Public Theatre Research Articles

#Unrequited potentiality of socially and politically committed theatre

In 2018 Zala Dobovšek and Jaka Smerkolj Simoneti examined how LGBTQ+ characters are represented on the stages of Slovene public theatres. In their overview they concluded that rather than being the centre of the narrative, these representations are most often supporting roles. In that sense the play #scars #chemsex (#brazgotine #kemseks) is not only a breath but a strong nudge of fresh air.

Daniel versus Jonson: Books, Beasts and Birds

Abstract The dispute between Samuel Daniel and Ben Jonson lasted two decades, until Daniel’s death in 1619. The story is usually told only from Jonson’s perspective. It began c. 1599 with Jonson’s vying with Daniel for the patronage of Lucy, Countess of Bedford. At the accession of James, Jonson presented himself as the decipherer of the court’s images. He was dismissive of Daniel’s learning and lack of sophistication, but it was Daniel who was chosen to write the first masque at court. The dispute became more vehement in 1605–1607. Jonson suggested Daniel was a brainless time-server and a plagiarist, and Daniel identified Jonson as a wolf trying to get under Lady Bedford’s skin (alluding to the goat emblem on the covers of the Countess’s books). This was when Jonson announced his claim to be the Horace of the age—not just in the public theatres (as in Poetaster), but to the elite of the Jacobean court. At this point Daniel was facing a Privy Council enquiry into his play, Philotas, but he survived. His tragicomedy, The Queen’s Arcadia, was successful when the King and court visited Oxford University in 1605, in events to which Jonson was probably not invited. The essay examines what Daniel said about (as he thought) Jonson’s indecorous fictions and his bullying—and how and why Daniel said these things, through allusions to Lady Bedford’s books, to the persona of the less judgemental Horace (i.e., not Jonson’s version) and to his own sickness and withdrawal from the debate.

La culture pour tous, théâtre public, théâtre privé, les règles françaises du jeu

"The theater has always been a privileged partner of the political Power, to be protected and/or monitored, depending on each type of society. In France, the idea of having the arts and culture supported by the State had already germinated at the dawn of the French Revolution, but it was necessary to wait until the end of the 19th century to witness a real awareness and a new distribution of “roles” between institutionalization and democratization. After a quick historical review, following in the footsteps of André Malraux, Jean Vilar or Jack Lang, until today, we can identify the principles of a cultural policy, shared between the State and the local authorities. An important particularity of this system is that this policy integrates, to different degrees, the public and private sectors. More concretely, we define what the French theatrical system is made of both public and private, and in the latter, which is more fragile and relatively uncontrollable, we recall the situation of the so-called “intermittents du spectacle” and their permanent struggle to consolidate or wrest their rights. A representative case is thus the confrontation between the two branches of the Festival d'Avignon, the IN and the OFF, at the turn of the health crisis, from which the theater has managed to emerge alive. Keywords: public theater, popular theater, private theater, subsidized theater, intermittents du spectacle, cultural policy, Festival d'Avignon IN, Festival d'Avignon OFF "

The Public Consciousness of the Transition

"The decade following the Romanian Revolution, generally known as “the transition,” saw radical changes in the economic and social fabric of the country, with one apparent exception: the public theatre system. At the same time, the monopoly the winners of post-communism developed on the discourse about the transition and the traditional practices of cultural production delayed any artistic representation of that period for at least another decade. The article tackles the issue of this delayed public reflection on the long-term effects of the transition, how the theatre managed to preserve its own oblivion to these effects, and how the independent theatre of a new generation of artists engaged, after the financial crisis of 2008-2011, in a public reckoning of the ongoing legacy of the transition. Keywords: post-communist transition, political theatre, independent theatre. "

Changing the State’s Discourse about Public Theatre Institutions by Redefining the Language of Law

"In this study we take a closer look at how the state refers to performing arts venues and their roles and attributions in Romanian society, through its official channel of expression – the law. The two chosen laws, OG 21/2007 and OUG 189/2008, define the purpose, structure and organisation of public performing arts institutions, the criteria for becoming their manager and the duties that must be performed in this position. Our research first reflects on the terminology of these laws, comparing it with the general vocabulary of the texts. Then, for each of the two sets of regulations, we illustrate their shortcomings from the point of view of theatre management, grouping them in six and four topics. We believe that it is necessary to sensitise the professional and civil community to what the word of law actually means, since we consider it important to take back our public spaces through language as well and start democratising public institutions also through discourse. Keywords: public sphere, legislation, performing arts, management, post-communist institutions, state funding. "

