Post-performance Discussion Research Articles

Raging in Delhi and Rajasthan: Post-show Audience Discussions of Medea

From April to November 2019, eight members of the pandies’ theatre, a Delhi-based activist theatre group, toured Delhi and Rajasthan with a fifty-five-minute version of Euripides’ Medea, in Hindustani. The group gave fifteen performances in the round, in spaces ranging from a tin shed to a plush air-conditioned conference room, addressing diverse audiences. During post-performance discussions in four spaces – Ambedkar University of Delhi, the village of Mangliawas in Rajasthan, the India Habitat Centre, and Studio Safdar in New Delhi – spontaneous debates arose between women on the one side and men on the other in which the women expressed their understanding of Medea’s actions or their ‘identification’ with her character. Anuradha Marwah, the director of the play, discusses these debates with reference to the ‘agonistic’ character of Medea (431 BCE) while framing the tour as a feminist activist endeavour in India today, where the condition of abandoned women and those considered to be outsiders has become even more precarious due to increasing divisiveness and chauvinism. Anuradha Marwah is a theatre activist and a Professor in the Department of English at Zakir Husain Delhi College, Delhi University. She was a Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence Fellow at the Interdisciplinary Centre for Study of Global Change, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities in 2017. Her publications include two plays, A Pipe Dream in Delhi and Ismat’s Love Stories, three novels, and several academic and popular articles.

An Educational Theater- Based Activity to Challenge Cultural Stereotypes about Veterans’ and their Lived Experiences

The media stereotypes military veterans as damaged beings or indestructible heroes, often forming implicit and explicit biases that impact medical and health providers’ capability to connect emotionally with veterans. This educational tool uses interactive theater to challenge veteran stigma, enhance empathy, and increase learners’ ability to talk to veterans about their service. This 90-minute session includes an interactive theater performance where learners recite verbatim veteran interview excerpts. This article contains all the materials necessary to replicate this activity in the appendices. The performance is prefaced with an introduction of the script, how it was developed and directions for engaging in the session. The session is facilitated by faculty knowledgeable in veteran culture and care who led post-performance discussion. Electronic survey data provides quantitative and qualitative assessment of learners’ attitudes, beliefs, and quality of the session. Learner satisfaction revealed satisfaction among all questions asked, which including the following dimensions: instructional format, session content, impact of content. Qualitative results illustrated a newfound awareness of the diversity of military experience, personal bias, and the impact of social stigma on veteran health. Addressing stigma in the vulnerable veteran population is challenging. This one-time intervention called for learners to confront their biases and showed a short-term impact that may improve clinical care of veterans. Future research should address long-term impact on patient care and clinical outcomes.

Directing “The Performance of Possibilities” Within Whiteness: Casting, Staging, and Interaction in Postperformance Discussions

Postperformance discussions are common, talk-driven events that follow cultural affairs (i.e., lectures, film screenings, theater) and often feature expert panelists in conversation with everyday spectators. This article examines the postperformance discussions held after The Every 28 Hours Plays, a critical performance project focused on anti-Black racism and police brutality, at the predominantly White University of Missouri. Applying discourse analysis to transcripts of the postproduction dialogues, I show how Whiteness challenged some White spectators’ understanding of the pedagogically oriented performance and, as such, I examine how critical performance pedagogues can grapple with the White racial frame of spectatorship to navigate and, potentially, resist it. One way to navigate Whiteness during postperformance discussions is to approach the discussions as performance, using directorial practices like casting, staging, and structured interaction to focus the dialogue on a production’s critical themes.

Portrait of a Caregiver: Ethnodrama Development and Its Influence on Caregiver Well-Being.

