Royal National Theatre Research Articles

“The messenger has arrived”: the Angel of America as a prophet of intra-action on stage

ABSTRACT This article analyses representations of the Angel in the staged productions of Tony Kushner’s play Angels in America across a span of 25 years, from the 1993 Walter Kerr Theatre premiere on Broadway to the 2017 staging at the Royal National Theatre in London. Using Karen Barad’s theoretical framework of intra-action, I argue that the Angel in the play stands for the dynamism of competing forces of Heaven and Earth, which Barad both represents and challenges. In particular, I emphasise the phenomenology of transcendence, depending on the affordances of the theatrical medium. Barad’s definition of apparatus and her agential realist ontology offer a valuable framework for understanding the complexity and significance of stage design elements, such as the flying gear for the Angel. By recognizing the dynamic, interconnected, and performative nature of such apparatuses, we can gain deeper insights into how theatrical effects are created and how the boundaries between the physical and conceptual realms are navigated in the realm of live performance.

The Effects of Convolution Reverberation on the Emotional Characteristics of Musical Instrument Sounds

Abstract Previous work has shown that the emotional characteristics of musical instrument sounds are significantly changed with parametric reverberation. But do the parametric reverberation results also apply to real concert hall reverberation? This article considers the effects of reverberation time on the emotional characteristics of instrument sounds with convolution reverberation. We compared eight musical instruments and ten emotional characteristics over five hall impulse responses ranging from the one-second Royal National Theatre to the five-second King's College Chapel. The results showed that convolution reverberation had more pronounced effects on emotional characteristics compared with parametric reverberation. This makes sense, since convolution reverberation is often regarded as warmer, more natural, and smoother than parametric reverberation. The latter is often regarded as blander by comparison. Halls with shorter reverberation times emphasized the emotional characteristics Angry and Comic, whereas medium reverberation times emphasized the characteristics Happy, Heroic, and Shy, and longer reverberation times emphasized the characteristics Calm, Mysterious, Romantic, Sad, and Scary. Although the results were more pronounced for convolution reverberation compared with parametric reverberation, there was also a striking agreement in their results, and the correlation coefficient between them was 0.654 over all emotional characteristics. This strong correlation indicates that reverberation time has a remarkably consistent effect on the emotional characteristics regardless of whether using convolution or parametric reverberation—a reflection of their deep underlying functional similarities despite their fundamentally different implementations.

3. National Theatre Live. The Beginning of a Revolution

Abstract In June 2009 at the initiative of Royal National Theatre in London, National Theatre Live appeared – a revolutionary project through which theatre performances are live streamed. The first one was Phedra69 by Racine. The show was live streamed in 73 movie theatres from Great Britain and in 200 others all over the world. The broadcasting was a great success about which The Guardian wrote: “The main lesson is that a theatre production can be made democratically available to a mass audience without any loss of quality. For generations we have been told that the theatre is elitist. Last night it was shown that a supposedly difficult classical tragedy can speak simultaneously to people across the globe… this is only the beginning of a revolution in making theatre available in ways of which we had never dreamed.”70 For more than 13 years, The National Theatre of London has been live streaming its shows, at the moment having over 5.5 million spectators and being present in over 5000 locations all around the world.

The guilty pleasures of bigotry: ethnic stereotypes in Trevor Nunn's Merchant of Venice and Dave Chappelle's pixie sketches

ABSTRACTTrevor Nunn's 1999 Royal National Theatre production of The Merchant of Venice and Dave Chappelle's “pixie sketches”, produced in 2005 for Comedy Central USA, addressed the same challenge: how does one present ethnic stereotypes in a way that undermines those stereotypes rather than reinforcing them? The different representational strategies adopted by Nunn and Chappelle illustrate the different conventions that govern the representation of ethnicity in high and popular culture. Nunn downplayed the most stereotypical elements of Merchant and guided viewers towards a clear and obvious moral choice. He updated the setting of the play to Weimar Germany, evoking a strong sense of specific social context and prompting the audience to identify with Shylock as the victim of a toxic culture. Chappelle presented a series of hyperbolic racist caricatures that tempted his audience to make the wrong choice. The pixie sketches both solicit and chastise laughter, potentially making viewers aware of their momentary indulgence in the guilty pleasures of bigotry. In Nunn's Merchant, the antidote to racism is empathy, and the audience is reassured of its moral probity; in Chappelle's pixie sketches, the antidote to racism is critical reflection, and audience members are left wondering whether they really should have laughed at Chappelle being called a “big-lipped bitch”. Reading Merchant through the rough representational logic of the pixie sketches can offer a richer sense of Shakespeare's treatment of ethnic stereotyping than can be found within the conventions of the naturalistic theatre of empathy.

