Theatre Practitioners Research Articles

What does “an open body” say: the body and the Cold War in the early 1980s theatre of Taiwan

ABSTRACTThe early 1980s marks a significant period for modern theatre in Taiwan. It is often heralded as the “renaissance of modern Chinese/Taiwan theatre” through the reinvention of Chinese theatrical traditions, such as the Peking opera. This paper examines the connotations and denotations of “the West,” which serves as an important reference or counterpart in theatre practice of the period. An “open body” on stage was highly appraised and requested for theatre practitioners during the time. By historicizing the West in tandem with the concept of the “open body,” this paper calls attention to the socio-historical and the geopolitical aspects of the Cold War in Taiwan’s “theatrical renaissance.” “An open body” was emphasized in the first year of “Experimental Theater Exhibition” in 1980. Wu Jing-jyi, who had experienced working and directing in one of the most famous Off-Off-Broadway theatres, LaMaMa E.T.C in New York, led a series of workshops and training courses in “Lan-ling Theater Workshop” and created a new performing method on the basis of what they coined as “an open body.” Lee Kuo-hsiu, Liu Ching-min, Chin Shih-chieh, Lee Tien-ju – most of whom were and still are the leading actors and actresses in Taiwan – among others were all trained and influenced by this method. The magnificent production of the play Hechu xinpei was an example that followed the “open body” performance method. In this paper I make two main arguments. First, without examining closely what an open body signified at the time, the discursive formation of the body in the 1980s theatre renaissance cannot be fully comprehended. Second, I propose that the modern Taiwanese body that is open is simultaneously imbricated in relation to geopolitics, knowledge of Area Studies, and modernity – categories that the United States invented, led and developed throughout the Western bloc in the Cold War.

Radical Care

In the wake of the loss of a grand narrative for the Left, given the internal contradictions of Marxism, the demise of Communism and the global propagation of Late Capitalism, we concord with Giles (2016: 4) that, ‘ … in a political situation in which care is both exceptionally necessary and exceptionally underprovided, acts of care begin to look politically radical. To care is to act against the grain of social and economic orthodoxy: to advocate care is, in the present moment, to advocate a kind of political rupture’. In parallel with the increasing cynicism that has undermined care and notions of generosity, we seek to locate a persistent countercurrent in the participatory praxis of the so-called Third Theatre, a transnational network of practitioners operating in Europe and Latin America since the 1960s, who have developed a holistic approach to performer training, dramaturgy and participation. We will argue that the work of Third Theatre practitioners is characterised by the practical application of that which Derrida (2000) has termed as unconditional hospitality – an encounter with radical difference; an ethical, creative, even transgressive opening up to the Other, the ‘foreigner’. Thus, we shall draw on specific examples of unconditional hospitality in the work of two Third Theatre groups - Nordisk Teaterlaboratorium (Denmark) and Yuyachkani (Peru) - and examine the ways in which this manifests as a performative mode of generosity and generativity. In the case of Nordisk Teaterlaboratorium, we will focus on the triannual Festuge festival as an example of generosity and community building. With Yuyachkani, we shall look at how their work is illustrative of a radical form of political theatre which has allowed people across Peru to process the atrocities committed during the Internal Conflict between communist guerillas and the State that rocked the country over a twenty-year period from 1980-2000.

Desacralizing Whispers: Counter-Conduct in the Iranian War Theatre

The commemoration of sacrifice and martyrdom in the Iran–Iraq war led to dissemination of the ‘sacred defence’ culture and its theatre progeny – the Arzeshi genre, which is rooted in Shi’i religious values, Persian culture, and Iranian performance traditions. In response to this, Iranian anti-war theatre practitioners have intervened through a counter-conduct theatricality made up of characters, stories, reasoning, embodied emotions, and scenic languages. A thematic and aesthetic analysis of three stagings of the anti-war play The Whispers Behind the Front Line by the prominent Iranian playwright/director Alirezā Nāderi shows that there has been a shift over two periods of time regarding ‘disguised counter-hegemonic dramaturgy’, alternative characterization, and the ethical engagements of artists with the narrative of war. In this study Marjan Moosavi shows that theatre counter-conducts have shifted since 1995 from a realist aesthetic, reflecting a specific event – the Iran–Iraq war – to a universal, abstract aesthetic practice that sees war as a global phenomenon. Marjan Moosavi is an Iranian-Canadian PhD candidate and instructor at the University of Toronto's Centre for Drama, Theatre, and Performance Studies. She has published articles on Iranian dramaturgy and diasporic theatre in The Routledge Companion to Dramaturgy, TDR, and Critical Stages.