The majority of long-term care needs are placed upon family members who often receive minimal support. In this study, we collaborate with family caregivers to create an ethnodrama about their experience and assess outcomes of participation, including caregiver well-being. Participants met over 4 months to discuss their roles as informal caregivers. Discussions were analyzed in a two-phase process and themes were developed into a script. Member checks included script review and revisions, culminating in viewing a professional performance of the play followed by a post-performance discussion and reflection. Data were gathered at six timepoints to assess caregiver well-being and longitudinal analysis was used to assess change during the course of the intervention. Twenty-two caregivers completed intervention activities. Participant reactions to the process evolved overtime, from an initial hesitance about what individuals had to offer leading to an acknowledgement of feeling heard and a desire to help others. Caregivers had high levels of burden and positive perceptions towards caregiving. Those with high levels of self-rated health had the lowest levels of burden and the most positive perceptions of caregiving. Developing an ethnodrama in partnership with caregivers is a unique and feasible method of caregiver support, mentoring, reflexivity, and meaning making. Promoting caregiver health early in the caregiving trajectory has the potential of reducing burden and elevating positivity towards caregiving.

Three performances, different responses: bringing early Holocaust commemoration to the stage

ABSTRACT This article discusses performances of a pageant called Mother Rachel and her children written by Helsinki-born Jac Weinstein in 1948 as a work of Holocaust commemoration and the radically different ways in which three audiences in the US, UK, and the Czech Republic that viewed the play in 2016 interacted with it during post-performance discussions. Using filmed performances and talkback sessions, the article analyzes the changing subject positions of the performers and audiences, as ‘primary’, ‘secondary’, and ‘tertiary’ witnesses and focuses on how various factors can make performances and reactions of the same piece so profoundly different.

The ART of performance: engaging young people with assisted reproductive technologies

ABSTRACTMore children than ever before are conceived with the use of assisted reproductive technologies and many are raised in families that are structurally different from most. Research on the experiences of children growing up in diverse families has shown that children may face disapproval, a lack of understanding, and in some cases, bullying by those outside of their home environment, including from their peers at school This study evaluated the use of theatrical performance and post-performance discussions as a method of informing young people about different families. Findings indicated that performance was an effective and engaging learning tool, as it presented first-hand experiences of family diversity. Post-performance discussions were important in enabling young people to improve their understanding of different methods of Assisted Reproductive Technologies and diverse family forms. Young people were found to value engagement activities that are unbiased, interactive, and do not make them feel awkward or uncomfortable.

Towards a Conceptual Reading of Performance as a (Counter) Public Sphere

ABSTRACTFocusing on two Zimbabwean protest productions that the authors witnessed, this article conceptualises protest theatre performances as a public spheres. Whereas the traditional application of this concept has been confined to post performance discussions and to some extent to citizens deliberating on issues of common interest in the Boalian sense, we wish to advance the notion that the world of the play itself represents a category of a public sphere which has received scant academic attention. We argue that as actors perform in plays that deal with issues of social change, citizenship and advocacy, they automatically create a primary public sphere, which is simultaneously reflective of other subaltern public spheres in the world beyond the theatrical public sphere. The actor then becomes a citizen that deliberates on issues of common interest. The article extends its analysis by exploring not just how plays function as public spheres but also how plays become public spheres that are liberating.

