Theatrical Representation Research Articles

Boundaries In Theatrical Representations of Violence

This paper investigates the role of symbolic violence in theater as a catalyst for fostering civic consciousness and a nuanced understanding of the human condition. By examining the dramaturgical, social, and aesthetic dimensions, the study explores how theatrical productions, through the metaphorical depiction of violence, transmute intense emotional experiences into vehicles for societal introspection and education. The analysis emphasizes the transition from overt physical aggression to more subtle forms of symbolic violence, and examines the implications of this shift for both the audience and the broader cultural discourse.

Rethinking older adults’ autonomy in Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days

ABSTRACT This article reevaluates the theme of aging and autonomy in Samuel Beckett’s play Happy Days, focusing on the character Winnie’s experiences to challenge conventional paradigms of aging. It explores how Winnie’s experiences, monologues, and interactions with the world resonate with gerontologist perspectives of autonomy in old age, which significantly emphasizes dignity, authenticity, and interdependence rather than freedom and independence of traditional viewpoints. By analyzing Beckett’s theatrical representation of Winnie, the paper argues that through Happy Days, Beckett provides a lens to reconsider societal attitudes toward aging, advocating for recognizing older adults’ subjectivity and confronting the subtle yet pervasive ageism in modern society.

Performing a constitution: a history of Magna Carta in Shakespeare’s King John

ABSTRACT Despite its now totemic constitutional status, Magna Carta is not explicitly mentioned in Shakespeare’s history play of King John. King John has been interrogated by literary scholars for references to the charter and investigated by historians for potential oversight. Yet, often overlooked are the sporadic references to Magna Carta in nineteenth-century productions of the play. During the nineteenth century, Magna Carta’s legal significance waned as clauses were removed from legislation. Its political purchase is well-documented, including its use by the Chartists, and its use in nationalist-based support for wars at the start and end of the century. What is often unheeded in legal scholarship, is the shifting cultural significance of the charter. A performance history of Shakespeare’s King John exposes the different treatment of Magna Carta in productions of Shakespeare’s play and related theatrical representations of the charter in popular melodrama and pantomimes in the nineteenth century. This paper uses archival material of theatre productions to interrogate the status of Magna Carta through a performance history of Shakespeare’s King John in nineteenth-century London. Investigating the representations of Magna Carta in theatre productions offers a complex picture of the charter’s place in the history of British constitutionalism.

Augmented total theatre: shaping the future of immersive augmented reality representations

Abstract This work introduces Augmented Total Theatre (ATT), a new theatrical form that combines Total Theatre with Augmented Reality (AR) to transform theatrical experiences. We first explore ATT features, highlighting its capabilities in creating theatrical representations that surpass traditional theatre. We also examine current technological limitations that hinder the deployment of ATT potential. We venture then into a journey into the future, particularly focusing on the next decade. We try to envisage the evolution of AR and assess whether future advancements will yield a form of AR capable of creating digital worlds that can deceive human senses. Additionally, we explore the role of Generative AI systems in addressing the problems that hold back the current ATT. Specifically, we probe the feasibility of a cost-effective, autonomous, and highly efficient generative AI system to reshape and empower ATT, making it capable of real-time production of (theatrical and non-theatrical) representations of many events in the world. Finally, we try to imagine the ATT of the future: a sophisticated device that integrates cutting-edge AR technology with a super-performing generative AI system. This ATT, transcending its theatrical origins, emerges as a powerful tool for augmenting our sensory experiences and enriching our perception of reality.

A Literature Review on the Identity Construction of the Simulacra Subject in Jean Genet’s The Balcony

Jean Genet's The Balcony explores the fundamental elements of subject identity construction and identification within a framework of double paradoxes. The reconfigurations of simulacra activities challenge the traditional political model of theater, redefining the nature and expression of the subject's identity and endowing theatrical representation with political potential. The subject of simulacra exists in a constant state of internal and external constitutive difference, emphasizing the essential incompleteness and antagonistic dimension of identity construction, which resonates with the political realm. The dual nature of the other renders the construction of the subject's identity an insurmountable task, while the perpetual opposition of the dual relationship converges into tertiary natures, exposing the failure point of impossibility and necessity in subject identity construction. The trinity mode of the subject continually replaces power relationships through negation, engendering space for reflection. This paper employs Deleuze's theory of in-itself difference and Mouffe and Laclau's theory of antagonism and hegemony to analyze the foundational structural strategy of subject identity construction and identification in The Balcony. It elucidates how this strategy establishes the necessary conditions for the autonomy of politics within Genet Theatre.