Who is Responsible? Neoliberal Discourses of Well-Being in Australia and New Zealand

ABSTRACTPolicy proposals about social change and well-being shape the implementation of applied theatre projects through technologies such as evaluation practices and funding applications. Representations of projects can, in turn, effect public discourse about who participants are and why they are or are not ‘being well’. Like public policy, applied theatre for social change has to establish a problem that needs to be solved. Drawing on debates about change in applied theatre literature, we consider how funders, governments, and communities call on applied theatre practitioners to frame particular issues and/or people as problematic. We then examine discourses of well-being in Australia and New Zealand, drawing on policy documents and funding schemes to discuss the politics of change in applied theatre in each country. We consider how the field might navigate policies, technologies and public understandings of well-being, change and social good to produce work with and for participants in neoliberalised contexts.

Shamanic striptease

Abstract This article explores a performance called Salvation: Shamanic Striptease. It considers how my co-creation of this spiritual–erotic work with white South African performer Daniel P. Cunningham1 has elaborated ‘shamanic striptease’ – an emergent practice through which he seeks to discover movement and vocalization (words and song) that yield deep significance for him (as performer) and for those who witness his performance. This is a process in which somatic and semiotic meaning are negotiated. Inspired by the vision of seminal Polish theatre practitioner Jerzy Grotowski (1933–99), shamanic striptease looks for what might be called naïve expression, that is, a close merging of intention and action that generates a dense performance open to multiple interpretations. Our working process opens up considerations of the relationships between performers’ and audiences’ experiences, the multivalence of identity and searches for the transcendental in a cosmopolitan context of London. Special consideration is given in this essay to how the identity politics of postcolonial white settler culture intersect with queer cisgender expressions of masculinity.

THE CHANGING SCENE OF THE NIGERIAN STAGE

The world has witnessed phenomenal changes, even development, in the last few decades. What with the internet and the social media with their attendant plethora of opportunities for both positive and negative minded individuals, corporate bodies, institutions and even governments, to bring their reaches within their grasp! Theatre practice in Nigeria has not been left out. However, unlike other areas of the profession, the live stage has not fared so well. Where the others have progressed, the living stage has retrogressed to the point that there appears to be a shift from the production of stage plays to other forms of performance, notably, the one man comic genre which makes appearance on the live stage on occasion, but which is otherwise, a product of the cinematic genre. This paper takes a retrospective historical glance at the reasons for this shift in order to proffer suggestions for a revival, if possible, of the conventional stage production of plays. The writer is of the view that all the stake holders in the industry among whom are governments at all levels, culture ministries and parastatals; academics and professional theatre practitioners, are all liable and as such, should contribute towards a revival because the main of the theatre revolves on collectivism rather than individualism towards which the profession is presently tilting in the name of stand-up comedy. The paper concludes on the note that though stand-up comedy is a theatrical form, it lacks that aura and spirit on which a nation’s cultural and theatrical pride traditionally depend and by which a nation is recognized universally and accepted.

МИМЕСИС И ПРАВДОПОДОБИЕ В ДРАМАТИЧЕСКОМ ТЕАТРЕ

The article considers how the idea of mimesis and likelihood relates with different types of drama theatre. During the study, the author identifies the stereotype to reduce mimesis to imitation of reality. The paper shows that such a meaning deprives the Aristotelian term of universality, making it relevant only for one of the types of theatre. The research observes fruitfulness of mimesis interpretation, proposed by A. F. Losev, for theatrical studies. This conclusion will be useful for theatre experts and theatre practitioners, who use the notions “mimesis” and “likelihood”.