Richard III by the Shakespeare Theatre Company

Reviewed by: Richard IIIby the Shakespeare Theatre Company Michael J. Collins Richard IIIPresented by the Shakespeare Theatre Company at Sidney Harman Hall, Washington, DC., 02 5- 03 10, 2019. Directed by David Muse. Scenic Design by Debra Booth. Costumes by Murell Horton. Lighting by Lap Chi Chu. Sound Design and Original Music by Lindsay Jones. Movement by Steph Paul. Fight Choreography by Robb Hunter. With David Bishins (Edward IV/Richard Ratcliffe), Matthew Rauch (Richard III), Cody Nickell (Duke of Clarence/James Tyrrel), Lizan Mitchell (Margaret of Anjou), Cara Ricketts (Lady Anne), Robynn Rodriguez (Queen Elizabeth), Todd Scofield (Earl of Rivers), Jonathan Feuer (Lord Gray), Christopher Michael McFarland (Duke of Buckingham), Derrick Lee Weeden (Lord Hastings), John Keabler (William Catesby), Evelyn Spahr (Earl of Richmond), and others. The stage of the Sidney Harman Hall had been transformed into a single room with gray, concrete walls resembling those of an underground parking garage. A utility sink stood just to the left of center stage, and a large operating room light, which would be swung around to various positions during the performance, was fixed overhead. The set included a large double door, for exits and entrances, upstage center, and a concrete walkway extended above and around the entire room with a door toward its left end to create a balcony. A stairway at the left corner of the stage connected the two levels. The set never changed: the entire play was set in a mortuary. While Shakespeare's Richard IIIonly stages one of its many murders in front of the audience, this production chose to portray them all, graphically and gruesomely. As blaring, pounding music filled the theatre, Clarence was stabbed and thrown into a stainless steel vat. He bobbed up and down three or four times as his murders struggled to keep him underwater. Rivers and Grey (Vaughan was cut from the production) were thrown through the double doors upstage and strapped onto gurneys. Tubes connected to a large bottle of red fluid were inserted into their arms, and they were poisoned intravenously. Hastings too was strapped to a gurney and rolled to center stage under the operating room light. An actor brandishing a hacksaw moved across the front of the stage and then, with some actors encircling the gurney and others spread out across the apron, marching loudly in place and clapping rhythmically, Hastings was decapitated. As the "operation" was carried out, Richard and the rest of the company appeared along the walkway above, blood rolled down the stage, and the first act came to an end. [End Page 417] The Princes were drowned with funnels inserted into their mouths and water forced into them. Lady Anne, as Cara Ricketts put it in a post-performance discussion, underwent "death by corset." When Richard became king, he changed the brown brace he had worn on his chest to a gold one. Anne wore a matching gold vest when she stood next to him in 4.2. Her murderers pulled the straps on either side of the vest to crush her and then strangled her as well. Buckingham got off easy: he was simply hooded and shot in the back of the head. The setting of the play in a mortuary and the graphic staging of the murders turned England into a killing field and allowed the production to shift the focus from the War of the Roses to the tyranny and violence that disfigure our own world. The company created a kind of music to punctuate the action of the play. During Richard's soliloquy at 1.1.144ff ("He cannot live"), two actors stood on stage sharpening knives, creating a slow, rhythmic twang. At the end of 2.2, Catesby and another actor entered, snapping belts ominously as Richard and Buckingham spoke. The murder of Hastings, with the actors spread across the apron, marching in place and clapping, introduced a new form of music. As the Princes were murdered, actors gathered on stage, stamping their feet and rhythmically striking their chests with their hands. Later, in 5.2, as they stood on the walkway, they again stamped their feet and slapped wooden sticks together as Richmond spoke to...

Yes! Reflections of Molly Bloom, a one-woman play adapted from the "Penelope" episode of James Joyce's Ulysses for stage by Aedín Moloney and Colum McCann

