Theatre Industry Research Articles

Covid-19 And Movie Theaters

The Entertainment Industry underwent a drastic change during the Covid-19 pandemic. The movie theater industry was especially hard hit, as it temporarily lost most of its customer base to general panic and uncertainty as a result of the pandemic. This study aims to determine what long-term effect the Covid-19 pandemic has had on the Movie Theater Industry. To assess any change in the public's view of Movie Theaters, an online survey was distributed among 11th and 12th graders in a West Texas High School, which asked participants to respond to a set of questions inquiring about past and present entertainment habits and expectations. Analysis of the responses demonstrated that the opinion and future likelihood of visiting movie theaters for entertainment had decreased notably, over the course of the pandemic, potentially giving rise to more convenient entertainment alternatives, and implying that the movie theater industry will likely need to adapt and alter the experience they provide in order to retain their audience. Further research is needed to look closer into the economic and social impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Recent Research in Singing

Recent Research in Singing Donald Simonson (bio) RECENT RESEARCH IN SINGING The following list of recent research in singing is a brief sampling of dissertations/theses published during the last year. It is by no means comprehensive and reflects only a small fraction of the available documents. If you have published recent research in singing, voice pedagogy, voice science, vocal repertoire, pedagogic methodology, or other topics of interest to the membership of NATS, please send citations and abstracts to Donald Simonson at drs@iastate.edu for review and possible inclusion in future columns. ________ Bidstrup Graham, Kelly. "From Broadway to Community, the Job of a Music Director for Musical Theatre." M.A. Thesis, University of Colorado at Boulder, 2022, 67 pages; ProQuest 2681016185. "What in the world do music directors do? Despite musical theater being a billion dollar industry, the backbone of these productions, the music director, is often unknown and even less so understood within the theatre industry. In this study I interviewed nineteen music directors from across the professional and educational spectrum in search of crystallizing a common set of best practices that can be utilized by new musical directors, but more importantly, can be used by non-music directors in the industry to improve their working relationships with music directors, in order to create more musical theater in meaningful and creative ways." (ProQuest/Author Abstract) ________ May, Nicholas A. "The Effect of Nonlinear Source-Filter Interaction on Aerodynamic Measures in a Synthetic Model of the Vocal Folds and Vocal Tract." Ph.D. Dissertation 2022, Bowling Green State University, 321 pages; ProQuest 2684505746. "According to nonlinear source-filter theory, as the strength of the coupling between the source and filter increases, typically by a decrease in the vocal tract cross sectional area, the resultant increase in the inertance of the vocal tract yields an increase in the interactions between acoustic pressures within the vocal tract and the changing glottal airflow and/or the vibratory pattern of the vocal folds. The purpose of the current research was to examine the effects of parametric vocal tract constrictions mimicking epilaryngeal tube and lip narrowing on aerodynamic and projected glottal area measures in a dynamic self-oscillating physical model of the vocal folds and vocal tract. "Multilayered silicone vocal fold models were created (after Murray & Thomson, 2011, 2012) and mounted to a simple synthetic trachea and supraglottal vocal tract model. Four constriction cross sectional areas were examined at two locations yielding 16 possible experimental vocal tract conditions. Vocal fold model adduction and tension were held constant across all experimental conditions; three constant subglottal pressures were examined. "Results indicate that: 1) mean phonation threshold pressure (PTP) at onset and offset, phonation instability pressure (PIP) onset, phonation pressure range (PPR) onset, phonation threshold flow (PTF) at onset and offset, phonation instability flow (PIF) onset and offset, and phonation flow [End Page 263] range (PFR) onset and offset were all found to generally decrease given a constriction in the epilarynx tube region; 2) mean PIP offset, and PPR offset were all found to generally increase given a constriction in the epilarynx tube region; 3) mean PTP at onset and offset and PTF at onset and offset were all found to generally decrease given a constriction in the lip region; and 4) mean PIP onset and offset, PPR onset and offset, PIF onset and offset, and PFR onset and offset were all found to generally increase given a constriction in the lip region. Thus, results indicate that both constriction magnitude and location are relevant factors in determining glottal aerodynamics and projected glottal area measures." (ProQuest/Author Abstract) ________ Moreno, Amanda Marie. "An Examination of the Effects of Body Mapping Instruction on Singers' Static Standing Posture and Posture While Singing." Ph.D. Dissertation, The University of North Dakota, 2022, 159 pages; ProQuest 2682732045. "Physical posture is one of the fundamental aspects of vocal technique, and voice pedagogues suggest that effective alignment is necessary for healthy vocal production. Body Mapping (BMG) is a somatic method that focuses on the understanding and correction of errors in a person's body map to facilitate effective movement for musical activity. Because this method has balance, physical alignment, and posture as...