The Magic Circle: An Exploration in Immersive Theatre

When discussing theatre, most people will imagine a traditional audience-actor relationship, likely in a proscenium setting; the actors on stage inhabit the world of the story while audience members remain passive bystanders. Immersive theatre challenges this convention by bringing the audience into the world of the story. Comparable to being immersed in water, the audience members are fully submerged in this new world; senses are engaged and heightened, and curiosity is peaked. The audience becomes a part of the story world alongside the actors as the border between the real and the fictional becomes blurred. In the world of games and digital media, this border is known as the “magic circle”, a space with unique rules and values separate from day-to-day reality. Though this metaphor was created to describe a game space, it can be argued that audience members in immersive theatre performances have become “players” themselves.
 In this project, I explore the “play” aspect of immersive theatre, with a particular focus in the area of pervasive gaming. This project includes research from a variety of theatre practitioners, theorists, and game designers including Janet Murray, Josephine Machon, Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman. Inspired by that research, I am creating a pervasive game designed to be played in and around the city of Kingston. The goal of this project is to further understand the ways in which theatre and gaming are intrinsically linked while experimenting with form and pushing the boundaries of the magic circle.

Drama and the Digital Revolution

Drama and the Digital Revolution

Indirect translation on the London stage: Terminology and (in)visibility

ABSTRACTProductions of translated plays on the London stage use a variety of terms to describe the interlingual interpretive process that has taken place between the source text and the performance. Most frequently, a translated play is described as a “version” or “adaptation”, with the term “translation” reserved for specialized productions. The translation method most commonly adopted is to commission a source-language expert to prepare a “literal” translation which is then used by an English-speaking theatre practitioner to produce a playscript for performance. This article examines the incidence of such indirect translation practices, the inconsistencies of the applied terminology, and the relevance for indirect translation in its wider sense, revealing the shadows of translational behaviour even within language pairs, and demonstrating the multiplicity of agents impacting on the ultimate appearance of a text in translation.

Quality assurance in the creative enterprise: an appraisal of select plays of Emeka Nwabueze

Live performances on live stage, the mother medium are no longer common sights in Nigeria. Thus, the waning influence of the live stage in the nation’s contemporary theatre practice is becoming a newly found but embarrassing tradition among young and even some old theatre practitioners. Hence, the problem of this study is the lull in different stages and sectors of the creative industry that led to the decline in live performance. Poor creativity is one of the cancerous worms that is eating deep into the fabrics of the vibrancy of contemporary African theatre practice. Commercial interest, sexploitation and peripheral creativity are now the order of the day. Thus, the aim of this study is how to assure quality in the creative process through adherence to theoretical provisions, professionalism and finesse in the creative process; reinforced with indebt knowledge of the practitioner’s worldview. Objectives include drawing the practitioners’ attention to existing theories and aspiration towards a robust, vibrant and entertaining live theatre. To achieve this creative process based on a marriage of theory and practice; two of Emeka Nwabueze’s plays, Guardian of the Cosmos and A Parliament of Vultures are examined in this article using case study and content analysis research approaches of the qualitative research method. The researchers concluded that adherence to theory can build and sustain quality assurance mechanism and vibrancy into the postmodern African theatre practice.

Living the experience of learning: embodied reflexivity as pedagogical process

As theatre practitioners we are always doing, acting, speaking and moving. Our world is one of lived experience, where we physically embody moments of knowledge creation and transformation. Through these interactions and transactions of learning, we reflect and ‘reflex’ our understanding of experiences. But how might we develop an approach to pedagogy that recognizes the primacy of relationships, enabling a sharing of an embodied and reflexive approach about our pedagogical practices? How might we experience these relationships in a way that enables learning processes to occur for ourselves and those we teach? These are questions we explore in this article, using our experiences and research. We identify how principles based on the Indigenous concept of 4Rs (relevance, responsibility, respect and reciprocity) that underpin embodied reflexivity could open up the possibility for new ways of knowing and understanding. We do this through presenting two research projects, one in Canada on using theatre games to explore well-being with Indigenous youth and one in Scotland on story and re-storying using an approach with educational professionals to develop embodied reflexive practice. Embodied reflexive processes as collective experience become opportunities for complex learning to occur where participants gain potentially transformational insights into practice through their symbiotic interaction with others.