Not Making a Movie: The Livecasting of Shakespeare Stage Productions by The Royal National Theatre and The Royal Shakespeare Company

This article explores the tension between the announced transparency and the actual intermediality in the live broadcasts of Shakespeare stage productions by the Royal National Theatre (NT Live 2009-) and the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC Live 2013-). While often seen in terms of the practical achievements of reach and access, the broadcasts do not merely reproduce or transmit the stage production to the remote cinema audience, but rather adapt the stage productions on which they are based. I give attention to the process of making the livecasts to situate these intermedial adaptations in their material conditions of production. The apparent transparency obscures the significant creative and technical intervention that the broadcasts make in the live event. The fluent film grammar in the broadcasts, which offers the cinema audience a dynamic, shifting point of view, may account for a market research finding suggesting audiences for the broadcasts found them significantly more engaging than did audiences who saw the same stage production live in the theater. The broadcasts make a complex negotiation with liveness which depends in part on the conditions of reception. The cinema audience’s experience of liveness depends on the livecasting theater companies’ decision-making in determining the conditions of production and reception just as much as temporal co-presence with the live event.

The Silver Tassie by Sean O’Casey (review)

Reviewed by: The Silver Tassie by Sean O’Casey Robert Hubbard The Silver Tassie. By Sean O’Casey. Directed by Howard Davies. Royal National Theatre, Lyttelton Theatre, London. 21 May 2014. William Butler Yeats did have a point: on the page, the stark and impenetrable expressionism of act 2 of Sean O’Casey’s The Silver Tassie harshly contrasted with the customary word-drunk realism of the other three acts. Of course, Yeats’s 1928 decision to reject O’Casey’s fourth submission to the Abbey Theatre deeply damaged the previously fertile relationship between Ireland’s premiere theatre and one of her favorite sons. In the conventional wisdom of many critics and historians, the relatively scarce production history of The Silver Tassie has since vindicated Yeats’s theatrical instincts. Eighty-six years later, however, the Royal National Theatre contributed a counterpoint to the historical argument regarding the stage-worthiness of The Silver Tassie. If Howard Davies’ stunning production at the Lyttelton Theatre failed to completely prove a theatrical injustice, it at least succeeded as compelling theatre. His staging achieved this dramaturgical redemption by creatively fusing the internal rift between O’Casey’s realistic social drama with his expressionistic liturgy of act 2. While messy and still a little odd, the production soared. Act 1 began conventionally enough, resembling the poetic naturalism of O’Casey’s Juno and the Paycock and The Plough and the Stars. A handful of colorful Dublin eccentrics wait in a dilapidated flat for most of the neighborhood men to return from a championship football game. The men finally arrive with the coveted victory cup (the Silver Tassie), led by their dynamic star, Harry Heegan, charismatically played by Ronan Raftery. They do not savor victory for long, however. A train soon departs to take the twenty conscripts to fight in the trenches of World War I. But before they board, the colorful group find time to debate the finer points of divine salvation, shrug off troubling examples of domestic abuse, sing melancholy ballads, and drink. Pure O’Casey. Convincing designs supported the realistic style of act 1. In a nod to the naturalist, the audience smelled, heard, and saw a small slab of blood-red beef sizzle and burn on a central stove. Vicki Mortimer’s scenery, faithfully illuminated by Neil Austin’s lighting, effectively captured the poverty of a tenement slum: the crumbling and water-stained walls vividly illustrated what happens to a low-rent flat in a city prone to rain. Supported by John Bright’s authentic costumes, everything appeared real and true in Dublin until . . . Act 2 exploded onto the scene, literally. A series of uncomfortably loud flash-bombs erupted so brightly that they lingered as blue spots in the audience’s vision. In full view, the environment impressively shifted from the Dublin flat into a shell-ripped urban jungle somewhere in war-ravaged Europe. The visual and auditory assault eventually ended to reveal a lone Irish soldier standing in the smoke and wreckage. With the ritual posture of a cantor in a cathedral, the soldier—identified in the program as the Croucher—chanted lyrically to the Lyttelton audience: “Can this exceeding great army become a valley of dry bones?” [End Page 122] Click for larger view View full resolution Judith Roddy (Susie Monican) and Ronan Raftery (Harry Heegan) in The Silver Tassie. (Photo: Catherine Ashmore.) Click for larger view View full resolution Ronan Raftery (Harry Heegan) and Josie Walker (Mrs. Heegan) in The Silver Tassie. (Photo: Catherine Ashmore.) [End Page 123] A procession of fellow soldiers eventually joined the Croucher in an antiphonal mass of ritualized anti-war rhetoric and stylized movement. While played by the same actors from the previous act, individual identities mostly slipped away into the machine-like collective of military service and suffering. Midway through the act actresses appeared in this masculine world, but also without clear identities. Davies’ staging brought the women in on stretchers as wounded soldiers, all visible skin of their writhing feminine forms wrapped in gauze; their alto and soprano voices added timbre to the ceremonial chanting. Over the course of act 2, a few characters from the previous act revealed themselves from within the...