Reviewed by: Yes! Reflections of Molly Bloom, a one-woman play adapted from the "Penelope" episode of James Joyce's Ulysses for stageby Aedín Moloney and Colum McCann Richard J. Gerber (bio) YES! REFLECTIONS OF MOLLY BLOOM, a one-woman play adapted from the "Penelope" episode of James Joyce's Ulysses for stageby Aedín Moloney and Colum McCann. World Premiere at the Irish Repertory Theatre, Chelsea, New York, performed 706- 707 2019. It was weeks past Bloomsday 2019 when I finally caught Aedín Moloney's triumphant presentation of YES! Reflections of Molly Bloomat New York's intimate Irish Repertory Theatre. Following her performance, Moloney (who insisted on being called Aedín) participated in an on-stage discussion about Ulyssesand the creation of the play with her co-creator, the novelist Colum McCann. But it was Aedín's YES!that succeeded in making it Mollysday. A seventy-fiveminute abridgment of Molly's soliloquy, YES!uses about a third of Joyce's text selected for this presentation, and all of the shows over the play's month-long run were sold out. YES!opens on a simple set, with all-gray modern curvilinear props—a bed, a mirror, a round hassock. Music, consisting of a single pipe, is heard, courtesy of Paddy Moloney, Aedín's father and a cofounder of the Chieftains, the famous traditional Irish band. Aedín's pale nightshirt-dressing gown is complemented by several colorful scarves, which she uses to full effect throughout this performance. Aedín's Molly brings Joyce's language fully alive, and the performance (though comparisons are unnecessary) is the equal of any of many seen by this reviewer. But what makes this presentation so special is Aedín's extraordinary physical grace and her magnetic facial expressiveness. Barely five feet tall, she seems six or more onstage; when she smiles or laughs, the audience has no choice but to do the same. In this show, a tear is brought to the eye with the beauty of Molly's final lines. YES!is a rollicking roller-coaster of a ride, and only reading Joyce's text directly achieves the same effect. Among many moments, two especially capture the feel of YES!While a brief bare-breasted scene is appropriately revealed, it is when Aedín slowly delivers lines like "[m]akes your lips pale" that her Molly is most sensual. 1Later, lying on the floor as she screams "shit! fuck!," she kicks one foot then another on the wall; it is a powerful bit of staging (see U18.588-89). During the post-performance discussion, Aedín outlined her long engagement with Joyce's novel. She claims to have found a copy of Ulyssesin the Moloneys' Dublin home at the age of ten. While she said that a lot of the sexually related references in the novel went over her head, she was struck by the language and imagery. After she migrated to the United States, McCann asked her to read "Penelope" at the first Ulysses Tavern celebration of Joyce in New York's Financial District in 2002. Credit McCann for the tactful editing [End Page 470]of Molly's soliloquy in YES!and for recognizing Aedín's accent as the perfect vehicle to hear Joyce's text as he himself might have rendered it. Aedín complimented McCann's careful text-editing: "Joyce was having too good a time with it!" Aedín's specific comments on "Penelope," with which she is so familiar, were enlightening. "It can be profoundly lonely being a woman," she said, "but Joyce's passion gives Molly drive and strength. … Joyce meant her to be mother-earth, beautiful, ugly, angry, and so on." Pressed for her favorite line in Molly's soliloquy, Aedín settled on "kissing … his mouth was sweetlike young" ( U18.770-71). She noted that, for the show, "tongue" was edited out of that line (as Joyce had written it), thereby making it all the "sweeter." At another point in the soliloquy, Aedín took out the word "spunk" (see U18.154, 168, 1512); "As a woman, I...

Music, complexity, and embodiment in performance: a conversation with accordionist Andreas Borregaard

ABSTRACTAs part of the Copenhagen workshop of the Evaluating Methods of Aesthetic Inquiry Network, which took place from the 6th to 8th of April 2017, the organisers invited accordionist Andreas Borregaard to give a performance of two contemporary pieces for the accordion: De Profundis by Sofia Gubaidulina, and Sequenza XIII (chanson) by Luciano Berio. The performance was followed by a discussion on musical complexity and embodiment, chaired by Jonna Vuoskoski. The event was conceived along similar lines as the handling sessions at the Hunterian and Pitt Rivers Museums as a means of allowing the researchers involved in the network to engage with specific works of art and reflect collectively on the experience. It was also a way of continuing with the network’s commitment to furthering new thinking by fostering not only the dialogue between different academic disciplines, but also with art practitioners and performers. Finally, the performance was part of a series of discussions that took place on the first day of the Copenhagen workshop that were concerned with the notion of complexity and how it may be brought to bear on aesthetic issues. This article comprises a transcript of the post-performance discussion, as well as a response written by Roddy Hawkins.