Knowing in our bones: interrogating embodied practice in theatre-making/theatre-teaching through self-study

This article explores the use of self-study as a methodology for interrogating embodied practice, in our work as theatre-makers, teachers, and researchers. This approach offers a means to uncover and elucidate the embodied knowledge that often remains unspoken in artists’ creative processes. Such knowledge is deeply personal, difficult to express, and often reduced to the generic catch-all terms of talent or instinct. While talent and instinct are important, we believe that finding ways to codify and communicate the ‘knowing how’ of the artist’s embodied practice is significant for the discourse of drama and performance. Self-study is a methodology borrowed from teacher education practice; this article explores the potential application of the method beyond the borders of traditional education discourse into the field of creative arts and practitioner research. We position self-study as reflexive, and explore its connections to practice as research and a/r/tography, offering theatre practitioners, teachers, and researchers a methodology that recognizes, supports, and nurtures the creative impulse and its embodied nature. This article draws on the literature and theoretical aspects of self-study in order to reflect on the possibilities it affords creative artists for innovative and interdisciplinary research around their embodied practice.

Where Character Is King

This article studies ‘King and Country: Shakespeare’s Great Cycle of Kings’, the RSC’s recent four-play Henriad directed by Gregory Doran and performed at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in April 2016. In keeping with Doran’s directorial style, the cycle was conspicuously lean on concept, offering few moments of design-driven staging and instead spotlighting character and ensemble acting. The cycle thus presents an opportunity for exploring some of the claims of character criticism, which has recently made something of a comeback in Shakespeare studies. Combining the perspectives of performance theorists, theatre practitioners and literary scholars, character criticism describes dramatic character as a phenomenon constituted through the cooperation of text and body. Thinking about Doran’s Henriad in these terms not only highlights the achievements and flaws of ‘King and Country’ but discloses Shakespeare’s diverse mechanisms for constructing theatrical kings.

Eco-Shakespeare in Performance: Introduction

Eco-Shakespeare in Performance:Introduction Randall Martin and Evelyn O'Malley Can performing Shakespeare address, let alone mitigate, the threats to human and nonhuman life in the Anthropocene? Perhaps because its destruction seems to be virtually unstoppable and, on some levels, invisible and baffling, the answer so far seems to be, no. Today's worsening climate-change impacts, rising sea levels, and species extinctions are rarely reflected in today's productions of Shakespeare. James Shapiro has remarked that we read the news to find out what has happened in the world and then turn to Shakespeare to make sense of it.1 But this does not seem to be happening in terms of ecology and Shakespearean performance, even though ecocritics have been exploring relations between the playwright, early modern environmental history, and contemporary ecology for the past dozen years or so.2 These studies have focused mainly on textual readings of Shakespeare's and other early modern plays.3 In 2011, Lynne Brucker and Dan Brayton's introduction to their ground-breaking collection, Ecocritical Shakespeare, asked, "Can reading, writing about and teaching Shakespeare contribute to the health of the planet?" (2), leaving performance out of the enquiry. And while theater scholars Wendy Arons and Theresa J. May note that the "critical and theoretical intersections between literary ecocriticism and theater/ performance studies […] have been slowly but increasingly articulated over the past two decades" (3), there is little evidence, as yet, of ecocritical studies of theater and performance crossing over with Shakespearean ecocriticism.4 Randall Martin's epilogue to his study Shakespeare and Ecology calls for future work in this direction by asserting that "Shakespeare's greatest possibilities for becoming our eco-contemporary […] lie not in academic discourse but in performance" (167). Richard Kerridge makes a similar provocation, imagining a production of Macbeth that might realize [End Page 377] his ecocritical analysis of the play: "Such a production would be making a 'green' interpretation of the play," he writes, "I'd like to see it" (210). This special issue accordingly asks how Shakespeare scholars and theater practitioners can make ecological relations and environmental politics a motivating concern of twenty-first century productions. The desired goals might be formulated as two related questions: What opportunities are there in Shakespeare for making him our ecocontemporary in performance? How can Shakespeare, both in his original scripts and in transcultural adaptations around the world, become an ecological discourse on stage, as well as a model for environmental practices in the theater? This special issue suggests answers to these questions and illuminates the emerging field in a set of case studies pursuing three propositions: To discover and articulate through theatrical fieldwork, empirical research, and scholarly analysis the conceptual frameworks and material relations that can reshape Shakespeare as our eco-contemporary in performance. To analyze past and current productions for ways of modelling Shakespearean performance as an interactive platform among non-human actants and human performers. To theorize community relations in locally-situated performances with a view to rethinking Shakespeare environmentally as a metacontextual playwright. Common threads running through the papers are unpredictability, which connects climate and theater as improvisational conditions and opportunities of the Anthropocene, and desire/pleasure/affect. The latter are risky conditions in theater, but useful for shifting subjective perceptions towards global ecologies through local interactions, and for creating a new "distracting" and emancipating appeal in eco-Shakespeare (of which more below). The essays also raise questions about the relationship of theatrical genre, especially tragedy, to ecocritical representation of environmental crisis and the Anthropocene. As a whole, our case studies appear to suggest that tragedy is a more obvious fit with climate change and environmentally conscious productions. If, however, Shakespeare is indeed to be made eco-contemporary, the works will need to be meta-contextual in all genres, since the connections between the environmental [End Page 378] affordances, desires, and pleasures we are suggesting could be recognized and put into practice in any play. Book-ending and interconnecting our essays are four papers that analyze outdoor performances of Shakespeare. Traditionally such productions take the form of "Shakespeare in the Park," a seasonal and festive staging formula often understood to be an easy path into "green...