The Lifeworld of Millennial Stage Actors in Metro Manila: A Schutzian Phenomenological Study

Using the phenomenological method developed by the Austrian-American philosopher and social theorist Alfred Schutz, this article studied the lifeworld of millennial stage actors in Metro Manila, Philippines. Lifeworld is the meaning-giving sphere of common sense that is shared by individuals from a given social group. Using the data gathered from key informant interviews with 12 professional actors and five consociates from the said locale, we investigated how these millennial actors started their careers in the theatre industry, how they perceived theatre in general and Philippine theatre in particular, how they experienced the challenges and difficulties in their careers, how they were motivated to persevere, and how they envisioned their long-term future in the same industry. This article contributes to the sparse literature on the lives of contemporary professional stage actors in general, and to the almost non-existent literature on Filipino professional stage actors in particular. Understanding the status and problems of the lives of professional stage actors should be the first step in further improving their plight and in appreciating more their central role in the continued existence of theatre as a cultural practice.

Opening rehearsal rooms as a way of broadening access, demystifying the process and breaking barriers

Access to the theatre industry is often frustrated through lack of experience. Many theatre companies have a stated aim to widen participation in order to fully represent the communities and society that they work in. This study assesses how opening up access to the rehearsal room can embolden and accelerate change as well as encourage a multiplicity of routinely marginalized voices to speak and be heard. It seeks to ask whether opening access to the rehearsal room has benefits for participants, companies and the industry at large. In this context, opening the rehearsal room means to facilitate observation access for those not directly involved in the production. After a nascent, small-scale version of the observation offer, a questionnaire was circulated to those who were invited and/or actively participated in the observation offer with conclusions drawn from responses and other related contextualizing literature. The results suggest that the offer can help to increase participation, with suggestions as to how it can be fine-tuned in further, future iterations.

The revival is dead: Is this something else? Or, holding onto Anta Helena Recke’s MITTELREICH as a work of art

In 2017, Anta Helena Recke restaged the production of MITTELREICH on which she had previously been employed as the assistant director, with one crucial difference: the entire cast, orchestra and creative team were now Black. This action, which she named a Schwarzkopie (‘black copy’), exposed a raft of material racial inequalities within the European theatre industry and brought about a more abstract inquiry into the very idea of a theatrical copy. In this article I bring some of the material and theoretical consequences of Recke’s production in direct conversation with McKenzie Wark’s thought experiments on finding, after Marx, a new language for the contemporary modes of production. Wark’s insistence on historical materialism provides a helpful framing for uncovering the specific value(s) of Recke’s staging and allows a discussion on class relations to enter a hitherto stymied debate around identity politics in European theatre.

A History of Chinese Theatre in the 20th Century I by Fu Jin, and: A History of Chinese Theatre in the 20th Century II by Fu Jin