A Fragment

A Fragment Ben Okri (bio) There is an island in the South Pacific where giant stone images of the human head stand inexplicably on the rocks. Many legends surround these imposing images, but no one really knows how they came there, why they were made, or what they mean. They remain one of the great enigmas of man’s passage on this hieroglyphic territory of the earth. There is in France a cave where images of bulls leap on the stone walls, vivid as if limned there by modern masters. There are bulls and horses, but it is the bulls that shake the imagination. To see these images you have to go deep into the caves, without light, and traverse the steady dripping of water and navigate the slow forming stalagmites and stalactites. And then in the dark the cave walls writhe. The smallest light on them draws a heave of wonder. These are not natural images. These are not mere reproductions of bulls playing in the field. They compel one to a soul-stirring aesthetic contemplation. Why did those ancient artists choose to paint their bulls on a wall so deep in the caves, so deep in the dark? These are enigmas of man’s passage through the dark riddle of the earth. There is in Lagos a museum where the most potent images are not inside the museum, but outside it, growing like dark koans from the museum earth. They are oddly shaped stones, with curious markings that conform to the typography of the human face but extending this signification to the whole form of the body without separation among the parts. It is a gnomic image of the human form. These images appear to give birth to themselves. They have their home in Cross-rivers state, but they sprout here in Lagos. No form of sculpture anywhere in the world approach their strangeness. They are the magic form of nightmares. Children love them, love their incomplete forms which the mind completes. No one knows how they came to be created. There is a legend that they are the leftover forms when the great god exhausted his creative matrix. They are the addendum to creation, God’s last thoughts. Wherever we are faced with a puzzle older than tradition, which not even stories can domesticate, we are dealing with the depth-charge enigmas of our obscure passage across the face of the stars. Before humanity knew what it was, it made art. Making art helped humanity glimpse what humanity was. Our remotest ancestors shaped stone for reasons beyond productive use. They liked the elliptical shape of things. Our farthest ancestors were abstract sculptors, minimalist painters, and compressed riddlers. The oldest objects we know of bear testimony to our unfathomable need to shape, to create, to bend form, to hint at the thousand ways that the world can be mirrored and distorted, with each distortion being more true about that which is distorted. It seems that the impulse for art runs parallel with the impulse to live. [End Page 1041] Ben Okri BEN OKRI—novelist, short story writer, poet, playwright, and essayist—was born in Minna, Nigeria, but spent his early years in London, while his father studied law. Okri later returned to the UK to study at the University of Essex. He is author of more than eighteen books, including Incidents at the Shrine, The Famished Road (winner of the Booker Prize), An African Elegy, In Arcadia, Starbook, Tales of Freedom, and The Age of Magic. He has also received such literary prizes and awards as the Commonwealth Writers Prize, the Booker Prize for Fiction, the Chianti Ruffino-Antico Fattore International Literary Prize, the Premio Grinzane Cavour, and the Premio Palmi. From 1991 to 1993, he was Fellow Commoner in Creative Arts at Trinity College, Cambridge University, in 1987 he became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and in 2001 he was awarded an OBE (Order of the British Empire). In addition to being a member of the board of the Royal National Theatre, he is also a Vice President of the English Centre of International PEN. He lives in London. Copyright © 2016 The Johns Hopkins...