“Audience exchange”: cultivating peer-to-peer dialogue at unfamiliar arts events

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the usefulness of the “audience exchange” approach for audience development and research, and to highlight the insights offered by peer-to-peer dialogue in understanding experiences of unfamiliar arts.Design/methodology/approachUsing a case study with contemporary arts audiences, and setting this in the wider context of studies with other first-time attenders at a range of arts events, the paper explores the use of the “audience exchange” method, in which facilitated conversations after performance events allow newcomers to reflect upon and deepen their first-time encounters with live arts.FindingsThe study demonstrates the way in which conversations about arts events can enrich audience experience, and shows how participants use exploratory and emotional language to articulate their understanding of unfamiliar arts events. Peer-to-peer learning occurs through these conversations, in ways that could be further supported by arts organisations as a valuable tool for audience development. The audience exchange discussions also reveal the varieties of participation from “drifting” to full attention that are all part of audience engagement.Research limitations/implicationsThis is a small-scale, qualitative study, and the method has potential to be tested in future studies with a greater variety of participants (e.g. younger or more ethnically diverse groups).Practical implicationsUse of the audience exchange for enriching experiences of first-time attendance could be adopted by arts organisations as a regular part of their audience engagement. Greater understanding of how new audience members draw on prior cultural experiences in finding the language to articulate their first impressions of an unfamiliar arts event could be valuable for targeted marketing and increasing accessibility.Originality/valueThe originality of this study lies in its elaboration of the audience exchange method, and its focus on the language and peer-to-peer learning evident in the facilitated post-performance discussions.

No Exit from the Gaze: Sartre’s Theory Facilitated Through Aspects of Meisner’s Practice

No Exit from the Gaze:Sartre’s Theory Facilitated Through Aspects of Meisner’s Practice Caroline Heim (bio) and Christian Heim (bio) “I think the gaze was the central character in the play.” Audience member comment at a postperformance discussion of Sartre’s No Exit.1 The play No Exit was written in 1944 after Jean-Paul Sartre was a prisoner of war during the German occupation of France. It is, in its essence, a staging of Sartre’s phenomenological theory and existential philosophy as expressed in his magnum opus, Being and Nothingness. Concepts such as “the gaze,” “nothingness,” “bad faith,” “being-for-others,” “love, masochism and sadism,” and the “essence/existence dilemma” are particular themes in No Exit, which Sartre introduced and explored in Being and Nothingness. These concepts are dense and difficult, subtle and thorny, and grasping their finer nuances can be challenging. How can an understanding of these concepts be facilitated for actors who must portray characters that embody these ideas? How can audiences comprehend these ideas? How can theory be translated into the practice of theatrical performance? This article considers one experiential approach to these questions. It traces Sartre’s theories from philosophy to theatrical realization through the use of techniques based on Sanford Meisner’s methods in rehearsals and performance. It considers the problems of transferring theory inherent in dramatic texts into practice. A discussion of aspects of Sartre’s theory from Being and Nothingness, as distilled in No Exit, is followed by an analysis of the conflation of theory and practice in the rehearsal room and performance. Meisner’s methods are best suited to the internalization and practice of Sartre’s theories, and of “the gaze” in particular. Furthermore, this article considers aspects of audience meaning-making [End Page 127] through experience-based workshops and postperformance discussions attended by audiences. In some ways, the performance analyzed in this article asked the actors and the audience to have a dual consciousness. Dual consciousness, where one is “witnessing aspects of consciousness” and is “emotionally involved and noninvolved” simultaneously, is predominantly used to describe one state of the actor’s consciousness.2 This article also considers the possibility of the audience member’s dual consciousness, of her witnessing her own watching. As discussed below, the gaze was the primary vehicle to facilitate this dual awareness. The relationship between critical theory and theatre practice is a subject of continuing debate; discussions in this area primarily explore methods for trying to bridge this gap.3 While much scholarship explores the theories of play texts, there remains a dearth of research into the methods for transferring knowledge from these theories into theatre practice. Practical strategies for conveying the complex theories of intellectually formidable plays from the page into the rehearsal room and subsequent performances are unavailable. The general rubric of “theory” refers here to the playtext’s underlying philosophies, discourses, and ideologies. The purpose of transferring the theory of any given play into theatre practice is ultimately for audience readability. As Meyer-Dinkgräfe argues, when theory and practice are integrated, the “art created . . . has not only the intention, but also the very impact of affecting the spectator’s consciousness.”4 Extant methods for this transference include didactic program notes, expert-led pre- and postperformance discussions, lecturing to the actors in rehearsals, and asking the actors to research the theories themselves. These methods either presuppose an intellectual understanding of difficult concepts, or they create an expert/student binary that distances the audience and the actors from an emotional engagement with the play itself.5 We explored a more experiential method for transferring the theory of a playtext into theatrical practice: the use of exercises for the actors in rehearsals based on Meisner training methods. Sartre’s No Exit was staged in Sydney, Australia in 2011 by Crossbow Productions.6 It was in this particular production that an experiential method for the transfer of theory into practice was explored. No Exit is a germane play for such an exploration, as the content of the play is an expression of Sartre’s seminal theories found in sections of Being and Nothingness. The authors of this article were participants in the production. Detailed...