Stages of Struggle and Celebration: A Production History of Black Theatre in Texas by Sandra M. Mayo, Elvin Holt

CLA JOURNAL 241 Book Reviews Mayo,SandraM.andElvinHolt.StagesofStruggleandCelebration:AProduction History of Black Theatre in Texas. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2016. 317 pp. ISBN: 978-1-4773-0820-2. $29.95 Paperback. Stages of Struggle and Celebration: A Production History of Black Theatre in Texas is the first and only book to undertake a comprehensive study of black theatre organizations in Texas. Co-authored by seasoned theatre practitioners Sandra Mayo and Elvin Holt, the book draws upon a wealth of research on the most prominent and best documented theatre organizations in five major cities in Texas: San Antonio, Austin, Dallas, Fort Worth, and Houston. Stages of Struggles and Celebration provides historical background on active, thriving theatres as well as defunct theatre organizations. Many of the contemporary theatres in Texas emerged to replace theatres that struggled but failed to maintain solvency, and Mayo and Holt clarify for the reader that the black theatre tradition of struggle and celebration in Texas shares a common ground with black theatres across the nation. Mayo and Holt have skillfully compiled,analyzed,and contextualized extensive research on the Lone Star State black theatre organizations. The co-authors have organized the book into two sections with six chapters and an afterword. In Part I, “Setting the Stage,” the co-authors provide an excellent synopsis of the history of black theatre in Texas, one that includes a brief overview of black minstrelsy of the 1800s, black musicals, the Negro Little Theatre Movement, historically black college theatre troupes, and the emergence of the black professional theatre companies. The study provides a context for black theatre by first offering a definition: “Black Theatre in Texas, established and sustained by black theatre professionals trained in the Western theatrical tradition, does not simply imitate theatre in the larger context; infused with a black artistic sensibility, black theatre in Texas fundamentally enriches the Western theatrical experience and is enriched by it.” (7) Referencing W.E.B. Du Bois’ theory of black theatre, namely that black theatre must be about us, by us, for us and near us, Mayo and Holt provide insightful examples of the ways in which Texas black theatre companies created a brand that reflected the culture of the communities they served while reaching outward to absorb the cultural influences of black theatre theorists and practitioners across the United States. One case in point was Myra Davis Hemmings, a graduate of Howard University in 1913 who studied under Alan Locke and Montgomery Gregory when they were theorizing black theatre. Ms. Hemmings returned to San Antonio to make a career of directing plays at schools, churches, and community gatherings. This one instance of the direct influence of key figures like Locke 242 CLA JOURNAL Book Reviews and Gregory on Texas black theatre history offers validation that Hemmings and her contemporaries in Texas joined and contributed to the Negro Little Theatre Movement that emerged in Texas in the 1920s and 1930s. Mayo and Holt’s research rightly includes the nine historically black colleges and universities of Texas (HBCUs) that contributed to the Negro Little Theatre Movement spreading across the country. Highlighted are Wiley College’s Log Cabin Players, Prairie View A&M’s Charles Gilpin Players, and Texas Southern University’s University Players. The burgeoning black theatre of the 1920s around the nation and specifically in Texas continued its upward trajectory into the 1960s and 1970s where,according to Mayo and Holt,black theatres nationwide organized more than 600 community and university theatre programs. The growth of black theatre in Texas signaled the tremendous efforts of blacks across the country to build and sustain theatres, including such companies as the Lorraine Hansberry, the Oakland Ensemble, the Berkeley Black Repertory Theatre, ETA Creative Arts Foundation, Penumbra, and many others. In Part II of Stages of Struggle and Celebration, titled “Their Place on the Stage: Representative Organizations,” Mayo and Holt focus chapters 2 through 6 on the development of black theatre organizations past and current in select urban cities in Texas. The chapters in this section of the book represent a major contribution to theatre history, black theatre history, Texas history, and women’s history because of the predominantly female-run theatres in the Lone Star State...