Staging Timon of Athens in the Downturn

This paper examines the challenges of localizing Shakespeare though theatrical adaptation, and considers some of the problems of “presentist” approaches to the early-modern text. It analyses the production of Timon of Athens at the Royal National Theatre, London in 2012, directed by Nicholas Hytner and starring Simon Russell Beale. This was a defiantly topical and localized interpretation of the play that made reference to the current economic downturn in the U.K and Europe, and the recent protests in the City of London by the Occupy movement. The paper discusses how significantly the text was revised and adapted to fit these topical British concerns about London, politics and the finance sector, and assesses how successfully these changes were developed in performance. The paper also considers in what other ways Shakespeare and Middleton’s text has been received in recent literary criticism of the play in order to better understand how the drama has been interpreted as a commentary on the present economic situation. In particular, the theme of linguistic and symbolic breakdown in the drama can be related to contemporary arguments in political philosophy, such as by Slavoj ?i?ek, regarding language, authority and the social order. The paper also speculates on how the drama lends itself to ideas of politics, and in what ways the London production illustrated some limitations of the presentist approach. The paper finally speculates on the ramifications of contemporary Shakespeare reception in local and global contexts.

The Method behind the madness: Katie Mitchell, Stanislavski, and the classics

Scholars frequently debate the applicability of contemporary theatre theories and acting techniques to Greek tragedy. Evidence both for and against such usage, however, is usually drawn from textual analyses which attempt to find support for these readings within the plays. Such arguments neglect the performative dimension of these theories. This article demonstrates an alternative approach by considering a case study of a Stanislavskian-inspired production of a Greek tragedy. Taking Katie Mitchell’s 2007 Royal National Theatre production Women of Troy as a paradigmatic example, the article explores the application of a Stanislavskian approach to Euripides’ Troades. I argue that Mitchell’s production indicates that modern theatre techniques can not only transform Greek tragedy into lucid productions of contemporary relevance, but can also supplement the scholarly analysis of the plays. The Stanislavskian acting techniques are seen to work like a domesticating translation, recreating themes and emotions from the extant tragedy in a powerful way that enhances the performative dimensions of the play and counters the idea of a fixed Euripidean meaning. The article concludes that a performative methodology is essential for reception scholars and performance historians who debate the applicability of a Stanislavskian approach to Greek tragedy.

King Lear by Royal National Theatre (review)

Reviewed by: King Learby Royal National Theatre Jami Rogers King LearPresented by the Royal National Theatreat the Olivier Theatre, London, England. January 14–July 2, 2014. Directed by Sam Mendes. Designed by Anthony Ward. Lighting by Paul Pyant. Sound by Paul Arditti. Music by Paddy Cuneen. Fights by Terry King. With Simon Russell Beale (Lear), Stephen Boxer (Earl of Gloucester), Cassie Bradley (Nurse), Tom Brooke (Edgar), Richard Clothier (Duke of Albany), Paapa Essiedu (Duke of Burgundy), Kate Fleetwood (Goneril), Colin Haigh (Old Man), Simon Manyonda (Oswald), Anna Maxwell Martin (Regan), Daniel Millar (Curan), Michael Nardone (Duke of Cornwall), Gary Powell (An Officer), Adrian Scarborough (The Fool), Hannah Stokely (Doctor), Jonathan Dryden Taylor (Cornwall’s Servant), Stanley Townsend (Earl of Kent), Sam Troughton (Edmund), Olivia Vinall (Cordelia), and Ross Waiton (Captain). The long-awaited King Learat the National Theatre had all the hallmarks of Sam Mendes’s best Shakespearean work: from the scenic trappings of anglepoise lamps and creative locations for scenes that provide a fresh context for the action to the presence of Simon Russell Beale in the leading role. There were also apparent homages to the outgoing artistic director of the NT, Nicholas Hytner, and his production of the play in 1990 at the RSC, the same season Mendes began his decades-long collaboration with Beale with Troilus and Cressida. The sheathes of wheat that appeared in the second half were identical in placement and design to those used in Hytner’s Lear, to name but one example. Mendes’s version—like Hytner’s before him—was resolutely present-day without a hint of the eclecticism that was common in Mendes’s early Shakespeares. Some could argue that the production was not novel or groundbreaking—and some, indeed, clearly did. Social media reaction to the NT Live broadcast of the production on 1 May (by which date I had seen the show in the Olivier three times) noted the feeling of being “underwhelmed” by the relayed event, particularly by the acting. Aware [End Page 519]that much commentary surrounding this high-profile production will undoubtedly focus on directorial intent, and spurred on by the negative reactions I have encountered online, I will focus here on the rich detail to be found within the performances. Shakespeares staged by Mendes have nearly always had a forensic quality about them (the final three productions in the Bridge Project excepted), in which emotional detail both emerges within the lines and fills the space between them through actors’ engagements with other characters and the environment they inhabit. In Mendes’s 2009 The Winter’s Tale, for instance, Simon Russell Beale’s Leontes clutched a brandy glass as he discreetly discussed the fate of Polixenes with Camillo. Beale’s long glance at the liquid that Leontes was swirling around as he said “bespice a cup” became the physical embodiment of the words and provided a clear indication that this oblique passage signaled the assassination of Polixenes by Leontes, as though the latter were a Borgia. The moment filled the stage with heightened tension through a simple action performed between the lines. In Mendes’s King Lear, this filling of the space with unspoken emotional resonance was embedded in the performances of Simon Russell Beale as Lear and Adrian Scarborough as the Fool even before Lear had spoken his first line. As the lights in the auditorium went down, Scarborough entered via the central stalls stairs and placed a stool on the vomitorium that jutted into the audience at stage level. There he sat with his back to the stage, facing the audience deep in contemplation. As Lear entered with his large retinue (thirty male extras populated the stage throughout Lear’s first scenes), the Fool stood up and turned around to face the stage—and Lear. As the King rounded the stage right corner of the tables, he saw the Fool standing in his eye-line, directly behind the chair that had been placed on the downstage center edge of the stage (from which Lear would hold court, facing upstage). There followed a pause in which the stillness of the two men spoke volumes about the decision Lear had made to...