The Feasibility of Ethnodrama as Intervention to Highlight Late-Life Potential for Nursing Students and Older Adults

One barrier to the expansion of geriatric health care providers is the limited desire of nursing students to work with older adults. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the feasibility of using ethnodrama as an intervention to highlight late-life potential. Twelve baccalaureate nursing students were paired with 12 residents of an assisted living facility to complete transformative learning activities focused on the topic of late-life potential culminating in a performance of an ethnodrama developed from these data. Transcripts of initial student meetings, self-reflections, the performance, postperformance discussion, and open-ended survey questions were analyzed using in vivo and pattern coding. Older adult participants recognized and emphasized positive late-life potential, whereas students explored potential throughout the life span and reflected on its meaning in their own lives. Increasing discussion about late-life potential may alter the stigma associated with aging.

The development and cultural translation of a brief theatre-based programme for the promotion of bystander engagement and violence prevention

Abstract This article focuses on a theatre-based intervention for the promotion and protection of health and well-being, an area of applied arts that is increasingly seeing more interest. You the Man (YTM) is an American theatre-based programme for bystander engagement and violence prevention. It is a brief intervention, consisting of a 30–35 minute play about dating violence and sexual assault plus a post-performance panel discussion. The script of the play remains unchanged from performance to performance, but the format of the post-performance discussion is tailored to the local setting, circumstances, and other violence prevention activities happening locally. Panel members present for this discussion are drawn from local support agencies, and the discussion serves to introduce people to the local resources that are available. This article describes the original process of development and application of YTM in the United States, followed by the process undertaken to produce an Australian version of the programme; the term cultural translation is used to describe this process.

‘Argue with Us!’: Audience Co-creation through Post-Performance Discussions

In this article Caroline Heim explores an avenue for the audience's contribution to the theatrical event that has emerged as increasingly important over the past decade: postperformance discussions. With the exception of theatres that actively encourage argument such as the Staatstheater Stuttgart, most extant audience discussions in Western mainstream theatres privilege the voice of the theatre expert. Caroline Heim presents case studies of post-performance discussions held after performances of Anne of the Thousand Days and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? which trialled a new model of audience co-creation. An audience text which informs the theatrical event was created, and a new role, that of audience critic, established in the process. Caroline Heim is a lecturer in Performance Studies at Queensland University of Technology. Her PhD examined the changing role of theatre audiences in recent years.

