Theatre People Research Articles

Insight Into Adult Classic Theatre Audiences’ Perceptions and Behaviour

Many cultural institutions are experiencing challenges to implement different types of market-oriented behaviour in order to ensure their existence. Classic theatres are faced with many challenges related to their audience. One of the challenges is related to traditional audience that is declining and ageing. The aim of this research was to identify and analyse the key factors that contribute to understanding of attitudes and behaviour of 35+ theatre audiences in order to suggest appropriate marketing strategies for the classic theatre in Croatia. The research was conducted on altogether 438 participants. Statistical techniques of univariate analysis (frequency distribution, central tendency measures), bivariate (ANOVA and t-test) and multivariate analysis (reliability analysis, linear regression) were used. The results have identified attitudes and audience behaviour in relation to HNK Osijek. Three major factors were identified: theatre marketing profile, theatre people and stereotypes. This study seeks to provide a deeper understanding of classic theatre audiences’ perceptions and behaviour as a basis for theatre marketing strategy development. Since no other research has tested the influence of stereotypes on theatre attendance, the major contribution of this paper is its proven negative influence on theatre attendance.

Polish Theatre in the Time of War (1939–1945). Fight—Will to Survive—Losses—Legacy

During World War II Polish theatre people took an active part in the fight with both Germany and the Soviet Union. Several of them fought with a weapon inhand as officers and soldiers of Polish armies in the September 1939 campaign, later as combatants of the Home Army (AK), and also within Polish armed forces fighting abroad. Many more fought with a weapon of the word. While boycotting German sponsored stages in the General Government, they created the whole network of small underground theatre groups. Two major centers of this activity were Warsaw, where the Clandestine Theatre Council (Bohdan Korzeniewski, Leon Schiller, Edmund Wiercinski and others) organized and sponsored underground theatre productions and acting studios, and Krakow with The Rhapsodic Theatre (led by Mieczyslaw Kotlarczyk), The Independent Theatre (led by Tadeusz Kantor), and a circle of artists and apprentices gathered around Juliusz Osterwa, who frequently gave one-man shows. Productions were also prepared in German oflags and concentration camps. The great actor Stefan Jaracz performed for fellow inmates in Auschwitz, Zofia Rysiowna in Ravensbruck, and Roman Niewiarowicz in Dachau. Such productions were recorded also in Soviet camps (gulag system). Soldier theatres were organized at the Gen. Anders Second Corp, then also at the Polish forces underSoviet command. Losses of Polish theatre due to the war were staggering. In terms of material losses, The National Theatre in Warsaw was bombed by the Lufwaffe on September 19, 1939, and eventually Poland lost about 70% of theatre buildings standing in August 1939, plus their libraries, sets and costumes magazines, etc. In terms of human losses, about 300 theatre professionals died (out of about 2000 in 1939). Some were killed in military actions, some murdered in either German or Soviet camps. The losses in the spiritual domain were uncountable. Theatre artistswere deprived of the possibility to perform, thus executing their profession and vocation. Theatre spectators were left without their artistic nourishment. The struggles, sacrifices, and deeds of the war-time Polish theatre had a profound influence on the history of Polish theatre of the second half of the 20th century. They were not only an important element of the nation’s war-effort, but—indirectly— contributed to the restoration of Poland’s freedom at the end of the 20th century.

Image-based theatre: a new pedagogy for a “new” theatre

This article captures the one-hour presentation, discussions and interactivedialogue at the conference: The theatrical function of the image and its relation to the other elements of staging. Pedagogical approach. The main idea of the conference is that nowadays the context of performing arts claims a reconsideration of the pedagogical approach of the profession of theatre director. I will recall how the “job” of theatre director has emerged in 19th century as a logical result of the industrialisation. Bringing electric light into theatre auditoriums, building bigger theatres with wider stages, the appetence of the public for elaborate and realistic staging using 3D props and complicated machineries – all this imposed the necessity of a man who has or develops the skills and knowhow of staging. And that’s how the history of the world theatre was re-written in the 20th century – The Century of the Director. Moreover, the two most influential theatre people of the last century where both directors and professors: Konstantin Stanislavsky and Bertolt Brecht. But what about our 21th century? Is theatre still “a play ground” for the directors? My theory is that the performing arts today are erasing the “traditional” patterns of theatre makers under the pressure of the new role that theatre is claimed to perform insociety. The theatre of Digital Era needs to have the same “pixeled” structure as every other human creation. That’s why I strongly believe that the pedagogy of theatre must be reconsidered and reorganized having as its central idea the dichotomy between the dramatic and the post-dramatic structure of the play. After all, as Peter Brook said: “A play is a play.” As support for demonstration and discussions I will use Meyerhold’s theory on how to construct a performance, Schlemmer’s diagram on types of performances, Brecht’sremarks on dramatic theatre vs. epic theatre, Lehmann’s theory on post-dramatic theatre and Erika Fischer-Lichte’s arguments on transformative aesthetics. I will use images from shows staged by outstanding theatre directors, which marked or/and are marking how we make and look at theatre today.