Exploring Urban Dynamics: Setting in Girish Karnad's Dramatic Universe

This study delves into the complex urban dynamics portrayed within the dramatic universe of renowned playwright Girish Karnad. Through an in-depth exploration of characters inhabiting Karnad's urban landscapes, this study seeks to explore the multifaceted interactions, conflicts, and transformations that represent urban life. Drawing upon textual analysis and theoretical frameworks from different plays of Karnad, it examines the ways in which Karnad's characters negotiate identity, power dynamics, and societal norms within the urban environment. By analysing the complexities of urban existence as depicted in Karnad's works, this study aims to contribute to a deeper understanding of contemporary urban experiences and their representation in Indian theatre. The study contains three plays and critical analysis of the characters with opposite mindsets and struggling to adjust their existence in the modern digital world. The study has first analysed the setting of all the three plays separately. The study explores the dramatic universe of Karnad and unfolds the complexities of the dual world.

From Strings to Sensors: Movement Representation in AI Theatre

The assimilation of AI technology into theatre practices has inaugurated an expansive frontier of possibilities for both thespians and spectators. In terms of movement, this involves the use of avatars, which inhabit a customary screen milieu (encompassing three-dimensional in-world scenography) that necessitates simultaneous consideration of a tridimensional theatrical space and coexisting performers, within a moment of real-time inception and interconnectedness. This complex confluence raises questions pertaining to the ‘avatarisation’ of corporeal embodiments on the theatrical stage and the consequent emergence of novel performative methodologies. Within AI-enabled performances, the use of motion capture technology, commonly known as ‘mocap’, entails the recording of skeletal data from physical actors, referred to as ‘mocaptors’, who wear a geo-spatial system for motion capture. This is then translated into digital data that can subsequently be used to animate digital characters or avatars.

The Ageing Self through Dramaturgies of Memory Loss and Love: Tristan Bernays’ Old Fools and Nick Payne’s Elegy

This comparative study of Tristan Bernays’ Old Fools (2018) and Nick Payne’s Elegy (2016) concerns two contemporary plays in which love manifested in middle-age and older adulthood is a determinant factor in the reconceptualization of the ageing self, particularly when afflicted by memory loss or cognitive failure. Positioned within the framework of theatre and ageing studies, and drawing from their intersection with gender studies and disability theories, the study demonstrates that the narrative arc that both texts recreate is not free of overtones of decline. However, the manipulation of chronological time in both plays through different techniques, as well as the importance of their love story, one between a man and a woman in Old Fools, and the other between two women in Elegy, help disrupt the binary of young/old perpetuated by ageist cultures, and, ultimately, undermine rigid constructions of identity in old age. The article concludes that new theatrical representations of ageing that develop narratives of love not only enable richer debates on the construction of the self, but ultimately contribute to an all-inclusive stage and, with it, to an age-friendly society.

Features of Visual Identification of Modern Ukrainian Theatres by Means of Graphic Design

