Postmodern Performance Research Articles

Melle Mel in the Megaplex: Postmodern Performance and the Hip-Hop “Real” in Krush Groove & Beat Street

While Michael Schultz’s Krush Groove (1985) and Stan Lathan’s Beat Street (1984) represent two of Hollywood’s earliest engagements with hip-hop music and culture, little critical attention has been paid to these films. Instead, cultural critics from within and outside the hip-hop community tend to focus on films such as the publicly-funded, documentary-styled Wild Style (1983) and Style Wars (1983) as more “authentic” representations of early hip-hop culture. This essay argues that the dearth of critical analysis of these films evinces a binary paradigm implicit in much academic and mainstream discussion of hip-hop music and culture, in which hip hop must always either be resistant to or complicit with its absorption into the capitalist cultural marketplace, either “authentic” or a “sellout,” either “fake” or “real.” An employment of Jean Baudrillard’s notions of the proliferation of simulacra and the implosion of binary paradigms of meaning in postmodern society points up the ways that hip hop has, since its inception, called the very existence of such dichotomies into question. The essay argues that such seeming contradictions have always been inherent in hip-hop culture itself, and that hip-hop artists’ playful negotiations of these very tensions have afforded the genre its immense staying power in a postmodern society characterized by the implosion of binaries separating culture and commerce, work and play, reality and simulation. Analyses of these early “Hollywoodized” hip-hop films and the responses they spurred, then, have much to reveal about hip-hop music and culture’s entry into the mainstream commercial marketplace, and about hip hop’s continuing, fraught negotiations around the notions of authenticity and “keeping it real.”

A melodious anti-melodrama–Underscoring, song and parody in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby

Charles Dickens’s Nicholas Nickleby (1838–1839) is arguably the author’s most melodramatic novel, as Dickens adopts the grandiloquence and histrionic hyperbole of Victorian melodrama. The narrator repeatedly defines the principal conflict between Nicholas and Ralph in melodramatic terms, and both of these characters (along with the helpless and noble-hearted heroines, Kate Nickleby and Madeline Bray) possess traits that were commonly found in the characters that populated the Victorian stage. Nevertheless, Dickens also satirizes the conventions of melodrama through his humorous depiction of the Crummles Theatre Company; Mr Crummles’s wry observations about how to manipulate audience sympathies are humorously applicable to Dickens’s narrator, and thus to Dickens himself. This dialectic between the genuinely melodramatic elements of the text and the pastiche of melodrama sets up the tensions that would define the most famous and acclaimed adaptation of Dickens’s novel: The Royal Shakespeare Company’s Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby (1980). This epic adaptation dramatizes the complete Dickensian text (including the narrator’s narrative prose), but simultaneously eschews the conventions of Victorian melodrama in favour of modern and postmodern performance techniques. The musical score to the RSC adaptation epitomizes this contrast, for composer Stephen Oliver’s score embraces the conventions of Victorian theatre music while simultaneously drawing attention to the absurdity of many of these conventions; although the primary purpose of Oliver’s music is to provide melodramatic underscoring that reinforces the emotion of each scene, the composer likewise incorporates diegetic interludes and randomly placed songs that disrupt the continuity of the Dickensian narrative and draw the audience’s attention to the ‘falseness’ of what is transpiring onstage. The sense of pastiche and Brechtian parody conveyed through songs such as ‘Mrs. Grudden’s Goodbye’ and ‘The Patriotic Song’ further links the adaptation to isDickensian source, as these pastiches, like the pastiches in Dickens’s own text, are directly connected to the Crummles family.

A Menopausal Gentleman: The Solo Performances of Peggy Shaw (review)