Revisiting monitoring and evaluation strategies for applied drama and theatre practice in African contexts

Most of the applied drama and theatre projects being carried out in African contexts tend to be one-off events with limited follow-up in terms of building the capacity of target communities and organising them for action. Besides bringing people together for workshops, performances and post-performance discussions, such projects simply pass by with little or no impact. The few that have been given attention remain trapped within a modernising paradigm that seeks to create external blueprints for monitoring and evaluation (M & E). This article focuses on the current drive among international donor agencies, non-governmental organisations and other stakeholders in adopting more participatory strategies in M & E practice. The article argues for the adoption of a Participatory Monitoring and Evaluation (PM&E) framework where stakeholders at different levels share control over the form and content of the monitoring and evaluation process. While conventional M & E strategies mainly involve outside experts coming in to measure the impact of projects against prescribed social science-based indicators, PM&E seeks to engage all the stakeholders in planning, designing, implementing and assessing the outcome of projects.

As You Like It , and: The Tempest (review)

Reviewed by: As You Like It, and: The Tempest Michael J. Collins As You Like It Presented by The Bridge Project 2010 at the Old Vic, London. June 12–August 21, 2010. Directed by Sam Mendes. Set Design by Tom Piper. Costumes by Catherine Zuber. Lighting by Paul Pyant. Sound by Simon Baker for Autograph. Music by Mark Bennett. Choreography by Josh Prince. With Christian Camargo (Orlando), Alvin Epstein (Adam, Sir Oliver Martext), Edward Bennett (Oliver), Ross Waiton (Dennis, William), Ron Cephas Jones (Charles, First Lord) Juliet Rylance (Rosalind), Michelle Beck (Celia), Thomas Sadoski (Touchstone), Jonathan Lincoln Fried (Le Beau), Michael Thomas (Duke Frederick, Duke Senior), Richard Hansell (Amiens, Jacques de Boys), Anthony O'Donnell (Corin), Aaron Krohn (Silvius), Stephan Dillane (Jaques), Jenni Barber (Audrey), and Ashlie Atkinson (Phoebe). The Tempest Presented by The Bridge Project 2010 at the Old Vic, London. June 18–August 21, 2010. Directed by Sam Mendes. Set Design by Tom Piper. Costumes by Catherine Zuber. Lighting by Paul Pyant. Sound by Simon Baker for Autograph. Music by Mark Bennett. Choreography by Josh Prince. With Stephan Dillane (Prospero), Christian Camargo (Ariel), Ron Cephas Jones (Caliban), Ross Waiton (Boatswain) Jonathan Lincoln Fried (Alonso), Alvin Epstein (Gonzalo), Richard Hansell (Sebastian), Michael Thomas (Antonio), Juliet Rylance (Miranda), Edward Bennett (Ferdinand), Aaron Krohn (Adrian), [End Page 85] Anthony O'Donnell (Trinculo), Thomas Sadoski (Stephano), Michelle Beck (Iris), Jenni Barber (Ceres), and Ashlie Atkinson (Juno). As they had in 2009, the plays of The Bridge Project, again directed by Sam Mendes, opened at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, As You Like It in January and The Tempest in February 2010. (A review by Steve Mentz of the two productions in Brooklyn appeared in the Winter 2010 issue of Shakespeare Bulletin). They then traveled to Hong Kong, Singapore, Paris, Madrid, and Amsterdam, arriving finally in London at the end of June. Both plays opened in London on the same day, As You Like It in the afternoon and The Tempest in the evening, perhaps to insure they received equal attention from the critics (The Tempest had been more widely reviewed in New York), or perhaps to make more apparent a link Sam Mendes had found between the two plays. As he explained in a note to the program, he had in his research come upon a passage by Ted Hughes in Shakespeare and the Goddess of Complete Being: it is "as if the Devil's Island where Prospero now finds himself were what remained of the Forest of Arden after the holocaust of the tragedies." "The plays this year," Mendes thus proposed, "are designed and conceived as a single gesture, a single journey." In performance, however, each play, as he admitted, stood "on its own," and, if they in any way created a single gesture, a single journey, it was only through the somber and melancholy tone they shared. The opening scenes of As You Like It were played on a darkened stage. The struggle between Oliver and Orlando was more violent than usual, and, although Oliver seemed in his subsequent soliloquy to have genuine reservations about his treatment of Orlando, he had earlier bribed Charles with some folded bills to "break his neck." Orlando was visibly sad as he prepared for the wrestling match, a sadness from which he never seemed to recover, even after his marriage to Rosalind. (In a post-performance discussion Christian Camargo said that, even after some six months as Orlando, he had still not fully understood how to play him). Charles and Orlando wrestled in darkness, their shadows projected menacingly on the back wall by means of a lamp swinging on a chain laterally across the stage. In the first scene after the interval, when he was interrogated by Duke Frederick, Oliver's head was twice submerged in a basin of water, and he was left alone, with a burlap sack on his head, to find his way off the stage. Rosalind alone brightened the dark court with her vibrant energy, playfully jostling Celia as they spoke to Orlando, eagerly jumping [End Page 86] onto the stage at "he calls us back," and later rushing toward Duke Frederick and grabbing at him when he banished her...