The purpose of the article is to reveal the features of visual identification of Ukrainian theatres by means of graphic design. Research methodology. The method of typology and techniques of figurative and stylistic analysis are applied, as well as the method of semiotic and visual-cultural analysis of brand symbols of Ukrainian theatres. A combination of the descriptive method and techniques of formal analysis are used to identify the means of artistic expressiveness used by the designer. The method of semantic and structural-semantic analysis help to clarify the cultural meanings of images created for the representation of Ukrainian theatre. The graphic-analytical method is used to visualise research results. Scientific novelty. Peculiarities of visual identification of modern Ukrainian theatres by means of graphic design were studied. The main attributes of visual identification of Ukrainian theatres – emblems and logos – were considered, their comparative analysis was carried out. The concepts of "emblem" and "logo" in the context of graphic design have been clarified; based on the structural and semiotic analysis of emblems of Ukrainian theatres, the spectrum of their visual images was characterised. Conclusions. The visual identification of modern Ukrainian theatres is a system of symbolic and graphic images, the logic of which is built to distinguish theatres by their purpose according to their types (musical, music-dramatic, dramatic, puppet, and others), as well as to differentiate each specific theatre within the defined typology. The emblem as a symbolic image of a certain idea encoded in a graphic form is the main visual image of the theatre, endowed with symbolic meaning, which conveys the main values of this cultural institution with the help of the graphic elements depicted on it. It is used for visual identification of the theatre in real and virtual space. The study of the emblems of modern Ukrainian theatres has revealed the following. Characteristic elements for the symbolism of Ukrainian theatres expressed in the emblems are elements of architectural origin (theatre buildings), graphic images of famous Ukrainian representatives of theatre, literature and art (Lesia Ukrainka, I. Franko, T. Shevchenko, M. Vodianyi, M. Sadovskyi, and others) and Harlequin masks as a symbol of the acting profession. Socio-historical and cultural factors are fundamental elements of concept formation. Emblems symbolically reflect theatrical, primarily acting activity. The conceptual solution of the corporate style also reflects the idea of the existence of the theatre and the values it offers in the space of modern culture: humanity, heredity, traditionality, and interculturality. Decoding symbolic images requires a high level of education and intelligence. Brand symbols can be built on a nuanced solution, in which all style elements enhance the effect of simplicity, complexity or an intermediate option. Keywords: graphic design, Ukrainian theatres, visual identification, emblem, logo.

Modern Ukrainian Theatre in the Dimension of Internet Culture

The purpose of the article is to reveal the peculiarities of the functioning of the Ukrainian theatre of the second – beginning of the third decade of the 21st century in the dimension of Internet culture. Research methodology. The principle of scientific objectivity, analytical, cultural, systemic, typological, and structural-functional method was applied to generalise the theoretical and methodological foundations of the study of Internet culture, to identify the peculiarities of the functioning of modern Ukrainian theatre in the cultural environment of the Internet. Scientific novelty. The trends of the development of modern theatre culture were studied through the prism of the specifics of the Internet space. The cultural environment of the Internet was considered as an important factor in the functioning of theatrical culture in the modern digital society. The peculiarities of the representation of modern Ukrainian theatre in the Internet space were revealed using the example of interactive sites and virtual tours. The concept of "Internet culture" was clarified. Conclusions. Internet culture forms a high level of general human culture due to the property of representing modern progressive cultural practices; oriented on the principles interconnected with modern culture (montageability, clipability); characterised by dynamism, interactivity, variability, a special ratio of heterogeneity and unity. The Internet space represents a new dimension of interaction between the theatre and the audience, the discovery of new ways of creating and presenting theatre, as well as new forms of interaction between the actor and the audience in these theatrical contexts. It acts as a part of cultural communication, in which multimedia technologies allow creating a new type of communication, and the Internet is a channel for broadcasting. The consequence of this is the formation of theatrical content as a specific sphere of the Internet environment. The nature of these changes is a promising subject of further scientific reflection. At the current stage, the Internet space and its cultural environment lead to the emergence of innovative ways to satisfy the informational needs of potential theatre viewers, provide forms of presentation of Ukrainian theatre and opportunities for interactive engagement that are relevant for the modern digital society. Keywords: Internet culture, Internet, theatre culture, digital society, Ukrainian theatre, official sites, virtual tours.

“We Could Have Ventured in the Opposite Direction”: Exploring the Legacy of Polish Theatre on the Festival Map of Independent Ukraine

This article examines the representation of Polish theatre on the Ukrainian festival map. This study includes key stages, events, and trends, and aims to uncover both positive developments and underlying problems. The research is based on sources such as published material, information resources, and my experience as a theatre critic. The periods of individual “breakthroughs” (1992–2000), “local encounters” (2001–2011), and “dramaturgical and performative landing forces” (from 2011) are identified and briefly characterized. The article outlines a broad geographical and genre-specific range of festivals in which Polish theatres participate and highlights their contribution. It also discusses the reception of individual performances by Polish theatres in Ukrainian criticism. The author focuses on the absence of iconic plays of Polish theatre on the posters of Ukrainian festivals (the exception is Bzik tropikalny (The Tropical Craze) by Witkacy, directed by Grzegorz Jarzyna, 1998). This resulted in the fact that the most important achievements of Polish theatre remained unknown to the Ukrainian audiences, and the professional community gravitated more towards Russia than towards the West. Given the more than four-hundred-year history of Polish–Ukrainian relations, it is essential that steps be taken to restore Polish–Ukrainian theatrical communication in order to ensure that Ukrainian theatre is connected to the European cultural space.