Reviewed by: A Menopausal Gentleman: The Solo Performances of Peggy Shaw Rebecca Ormiston A Menopausal Gentleman: The Solo Performances of Peggy Shaw. By Peggy Shaw. Edited by Jill Dolan. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2011. Cloth $65.00, Paper $26.95. 178 pages. A Menopausal Gentleman: The Solo Performances of Peggy Shaw encompasses the intimate, wry, queer, and musically punctuated performance texts of Peggy Shaw, the iconic butch lesbian performance artist and co-creator of Split Britches. The collection includes four of Shaw's full-length scripts, written and performed between 1997-2008. Also included in the book are three of Shaw's monologues, written for Split Britches's full-length performances (Upwardly Mobile Home and It's a Small House and We Lived in it Always), a comprehensive introduction by Jill Dolan, and an interview with Shaw. A Menopausal Gentleman stands as the first published collection of Shaw's writing, and it explores the complexity of Shaw's gender-bending performances, her protective brand of love, and her adamant refusal to let others speak for her. Shaw argues, "I'm performing as myself. Part of how I take care of people is that they don't have to be anything except how they are" (1). Her declaration for inclusivity echoes throughout A Menopausal Gentleman, resisting efforts to reduce her onstage personality solely to male impersonation. Conversely, her argument implies that gender remains a fluid, deeply personal endeavor; to adhere to rigid gender roles amounts to an incomplete posturing of personhood. The scripts included (You're Just Like My Father, Menopausal Gentleman, To My Chagrin, and Must—The Inside Story) chiefly tackle the complexity of remaining a gentleman while the female body ages and continually investigate the questions: "Who is Peggy Shaw? What contributes to her performances? Who or what shapes her identity?" For Shaw, performance and life tread a thin line, converge, and spill over. As a performer, Shaw moves and speaks effortlessly, but her writing reveals the difficulty of such work. In Menopausal Gentleman, Shaw declares: "An older woman being a gentleman is not funny" (84). Each script encompasses Shaw's fascination with mortality and the ways in which her own mortality collides with her energetic stage presence and her robust desire. Dolan's thorough introduction explores this tension at length, providing multiple critical lenses for spectators to receive Shaw's work, and cataloguing the first three scripts in A Menopausal Gentleman as a trilogy of masculinity, concluding with an "elegiac" piece on loss and aging, Must—The Inside Story (32). Dolan's introduction contextualizes Shaw's writing with useful biographical information, as Shaw's scripts often shift between anecdotes from her adolescence [End Page 153] during the 1940s and 1950s, and musings on aging, death, art, and love while performing throughout the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. Keeping Shaw's longevity in mind, Dolan also describes Shaw's charismatic persona and technical skill as a performer and traces Shaw's formidable oeuvre from her theatrical debut in the drag troupe Hot Peaches to her work with Split Britches. Dolan argues that Shaw's female masculinity and her work in Split Britches made a significant impact on postmodern performance and working-class theatre, thereby recuperating a "butch-femme style" (16). The introduction and scripts feature a complex web of influences for Shaw: Shaw's working-class, Irish-immigrant background; her heterosexual marriage prior to coming out as a lesbian; her complicated role as a butch lesbian during the rise of second-wave feminism; and other experiences of survival as a queer artist. Shaw similarly acknowledges the individuals who assisted in her self-fashioning. In Shaw's preface to the collection, an essay titled, "On Being a Solo Artist: No Such Thing," Shaw writes: "I am a solo artist and, by virtue of that, a collaborator—/ 'I would be nothing without you.'/ Well, I would be something, but not all that I could be" (39). With playful, elusive language, Shaw reveals how personal surety requires an endless shifting through collaboration. Comfortable working in contradictions, Shaw makes a compelling case for acknowledging others' roles in shaping and ultimately co-creating her theatrical aesthetic, her female masculinity, and her idealistic worldview...

Performance Theatre and the Poetics of Failure: Forced Entertainment, Goat Island, Elevator Repair Service (review)