Between Theory and Practice: Tracing Improvisation with British Muslim Youth

Improvisation is simultaneously an artistic and social practice, one that is informed by the process of making performance and living life. Drawing on literature from across the social sciences and theatre/performance studies, improvisation can be understood as a practice that requires attention to sociologist Pierre Bourdieu’s habitus, theatre practitioner Konstantin Stanislavksi’s “Given Circumstances,” and theatre practitioner Viola Spolin’s idea of the intuition. When these concepts are put in conversation with devised theatre work that the author undertook with British Muslim youth, both the benefits and limitations of improvisation become evident.

A Note from the Editor

A Note from the Editor Lisa S. Brenner The week after the election of Donald Trump to the presidency of the United States, I passed a sign on my commute to work that contained only one word: “Resist!” I couldn’t get that word out of my head, wondering what actions count as resistance and prompting me to focus the 2018 special issue for Theatre Topics on “Theatre and Protest.” The idea of protest certainly felt ripe: protests in the streets of my town with shouts of “This is what democracy looks like”; thousands of people flooding cites worldwide in women’s marches; and individuals gathering at airports to thwart the implementation of Trump’s travel ban. On the eve of his inauguration, theatre companies across the United States, from Broadway houses to community stages, participated in the Ghostlight Project “to stand for and protect the values of inclusion, participation, and compassion for everyone—regardless of race, class, religion, country of origin, immigration status, (dis)ability, age, gender identity, or sexual orientation” (Alick et al.). I noted as well that this special issue would mark fifty years since 1968, surely a revolutionary year. From the civil rights and feminist movements to opposition to the Vietnam War and consumerism, 1968 marked a worldwide escalation of social conflict and rebellion. The theatre of 1968 both reflected and fed such protests. To name but a select few: in the States, Hair premiered on Broadway; the Living Theatre returned to America with Paradise Now; Larry Neal published his celebrated essay “The Black Arts Movement”; and the Yippie movement enacted the “Festival” at the Chicago Democratic National Convention. In Paris, artists, students, and workers joined together to occupy the Odeon Theatre; in Czechoslovakia, playwright Václav Havel published a manifesto calling for liberalization; influenced by the Black Arts movement, South African theatre practitioners used their art in the struggle against apartheid; and Pilar Campesino’s Verano Negro premiered at the Teatro Estudiantil de la Universidad de México (foreshadowing the massacre of unarmed students by military police later that year). Pondering this history in conjunction with the current moment—anti-immigration sentiment, refugee crises, the dangers of global warming—and my position as both a theatre professor and practitioner, I wondered what kind of actions would occur as 2018 unfolded: Would theatres be shut down? Would students take over college campuses, like they did at Columbia University in ’68? But about six months after Trump’s inauguration the sign on my commute to work had changed. It still contained only one word, but the sign now read, “Persist!” And six months after that, as I worked on fine-tuning this special issue, the sign no longer contained any words at all, but only a peace sign. What had shifted for this protester to become a cheerleader, to then be rendered speechless? I am currently unaware of any artists shutting down theatres; antithetically, the lead actor of the upcoming Pretty Woman: The Musical lately commented, “I think with the state of the world that we’re in right now, art sometimes has to go to the other side. So, a great story like this—a fun, beautiful fairy tale—is just what we need at this time, when life is so heavy” (qtd. in Duboff). My students told me that they did not attend the Women’s March this year because they had rehearsal, feared crowds or their own safety, or could not afford to take the day off from work. I thought more about those signs. Clearly, protesters were still resisting and persisting, but in my daily interactions, people seemed anxious, fearful, and beaten down. Recently, however, I gained new inspiration about theatre’s capacity for resistance. My department produced Pia Wilson’s Down Neck, a family drama about the 1967 rebellions in Newark. To [End Page ix] provide context for our audiences, we organized a salon that featured scenes from various plays dealing with rebellion (Detroit ’67, Twilight: Los Angeles 1992), followed by remarks from Newark scholars and longtime married couple Junius Williams and Antoinette Ellis-Williams (fig. 1). The two spoke of four words connected with rebellion: anger, fear, hope, and vision. To...