The Puppet and the Puppet-Master in Ancient Greece: Fragments of an Art Form

Drawing on literary, epigraphical, and archaeological material, this article addresses the interrelation of the performance context, physical form, and aesthetic of ancient Greek puppetry. Puppeteers performed in a variety of contexts, which included processions and public theaters. During religious festivals, they were hired to supplement competitions in drama and music. I classify ancient Greek puppetry into two main types: the phallic puppets used in religious processions in the Eastern Mediterranean, and small-scale puppetry, which was performed in theaters and possibly also in private contexts. I contend that puppetry was not universally considered an insignificant art but was, rather, an important part of the performance culture of the ancient Mediterranean world. The inclusion of puppetry in religious festivals suggests a positive relationship with this art; reactions to puppetry, from laughter to thauma (wonder), align with the aims of the festivals which hosted such performances.

Merry Wives

Reviewed by: Merry Wives Ali Madani Merry Wives Presented by The Public Theater at the Delacorte Theater, New York City, NY. 6 July–18 September 2021. Directed by Saheem Ali. Adapted by Jocelyn Bioh. Costume design by Dede Ayite. Scenic design by Beowulf Boritt. Lighting Design by Jiyoun Chang. Sound design by Kai Harada and Palmer Hefferan. Original music by Michael Thurber. Original drum compositions Farai Malianga. Fight direction by Rocío Mendez. Choreography by Darrell Grand Moultrie. Hair, wigs, and makeup design by Cookie Jordan. Production stage manager Narda E. Alcorn. Stage Manager Benjamin E. C. Pfister. Sound system design by Jessic Paz. With Abena (Anne Page), Gbenga Akin-nagbe (Mister Nduka Ford), Pascale Armand (Madam Ekua Page), MaYaa Boateng (Fenton/Simple), Phillip James Brannon (Pastor Evans), Joshua Echebiri (Slender/Pistol), Angela Grovey (Mama Quickly), Jacob Ming-Trent (Falstaff), Susan Kelechi Watson (Madam Nkechi Ford), Julian Rozzell, Jr. (Shallow), Kyle Scatliffe (Mister Kwame Page), David Ryan Smith (Doctor Caius), and others. “The Public Theater,” promotional material announced, “is theater of, by, and for all people.” On public transit to the Delacorte Theater I encountered a man walking the subway A-train selling tasers and stunguns, [End Page 152] another entering in a hospital gown, and a third wearing a track suit, reading Karl Marx’s Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, and smirking (he wasn’t wearing a mask despite official mandates). Are these minor spectacles relevant or merely remarkable? After some eighteen months of drastically reduced time witnessing the New York City public, it can be difficult to distinguish. The Public Theater’s staging of Merry Wives (July–September 2021) was the first production of Shakespeare at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park since the 2019 performances of Much Ado about Nothing and Coriolanus. Like much of the theater planned for 2020, The Public’s production of Shaina Taub and Laurie Woolery’s musical adaptation of As You Like It, scheduled to return to the Delacorte during the first summer of COVID-19, was cancelled in deference to public health, and their planned production of Richard II became a radio play. Merry Wives was my first experience of live in-person theater in the pandemic era. This production would also have been my first opportunity since March 2020 to participate in a crowd, were it not for the mass demonstrations against anti-Blackness and police brutality that had spurred a sequestered public to collective action. In New York City those mass demonstrations were followed promptly by mass arrests, further police brutality, and swarms of nocturnal police helicopters hovering just overhead. The effect of the City’s militarized response was to deny rest to those who most needed it, to dissuade the public from further action. It was out of this dizzying urban scene that Jocelyn Bioh’s adaptation of Merry Wives appeared. A celebration of Black joy, The Public’s performance of Shakespeare’s city comedy was keyed to the time and location of its staging. Beowulf Boritt’s fabricated block of contemporary Harlem, complete with Citi Bikes and a Black Lives Matter mural, served as backdrop to the action of the play’s West African-descended characters. Directed by Saheem Ali, Merry Wives radiated joy and “Black Aliveness,” a term I borrow from Kevin Quashie’s recent monograph of the same name. To imagine Black being in reprieve from the threat of anti-Black violence, as this performance managed with exuberance and style, participates in the worldmaking of Blackness as capacious and relational. The production insisted on the relational nature of the theater, organizing seating based on vaccination status, ability, and seniority. Those audience members at greatest risk from COVID-19 were seated in a section preserving physical distance and requiring masks. I and my viewing companion, a friend visiting from out of town whom I had not seen in two years, sat in the “full capacity” zone designated for the vaccinated. Before the performance began, ushers invited audience members in the [End Page 153] vaccinated section to remove masks. (Performances were cancelled the following week due to a production member’s positive COVID-19 test.) On this night, Bioh and Ali invited to the stage Helen...