Stages of the Loss, Translation as Contamination: How The Ritual Made It to the Royal National Theatre, London

This article focuses on the practice of translating Brazilian playwright Samir Yazbek's play The Ritual for the Royal National Theatre, as part of its 2012 Connections season. The article charts the course of the translation through its different stages, and through the different drafts of the play as they emerged, and examines the way in which translation itself can become a mediator for dramaturgical support, development, enquiry and critique. Through an interrogation not only of what is retained by the playwright, but also of what ultimately falls by the wayside, what is lost, I examine the peculiarly British notion of ‘workshopping’ new writing, in its linguistic mediated form of translation, and the role of the translator as cultural mediator. Ultimately, the article points towards an international economy of playwriting products where translation becomes a means of mediating cultures through particular and specific frames that remain largely unchallenged.

Othello performed by the Royal National Theatre (review)

Othello performed by the Royal National Theatre (review)

Hamlet performed by the Royal National Theatre (review)

Hamlet performed by the Royal National Theatre (review)

Guest Editor’s Introduction

Guest Editor’s Introduction Susanne Greenhalgh In 2009, the Royal National Theatre secured research and development funding to create its own digital High Definition theater recordings, resulting in a streamed transmission of Racine’s Phèdre, starring Helen Mirren, to cinema audiences in the UK and beyond. Modeled on and informed by the Metropolitan Opera’s successful project to transmit its productions, which had begun three years earlier, the NT digital streaming was initially regarded as a more effective way than occasional touring to extend access to its work beyond London. Five years later, now with the strap line “Experience the Best of British Theatre at a Cinema near You,” the National Theatre has its own in-house production company, NT Live, and this innovative form of disseminating its repertoire has proved a critical and economic success, its worldwide ticket sales bringing in profits and royalties despite costs of around £200,000 for each digital production. The format for these presentations has been consolidated and is now copied by other institutions. Seasonal programming builds momentum and a returning audience, supported by in-cinema and online trailers, video clips and background material on websites, and social media, especially Facebook and Twitter, which are also utilized to gauge audience response and statistics and to generate a sense of interactivity. There is close liaison between the screen director and stage director from the start of rehearsals; a camera script is drawn up and tested in two full-scale filmed dressed rehearsals, while the multi-camera filming on the night can be fine-tuned by the mixing and editing of shots in response to live feed from the standard six to seven cameras, both fixed and mobile, providing a range of perspectives from “the best seats in the house.” For an institution that has boasted of producing 70 Shakespeare plays during its first half-century, the National Theatre has built up its NT Live Shakespearean content gradually, but the number of productions [End Page 255] now screened or imminent confirms that the canon is regarded as intrinsically suitable for, and deserving of, live digital dissemination. As has frequently been the case in the wake of other technological and media developments, Shakespeare serves both as guarantor of quality and a cover for innovation: a symbol, in Kate Rumbold’s words, of “enduring value and entrepreneurial creativity” (“From ‘Access’ to ‘Creativity’: Shakespeare Institutions, New Media, and the Language of Cultural Value,” Shakespeare Quarterly 61.3, 2010: 325). While the NT has livecast a wide range of plays from both the contemporary and classical repertoire, it is the Shakespeare productions that have arguably tested and developed its digital house style most fully, in the greatest variety of theater spaces. To date there have been eight NT Live relays of full length Shakespeare plays. All’s Well that Ends Well (Olivier, October 1 2009) provided the NT’s second livecast offering, directed in a mix of fairy-tale and early film style by Marianne Elliot and filmed by Robin Lough, NT Live Executive Producer. Season 2 of an increasingly varied repertoire included Nicholas Hytner’s Hamlet, with Rory Kinnear as the Prince (Olivier, December 9, 2009), and the first Shakespearean production by a partner institution, the intimate Donmar Warehouse’s King Lear, directed by Michael Grandage with a highly praised central performance by Derek Jacobi (February 3, 2010), which attracted a worldwide audience of almost 60,000 compared with 40,000 for Hamlet. Lenny Henry was a draw in the 2011/12 multicultural production of The Comedy of Errors (Olivier, March 1, 2012), directed by Dominic Cooke and filmed by Tim van Someren, while towards the end of that year Hytner’s production of a less well-known play, Timon of Athens (Olivier, November 1, 2012) was filmed by Lough on its last night, showcasing Simon Russell Beale’s performance in a modern dress version that highlighted the play’s contemporary relevance to a boom-and-bust society. Another partner institution, the Manchester International Festival, provided a widely welcomed opportunity to bring its sell-out production of Kenneth Branagh’s Macbeth, staged in a deconsecrated Manchester church in 2013, to the big screen, courtesy of van Someren. That...