Theater; or, Looking beyond Plays and Places

Theater; or, Looking beyond Plays and Places Amy E. Hughes (bio) Alas: some readers, having read nothing but my title, are already annoyed with me. This is because many US theater practitioners, professors, and aficionados have surprisingly strong opinions about how "theater" should be spelled. The subject comes up perennially and persistently in articles, blog posts, and conference panels.1 It seems the spelling debate gained considerable rigor in 1962, when the New York Times quietly changed its editorial policy to use theater instead of theatre—even going so far as to "correct" the names of theaters that called themselves Theatres.2 But the dispute can be traced back to 1789, when Noah Webster advocated for a pronunciation-based approach to US spelling in his Dissertations on the English Language. Observing that the spelling of French words had been retained even though they were pronounced differently in English, Webster complained, "Ought [the Americans] at once to reform these abuses, and introduce order and regularity into the orthography of the AMERICAN TONGUE?"3 He answered his own call in the American Dictionary of the English Language (1828), offering postcolonial alternatives to the spellings of many British (cum French) words. When Chauncey A. Goodrich revised Webster's Dictionary in 1847, he formalized this orthographic philosophy by proclaiming in the preface that the re in centre, metre, and other "words of this class" should be transposed.4 But in contrast to centre and metre, the debate over theatre's ending is far from over. As director and theater historian Francis Hodge once observed, "There is an emotional context that surrounds this word that has made and will continue to make a shift to the-er spelling difficult."5 Further [End Page 411] complicating the matter is the insistence by some that theatre and theater are not merely variant spellings but actually two different words, with the former referring to the art form (and, concomitantly, the body of work it generates) and the latter referring to a place where plays are performed.6 I rehearse this history not because it is interesting but because it is revealing: the theater inspires fervent passion, intense loyalty, even cliquish elitism in those who love and study it. Proponents of the idea to embrace both spellings—theatre as play, theater as place—illustrate this most clearly. As architecture and activity, edifice and event, refuge and recreation, the theater is deeply beloved. However, we need more definitions when looking at the nineteenth century, when "the theater" was also a performance practice, a form of labor, and a community. By attending to these connotations, the chaotic complexities of nineteenth-century US theater culture can be seen more clearly: the eclectic amusements staged in playhouses, the diverse work and workers involved in theatrical enterprises, and the dynamic camaraderie that sustained theater/s. Such nuances expose enduring biases in historiography—among them, a tendency to privilege literary legibility over quotidian praxis; a continuing emphasis on the rich, white, and famous; and a benign neglect of the communal processes that shaped nineteenth-century US cultural production. The literature most closely associated with theater is the so-called legitimate drama: narrative-based plays that were professionally produced and/or published. Yet records of actual performances, such as promptbooks marked up by actors and stage managers, suggest that scripts served merely as starting points. Promptbooks exhibit a wide range of alterations—scenes rearranged, large swathes of dialogue omitted, or entire characters removed to meet the needs of a company. Managers frequently reduced five-act plays to four, three, two, or even one act, depending on what the evening's bill would accommodate or what the audience would tolerate. Even promptbooks cannot fully capture what happened on stage. Actors added personal flourishes or "points" to impress the audience, and often, they were "imperfect" in their parts due to last-minute casting changes and the limited time they had to memorize lines. Their improvised dialogue is undocumented, except for scattered anecdotes in diaries and autobiographies. Additionally, many scripts have been completely lost, for the simple reason that they were never intended to be kept. Sassy parodies; saccharine patriotic skits; [End Page 412] slapdash dramatizations of...