Reviewed by: Performance Theatre and the Poetics of Failure: Forced Entertainment, Goat Island, Elevator Repair Service Dan Venning Performance Theatre and the Poetics of Failure: Forced Entertainment, Goat Island, Elevator Repair Service. By Sara Jane Bailes. New York: Routledge, 2011. Cloth $115.00, Paper $39.95. 256 pages. It can be very difficult to write about postmodern performance. Sara Jane Bailes, in her book Performance Theatre and the Poetics of Failure, argues that just as attempts to comprehend or analyze such productions can miss the mark, such shows themselves are often constructed around the very idea that theatrical representation is always imperfect, and the possibility that failure can be intentionally productive. Bailes begins with Beckett, who sparked her interest in avant-garde theatre and who she sees as the father of such performance theatre; she argues that he sees failure as “a constituent feature of the existential condition that makes expression possible” (1) and thus allows audiences to question expected outcomes. Looking to J. L. Austin’s concept of infelicitious or misapplied, badly executed acts, Bailes argues that performance, because it is predicated upon liveness and impermanence, at times exists in a constant state of failure. She goes on to suggest that contemporary theatre groups such as Sheffield-based Forced Entertainment (founded 1984), Chicago-based Goat Island (1987–2009), and New York-based Elevator Repair Service (founded 1991) have used and constructed failure as an integral part of their performances. In the second chapter, “World(s) After a Different Image: Marxism, Slapstick, Punk,” Bailes examines some of the many theoretical concepts she uses to underpin her studies of the aforementioned theatre groups. Marxism, she argues, calls for alternatives to rich, polished professionalism—a centerpiece of Brecht’s epic theatre. Bailes defines slapstick—that long-time performance staple—as the failure of a [End Page 246] seemingly simple task that is nevertheless bungled optimistically. Bailes connects this theatrical style to the history and aesthetics of punk, the musical movement that expressed the disillusionment that followed the 1960s and opposed itself to harmony, virtuosity, and material success. The following chapters each examine one company’s work in detail. In “Profane Illumination: Theatre and Forced Entertainment,” Bailes examines a company that often plays with ideas of coercion and the apparent requirement that theatre entertain its audience. She discusses how the company members “refus[e] to demonstrate their own skill” (108) in shows such as Club of No Regrets (1993), in which the use of an inept narrator reveals the inadequacy of theatrical conventions. Bailes also explores the company’s politics, juxtaposing Forced Entertainment’s avant-garde drama with Thatcher’s conservative vision for Britain. The author notes that the company has faced significant resistance from conservative forces; based in the former mining town of Sheffield, Forced Entertainment has become an artistic lightning rod for class tensions in the U.K. The fourth chapter, “News from Nowhere: Goat Island Performance Group,” also examines a politically motivated performance group. Starting with a discussion of Ernst Bloch’s conceptions of “openness and non-fixity . . . hope and possibility” (116), Bailes examines a company that created shows that consist of a “non-hierarchical inventory” (136) of characters, images, and actions latticed around a particular social theme. Goat Island’s shows were often based around the theme of a particular social trauma, such as the suicide of Paul Celan (When will the September roses bloom? Last night was only a comedy [2004]), and contained long sequences of “impossible dances” in which the company members dramatized their production process. Through her analysis of Goat Island, Bailes argues that failure is both necessitated by the theatrical form, and also simultaneously oxymoronic and impossible in the theatre, since whatever happens onstage in front of the audience indeed happens, imperfect as it may be. In her final chapter, “Dislocations of Practice: Elevator Repair Service,” Bailes examines this company’s “made work . . . created from disparate ideas, sources, and formal ideas” (168), situating their work within a somewhat broader discussion of New York’s “downtown” theatrical scene. Instead of discussing any of the company’s more famous later works such as Gatz (2006), Bailes focuses on Elevator Repair Service’s earlier works, Cab Legs (1997...

Moving Targets: Political Theatre in a Post-Political Age (review)