From Divestment to Due Resolution:King Learand the New York Fabulists, 1989-92

I would unstate myself to be in a due resolution.-Gloucester in King Lear (1.2.102-03)before even a frame of the godfather part iii had been screened in late 1990, Francis Ford Coppola made a highly publicized connection between his new film and Shakespeare's King Lear. In Peter Cowie's book on Coppola, the director is quoted thus:Michael Corleone's instincts were always to be legitimate, so it would be odd now, when he's almost in the King Lear period of his life, if his prime aim and purpose were not indeedto become legitimate. The result is a very classical piece, in the tradition of a Shakespeare play. Before I began writing I read a lot of Shakespeare, looking for inspiration to Edmund in King Lear, Lear himself, Titus Andronicus, even Romeo and Juliet. (242)Filmmakers and film publicists like to throw this kind of allusion around, and it is worth noting that when Coppola recorded a commentary track over the film for the 2001 DVD release, although he spoke fleetingly and lovingly of Shakespeare and Hamlet in particular, he made no specific reference to King Lear at all. Nevertheless, the Lear allusion was picked up in reviews of the film in the early 1990s and has persisted in critical work on the influence of Shakespeare in Hollywood cinema ever since (Mizejewski 28-31;Rothwell 220-21, 226; Risko; Griggs, "Western Elegy"; Griggs, "Humanity"). The emphasis on themes of guilt, aging, renunciation, illness, family destruction, and redemption (or at least reconciliation) in The Godfather Part III indicates the usefulness of a comparison with King Lear. Furthermore, the timing of the film's production and release during the recession of the early 1990s-when the global economy was beset by mounting unemployment, home repossessions, high interest rates and mortgage default statistics, declining house prices, and stagnant housing sector construction-suggests ways in which the comparison might be even more fruitful and of more general use (Kamery; Eberts and Groshen). King Lear is, after all, a play that is very much concerned with economic crisis in both the contemporary and classical senses of those words.To elaborate on the context of Francis Coppola's high-profile "Lear dropping" and the global recession in which he made the allusion, it is important to point out that the late 1980s and early 1990s were notable years in King Lear's stage production history. For a tragedy by Shakespeare that is critically almost sacrosanct, it is not subject to nearly the same regularity of stage and screen production as Hamlet, Macbeth, or Romeo and Juliet. In the English summer of 1990 alone, however, there were three major stage productions of the play running at the same time-namely, those of Kenneth Branagh's Renaissance Theatre Company, the Royal National Theatre, and the Royal Shakespeare Company. These productions followed stage adaptations of Shakespeare's play by Tadashi Suzuki (The Tale of Lear) in the United States and Japan and by Barry Keefe (King of England) at Stratford Upon Avon in 1988, as well as the overdue UK premiere of Aribert Reimann's opera Lear for the English National Opera in 1989, a Hindi adaptation directed by Amal Allana performed in Delhi the same year, and finally, a New York production directed by Lee Breuer and a production of Howard Barker's Seven Lears at London's Royal Court Theatre, both in early 1990.1As Shakespeare's apparently recession-proof tragedy was dominating the stage and Coppola was contemplating his new Corleone film, Coppola was also participating in the omnibus production New York Stories (1989) with Martin Scorsese and Woody Allen. What is interesting about this spiritual rather than literal (Bjorkman 202) union in the financial capital of the world in the early 1990s is what came after it for each of the filmmakers. Following New York Stories each of these New York fabulists released a film about crime-GoodFellas (1990), The Godfather Part III, and Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989)- and followed that with a fairy tale of magic, fantasy, and the extremities of desire: Alice (1990), Cape Fear (1991), and Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992) (Thompson and Christie 165; Keyser 199). …