Introduction: Performance and the Paper Stage, 1640–1700

IntroductionPerformance and the Paper Stage, 1640–1700 Emma Depledge (bio) and Rachel Willie (bio) the second half of the seventeenth century was marked by attempts to limit access to the London theaters and by important developments in the trade in playbooks.1 The public theaters were closed when civil war broke out in 1642, and they remained closed for eighteen years. The punishments for performing plays during the ban were severe; as ordinances for theater closure state, punitive measures included the confiscation of profits and costumes, public whipping, arrests, and fines for audience members.2 The theaters were reopened shortly after the monarchy was restored in 1660, but only two playhouses were licensed for performance in London for most of the period 1660–1700, with their managers—William Davenant (Duke's Company) and Thomas Killigrew (King's Company)—to "suffer no rival companies."3 This was further reduced to just one theater from 1682 to 1695, and admission prices radically increased in comparison to the Elizabethan and Jacobean outdoor playhouses.4 Thus, although Restoration is used frequently to describe the supposedly simultaneous return of the monarchy and the theaters, for [End Page 1] many Londoners, the licensed theaters remained as inaccessible after 1660 as they had been during the ban on acting. As this special issue demonstrates, although state officials attempted to control when, where, and by whom theater could be produced and consumed, late seventeenth-century actors, managers, and audiences continuously sought out ways to defy the authorities and, in so doing, maintained a vibrant theatrical culture. Theater historians used to portray 1642–59 as a period in which theater became limited, elitist, and inert, but work by scholars including Janet Clare, Dale B. J. Randall, Rachel Willie, and Susan Wiseman has demonstrated that these years were instead marked by theatrical innovation, particularly in print culture as a dramatic form.5 Davenant (1606–1668) sought to circumvent the ban on stage plays by developing innovative methods of theatrical performance and by persuading the authorities to allow him to perform "moral entertainments," as exemplified by his Siege of Rhodes (1656), which contained recitative and other elements associated with the court masque and the development of English opera. An underground theater market also developed, in which new dramatic genres such as drolls, play ballads, play pamphlets, and dialogues, as well as the continued practice of dumb shows and dramatic commonplacing, helped to keep theatrical culture alive. These novel pieces were short and could be performed quickly to avoid detection by soldiers, or else they could be delivered privately without the need of professional actors or purposebuilt performance venues.6 There is evidence to suggest that these dramatic forms continued to flourish after 1660. In the early 1680s, the London-based playwright Elkanah Settle decided it would be expedient to take "one Coish [coach] & severall others to act some playes or Drolls in the citty of Yorke."7 As this example shows, performances took place beyond the capital, in York and also in places such as Norwich and "Sturbridge Fair" in Cambridge.8 Thus, it is important to recognize that [End Page 2] surreptitious performances took place during the midcentury ban on acting and that theater culture extended beyond the two patent theaters licensed to perform from the 1660s. Further, it is imperative to speak of theater histories in the plural to reflect the coexistence of state-sanctioned and underground theater culture as well as London and countrywide performances across the late seventeenth century. Actors and the Ban on Acting Prior to the ban on acting, in 1629, a French acting troupe performed at the Blackfriars playhouse. Their company followed Continental European practices and comprised female players, who met with a negative reception despite being admired at the English court.9 Evidently, English playgoers were not ready to experience women acting on the professional stage. Yet in 1656, Davenant obtained special permission to produce The Siege of Rhodes and cast Catherine Coleman to sing and act the part of Ianthe; it was first performed in the dining room of Davenant's home at Rutland House before transferring to the Cockpit theater in Drury Lane. Davenant was casting not only a female...