Reviewed by: Moving Targets: Political Theatre in a Post-Political Age Adam W. Nixon Moving Targets: Political Theatre in a Post-Political Age. By Ryan Reynolds. Saarbrucken, Germany: VDM Verlag, 2008; pp. 212. The essential question posed in Ryan Reynolds's stimulating book Moving Targets: Political Theatre in a Post-political Age is existential: "Is there such a thing as political performance in the post-political age?" Reynolds, an American scholar and theatre artist working in New Zealand, wonders at the utter lack of belief in alternative social structures in our current moment. He writes, with some disappointment, that the grand ideas of the past have been subsumed into the market of late-stage capitalism. Using the postmodern theories of Baudrillard and Jameson as his lens, Reynolds views late-stage capitalism as a "moving target" in the crosshairs of political theatre, which itself must remain a moving target so as to avoid commodification by, and absorption into, the market of late capitalist exchange. Moving Targets is concerned with the efficacy (or lack thereof) of postmodern performance in the United States, Canada, and New Zealand. Chapter 1 examines the conundrum of being defined by the very postmodern conditions that political artists seek to critique. Chapter 2 examines the work of Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping, based in New York City. Chapter 3 focuses on Reynolds's own work with Free Theatre Christchurch in New Zealand. Chapter 4 examines Critical Art Ensemble (CAE), an avant-garde performance collective from Toronto. And chapters 5 and 6 return to New Zealand, where Reynolds theorizes his own work in the broader context of political performance in the West. In chapter 1, Reynolds places Fredric Jameson, Augusto Boal, and Baz Kershaw in conversation, finding a method by which political performance can be effective even if its form is pastiche. Reynolds aligns himself with Boal and Kershaw, insisting on the possibility that a performer can, at least momentarily, transcend commodification in the marketplace and achieve political efficacy—even if that efficacy is fleeting. The important question for Reynolds is not how efficacy is achieved (form), but what is achieved (outcome). Parody/pastiche, clothes on, clothes off, gender, sex, sexuality—all is eventually consumed by the marketplace, concedes Reynolds, who nonetheless maintains that if an opening of consciousness is achieved in performance, then the political has been realized within the aesthetic. Chapter 2 offers a detailed analysis of Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping. As he documents, Reverend Billy appears in full religious costume atop a soap box in Times Square engaging in "mock sermons," organizing store invasions, preaching against mega-retailers, leading his choir in "Stop Starbucks" chants, and calling for the voluntary withdrawal of large corporations from the local economy. Against this backdrop, Reynolds details the myriad ways in which Reverend Billy has ironically commoditized himself: he offers classroom lectures for $500, sells appearances, and organizes events funded by rival retailers. By Reynolds's account—with a nod to Jameson—commodification is the end of the political. He reminds us that punk rock, Laurie Anderson, Robert Wilson, and hippies have all been subsumed and commodified to a significant degree by capitalist culture. He tells us that simply having radical aims or controversial content is insufficient, since the capitalist system is so adept at incorporating opposition into commodity culture. In such a world, is it possible for an aesthetically compelling avant-garde artist to set up a website that sells T-shirts and still remain avant-garde? Of the performers Reynolds profiles, CAE (discussed in chapter 4) is in many ways the most compelling, in that it appears to have best resisted market commodification. It has even provoked severe reactions from government authorities, including the Canadian government's absurdly fabricated charges of terrorism, which led to members' arrest and trial. Even if these charges are dismissed, CAE could face bankruptcy or ruin; if they are upheld, the troupe could face prison terms. According to Reynolds, CAE achieves autonomy from the marketplace by continually transforming its aesthetics. In one type of performance it produces and distributes fake television commercials and newspaper circulars, while in another type of performance it screens audience members genetically...

The Spectator's Performing Body: the Case of the Via Negativa Theatre Project

The concept of the performing body consists of two elements: the performer's and the spectator's performing bodies. The performer's body is an active and creative body on stage, while the spectator's body is considered an uncreative body, passive in his or her seat. In this article, findings regarding the duality of the performing body, its interchangeability, and its intertwinement, derive from researching Via Negativa, a Slovenian-based (yet international in its nature) theatrical project established almost a decade ago by theatre director Bojan Jablanovec. The mission of Via Negativa is to investigate the relationship between the performer and the spectator exclusively through theatrical means. Tomaž Krpič is a sociologist of the body with particular interest in postmodern theatre and performance. He was until recently Lecturer in Cultural Sociology in the Faculty of Social Sciences, Ljubljana University, Slovenia.

Releasing the Imagination

In this paper, Maxine Greene illuminates the concept of an aesthetic education within her discussion of the work of New York based dance company STREB. Elizabeth Streb's daredevil, postmodern acrobatic performance piece provides this paper with the metaphor of the wall—from the glass wall through which the STREB dancers literally ‘break through’. The idea of arts education is to challenge the wall, not passively walk away—to take the risks, to ask the questions, to be willing to engage.

