Theatre Research Research Articles

Performance and Religion Working Group, International Federation for Theatre Research

Performance and Religion Working Group, International Federation for Theatre Research

Samuel L. Leiter

Samuel L. Leiter is an important scholar whose work in American and European theatre is well known and whose teaching and research in Japanese theatre, especially kabuki, has been a very important contribution to the field. His work spans theatre history, translation of plays and historical and critical material, and important work as an editor of volumes on Japanese and Asian theatre. His teaching at Brooklyn College–CUNY has initiated students who have gone on to become scholars of Japanese theatre.

The Crossing of Boundaries: Transgression Enacted

Feminist discourse has proven to be a vital component in the expanding field of Irish theatre studies owing to its exposure of elided work and the articulation of unrepresented voices. Irish women's participation in the public sphere and cultural fabric of society has been hindered in the course of the twentieth century and this is reflected in limiting representations of femininity as perpetuated by discourses of nationalism and Catholicism: the dominant imagery of the idealized mother which merges the feminized nation – Mother Ireland – and the Virgin Mary. In Hegemony and Fantasy in Irish Drama, 1899–1949, Paul Murphy highlights the ‘contradiction between the symbolic centrality of Woman as fantasy object and the social subordination of women as social subjects’. The incongruity between the shifting realities of Irish women's lives and the inflexible institutions that shape cultural representations is the focus of much feminist theatre research in Ireland. This research examines work which articulates the experience of estrangement from the dominant cultural imaginary and attends to the possibilities of staging more accommodating models through three interlinked strands: self-representation and the unhomely experience; constraint and freedom as explored through space and form; and a shift in focus to performance and the body.

Chinese Themes at the International Federation for Theatre Research Conference in Osaka in August 2011

Chinese Themes at the International Federation for Theatre Research Conference in Osaka in August 2011

Introduction: Everything New is New Again (and again, and again...)

We first discussed the possibility of co-editing an issue of Theatre Research in Canada with a focus on the topic of intermediality back in June of 2006. While we knew that TRiC’s then lengthy list of guest-edited theme issues-in-waiting pushed the prospect several years into the future, we were both keen to explore the potential for such a project. As our turn in the limelight approached, a (to us) surprisingly small number of responses to our first two calls for proposals further delayed our move to print. However, the unusual time span between inception and completion has offered us a similarly uncommon opportunity to consider and revise our aspirations for the issue. Now, in the autumn of 2011 and on the verge of publication, evidence of this extended and somewhat circuitous evolution can be seen in this issue’s contents. One of the essays in this collection was first proposed to us in the middle of 2008; another only completed its peer-review process a couple of months ago. Charting the developments from the first conversations around the project, through the sequence of submissions, assessments, and revisions, it is easy to see that the field of intermedia studies has evolved rapidly and substantially during this period, with the result that the issue also provides an unintentional yet illuminating window on that evolution.

POWER WORKING THROUGH/ON BODIES IN THE UNITED KINGDOM

(Note: This statement started its life as part of the State of the Profession panel at the joint American Society for Theatre Research / Congress on Research in Dance conference in Seattle [November 2010]. I was asked to respond to the question of “how power has worked on/through/with bodies in the fields of dance and theatre studies, and in the academy at large.” I decided to speak about the serious crisis facing higher education in light of the economic recession, and its particular challenges to the academy and our field, using my present context in the United Kingdom, where I have lived since 2006, as a case study.)

POSTERS OF THE GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC AT GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES

Note from the Re: Sources Editor: This is my first contribution as editor of Re:Sources, and I'm proud to join the team of editors and authors who work diligently to put together each issue of this fine journal. I vow to try and maintain the standard of quality set by my immediate predecessor, Nena Couch—a daunting task, to be sure. I hope that you will find something of use within the pages of this column and that you will consider yourself an active participant in the shaping of its future. In the November 2006 issue (47.2) of Theatre Survey, which marked the fiftieth anniversary of the American Society for Theatre Research, editor Jody Enders invited readers to “ponder anew” what constitutes a resource and to submit “untraditional proposals” for the Re:Sources column. As she explained: Perhaps it is a document or a series of documents available for the first time when an entire collection is declassified. It could be that odd scribble somewhere that proves that, once upon a time, there really was a performance of a play that everyone else had taken to be closet drama. Maybe it is a transcription or an English translation of a document hitherto unseen, difficult to access, almost impossible to read. (165)