Rhythm in Acting and Performance: Embodied Approaches and Understandings by Eilon Morris

Reviewed by: Rhythm in Acting and Performance: Embodied Approaches and Understandings by Eilon Morris J. Ariadne Calvano Rhythm in Acting and Performance: Embodied Approaches and Understandings. By Eilon Morris. London: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2017; pp. 296. To start, Eilon Morris informs the reader that they will not find a simple definition or universal concept of rhythm in this book. Instead, through a well-balanced dose of theory and practice as research from his years in rehearsal and training rooms as a theatre practitioner, percussionist, educator, and scholar, Morris adeptly unpacks the complex relationship with rhythm in training and performance. With risk of sounding overly effusive, as an acting instructor this is a book I have been wanting for years. Its value comes from Morris’s approach. While he may at times seem to prize an empirical rather than the rational interaction with rhythm, he does accept that analyzing rhythm for performance requires deconstruction of its use in performance both from embodied and logical experiences: “this book offers up a collection of ways in which rhythm is approached and worked with. This includes some of the ideas, metaphors and associations attributed to rhythm, as well as the practical means by which performers have looked to develop rhythmic qualities in their work” (24). “Part One—Establishing a Pulse” contains chapters 1–2. The first one begins with an etymology of rhythm from the ancient Greeks, and incorporates the term’s use by many European and Russian artists. Chapter 2 delves into the history of foundational studies in rhythm, especially from the twentieth century onward. Morris calls for an awareness of the Western lens in analysis of rhythm; yet, it is difficult to deny that influence and background in the featured practitioners. Both chapters serve as an introduction and at times feel ambitious and sporadic, jumping from rhythm in movement, to writing, to emotional inspiration, but they relay the density of the topic and its myriad of performance aspects. “Part Two—Stanislavski on Rhythm” consists of a single chapter focused on Constantin Stanislavski’s work, especially his focus on physical action. Here, Morris attempts to untangle the various ways that Stanislavski, and those who continued his work, defined tempo and rhythm. This chapter marks the inclusion of exercises to demonstrate ideas in practice; they continue through the fifth part, supporting Morris’s belief in the embodied approach to understanding rhythm. While including exercises in the book is vital to his pedagogical focus, they will be most useful for those familiar with rhythm work. For example, even being trained myself in a Grotowski-based approach, I am still unsure that I could recreate the plastique exercise (159) from his description, but others are more clearly fleshed-out and articulated. Parts 3–5 focus more concretely on current modes of working with rhythm in rehearsal and training rooms throughout Europe, Australia, and the United States. Morris pays particular attention to the ways in which these modes blend into one another, and how readers currently engaged in an explorative practice of rhythm, time, dynamism, and so on can approach practical work from complementary perspectives. “Part Three—Structure and Spontaneity” contains four chapters, each framing a conversation around a particular practitioner’s work: Suzanne Bing, Vsevolod Meyerhold, John Britton, and Anne Bogart and Tina Landau, respectively. Overall, this part examines the connections between “notions of risk-taking and liveness” with structure in both ensemble and individual sense of rhythm (135). A short introduction before each chapter situates the relationship to the overarching theme of the part. Morris’s detailed attention to structure and guidance through this multifarious conversation is admirable. I appreciate the inclusion of important female practitioners’ voices, especially Bing’s, whose work tends to lose focus to her artistic partner Jacques Copeau. “Part Four—The Ecstatic Performer” frames the conversation through the lenses of the works of various practitioners, with an additional chapter that considers work done in scientific and anthropological studies of rhythm’s effects on the psychological state. Chapters 9–11 discuss the work of Jerzy Grotowski, Nicolás Núñez, and Morris’s own work, respectively. The latter two’s past experiences with Grotowski’s work resonates strongly with “the unification of...