Reading Pro-Am theatre through a serious leisure lens: organisational and policy-making implications

Amateur theatre has often suffered from a stigma of incompetence, and the view that while participants enjoy their involvement, they are unable to impact on the professional realm. Recent policy from Arts Council England and major projects from the Royal Shakespeare Company and National Theatre Wales suggest the amateur contribution is increasingly being recognised and celebrated. This article explores the emerging role of the non-professional in contemporary British theatre through the ‘Pro-Am’ initiative – whereby amateurs and professionals work collaboratively. It initially considers how serious leisure theories such as collective amateurism, flow, subjective well-being, social identity and culture of commitment can be applied to the Pro-Am theatre context and explore the challenge of negotiating the commitments of a serious leisure pursuit with participants’ ‘real lives’. Methods employed include case study, semi-structured interviews, observation and a focus group. Data are presented from the perspective of professional practitioners who facilitate Pro-Am work in regional, producing theatres and other industry experts, supported by some additional participant comments. Implications for arts organisations delivering this kind of work are then addressed. Findings reflect many of the outcomes outlined in the theory, and we conclude that the broadening of categories and the increasing popularity of Pro-Am initiatives are breaking boundaries, changing the very nature of amateurism.

Digital complements or substitutes? A quasi-field experiment from the Royal National Theatre

Digital broadcast technologies have expanded the virtual capacity of live performing arts venues, but they have also raised concerns about possible cannibalisation of box office revenues. We report the results of a quasi-field experiment involving the Royal National Theatre’s live broadcasts of theatre to digital cinemas in the UK and find that, if anything, live broadcasts generate greater, not fewer, audiences at the theatre.

Scarf

Scarf Rita Dove (bio) Whoever claims beauty lies in the eye of the beholder has forgotten the music silk makes as it settles across a slim, bared neck: skin never touched so gently except by a child or a lover’s breath. [End Page 511] Rita Dove Rita Dove is the editor of The Penguin Anthology of Twentieth-Century American Poetry (2011, paperback edition due out in the fall of 2013). The most recent of her nine poetry collections are Sonata Mulattica (2009), American Smooth (2004), and On the Bus with Rosa Parks (1999). A book of short stories, Fifth Sunday, was published in 1985 in the Callaloo Fiction Series. Her novel Through the Ivory Gate (1992) was widely acclaimed as a coming of age tale, and her drama The Darker Face of the Earth was produced at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, and the Royal National Theatre in London, among many other venues. In 1998 the Boston Symphony debuted her song cycle “Seven for Luck” with music by John Williams, under the composer’s baton. United States Poet Laureate from 1993 to 1995 and recipient of the 1987 Pulitzer Prize in poetry for Thomas and Beulah, Rita Dove received the 1996 National Humanities Medal from President Clinton and the 2011 National Medal of Arts from President Obama, making her the only poet ever honored with both awards. She is Commonwealth Professor of English at the University of Virginia. Copyright © 2013 The Johns Hopkins University Press