"And Thou Shalt Bind Them as a Sign upon Thy Hand": Eve's Tattoo and the Holocaust Consumer

"And Thou Shalt Bind Them as a Sign upon Thy Hand":Eve's Tattoo and the Holocaust Consumer Rob Baum (bio) The eponymous Eve of Eve's Tattoo acquires a tattoo based on a photograph of an anonymous woman from Auschwitz. New York writer Eve Flick seeks to memorialize all victims of Nazi genocide by performing their death stories, but instead plays out her own personal and political dramas before a backdrop of contemporary U.S. concerns, urban chic, and German reunification. Emily Prager's contemporary novel interrogates the Judeophobia prevalent in the most artistic and educated of milieux. The novel exemplifies a postmodern malaise I call the "Holocaust reader." The "Holocaust reader" actively pursues an empathic obsession with victims (and sometimes survivors) of the Shoah. The syndrome is ontologically "postmodern" in its pathology, as the "Holocaust reader" reads the Shoah as a secondary or tertiary text, and projects herself into the literature of torture and gratuitous death. Let your absence be the latest shape of your being felt forever.—Rilke When Eve Flick acquires a tattoo at the age of forty, she does not choose a butterfly, rose, or dragon to curl around her shoulder. Eve's tattoo resembles that of an unknown woman murdered at Auschwitz, matched to a photograph found hidden in the recesses of her boyfriend's closet; the tattoo is placed on her left forearm, six small numbers from a dead stranger. Why was this photograph in the closet, and what does Eve mean by transferring a dead woman's Ka-Tzetnik number onto her own limb? Eve intends to memorialize Hitler's female victims, to create archetypal death narratives, postmodern performances of memory. Around the imagined name "Eva," Eve invents myriad fictional selves, fragments of horrible truth. The brave, stupid gesture of emblazoning [End Page 116] Auschwitz on her arm initiates a spiritual journey as Eve hunts for the nameless woman she desires to embody. But she does not glimpse the decadent Gentile European body she has actually conjured from silence—a body that gives voice to racist and homophobic hatred in the name of a "living," loving god. Content in North American privilege and a generation away from war, Eve's painful dramas of private alienation, public betrayal, and self-denial testify to the contemporary allure of Nazism. Nazism exerts a dangerous fascination in these times, not least because of its association with the erotic. Nazi symbolism elides in the simplistic shapes of monster and maiden, discolours Jewish lives, whitens Gentile lives. In the twenty-first century, Nazism inspires the décor of Asian restaurants, fashions on Milanese catwalks, costumes of famous rock stars, national prize-winning novels, tags of Polish gangs.1 The resonance of Nazism with postmodernism governs a brisk market in secret photos, Judenstern crisp with age, Nazi china, shrivels of Torah scrolls reduced to swastikas. Fifteen years ago I handled a silver soupspoon with an incised lightning bolt of the SS, touched the dim dent made in its bowl by SS teeth. Hate memorabilia is very good business. You can buy it on the internet if you can't make it to the conferences, meetings, trade fairs, and club dinners where such goods are brokered, along with concentration camp uniforms, prisoners' tools, Jewish talismans, soap, flesh, and other Nazi family heirlooms. The Jewish Holocaust, the Shoah,2 has become a commodity, something to consume, to want, to want to possess. Emily Prager's novel Eve's Tattoo3 forms the basis of my exploration of Holocaust consumption, the visitation of a neo-trauma on the Jewish body. This insightful novel shapes my discussion of performance and embodiment, the iconography of the Ka-Tzetnik (concentration camp) tattoo, the Nazi erotic and the dangers of Holocaust consumption. [End Page 117] Performing the Jewish Woman The central character of Eve's Tattoo is Eve Flick, a tony New York magazine writer known for her witty, acerbic pen. In Eve's mind, "memorialization" is not the same thing as "immortalization"; the dead live in, rather than apart from, Eve, who incorporates the narrative. Attracted to, yet repelled by, the woman in the photograph who (blonde, blue-eyed, and Germanic) looks so much like...

A Semiotic Reading and Discourse Analysis of Postmodern Street Performance

Postmodern street art operates under a set of references that requires art educators and researchers to adopt alternative analytical frameworks in order to understand its meanings. In this article, we describe social semiotics, critical discourse analysis, and postmodern street performance as well as the relevance of the former two in interpreting the latter. To illustrate how the meaning of postmodern street performance is a socially constructed fluid variable that is situated, generated, and utilized in a particular context of discourse, we provide examples of analysis of street performances by Berlin-based artist Aram Bartholl. Finally, by garnering insights from this discourse analysis, we offer several conclusions. In the end, we propose the employment of social semiotics and discourse analysis as a more reflexive way of understanding postmodern street art practices.