Reviewed by: A History of Chinese Theatre in the 20th Century I by Fu Jin, and: A History of Chinese Theatre in the 20th Century II by Fu Jin Tarryn Li-Min Chun A HISTORY OF CHINESE THEATRE IN THE 20TH CENTURY I. By Fu Jin. Translated by Zhang Qiang. London and New York: Routledge; Beijing: China Social Sciences Press, 04 2020. 330 pp. 22 B/W Illustrations. Hardback, $325.00; Paperback/eBook, $99.95. A HISTORY OF CHINESE THEATRE IN THE 20TH CENTURY II. By Fu Jin. Translated by Zhang Qiang. London and New York: Routledge; Beijing: China Social Sciences Press, 11 2020. 268 pp. 22 B/W Illustrations. Hardback, $160.00; Paperback/eBook, $48.95. In A History of Chinese Theatre in the 20th Century, Fu Jin offers a comprehensive overview of Chinese theatre from 1900 to 2000 that demonstrates both a capacious attitude toward genre and close attention to the influence that political, social, and economic factors have had on content, form, and the lives of Chinese theatre artists. Fu Jin is a leading Chinese theatre historian and critic affiliated with Shandong Normal University and the National Academy of Chinese Theatre Arts, and his Chinese-language work has long been considered essential reading for scholars and students of modern Chinese drama. First published in Chinese by China Social Sciences Press in 2016–2017, this latest work of historiography is no exception, and a new translation series published by Routledge and China Social Sciences Press makes it available in four English-language volumes. The first two volumes were released in 2020, with the remaining two published in 2021. While the scholarship itself is rigorous and insightful, the usefulness of its publication in English is tempered by poor translation and the prohibitive cost of the print editions. The first volume, A History of Chinese Theatre in the 20th Century I (hereafter "Volume I"), is divided in two parts that examine the rise of jingju (Beijing opera) and other xiqu genres, theatrical reform campaigns (xiju gailiang yundong) at the turn of the twentieth century, and shifts in the market for the performing arts during this same [End Page 409] period. One of the most notable and valuable contributions of this first volume is that, although Part I "New Dramas and New Stages" begins with the familiar history of jingju in the late nineteenth century (Chapter 1), Fu Jin does not remain focused on China's best-known xiqu genre for long. Instead, by Chapter 2, he expands his geographic range well beyond Beijing and delves deeply into how "minor genres" (xiao xi), such as flower-and-drum (huagu), "folk minor" (tanhuang), yangge, and laozi, emerged and merged with forms such as chuju (Hubei), huju (Shanghai), chang-xi ju (Changzhou/Wuxi), yueju (Zhejiang), and pingju (Tianjin). Chapter 3 then turns to more overt attempts to "reform" the Chinese theatre among Chinese elites and intellectuals and the rise of "new drama" influenced by Western theatre, a perspective which complements the previous chapter's focus on the grassroots and popular taste. As Fu Jin describes each individual form, he also carefully details a range of different factors influencing its development: performance elements such as instrumentation and role types; changes in the stage apparatus and technology; political control and morality-based censorship; broader changes in urbanization, transportation, and communication; and the roles played by significant individuals. This methodology continues throughout subsequent sections of the book, with each using specific genres to illustrate broader points about the trajectory of theatrical development. Part II, "Updating Concepts and Adapting Theatrical Industry to Market Requirements," comprises three chapters split between Volume I and Volume II, marking a structural difference from the original and making for a rather abrupt conclusion to Volume I. In terms of content, however, Part II offers another important corrective to histories of modern Chinese drama that would draw a straight line from late Qing reformers to the debates on traditional theatre that raged in the early decades of the twentieth century. Instead, Chapter 4 demonstrates the innovation and influence of theatrical "clubs" that emerged through-out China in the early Republican period, such as the Yisu Club in...

Measuring Efficiency in the Movie Theater Industry: A Bootstrap Data Envelopment Analysis Approach

ABSTRACT This paper aims to propose a method to measure the operational efficiency of the movie theater businesses. The method is based on a bootstrap data envelopment approach to test the statistical significance of the performance difference between companies in the movie theater industry. The proposed method is utilized to investigate the operational efficiency of the three major U.S. movie theater chains. This article utilizes data from each company’s individual financial filings to estimate their bias-corrected efficiency scores. An aggregate report of the efficiency scores shows that the movie theater industry is experiencing a significant decline in both scale and technical efficiencies. The efficiency assessment of the three movie theater chains reports statistically significant differences. Based on the constant returns to scale assumption, the efficiency scores are different among the three movie theater chains. Closely, two significant differences are identified when considering the variable returns to scale assumption. The kernel density of the efficiency scores is estimated as well. Results suggest that the movie theater chains are in imperative need of developing an innovative strategic plan to tackle poor attendance and weak managerial practices. Other contributions and managerial issues are also discussed.

