller knowledge about early performance and for heightened awareness about the assumptions of such an attempt' (p. 34). This is a welcome endorsement and, it is to be hoped, one that will encourage exciting new forays into the performance of medieval drama and related theatre. Sponsler's chapter acts as a touchstone for the other eleven. Other authors frequently refer back to her, so that her work becomes a thread linking the chapters—disparate though they are in topic—and running through the entire volume. In a neat symmetry, the last chapter of the book—Butterworth's '"Ymage off Seynt Iorge" at St Botolph's'—both echoes and builds on Sponsler's suggestion that experiment and creative practice can be a useful way of advancing knowledge. Butterworth's chapter is an account of his liaison with Eric Williamson to draw up plans for 'a conjectured version' (p. 14) of the fifteenth-century semi-automaton St George and the Dragon. The diagrams accompanying the text are particularly helpful for visualizing and understanding how the model may have worked. Hopefully Butterworth and Williamson will one day have the opportunity to take this research to the logical next step, and produce a working replica of the automaton. This book will be of most interest, relevance and value to those working closely and in detail with late medieval...

Staging in the Medieval Theatre and Text

The present paper deals with different forms of staging, which are found in dramatic medieval forms and in narrative texts. As well in the theatre as in the text instructions for staging help to understand a sender’s message.

Жанрові модифікації фарсу в сучасній драматургії

Along with the genre forms that have not stopped their development for many centuries, but have gained significant transformations (tragedy, comedy, drama, melodrama, tragicomedy), there are also numerous genres, whichfell out of the history of drama for a long time (often for centuries) and were not claimed by theatrical art. However, in the drama of the 20 th – beginning of the 21 st century the clear tendency for the revival and modification of archaic genres, first of all, seemingly, “dead” genres of the medieval theater is characteristic. In its genre system religious drama genres (especially mystery and miracle plays), didactic (pritch, parable) and comic (farce, interlude, commedia dell'arte) occupy an important place. The article discusses the features of genre modifications of medieval farce in contemporary dramaturgy. A typology of contemporary farce is also suggested (three types are conventional farce, black farce and socio-political farce). Genre signs, features of the plot and of farce in the works of European dramaturgy of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries (M. Frein, M. Kamoletti, D. Orton, P. Schaeffer, E. Nelison, G. Adam, A. Bitton and others) are researched. Scientific (L. Smith, A. Sierz, S. Goncharova-Grabovskaya, N. Malyutina etc.) and author's (R. Cooney) reflections on the farcical genre module are considered.

Stijn Bussels. Review of "French Visual Culture and the Making of Medieval Theater" by Laura Weigert.

Stijn Bussels. Review of "French Visual Culture and the Making of Medieval Theater" by Laura Weigert.

Medieval Theater as Medium: a Survey in Media Archaeology

Medieval Theater as Medium: a Survey in Media Archaeology