Asymmetries at play: race, racism, and anti-racism in the archives of radical theatre-in-education

ABSTRACTThis article examines race, racism, and anti-racism in an historical example of British radical theatre-in-education in the 1980s: Pit Prop Theatre's Brand of Freedom (1984). We argue that while the programme's aims prefigured contemporary moves toward decolonising drama and theatre education, its theatrical representation of Black experience also reproduced a ‘racial calculus’ [Hartman, 6] that limited Black personhood, centred whiteness, and enacted white saviour tropes. Throughout, we emphasise the importance of critical historiographical work at the intersections of drama and theatre pedagogy, race, and class, to identify and dismantle practices of white-centricity in histories of drama and theatre education.

Towards a Historical Be(com)ing into Universal Benevolence: Anastasia and Geopolitical Reconfigurations in Late Modernity

Abstract Focusing on two iterations of the Anastasia topos – the 1997 animated musical movie produced and released by Fox Animation Studios and Takarazuka Revue’s Japanese theatrical musical live performance from 2020 –, this article analyzes the significance and impact of historical events and their dialectic renegotiation by means of mass entertainment in crosscultural cross-media perspective. Drawing on extensive fieldwork and archive research, the current analysis attempts a realistic diagnosis of future international developments based on live theatrical representations as well as their crucial reformulations of reality resulted from the empathic exchange between performers and audiences. Moreover, Japan’s attempts at reconfiguring geopolitical relations crisscrossing increasingly nationalist discourses in the public sphere during the 2010s are projected on the – likewise increasingly – polarized global narratives juxtaposing individual freedoms, rights, aspirations with collective expectations, pressures, anxieties.

Sonic Spectral Summoning

Sonic Spectral Summoning was a participatory ‘correspondence course’ that took place as part of Queer Extension, a series of remote, artist-led experiments in alternative education that ran during the spring 2021 COVID-19 lockdown in the UK. The project was structured as a kind of game that set a series of imaginative provocations all based on the idea that some arrangement of sound might give access to secret knowledge related to the persistence of the dead among the living (ghosts). Sonic Spectral Summoning is also the title of an audio work for voice and occasional electronic sound that the author made in response. This account traces some coordinates of the project, across fiction, domesticity, structures for collective practice and the unknown. The project, and this account, contributes to a field of inquiry about sonic epistemologies that is concerned not just with producing knowledge with and through sound, but with using sound to re-configure what constitutes knowledge. If ‘hear-telling’ designates a space for utterance, discourse, theatrical representation, sonic attention, infrastructures for communication and miscommunication, and other verbal transmissions, Sonic Spectral Summoning tries to linger in that space, shuffling through meaning and association, sense and its others.

Enacted Offstage Images, Reported Onstage Action, and Parallel Fictional Worlds in Dead Centre’s Chekhov’s First Play (2015) and Tim Crouch and Rachana Jadhav’s Total Immediate Collective Imminent Terrestrial Salvation (2019)

This essay addresses how the collision of image, text, and speech in contemporary scripted performances discloses something significant about both being in and thinking about the theatre. It examines cases wherein recent examples of theatre practice disrupt long-standing expectations about the form and function of reported offstage action. While Tim Crouch and Rachana Jadhav’s Total Immediate Collective Imminent Terrestrial Salvation (2019) literalises the relationship between text and performance by putting the play script in the hands of the audience and employing illustrations as a means of reporting that inverts established ekphrastic modes, Dead Centre’s Chekhov’s First Play (2015) literalises offstage presence through the audio narration of a figure named as ‘The Director’. These acts of staging literally key conceptual and practical challenges of theatrical representation work in both cases to reveal instances of mimetic disjuncture. Audiences are not sure which version of each performance to invest in: the staged action or illustrated text of Terrestrial Salvation and the onstage adaptation or The Director’s critical reporting in Chekhov’s First Play. By making available different versions of the same theatrical event, each production connects resonantly to a cultural moment wherein we are often exposed to alternative narratives but may not always recognise or acknowledge these alternate perspectives. Reviewed together, these two productions present a wide-ranging sensorial problematising of theatrical representation. They construct points of meaningful divergence through unscripted performances and the disaggregation of actor and character. Methodologically, this essay works to address these questions of representational multiplicity through a form of discursive practice that reports between the two case study examples. This approach serves to reveal the discourse of theatre and performance studies as frequently grounded in ekphrastic reportings that recount theatrical images no longer available to view. The argument marks out first how reported action and other forms of ekphrastic representation have historically been about what cannot be staged in order to propose that what comes to be unrepresentable in these examples – even as it is the means of representation – is theatrical performance itself. The essay then traces how these metatheatrical questions related to the representational affordance of these performances – in this case to do with impossibility of representing the theatre itself – ripple into wider consequences that can have substantial implications related to race, freedom, and collective endeavour.