Brilliant theatre-making at the National: Devising, collective creation and the director's brand

ABSTRACTThis article assesses the health of collective creation within British devised theatre in the early part of the twenty-first century. Using the Royal National Theatre as a case study, I argue that while devising has recently enjoyed increased recognition and acceptance, this ‘mainstreaming’ has come at the cost of its identification as a collective practice. Documentation on the creative practices of Théàtre de Complicité, Katie Mitchell and the War Horse (2008) company will demonstrate that devising's shift from the margins to the mainstream of British theatre has resulted in an increasing separation between an ethos of collectivity and a quest for innovative theatrical product.

Juno and the Paycock , and: The Veil (review)

Reviewed by: Juno and the Paycock, and: The Veil Andrea Grunert Juno and the Paycock. By Sean O’Casey. Directed by Howard Davies. Abbey Theatre, Dublin. 29 September 2011. The Veil. By Conor McPherson. Directed by Conor McPherson. Royal National Theatre, London. 25 October 2011. Two productions, in Dublin and London respectively, recently revealed the richness of contemporary Irish theatre production and added a new episode to the close and complex relationship between Irish dramatists and British theatre. The O’Casey play that opened Dublin’s Ulster Bank Theatre Festival in 2011 was the first cooperation between the Abbey Theatre and the National Theatre of Great Britain. Directed by Howard Davies, one of the most prolific directors at the National, the play included renowned actors in the leading roles: Sinéad Cusack played Juno Boyle, and Ciarán Hinds played her husband Jack. Conor McPherson’s play had its world premiere at the Lyttelton, one of the three theatres that make up the Royal National Theatre. As with his previous plays, he directed the first production of The Veil himself. His play is set in a manor in the Irish countryside, a hundred years before the events of Juno and the Paycock. Irish literature has not mapped the 1820s very well, but it was a crucial period with regard to the history of sectarian violence in the country. Anglo-Irish Protestant landlords are the protagonists, which is a rare choice in Irish literature. The two plays share many themes and figures: strong female characters, the troubled Irish past, the supernatural and superstition, individual and collective action, and human and political failure. Jack Boyle’s peacock-masculinity prefigures the crisis of masculinity, a topic much cherished by contemporary Irish playwrights, including McPherson, who obsessively explores it in his plays and films and in The Veil contrasts strong-minded women with weak [End Page 427] men who are only braggarts. Moreover, and significantly for the present period of recession haunting Irish and British society, the two productions dealt with poverty. Juno and the Paycock emphasized an overall sense of poverty and deprivation, and although the poor were invisible in McPherson’s play, poverty and misery cast their shadow. The ghostly appearances of starving people were mentioned on several occasions, as well as hatred of the ruling class and the Irishmen who work for it. McPherson’s historical play links very clearly the traumatic effects on the Irish psyche of economic decline after the Napoleonic Wars with the crisis in post–Celtic Tiger Ireland. Click for larger view View full resolution Sinéad Cusack (Juno Boyle) in Juno and the Paycock by Sean O’Casey. (Photo: Mark Douet.) O’Casey and McPherson address historical events and their respective social problems—social decline and impoverishment—through the representation of individual fate and inner conflict. Although deeply rooted in Irish culture, these two works have a transcultural humanist significance. While O’Casey’s concerns went far beyond Irish nationalism, McPherson’s interest in existential questions, the place of the human being in the universe, is clearly situated in its own Irish cultural context. Although the historical and social settings contrast, the two plays correspond both in content (the decline of a family, even if the consequences are different for McPherson’s upper-class protagonists and for the Boyles) and tone (the blend of tragic and comic elements). McPherson’s work fits perfectly into the tradition of an Irish theatre fascinated by storytelling and attentive to the subtleties of language, accent, and idiom. One might ask what there was to interest the contemporary viewer in narrative and directorial choices so obviously inspired by realism. Why did these productions reconstruct the atmosphere of the past in order to address burning contemporary issues like poverty? Realism, as the two productions demonstrated, is not a homogeneous block, but a complex system of conventions and illusions, and both productions explored and transcended this system. Bob Crawley’s set design for Juno and the Paycock immediately revealed the directorial strategy to merge historical veracity and a metaphorical approach. The curtain rose to reveal a huge stage with a table and chairs, an armchair in the foreground, an oven, a small closet...