Beyond Cynicism: The Sceptical Imperative and (Future) Contemporary Performance

‘Beyond Cynicism’ sets out to question the radical, or political, potential of the postmodernist philosophies which have underscored a significant strand of experimental performance over the last four decades. Rather than critiquing the postmodern from a Marxist or materialist perspective, the article returns to the self-deconstructive movement of Derrida to assess whether the capacity for political action and radical change is inherent within postmodernism itself. The article argues that the sceptical imperative, which is ‘fundamental’ to Derridean thought, contains the key to a constant self-reflexivity which prevents any ‘totality’ of conclusion being established. The logical consequence of this is that the ‘conclusions’ of the early postmodernists cannot be merely accepted by contemporary performance makers but must be rigorously and continually challenged in order to maintain the potential for political action and radical change. On the basis of this argument the article is able to make key distinctions between sceptical and cynical postmodern performance. It proposes that where Forced Entertainment's Showtime (1996) consistently questions its own scepticism by foregrounding the ghosts of the mimesis it simultaneously deconstructs, work which may have comparable ‘motifs’, such as Reckless Sleeper's Spanish Train (2006), presents only the foregone conclusions of the postmodern exercise, thus rejecting self-reflexivity to establish a new ‘totality’ which mirrors the ‘incommensurable narrative play’ defined by Lyotard. The article concludes by examining the process and politics of ‘making’ self-reflexive performance, through an analysis of the author's own production of Roses & Morphine (2005). This analysis highlights the importance of sustaining paradox in the making process, whereby the contradictions, which lie at the heart of the maker's own rhetorical operations, are exposed to ensure that conclusions are deconstructed even as they are reached.

Sites of Desire

© 2007 Nicholas Birns The distinct contribution of Joan Jonas to postmodern performance has been the introduction of a defined narrative and a complicated relationship with anterior source material into tableaux, without yielding to conventional storytelling. In works such as The Juniper Tree, inspired by the Brothers Grimm, and the more recent Lines In The Sand based on the poet H. D.’s modernist-feminist epic Helen In Egypt (whose enactment of modernity’s critical quest for primal, archaic nurturing is a clear precursor to The Shape, The Scent, The Feel of Things), Jonas has been inspired by literary sources without simply adapting them. She performs in her own pieces with other actors, theatrical props, and a complicated series of video presentations. Furthermore, Jonas’s films, drawings, and sound effects are part of these presentations and provide multiple conduits for her response to the source material. SITES OF DESIRE

Die Rekonstruktion der Dekonstruktion in Dea Lohers Dramen, oder: Die Rückkehr des politischen Dramas

Pitting Lohers aesthetics of theatre against Hans-Thies Lehmann's view of the postdramatic, this essay examines the various ways in which Loher overcomes the postdramatic theatre. Drawing on a vast range of examples from her work, the essay clarifies Loher's position in regard to mimesis. Whilst postmodernism features as a theme in Loher's œuvre, the form of her plays denies the idea of the radicalized V-effect that is typical of postmodern performances. As far as the dramatic form is concerned, Loher's plays do not adhere to a postmodern-postdramatic style. By contrast, Loher harks back to the tradition of the political theatre of Sartre and Brecht. This does not mean, however, that she merely replicates their aesthetics. Mimesis means that she employs both Brecht's not-but and Sartre's engaged theatre, thus distancing herself from the idea of radicalized Brechtian (i.e., postmodern) theatre. In this sense, her theater is derived from modernist ideas, namely the focus on the individual in an increasingly mechanized environment; an individual who—in contrast to the two-dimensional figures of the post-dramatic—is still open to communication with others through language, thus being able to negotiate his/her position. Loher does not teach her audience what to think; yet she offers a dramatic framework for the struggle of the individual. (BH; in German)

Postmodern Display: Staging the Mind of Marshall McLuhan

Creatively commingling the life and theories of Canadian media icon Marshall McLuhan may yield robust material for negotiating and staging postmodern performance. This article considers certain of McLuhan’s theories that have parallels to influential postmodern theoretical constructions and the ways in which these parallels are ripe for performance. It considers the uneasy relationship between dramaturgies and dialectics, and deals with frequent criticisms leveled at postmodern thought, including a hectic rejoicing over consumerism,a cacophony of signs,and the dangers of incorporating into performance the mixed-media environments inherent toMcLuhanismand postmodernism alike. Finally, the article considers the potential for mixed-media performance to engage with social objectives linked to producing alternative theatre. But it begins and ends by asking the question: Do artists who attempt to stage theory risk allowing the theory to distract from and overwhelm the performance? In order to probe these effects, the sprawling Edmonton science-fiction “Alt-Rock Opera,” The Illumination of Marshall McLuhan, is offered as a case study.