International Hispanic Theatre Festival of Miami XXV July 7-August 1, 2010

International Hispanic Theatre Festival of Miami XXV July 7-August 1, 2010 Timothy G. Compton This 25th annual festival carried as a subtitle "A Tribute to Mexico," but the activities were truly international. The performance of sixteen different plays constituted the strong suit of the festival, only seven of which came from Mexico. But of those seven, a transplant from Argentina wrote one, two were staged readings, theatre groups from the United States performed three of them, and one was set in Colombia. Groups from Mexico, Spain, Brazil, Uruguay, Puerto Rico, Chile, Argentina, and the United States all performed plays, although not all brought plays written by their fellow citizens — a group from Spain performed a play by an Argentine/Ecuadorian playwright, and a group from Uruguay performed a Lope de Vega classic from Spain. Groups performed their plays up to five times each, but most provided just two or three performances. And beyond the plato fuerte, the festival featured a vibrant "Educational Program," the presentation of several significant awards, an exhibit featuring photos taken by Asela Torres of Mexican plays performed at prior iterations of this festival, and a pair of theatre workshops held on International Children's Day. As if all of the foregoing did not illustrate the enormous international dimensions of this festival, I would add that I have never seen a more extensive and varied listing of sponsors for a like event, which included 45 sponsors from four countries, ranging from governments to foundations to radio stations to banks to restaurants to airlines. The festival vividly reflected the vitality and internationalism of Miami itself. Before moving to some of the festival's theatrical highlights, I will dwell for a moment on the "Educational Program" organized and directed by Beatriz Rizk on the Wolfson campus of Miami Dade College, and sponsored by the College's Prometeo Theatre, Mexico's National Center for Theatre Research (CITRU), and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. This [End Page 167] was a two-day scholarly conference on Hispanic theatre with presenters from all over the Spanish-speaking world. Many of the presentations focused on Mexican theatre, given the theme of the festival in general, but Jorge Dubatti of the Universidad de Buenos Aires delivered the keynote address on the study and philosophy of theatre as an "acontecimiento," arguing that researchers need to be close to and study actual performances, an argument which participants immediately put into practice at the festival. Other highlights included the presentation by Rodolfo Obregón, director of CITRU, of a video montage of numerous Mexican plays, and the presentation of the International Hispanic Theatre Festival of Miami 2010 Life Achievement Award to Mexican director José Solé. Solé then spoke of his experience in Mexican theatre, which started at a very young age with small puppets, after which he formed a theatre group when he was 12 or 13, and has now included directing, in abundance, avant-guard as well as commercial theatre, including a stint directing Mexico's Compañía Nacional de Teatro. Many scholars and researchers also presented ponencias and entered into a dialogue on a variety of Hispanic theatre subjects, and undoubtedly many of these ponencias will appear in an even more polished format in the pages of scholarly journals and books in the months and years ahead. Another fruitful session introduced recent publications in the world of Hispanic theatre, including traditional journals such as Tramoya, Gestos, Latin American Theatre Review, and Artez, as well as the cyber-journal Karpa, books ranging from the latest publications of CITRU and AINCRIT, and books celebrating festivals such this one. In fact, Beatriz Rizk presented the first of a two-volume set of books paying homage to the 25 years of the International Hispanic Theatre Festival of Miami. As if it had not been enough for Rizk to organize the scholarly portion of this festival and prepare the aforementioned book, she directed not one but two staged readings of plays by Emilio Carballido, Orinoco and Rosa de dos aromas. Here follows a list of the other plays performed at the festival during the month of July: Amarillo, a creación colectiva from Mexico directed by...

From Oral Literature to Performance Analysis: Towards an Aesthetic Paradigm Shift*

*This article has been developed from a paper delivered at the International Federation for Theatre Research (IFTR/FIRT) Conference on ‘Theatre in Africa – Africa in the Theatre’ held at the Univer...