Circle in the Square Theatre: A Comprehensive History

Circle in the Square Theatre: A Comprehensive History

Seize the King

Reviewed by: Seize the King Jennifer A. Low Seize the King Presented by the Classical Theatre of Harlem at the Richard Rodgers Amphitheater, Marcus Garvey Park, New York, NY. 6–29 July 2021. Written by Will Power. Directed by Carl Cofield. Choreography by Tiffany Rea-Fisher. Scenic design by Christopher and Justin Swader. Lighting design by Alan C. Edwards. Costumes by Mika Eubanks. Sound design and music by Frederick Kennedy. With Ro Boddie (Richard the Duke), R. J. Foster (Hastings), Andrea Patterson (Queen Woodville), Alisha Espinosa (Lady Anne/Edward V), Carson Elrod (Buckingham); Daniela Funicello, Tracy Dunbar, Jenny Hegarty Freeman, Hannah Gross, and Alisa Gregory (dancers). New York has another Shakespeare in the Park, and its passion, intensity, and innovation rival that of the Public Theater’s summer stage in Joe Papp’s heyday. The Classical Theatre of Harlem has presented free theater each summer since 2013 at the Richard Rodgers Amphitheater, mounting such productions as Romeo and Juliet, The Tempest, and The Bacchae. This venue, a bandshell in Marcus Garvey Park in Harlem, underwent a renovation completed in 2011; it gained state-of-the-art lighting, sound hookups, and a wider stage that promoted a more intimate and direct relationship between performers and audience members. The Classical Theatre of Harlem is helmed by Producing Artistic Director Ty Jones, the Obie-award-winning actor best known for his role on the Starz show Power, and Associate Artistic Director Carl Cofield, who was recently named chair of the graduate acting program at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. The company’s stated mission is to tell stories through the lens of the African diaspora, combining original adaptations, music, and dance to present great classics of world literature. [End Page 156] From 6 July to 29 July 2021, the company presented the New York premiere of Will Power’s reimagining of Richard III. His play Seize the King is written in iambic pentameter but also very much in the American vernacular. Power is a playwright, actor, and rapper described as one of the pioneers and co-creators of hip hop theater. Having performed in the 1998 film Drylongso and on several television shows including Russell Simmons’s Def Poetry Jam, Power turned to playwriting, combining music, rhymed dialogue, and choreography in his dramas. Seize the King, first performed in 2018, seems to be a response to America’s political climate at that time: Power asserted in an interview that in times of polarization and dysfunction, “you have to go back to the past and imagine what those old stories are for today” (McVicker). Power’s play begins with the death of Edward IV, the king who re-ascends the throne shortly before the start of Shakespeare’s Richard III. Like Shakespeare, Power spotlights Richard’s skillful manipulation of allies and adversaries, creating a tighter and more muscular plotline by focusing on just six named characters. Power’s fluent verse echoed a myriad of dramatic lines from a range of Shakespeare plays. Early on, his Richard the Duke (Ro Boddie in this production) soliloquized, Now I am through with sloppy secondsSecond in line, second in command, second best, second born,No more, the hour now is mine. This Richard’s sentiments echo those of Shakespeare’s Edmund in King Lear, reiterating the word “second” as Shakespeare reiterates “base.” Power also makes frequent use of blunt, forthright American colloquialism; just as he works with the expression “sloppy seconds,” he later builds on the phrase “Kiss my ass.” When Elizabeth Woodville, the Queen, demands that Richard “Kiss my feet, and beg for forgiveness/Kiss it. Kiss it. Kiss it motherfucker!” (echoing Jean Genet’s bishop), Richard does so, only to be met with another demand: “Now kiss my ass.” “Ass” ups the ante of “feet” and, by turning in profile and sticking out her posterior, Queen Woodville (Andrea Patterson) showed she intended the phrase literally. Power then inverted the phrase, turning to the other meaning of “kiss my ass”—absolutely not. Richard kissed Queen Woodville’s posterior before us––down front and center-stage––in order to procure her signature, which was necessary to finalize the order that would make him Protector of...