Exploring musical theatre performance synergy: Accessing seven performative processes

To meet the demands of the ever-evolving musical theatre industry, performers are expected to craft inspiring performances across eight shows a week, seamlessly integrating their triple-threat expertise. Most actors undertake intensive training to achieve the complex skillset required to execute this art form, yet professional success can be elusive. It appears that a key element to building and maintaining a musical theatre career is performance synergy. This phenomenon is described colloquially as stage presence or X-factor. Whilst the literature regarding the field of musical theatre training is wide-ranging, little formal research has been undertaken on the ephemeral subject of performance synergy as it pertains to the work of the musical theatre actor. To address this lacuna in the literature – and to determine whether performance synergy can be described, comprehended, taught or learned – semi-structured interviews were conducted with 42 Australian actors and creative directors active in the musical theatre industry. Collected data captured expert opinions on the elements, constructs and praxis of musical theatre performance synergy. Following a thematic analysis of the data, a framework of seven performative processes was constructed towards a clearer understanding of the practical aspects of this multifaceted phenomenon.

An American Investor in the Theatre Industry of Budapest

In the interwar period, an American theatre and film entrepreneur had a determinantimpact on the private theatre sector of Budapest. Ben Blumenthal (1883–1967) ran the Vígszínház(Comedy Theatre) in 1920–1926 and owned its building in 1920–1949. In addition, Blumenthalfinanced the operation of the Fővárosi Operettszínház (Budapest Operetta Theatre) in 1922–1926.Although from a global perspective, Blumenthal does not belong to the group of legendaryUS theatre or movie producers, in the context of Hungarian theatre culture, he was the mostinfluential mediator in Hungarian–American cultural relations. The study aims to piece together theundiscovered elements of Blumenthal’s personal and professional biography and to discuss how hisactivities were evaluated from the American and the Hungarian perspectives.Special emphasis will be given to the US and Hungarian entertainment press: Blumenthal’sinterviews on his Hungarian theatres, articles on Blumenthal’s position in the transnationalproducers’ hierarchy, and representation of the Vígszínház in the US entertainment press. The aim isto assess the significance of Blumenthal’s Budapest business activities within his entire career.

Benefits of Embracing the Fourth Industrial Revolution in the South African Opera Theatre Industry

Benefits of Embracing the Fourth Industrial Revolution in the South African Opera Theatre Industry

Developmentally, Cognitively, and Intellectually Disabled People Are Artists, Not Pet Projects

In this autoethnographic piece, Riki Entz writes from their lived experience of Disability in the Canadian theatre industry and clearly outlines the ableism they have experienced as a multiply Disabled person. By providing honest examples of ableism, while also searching for ways that they can fit into this industry, Entz offers grounds for reflecting on ableism and the arts while remaining hopeful for the future.

Introduction: There's No Place Like London: Theatrical Landscapes of a City in Recovery