Present at the Creation: A Memoir

Present at the CreationA Memoir Wendy Ann Shay (bio) There are facts and there are memories. One thing is certain: everyone involved with the creation of the Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA) was focused on establishing an organization. That we would ever celebrate the organization’s twentieth anniversary never entered our minds. AMIA was certainly not created in a day. There was never a Mickey Rooney–Judy Garland moment when we all thought, “Let’s have a professional organization,” and there it was. Creating AMIA was a multiyear, multistep process to which many people contributed and about which even more people had a say. The growth of the field was one of the most important factors leading to the creation of a formal North American group interested in moving image archiving. Beginning as a trickle in the early 1980s, the mid-1980s saw a huge increase in the number of individuals and institutions caring for moving image materials. Suddenly people trained as archivists, librarians, and museum specialists found themselves responsible for film and video collections. Published information about caring for these formats was limited. Consequently, newly minted film and television archivists cast about looking for guidance. The lucky ones found out about the Film Archives Advisory Committee and the Television Archives Advisory Committee (F/TAAC), the informal but significant group described by William T. Murphy in his contribution to this issue. As Murphy points out, during its early years, F/TAAC participants all sat around a single table to share information and discuss common concerns. By the late 1980s, there were just too many people to sit around a single table and talk. Murphy discusses the evolution in F/TAAC meetings as a growing roster of participants necessitated holding the meetings in larger venues as well as organizing panels with presenters and guided discussions. However, throughout its growth, F/TAAC retained its essential roundtable discussion quality. Meetings always provided the opportunity for updates, conversation about matters of concern, and information sharing. In addition, F/TAAC provided new and veteran film and television archivists—many of whom were considered seriously out of the mainstream in their home institutions—with a sense of community as moving image archivists. Attending F/TAAC meetings reaffirmed that moving images were primary historical and cultural documents that deserved archival attention. Despite its lack of formal structure, or maybe because of it, F/TAAC was a unique professional group in which everyone was equal. By 1989, however, it was clear to many of us that we needed to consider how F/TAAC should move forward. There was the issue of pure numbers. Could the group continue to function as it had as more and more people became involved? There was also the issue of representing the field. Without any formal structure, it was impossible for the group to speak in support of film and television preservation. In fact, the group had no mechanism for voting on where to hold the next gathering, let alone for taking public stands on issues of concern. The first Future of F/TAAC Committee was constituted in 1988 during a gathering in Ottawa. With Gregory Lukow of the National Center for Film and Video Preservation volunteering to coordinate the effort, the committee was asked to prepare a questionnaire to survey the field regarding the various options. Committee [End Page 98] volunteers included Murphy (National Archives and Records Administration), Sara Meyerson (ABC News Library), Fay Schreibman (Museum of Jewish Heritage), Maxine Fleckner Ducey (Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research), Sam Kula (National Archive of Canada), Barbara Humphrys (Archives Center, National Museum of American History), Steve Davidson (Louis Wolfson II Media History Center), William Reader (U.S. Department of Defense), Sarah Richards (National Library of Medicine), and me (Human Studies Film Archive, Smithsonian Institution). I have no memory of the meetings we held to develop the questionnaire. According to the summary of the survey results, basic questions regarding the size and type of the respondents’ archives were followed by the all-critical F/TAAC-specific questions: what do you want from F/TAAC? Exchanging information? Expressing positions on archival matters? Organizing workshops and seminars? Establishing standards? Publishing? Lobbying? Unified fund-raising...

Early eighteenth-century performance historiography: Problems and possibilities

ABSTRACTThis article was first presented as a paper to the History and Historiography Working Group of the Theatre and Performance Research Association in 2009. It responds to a discussion of the archive and repertoire (Taylor 2003) by considering how these ideas might be applied to scholarship on early eighteenth-century performance. In the first part, the article considers the ways in which a focus upon a particular body of archival evidence, the dramatic text, has shaped scholarship in the field. In the second part, the article suggests ways in which a renewed awareness of the repertoire, of embodied performance, might open up new directions in scholarship on the early eighteenth-century actress, as well as challenging prevailing discourses.

Fringe theatre before the fringe

ABSTRACTThere is much debate about, as well as new research into, what constitutes the fringe and when it began. In the British context, the fringe as a term originated at the first Edinburgh International Festival in 1947, in relation to those protesting at the lack of Scottish representation in the official programme. The label reached a wider audience in the 1960s through the revue Beyond the Fringe, and was subsequently applied to the flowering of counter-cultural theatrical activity later that decade and in the 1970s when the term became established in its current usage. The talk reproduced here, which launched the Society of Theatre Research 2009/2010 lecture series, explores the London antecedents of the contemporary fringe, beginning at the turn of the nineteenth into the twentieth century.