"A Chess Game" by Thomas Middleton and Anglo-Spanish relations during the reign of James I

King James I of England was a supporter of the peacemaking policy, which he decided to implement with the help of matrimonial ties. The king planned to marry his son Charles to the Spanish Infanta Maria. This marriage did not take place, but the very turn of the King of England to pro-Spanish politics was incomprehensible to many of his contemporaries and caused heated discussions in parliament, a reaction in pamphlet literature and drama. During this period, the theater became a tool for shaping public opinion and a center for promoting political ideas. One of the most successful playwrights of the time of James I was Thomas Middleton, whose play "The Game of Chess" became the subject of this study. The purpose of the article is to analyze the playwright's views on the Anglo-Spanish relations of the 1620s, which he expressed through satirical allegory. The play "A Game at Chess" is important for analyzing the role of the public theater in shaping public opinion on the political strategy of King James I at the beginning of the XVII century. Turning to the play as a source makes it possible to analyze the ideas of English intellectuals of that time about Spain and relations with it, and to identify the features of the reign of James I, expressed in an unusual form. In the course of studying this topic, it became clear that Prince Charles's personal trip to Madrid and rapprochement with Spain were justified in the eyes of the English people precisely through the public display of the play, and the King of England himself was presented as the main peacemaker, whom the power-hungry Spaniards tried to deceive. Middleton's ideas hostile to Spain were widely spread among the British, which speaks of the play not only as a way of forming the opinion of society, but also its reflection.

“Folly of the Fiction” and the “Native Taste”: Cultural Interfaces in Two Bengali Adaptations ofCymbeline

AbstractThis article examines how two nineteenth‐century Bengali adaptations ofCymbelinetransfer Shakespeare's play to a Hindu field of signifiers and reinterpret the elements of tragicomedy according to the worldview of traditional Indian drama.Kusumkumari Natak(1868) by Chandrakali Ghosh, which was enacted before a ticket‐buying audience at the nascent phase of the Bengali public theatre in Kolkata (formerly Calcutta), condenses or rejects much of the action and dialogue ofCymbelinefor the sake of economy. For example, it excludes Cloten and the confusion over his beheading and discards Posthumus's dream together with the prophetic riddle. On the other hand,Sushila Birsingha(1868) by Satyendranath Tagore, which was probably never staged, follows the convoluted plot and characterisation ofCymbelinequite closely.Cymbelinewould appeal to the Bengali audience because it recalls traditional Hindu tales of reunion and reconciliation, including those of Sakuntala‐Dushyanta (referenced byKusumkumari Natak) and Damayanti‐Nala (referenced bySushila Birsingha). Moreover, Innogen's ordeals would be compatible with the trope of the abandoned faithful wife (as exemplified by Sita, Sakuntala, Damayanti) in Sanskrit epic and drama. This would also enable the valorisation of wifely fidelity and chastity, a favourite topic of Hindu patriarchal imagination in the nineteenth century. More importantly, the theme of loss and recuperation inherent inCymbelineaccords with the episteme and aesthetics of classical Sanskrit drama, which avoided exploring grave moral challenges and rejected the finality of sufferings (thanks to the doctrines of Vedanta or monistic theism,karmaand reincarnation). This article also suggests thatCymbelinefell out of favour with subsequent Bengali translators and playgoers as the taste for tragedy grew among them.

Due Process & the Theater of Racial Degradation: The Evolving Notion of Pretrial Punishment in the Criminal Courts

Abstract Most theorists assume that the criminal courts are neutral arbiters of justice, protected by the Constitution, the rule of law, and court records. This essay challenges those assumptions and examines the courts as a place of punitive excess and the normalization of racial abuse and punishment. The essay explains the historic origins of these trends and examines how the categories of “hardened” and “marginal” defendants began to assume racialized meanings with the emergence of mass incarceration. This transformed the criminal courts into a type of public theater for racial degradation. These public performances or “racial degradation ceremonies” occur within the discretionary practices and cultural norms of mostly White courtroom professionals as they efficiently manage the disposition of cases in the everyday practice of law. I link these historical findings to a recent study of the largest unified criminal court system in the United States–Cook County, Chicago–and discuss court watching programs as an intervention for accountability and oversight of our courts and its legal professionals.