IntroductionThere's No Place Like London: Theatrical Landscapes of a City in Recovery Harry Derbyshire (bio), Nicholas Holden (bio), and Mark O'Thomas (bio) At approximately 5:30pm (GMT) on Monday March 16, 2020, the West End and theatres across London as well as the rest of England were brought to an abrupt halt. The public was instructed by Prime Minister Boris Johnson to "avoid pubs, clubs, theatres and other such social venues," thus plunging the country's arts and hospitality sectors into an acute and unexpected state of paralysis.1 That evening, as commuters and tourists boarded buses, trains, and planes to make their journeys home, few could have predicted the sustained and brutal impact that the global pandemic caused by COVID-19 would have on these industries, and public life generally, in the months and years to come. Not since the Second World War had London's theatres suffered such unrelenting and grave difficulties. Indeed, even during the height of the [End Page 1] Blitz, the West End had remained open—albeit severely depleted—in an attempt to bring "some sense of normality" and "maintain general morale" for the public.2 In the early stages of the pandemic, the severity of which had not been seen for over a century, London's theatres were in complete blackout, with little sign of recovery. Theatregoers, whether Londoners or visitors, were left without the source of live entertainment that the country's capital had been famously supplying for hundreds of years. What separates the impact of COVID-19 from previous global conflicts and pandemics, however, is the advent of various technologies in the twenty-first century that have come to provide a social lifeline to the world's population. As stay-at-home orders, such as England's "Stay home, protect the NHS, save lives," forced much of the world into lockdown and physical isolation, people turned to internet platforms and apps such as Zoom, Skype, FaceTime, and Microsoft Teams as a means of maintaining contact with friends, families and colleagues. During those first weeks, quizzes and other traditional games were imaginatively reconceived for an online context to provide entertainment and a sense of social contact to a population confined to their homes. As has often been the case throughout history, the theatre industry in Britain responded quickly and imaginatively to the urgent issues and demands of the contemporary world. With theatres closed and production on film and television halted, the two industries worked together in new creative ways that were reflective of and informed by the isolation that had been enforced upon many during this time. At first, production companies found themselves sending cameras, recording devices, and other production equipment into the homes of creative teams. The results included Isolation Stories (ITV), with four episodes aired from May 4-7, and Unprecedented (BBC4), a short series of 14 dramas presented over four nights at the end of May 2020. Unprecedented was commissioned in the immediate aftermath of theatre closures and showcased new work by playwrights including James Graham, April De Angelis, and Duncan MacMillan for the BBC. The series was subtitled "Real Time Theatre From a State of Isolation" and, as described by BBC executive Stephen James Yeoman, offered "an intimate response to the radical way our world changed when lockdown was announced [in England] on 23 March [End Page 2] 2020."3 This was followed in June by further original work in the form of Staged (BBC), a series of short comic episodes starring David Tennant and Michael Sheen that was filmed almost entirely using video-conferencing technology. The same month saw the broadcast of a revival of Talking Heads (BBC), written by veteran playwright Alan Bennett and starring theatrical luminaries including Lesley Manville and Harriet Walter. The series, which had been rehearsed on Zoom and filmed using a skeleton crew on location at London's Elstree Studios, allowed for a continued sense of connection between the British theatre and its loyal audience during the initial lockdown period. The rapid restrictions placed on the theatre industry and the considerable impact of this uncertainty on its workers meant that many were left unsupported, financially and otherwise, in the early...

Dystopian/Utopian Theatre in Britain after 2000 and Its Political Spaces, Zentrum für interdisziplinäre Forschung / Centre for Interdisciplinary Research (ZiF), University of Bielefeld, March 11–13, 2021

Dystopian/Utopian Theatre in Britain after 2000 and Its Political Spaces, Zentrum für interdisziplinäre Forschung / Centre for Interdisciplinary Research (ZiF), University of Bielefeld, March 11–13, 2021