Towards cultural proficiency in South African secondary schools: Ethnodrama as educational tool

Abstract Approaches to school desegregation in South Africa have been largely assimilationist in nature. The increasing cultural diversity in many schools requires the development of cultural competency among students so as to move towards a school environment that is free of racism and other forms of discrimination. This paper reports on an arts-based inquiry in three multicultural secondary schools which explored the use of ethnodrama in this regard. The ‘raw’ data obtained from drama students through interviews, journaling, improvisational role play and Forum Theatre performances provided the material for both the authoring and the performance of an ethnodrama by the selected students, followed by post-performance audience discussion. The findings suggest that ethnodrama can create a safe space for the exploration of some aspects of intercultural relationships. Participants used ethnodrama to confront the influence of the family and the history of segregation on the formation of an identity, complicate...

Marginalising the Mainstream: A Signed Performance of <i>The Miracle Worker</i> Places Deaf Issues Centre-Stage

William Gibson’s The Miracle Worker was staged at the Brisbane Powerhouse June 2009 by Crossbow Productions. In this adaption, people with hearing impairment were privileged through the use of shadow-signing, unscripted signing and the appropriation of signing as a theatrical language in itself. 250 people living with hearing impairment attended the production, 70 had never attended a theatrical event before. During the post-performance discussions hearing audience members expressed feelings of displacement through experiencing the culture of the deaf society and not grasping some of the ideas. This paper argues that this inversion enhanced meaning making for all and illustrates a way forward to encourage the signing of more theatrical events.

A Deaf Knowingness

“Deaf.” How do we learn what we know about being deaf and about deafness? What’s the difference between “being deaf” and “deafness” as a particular kind of (non) hearing? Which would you rather be, deaf or blind: children commonly ask this question as they make their early forays into imagining the lives of people different from them. Hearing people cannot know what it is like to be deaf, just as deaf people cannot know what it is like to hear ... or can they? Finally, how can we tell fresh and authentic stories of “being deaf” and the state of “deafness” that disrupt our familiar—perhaps even caricatured—patterns of understanding? In this special “deaf” edition of M/C Journal we wanted to create a body of work in which deaf writers and thinkers would have their say. Mindful that "Deaf history may be characterized as a struggle for Deaf individuals to 'speak' for themselves rather than to be spoken about in medical and educational discourses" (Bauman 47), we were particularly keen to place the contributions of deaf writers and thinkers alongside the mainstream hearing culture. This is why we have chosen not to identify each writer in this edition as deaf or hearing, preferring to leave that biographical auditory detail to the writers themselves.