Культурная среда Москвы на рубеже XVIII–XIX вв.: дворянские театры города. Основные типы и особенности функционирования

The paper examines the place and significance of the city`s noble manor theaters in the cultural environment of Moscow in the second half of the 18th – early 19th centuries. The priority attention of the study is drawn to the frontier of two centuries, since this historical stage was marked by a final rooting of the hitherto mostly alien Western European theater tradition in the Russian city (primarily metropolitan) society, which led to the further development of theatrical art as an integral part of national culture of Russia. Along with this, the last years of the 18th century became the peak of the manor theater as part of the urban cultural space of Moscow. The noble character of the “old” capital as well as the dense ring of “Moscow” — suburban estates, oriented in all aspects of their life to Moscow — contributed to this momentum. Based on the census of Moscow theaters conducted in the last years of the 18th century, the study provides characteristics of the main types of home stage groups, which are divided into a number of independent types, differing from each other in a degree of openness, main goals of existence, circle of participants and social component of their activities. The paper explains the features and goals of their functioning, analyzing such a phenomenon of the cultural life of Moscow of those years as “noble” performances and “noble” actors. The research also dwells on some of the most notable and characteristic creative groups, stage venues and stage ministers, presenting an assessment of the nature of their work. The author draws special attention to the importance of home city theaters and orchestras in the development of public theater art in the country, formation of the necessary creative personnel, appearance of new talented actors on the Moscow`s imperial stage, including those maintaining their dependent serfdom. The study concludes with an assessment of the subjective and objective reasons of the decay of manor theaters in Moscow and Russia, as well as their transformation on a new “commercial” basis in the first half of the 19th century.

White Faces, Black Masks: The Racial Shimmer of Morisco and Sub-Saharan Slaveries in Lope de Vega's Los melindres de Belisa

Abstract: This essay examines how Lope de Vega's Los melindres de Belisa , a comedia urbana composed circa 1608, represents the intersection of different types of slavery in Habsburg Spain. This play is especially pertinent to these questions as its composition coincided with the intense debates that culminated in Philip III's Order of the Expulsion of the Moriscos from the Iberian Peninsula (1609), a time when sub-Saharan slavery was also firmly established in peninsular Spain. Lope de Vega's comic genius yields a rich dramatic canvas for exploring how racialized representations of enslaved Moriscos and sub-Saharan peoples intersect and interpellate one another in Spanish public theater. An analysis of racial imagery and plot twists in Los melindres de Belisa shows that even though early modern Spanish discourse often strategically essentialized differences between Black sub-Saharan Africans and Moriscos, the racial shimmer in Lope's representations of slavery discloses that these categories were fundamentally entangled with, and indeed, constructed one another.

The productivity of performing art organisations versus labor costs

Motivation: The study of the problem of “cost disease” contributes to the possibility of creating a model for effective subsidy to cultural institutions operating in the field of performing arts from public funds. The study also forms a part of a broader reflection on the values of culture, the humanism of culture and the economy in general.
 Aim: This article is to examine the connection between productivity and labor costs in public theatres in Poland. We investigate what the level of productivity depends on. We check whether it is based on costs or the so-called income gap or another factor. We verify whether costs in PAOs in Poland increase according to the theory of Baumol’s cost disease and whether labor costs are particularly significant in total costs.
 Results: Labor costs should be taken into account when subsidizing performing art organizations, as productivity growth depends on having funds to cover labor costs and increasing employment.