Stage Business and the Neoliberal Theatre of London by Alex Ferrone

Reviewed by: Stage Business and the Neoliberal Theatre of London by Alex Ferrone Alessandro Simari STAGE BUSINESS AND THE NEOLIBERAL THEATRE OF LONDON. By Alex Ferrone. Contemporary Performance Interactions series. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020; pp. 264. Stage Business and the Neoliberal Theatre of London begins with a story. The book's author, Alex Ferrone, recounts his spectatorial experience of attending Matilda the Musical at the Cambridge Theatre in London's Covent Garden. Ferrone tells us that his booking of a West End show was an "unlikely" occurrence and that, although he took his seat as a [End Page 122] "resolutely sceptical" audience member, the "sheer pleasure" of his spectatorial experience resulted in his leaving the theatre with an "affective rush," as well as an enthusiastically purchased program tucked under his arm (1). Ferrone grounds his affective response to Matilda in its perhaps surprising political potential: that a mainstream West End show, packaged and sold as benign family-friendly drama, should "contain" (in both senses of the word) the capacity to interpellate child spectators as "active subjects with the ability to challenge and disrupt oppressive structures of power" (29) through the deployment of the dramaturgical mechanisms of the musical theatre. This opening anecdote, and the materialist semiotic analysis of several moments of performance from Matilda in the book's introductory chapter, neatly exemplifies both Ferrone's hopeful approach to his subject matter, as well as his methods for critical examination. Stage Business and the Neoliberal Theatre of London locates and disentangles a perceived tension observed in commercial theatrical productions of an array of contemporary English plays, which are found to give voice to critiques of neoliberalism even as the theatre industry is itself financially reliant upon and "invariably enmeshed in networks of neoliberal capital and labour practices" (187). The single greatest contribution that Stage Business offers to the study of performance and political economy is its insistent attention, by way of richly detailed and incisive readings, to what Ferrone invites us to think of as "capitalist dramaturgy" (115), or the ways in which contemporary English drama visualizes, articulates, and critiques neoliberal policies and ideologies in its dramatic structures and stagings. Each chapter is organized around semiotic readings of performance in one or more significant London theatre productions, attending to how dramaturgical forms, theatre aesthetics, or performance and production practices articulate an opposition to neoliberalism. Ferrone's analyses are united by the adoption of an altitudinal approach to theatre that asserts a claim toward "the analytical and political viability of ambivalence" (5): to deliberately and optimistically conceive of theatre that, while conditioned and constrained by its position within market economies, nonetheless through its form, content, themes, and collaborative labor practices might resist if not rupture the "ethos of capitalism that fundamentally structures cultural life" (4). If there is one downside to this structured approach, it is that the meticulously compiled readings of playtexts, performances, and performance histories that Ferrone weaves together in his individuated assessments feel unmoored within the monograph. The absence of a conclusion to Stage Business—in which the author might have drawn an argumentative through-line between his case studies, drawing connections that provide a clearer insight as to how theatre's position within neoliberalism might instantiate instances of "capitalist dramaturgy" as a method of expressing the tension so aptly articulated in the monograph's introduction—seems something of a missed opportunity. The most striking and successful of Ferrone's readings is found in chapter 2, which focuses on theatre and corporate finance. Ferrone interrogates the dramaturgical concretization of financial instruments in stagings of Lucy Prebble's Enron (2009) and Caryl Churchill's Serious Money (1987), attending also to these productions as transatlantic theatre commodities with mirrored performance histories whose commercial successes and failures were determined less by artistic considerations than by the market imperatives that both plays work to critique. Ferrone makes the compelling case that these plays, in their production histories and stagings, "dramatize capitalist logic's infiltration of every aspect of social and cultural life at the turn of the century" (76), including if not especially the performing arts. In chapter 3, the spatial-temporal dislocations in Lucy Kirkwood's Chimerica (2013), debbie tucker green...

‘We are like refuse in front of the guest of honour’ : Dancers’ Struggles and Tribulations in Tanzania

Informed by the theory of attitude and original data gathered with dancers in Dar es Salaam and Iringa, this article argues that dancers in Tanzania are dogged by lack of recognition, infrastructural, attitudinal and economic challenges. These problems arise primarily because dancing is largely an ad hoc and autonomous career that employs a considerable number of Tanzanians regardless of their socio-economic and education background. However, what dancers encounter in the career disappoint many of them particularly when they want to use it to earn a living as terpsichoreans. The article shows that failure of community members and the government to give the performing arts industry, particularly theatre and dancing, the attention it deserves frustrated many artistes including dancers. Thus, the article suggests that government-owned theatrical infrastructures be hired at affordable rates with more theatres to be built to ease the problem of limited venues for theatrical performances. Moreover, dealing with the problem of undervaluing dancers that, subsequently, impact on them economically and how they are perceived also requires a systematic documentation of the contributions of dancers and the theatre industry generally.

Dancing in the rain

Worldmaking is a genre-bending ethnographic/theoretical analysis of labor and race-making in the US theater industry, grounded in Kondo’s full participation in theater as anthropologist, performance studies scholar, dramaturg and playwright. The narrative trajectory toward what Kondo calls “reparative creativity,” inspired by Kleinian theory and its appropriations in queer of color critique, grounds her analysis of the work of artists of color Anna Deavere Smith, David Henry Hwang, and her own full-length play. She disrupts the theory/ practice binary by spotlighting creative labor and race-making, and destabilizes the personal/structural divide through her concepts of “racial affect” and “affective violence.” Theater and the arts are more than second-order representation; they are zones of public existence. Kondo locates shared themes of destruction/creation, genre-bending, and embodiment/ affect/ movement as she “dances in the rain” with her interlocutors Joshua Chambers-Letson and Aimee Cox.