Public Theatre, Community Theatre, and Collaboration: Two Case Studies

In 1986 professional theatre practitioners working in two underprivileged neighbourhoods in greater Tel Aviv in Israel created in collaboration with the local residents two large-scale productions. In this article Shulamith Lev-Aladgem studies these rare encounters between professional public theatre and amateur, community-based theatre in Israel, employing a method similar to that of the historian who employs micro-history in order to reveal the excluded past of muted groups in a given society. Both productions – including the intentions of their creators and participants, the power struggles, and the results – serve as an historical record rich in information regarding Israeli society; and through the micro-history presented here the social and cultural role of the institutional theatre in general, and in Israel in particular, is also explored. Shulamith Lev-Aladgem is a senior lecturer, researcher, and practitioner, chair of the Faculty MA Program of Expressivity and Creativity in the Arts, and Head of Community-Based Theatre Studies in the Theatre Department of Tel Aviv University. She is also a community-based theatre facilitator/director and a trained actress who uses her acting experience in her research and teaching. Her recent publications include articles in Theatre Research International, Theory and Criticism, Social Identities, Israeli Sociology, and Research in Drama Education, and the full-length studies, Standing Front Stage: Resistance, Celebration and Subversion in Israeli Community-Based Theatre (Haifa University Press, 2010) and Theatre in Co-Communities: Articulating Power (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010).

Youth Arts Residencies: Implications for Policy and Education

This article considers youth arts residencies in the context of historical and contemporary arts policies. Arts residencies, delivered by professional artists and arts educators, have been a mainstay of the cultural sector since the artists-in-schools program was established by the National Endowment for the Arts to address issues of access to the arts for all Americans and are an essential component of federal arts education support. Changing patterns of participation in the arts are transforming the ways that young people gain entry and sustain lifelong learning in the arts; and the maturation of the teaching-artist field is resulting in changes in arts education delivery mechanisms—all of which have implications for arts education training and preparation through higher education and professional development. The purpose of the article is to call attention to policy issues and priorities that are shaping the arts residency field and that can inform programs, education, and research in theatre for youth, theatre education, and arts education.

The Achievements of Disability Art: A Study of Inclusive Theatre, Inclusive Research, and Extraordinary Actors

This article emphasizes the importance of including young actors with a disability in theatre research by means of inclusive research methods. Rikke Gürgens Gjærum and Bjørn Rasmussen present a new Norwegian study on audience experience with extraordinary theatre productions. Data used in the research project are taken from 128 questionnaires and focus group interviews with twenty-one children. The study reveals that some adults attempt to identify disabled actors on stage, whereas most children are drawn into the mystical arena of theatrical narratives in the performance. In this type of theatre, it is possible to turn disability into ability.

IFTR's Arabic Theatre Working Group

This collaborative article looks at the establishment in 2006 of an IFTR/FIRT working group in Arabic theatre, and the significance of this in terms of breaking the twentieth-century, hegemonic hold of European and North American subjects in theatre research. We trace the development of the working group from preliminary conferences and gatherings outside IFTR to its set-up and organization within the Federation. Surveying our methodologies, key issues, research areas and future directions, we argue the significance of the group's work in creating a research forum for Arab theatre scholarship.

Back to the future of theatre studies

In this special issue, Theatre Research International marks its thirty-five years of existence. This time span equals the approximate length of an academic career or, at least in my case, it happens to coincide with my participation in the activities of the International Federation for Theatre Research. In order to locate the present position and the future direction of theatre studies, I begin with a brief retrospective overview of the decades that I have experienced with IFTR/FIRT.

The future possibilities of inter-Asian theatre research

Looking to the future, it is my view that Japanese theatre research needs to concentrate its efforts on scholarly exchanges with research communities in other Asian countries or cities.

Pedagogy, practice and research in Indian theatre

Modern academic training for theatre in India has a history of just over fifty years (since independence). The National School of Drama (NSD) was set up in 1957, but the prime objective of the institution at that time was to generate professionals to develop children's theatre and rural theatre. Although India possessed a wide range of traditional performance cultures throughout the country, from rituals to folk performances and classical performances, the NSD was modelled on the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts (RADA) since the new institution was led by a graduate of RADA, Professor Ebrahim Alkazi, who put the institution on a functional track. Thus the toolkit used during the initial days was primarily based on Western models conducive to realism rather than growing organically out of the actual practices of the different forms of Indian performance. This early orientation remains today, emphasizing the creation of referential meanings on the stage through conventional methods and devices, taken as the unshakable organizing principle of theatre practice.

Interweaving cultures in performance: theatre in a globalizing world

One of the most urgent issues facing theatre research today is the question of how theatre is affected by the rapid processes of globalization.