Творчество Н. В. Гоголя и Ф. М. Достоевского в народном/общедоступном театре: проблемы адаптации и восприятия зрителем

The aim of the research is to reveal the holistic reflection of N. V. Gogol’s and F. M. Dostoevsky’s works in the folk environment (from public library to public theatre) in the second half of the 19th century. The article considers N. V. Gogol’s, F. M. Dostoyevsky’s, A. Ya. Alekseev-Yakovlev’s works, reviews of the critics, pedagogues, censors, people. The scientific originality of the research is determined by monographic approach, exploration of the second half of the 19th century periodicals, specialized literature, all the popular editions of classics known at that time. As a result, social and historical, cultural and educational, aesthetic factors of people’s comprehension of N. V. Gogol’s and F. M. Dostoevsky’s “theatrical” heritage have been systematized.

Music education of Zhytomyr in terms of the creative period of Victor Kosenko in the city (dedicated to the 125th anniversary of his birth)

The purpose of the article is to study the music education of Zhytomyr on the eve and during the creative path in the specified city of Viktor Kosenko. Research methodology. The methodology of work is based on the application of analytical, systematic, biographical methods, which revealed the place and significance of the figure of V. Kosenko in the development of the musical culture of Zhytomyr during the life and work of the composer in this place in 1918-1929. Features of tendencies in the educational musical movement of that period, in particular, sociocultural and artistic factors of formation of music education and its positioning in the context of musical life of the specified period. The scientific novelty of the article is that for the first time the level of development of music education in Zhytomyr during the stay of the famous composer V. Kosenko (1918-1929) was analyzed and evaluated, which influenced the further development of educational and cultural branches of Zhytomyr region. Conclusions. The article outlines the peculiarities of music education in Zhytomyr on the eve and during the period of creativity in the city of Viktor Kosenko. It is established that at the beginning of the last century Zhytomyr was one of the important cultural and educational centers of the Right Bank of Ukraine, where there were schools and gymnasiums, theological and teacher's seminaries, as well as dozens of educational institutions of various specializations. It was found that one of the first in Ukraine in Zhytomyr opened a public library, theater, and cinemas. It was found out that the stay in Zhytomyr was a unique opportunity for V. Kosenko to be in Ukrainian (and not Russian or Polish) center (after Warsaw and St. Petersburg, where the urban cultural tradition prevailed, oriented differently) (not only Ukrainian but also European culture). It was important for Ukrainian music to position itself as European, and for the composer to have a kind of shelter from the control of the Soviet government, he had the opportunity to delve into himself, to find his own style.

Application of Multi-Criteria Analysis on Theatres’ Efficiency – Czech and Polish Comparative Case Studies

Institutions (theatres) evaluated in this paper are mediators of an unrepeatable interpretive art and they need funds from public resources of different government levels to ensure their activities. The aim of the present paper is to evaluate the efficiency of theatre management of 93 evaluated public theatres in the Czech Republic and Poland through 11 indicators. The evaluated weights of chosen indicators were determined by the Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS), in combination with the chosen objective method for determining the importance of indicators. From the results it is evident that big multi-genre theatres producing more genres of interpretive art (drama, opera, ballet, musical) with a bigger number of employees had the worst results in both states.

Productivity of Public Theatres in the Times of COVID-19: The Example of Polish Theatres

Purpose: Our article aims to analyze the changes in the productivity of cultural institutions during the Covid -2019 pandemic. We studied how much productivity has changed and saw which indicator was targeting the influx. The number of visitors in the theatre in a given year is taken as productivity. The research period is the years 2016-2020. We hypothesize that the productivity index in 2020 depended on most on the technology change. Design/Methodology/Approach: The proper study was focused on Polish Public Theatres. The verification of the assumptions was conducted through the Malmquist index -Total Factor Productivity. Findings: As a result of the research, it was found that the hypothesis was positively verified. The value of the Malmiqusita index shows significant changes in productivity between 2020-2019 and 2019-2016. In particular, the considerable increase of the technological progress index is worth noting. In 2020-2019, the annual change regarding this index was as high as 1208.8%, while the technical efficiency decreased to 13.9% and TFP was 168.2% - the highest level over the whole period considered. Practical implications: We noticed that for individual theaters, the productivity results were different. It means that not all of the theatres studied coped with the new conditions. Depending on the organization, the effects of using digital technologies may be different. This proves that each unit should be analyzed individually. Originality/value: These results seem to fully reflect the pandemic reality in which the technological factor was of crucial importance, an innovative research to describe the pandemic in the theatre sector.