Effects of Chain Affiliation in the Movie Theater Industry

In this paper, I empirically study the effect of chain affiliation on product variety and price in the movie theater industry. Using longitudinal data on Korean movie theaters, I find that movie variety in a theater increases by 3.2–5.5% after the theater joins a chain. Admission price, however, does not change after chain affiliation. These findings imply that consumers may benefit from the growing dominance of chain-affiliated theaters in recent decades. The results also suggest that the regulatory authorities should carefully examine the trade-off between the increase in market power and efficiency gains when evaluating the implications of chain affiliation.

The “Homosexual Code” in Contemporary Korean Theatre: The Case of Shakespeare’s R & J in Seoul

This essay critiques the vogue of “the homosexual code” in contemporary Korean theatre, with a close-up analysis of ShowNote Company’s Shakespeare’s R & J that premiered in 2018. It first examines the surge of queer-themed films and theatres since the mid-2000s in relation to the growing visibility of homosexuality, the changing concept of masculinity, the “flower boy” syndrome, and neoliberalism in South Korea. Defining the “homosexual code” as a distancing strategy of encoding homosexuality to bypass homophobia, I problematize the way queer subject is appropriated for novelty and spectacle in the theatre industry. The second part of the essay examines ShowNote’s R & J in depth, partly in response to a recent discussion of Choo Min Ju’s Our Bad Magnet (2012) by Claire Maria Chambers. Pointing to a close resemblance between the two, I argue that both shows adopt the established formula of “the homosexual code,” contingent upon the neoliberal ideology of commodification and consumerism.

“Women’s Voices in Contemporary Irish Theatre

The issue of re-establishing the contemporary Irish women playwrights to prominence has gained great attention. Women playwrights feel the need to combat systemic prejudice in the theatre industry, meaning that postfeminists in Ireland are very much present. Although often regarded as a synonym for third-wave feminism, postfeminism has its separate characteristics. One of them is that postfeminism defines equality differently than has been done previously. Equality should not look like androgyny, nor should it be strictly divided based on gender since such a division ignores the human elements of thought, intellect, emotion, and expression. Furthermore, ethical issues in literature have been identified and discussed worldwide for years, not excepting the contemporary Irish theatre. The aim of this paper is to show a notable step towards an increased emphasis on the issue of gender responsibility and solidarity, or lack thereof. The paper also deals with ethical implications and consequences of the ways in which these issues underpin social interactions as well as family and gender relations that Marina Carr and Nancy Harris dramatize in their plays.

THE ROLE OF THE UKRAINIAN FOLK COSTUME IN THE CREATION OF SCREEN IMAGES IN CINEMATOGRAPHY OF THE 20TH CENTURY

Relevance. The Ukrainian national costume recognized by all domestic researchers as a nation code has gained a new life in many artistic branches. Thanks to its skillful use in cinema and theater arts there were created screen images that have not lost their relevance to this day. Therefore, the purpose of the article is to study the role and place of traditions of the Ukrainian folk costume in the national cinematography of the 20th century. We chose staged movies that appeared on screens at different decades as a source for studying the said issue. To perform the set goal, we needed historical and art methods. The most important among historical methods are historical-biographical and historical-comparative methods. They allowed to highlight a number of the most important costume designers who developed patterns for the first domestic movies, forming national school of stage apparel. The historicalcomparative method allowed to determine the main trends in the approaches to the production of national costumes for movies in different historical periods. The art toolkit allowed separately to reveal artistic features of costumes in every chosen movie. Such approach used in the study determined the novelty of the article, both in terms of topic and methods. Conclusions. The studied corpus of domestic movies, mostly historical ones, allowed to make several important conclusions: well-known Ukrainian artists came into the cinema mainly from theater industry, having received their professional experience there. Simultaneously they all went through the study of traditional clothes, its architectonics and coloristics, as well as folk life in general in different ways. During the entire period of development of domestic cinematography, the national costume did not lose its relevance and became a face of historical, and later “poetic” cinema.