Konfrontacja różnych pamięci w przestrzeni scenicznej na przykładzie spektakli biograficznych z Teatru Śląskiego (Leni Riefenstahl. Epizody niepamięci i What the heil?!)

CONFRONTING DIVERSE MEMORIES ON STAGE: BIOGRAPHICAL PLAY AT THE SILESIAN THEATRE IN KATOWICE (LENI RIEFENSTAHL. EPIZODY NIEPAMIĘCI AND WHAT THE HEIL?!)
 In recent Polish theater, numerous projects have drawn inspiration from biographies. These practices not only reflect the prevailing biographical trend in culture but also indicate that theater serves as a “memory machine,” playing a socially important role in establishing connections between the past and the present. Drawing on the examples of two plays staged at the Silesian Theatre in Katowice, namely Leni Riefenstahl. Epizody niepamięci [Leni Riefenstahl. Episodes of Non-memory] (2016) and What the heil?! (2022), and employing the concepts of cultural memory (A. Assmann, J. Assmann), postmemory (M. Hirsch) and multidirectional memory (M. Rothberg), this study examines the conventions employed in r e c o n s t r u c t i n g t h e p a s t wi t h i n t h e th e at r i c a l spa c e . Furthermore, it delves into t h e dynami c s o f va r i - o u s f o rms o f memo r y (e.g. cultural memory, communicative memory, individual memory) in theatrical representation.

Re-Imagining Euripides’ Medea : Pre-Colonial Indigenous Elements in Alfaro’s Mojada

Abstract: This essay examines pre-colonial Mesoamerican elements in Luis Alfaro’s Mojada , highlighting significant differences between the recently published script of the play and a version produced at the Public Theater in New York City, which I attended in summer 2019, to argue that the Public Theater production questions whether Indigenous myth and ritual can persist and function effectively in the United States in the face of the brutal and dehumanizing forces of capitalism and racism. This essay contributes to discussions of the ways in which theatrical representations of Indigeneity function across different Latinx cultures and even different versions of the same play.

Between Divisions and Dialogue: A Critical Analysis of Brexit's Influence on Theatrical Representation in Leave Taking, The Jungle, Albion, and My Country

Between Divisions and Dialogue: A Critical Analysis of Brexit's Influence on Theatrical Representation in Leave Taking, The Jungle, Albion, and My Country

Women in Wartime: Theatrical Representations in the Long Eighteenth Century By Paula R.Backscheider, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2022, pp. 456 ISBN‐10 1421441675.

Gender & HistoryEarly View BOOK REVIEW Women in Wartime: Theatrical Representations in the Long Eighteenth century by Paula R. Backscheider, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2022, pp. 456 ISBN-10 1421441675. Meghan Kobza, Corresponding Author Meghan Kobza [email protected] orcid.org/0000-0001-6308-7754 School of History, Classics, and Archaeology, University of Newcastle, Newcastle Upon Tyne, United Kingdom Email: [email protected]Search for more papers by this author Meghan Kobza, Corresponding Author Meghan Kobza [email protected] orcid.org/0000-0001-6308-7754 School of History, Classics, and Archaeology, University of Newcastle, Newcastle Upon Tyne, United Kingdom Email: [email protected]Search for more papers by this author First published: 29 March 2023 https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-0424.12693Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Early ViewOnline Version of Record before inclusion in an issue RelatedInformation

Andantes con Cervantes

Andantes con Cervantes