Advancing Family Communication Scholarship: Toward a Communicology of the Family

In this article I argue for advancing family communication scholarship by incorporating more methodologies like communicology, which reflect human science systems of inquiry. Foremost, communicology offers a paradigm exemplar of the methodological integration of semiotic and phenomenological theory. We find that communicology is one among a number of emerging postmodern perspectives, like narratology and performance theory, for example, which effectively combines both interpretive and critical research agendas. Approaches like communicology show promise for future research aimed at critically examining the world of the family in its inherent concreteness, emotionality, and subjectivity.

Modern Drama: Defining the Field (review)

Reviewed by: Modern Drama: Defining the Field Jodi Kanter Modern Drama: Defining the Field. Edited by Ric Knowles, Joanne Tompkins, and W. B. Worthen. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003; pp. xiii + 212. $27.95 paper. With their collection of essays, Modern Drama: Defining the Field, editors Ric Knowles, Joanne Tompkins, and W. B. Worthen hope to open theatre studies to "questionings of period and generic boundaries; to questionings of scholarly and generic privilege based on class, race, nation, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality; and to questionings of all kinds, especially those that haven't yet been thought of or understood" (xiii). The collection is the fruit of the three-day conference "Modern Drama" held in Toronto in 2000 under the auspices of the journal Modern Drama. The collected conference proceedings first appeared in volumes 43.4 and 44.1 of the journal. Although the present collection bumps up against significant limitations in both representation and elaboration, and although organization is wanting, as a whole Modern Drama succeeds in articulating a broad, even exciting vision for the scholarship of modern drama. The volume opens with Elin Diamond's distinguished essay, "Modern Drama/Modernity's Drama." Breathtaking in both scope and coherence, especially in its present condensed form, "Modernity's Drama" articulates a critical difference between modernity, which is deeply invested in historical time, and modernism, which is suspicious of singular historical narratives. Modernity's drama, Diamond argues, is a double optic, through which histories may, indeed must, be seen as multiple, irrational and, perhaps most radically, "unredeemed by the rational promise of progress or futurity" (11). Diamond argues that it is not drama per se but performance that mandates this double optic, since performance makes it impossible not to read the text on multiple historical planes. Diamond surveys the contributions of Aphra Behn, August Strindberg, Bertold Brecht, and Zora Neale Hurston to a drama whose exclusion from received canons of modernism she sees as an opportunity. Particularly interesting is her analysis of Behn's work which, Diamond argues, rejects modernity's historicizing mandate, even as modernity rejects her. The other essay in the collection that approaches Diamond's in breadth of vision is Shannon Jackson's "Why Modern Plays Are Not Culture: Disciplinary Blind Spots." Where Diamond's essay troubles the history of the field's central terms, Jackson's troubles the genealogy of the field itself. Most importantly, Jackson recalls and revalues modern drama's [End Page 534] relationship to literary studies, even as she affirms its newer relationship with cultural studies. Through a reading of Raymond Williams's oeuvre, Jackson demonstrates that "the transition from literary to cultural studies can be seen to take place through the vehicle of 'modern drama'" (41). More specifically, it is through modern drama's "embedded practicality" and "extra-literary aesthetics" that the transformation from literary to cultural studies takes place. Similarly, Jackson argues that modern drama is also a linchpin in the relationship between theatre studies and performance studies. In both cases, Jackson uncovers disciplinary blind spots and argues powerfully for a longer, more complicated disciplinary genealogy, one that affirms the value of both newer and older origins. The three essays in the center of the collection are perhaps the most coherent unit, each concerning itself with the postmodern in different, complementary ways. Loren Kruger identifies the emphasis on subjecthood as distinctly modern and, surprisingly, cites Hegel's aesthetic as the source of this emphasis. Surprisingly, again, she then reads several postmodern—or, as she calls them, postdramatic—performances as sites wherein subjecthood is explored. These performances come from a range of genres, including solo performance, documentary theatre, and puppet theatre. Interestingly, the documentary and puppet theatre performances both deal with the same subject, the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Sue-Ellen Case's essay positions Brecht against his little-known predecessor, Helena Blavatsky, founder of the Theosophical Society. Through this unexpected tête-à-tête, Case demonstrates that Brecht's idea of the modern was largely outdated before it was articulated and that postmodern performance, as an embodiment privileging neither western nor male perspectives, can be traced back not only before Brecht but before the turn of the twentieth century. Finally...

Rap's Unruly Body The Postmodern Performance of Black Male Identity on the American Stage

In response to the question, Does rap bear any “social message,” Ice Cube was careful to make a distinction between the occasions when rappers are “just having fun” and when they are performing a more serious “social message.” “Gansta rap” or “reality rap” are self-conscious performances of the complexities and commodifications of black male identity in America. Gangsta rap, the most theatrical style of rap, comments on the place of black masculinity in the American value system, and imagines alternative spaces where the power structures may be redefined.

Service-Learning as Postmodern Art and Pedagogy

This article explores the idea that service-learning, when based on a postmodern art education pedagogy, is a work of art. The goal of service-learning is to deepen students' civic responsibility while providing opportunities for experiential knowledge in their academic study. While service-learning is meaningful and important across disciplinary boundaries, when it is combined with art education pedagogy there are explicit and implicit connections to the world of art and artmaking. Using Dominique Mazeud's Great Cleansing of the Rio Grande performance art ritual as an exemplar, one university art education service-learning program is described, reflected upon, and interpreted. Criteria are presented for the development of a postmodern service-learning art pedagogy as a transformative and socially reconstructive practice. These criteria are based upon the connection between the ritualistic nature of postmodern performance art and service-learning theories. The implications of this research extend the purposes of art education not only to include the power of the arts to educate, but to provide the service opportunities that transform and give us meaning in our lives.

The radical in performance: between Brecht and Baudrillard

The Radical in Performance investigates the crisis in contemporary theatre, and celebrates the subversive in performance. It is the first full-length study to explore the link between a western theatre which, says Kershaw, is largely outdated and the blossoming of postmodern performance, much of which has a genuinely radical edge. In staying focused on the period between Brecht and Baudrillard, modernity and postmodernism, Baz Kershaw identifies crucial resources for the revitalisation of the radical across a wide spectrum of cultural practices. This is a timely, necessary and rigorous book. It will be a compelling read for anyone searching for a critical catalyst for new ways of viewing and practising cultural politics.

Close listening : poetry and the performed word

Close Listening brings together 17 strikingly original essays, commissioned especially for this volume, on the reading of poetry, the sound of poetry, and the visual performance of poetry. While the performance of poetry is as old as poetry itself, critical attention to modern and postmodern poetry performance has been negligible. This collection opens new avenues for the critical discussion of the sound and performance of poetry, and offers an indispensable critical base for understanding language in and as performance.

Transgressing Boundaries: Postmodern Performance and the Tourist Trap

June 01 1999 Transgressing Boundaries: Postmodern Performance and the Tourist Trap Liz Tomlin Liz Tomlin Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Author and Article Information Liz Tomlin Liz Tomlin is currently Research Fellow in Performing Arts at the Manchester Metropolitan University. She is also codirector of Point Blank (formerly reflex theatre) at the Open Performance Centre Ltd. Online ISSN: 1531-4715 Print ISSN: 1054-2043 © 1999 New York University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology1999 TDR/The Drama Review (1999) 43 (2 (162)): 136–149. https://doi.org/10.1162/105420499760265244 Cite Icon Cite Permissions Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Search Site Citation Liz Tomlin; Transgressing Boundaries: Postmodern Performance and the Tourist Trap. TDR/The Drama Review 1999; 43: 2 (162), 136–149. doi: https://doi.org/10.1162/105420499760265244 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentAll JournalsTDR/The Drama Review Search Advanced Search This content is only available as a PDF. © 1999 New York University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology1999 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.