Bojownik czy błazen? Ibsenowski "Wróg ludu" w teatrze polskim

The article presents traditional and modern approaches to Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People in the Polish theatre. Banned in Poland for almost a decade (the country was a part of three different states until 1918), first staged in 1891, continuously censored, the play became a part of the national debate on freedom and rebellion, for a long time staged as a manifesto, even though Ibsen’s popularity lessened. The political approach was re-invented in the communist 1970s and 1980. After a thirty years’ gap, Ibsen’s masterpiece premiered recently in Cracow, directed by a famous and controversial artist of the younger generation.

Analysis of the Concept and the Drama Psychology of Immersive Theatre

Immersive theatre means put audience into the space where the story take place. Actors and actresses perform in the authentic environment and audience also in this environment, watching the peoceeding of the story closely. With the success of Sleep No More, more and more people pay attention to immersive theatre. Some Chinese theatre directors also launch out into doing similar things. It is no doubt that immersive theatre is popular now at home and abroad. However, as a new form of theatre, immersive theatre theoretical study is really inadequate. This text aims explain the connotation and concepts of immersive theatre or what is immersive theatre, the feature of immersive theatre in addition to its present situation in China, though Sleep No More, one of the most famous immersive theatres. I hope to offer reference for Chinese theatre people, make contributions for their study and creations, then again filling in gaps in immersive theatre theory. Only in this way, can immersive theatre develop healthily and can its ecology be constructed well.P.C. 210046

„Młodości mej stolica”, czyli Kraków literacki i teatralny we wspomnieniach Tadeusza Kudlińskiego

In my article I reconstructed the picture of literary and theatrical Cracow in the years 1918– 1939, represented in the memorials Młodości mej stolica. Pamiętnik krakowianina z okresu między wojnami (the extended edition, 1984), written by Tadeusz Kudliński. The author was an active participant of the cultural life of this city and a bystander of the great social and historical changes after Poland regained its independence in 1918. I tried to confront his subjective view of the important artistic events and processes in the interwar period with the objectivism of historical studies. Kudliński presented a complete and detailed image but, naturally, he paid more attention only to some facts, disregarding or briefly mentioning others. I wanted to understand the motivation behind thematic selection of the material. In the first part of this article, I analysed Kudliński’s „gallery of the portraits” of Cracovian writers and theatre people, paying special attention to the applied genre convention and description method. In the second part, I presented some individual elements of the literary Cracow panorama: professional organisation and institutionalisation of the literary life, the functioning of the publishing market, the development of local newspapers and periodicals, the financial situation of the writers and the meaning of tradition and avant-garde. In the third part, I reconstructed the image of the theatrical Cracow and the author’s views on the philosophy and aesthetics of the theatre. My main objective was to show the great documentary value of Kudliński’s memories – due to their factographic credibility and variety of content Młodości mej stolica can be a valuable source of knowledge about the history of Cracow.

Talking Drama, Teaching Writing

Talking Drama, Teaching Writing

Black Petes & Black Crooks? Racial stereotyping and offending in the Netherlands

In the popular Dutch tradition of Sinterklaas, the caricature of his helper ‘Zwarte Piet’ [Black Pete] is often of a black-faced white person. The representation of this character has been surrounded by controversy in Europe and abroad. The following paper discusses these recent controversial media stories in the Netherlands and Western Europe along with the historical context of this character. We also make an argument about how the pervasive imagery in news, television, and theatre of people of color in the Netherlands may be influencing crime statistics by creating and encouraging negative views of ‘the other’. In the Netherlands, Dutch Caribbean and Surinamese first-generation immigrants compared to white, native Dutch are over-represented in official arrest and prison statistics. We theorize that the reasons for this noticeable overrepresentation in crime statistic is it at least in part due to a societal stigma of ‘the other’ and racial profiling of black ethnic minorities.

The Sign Language Interpreted Performance: A Failure of Access Provision for Deaf Spectators

The Sign Language Interpreted Performance: A Failure of Access Provision for Deaf Spectators Michael Richardson (bio) Introduction Sign language interpreted performances (SLIPs) are performances of spoken-language theatre rendered simultaneously to Deaf spectators through a single interpreter using sign language (Gebron; Rocks 2015) rather than other access tools, such as supertitles or captions. Initially requested from within the Deaf community, nowadays the demand for SLIPs is driven more by audience-development goals and access requirements (Simpson), and significant time and money are invested in their provision in the UK by both producing and receiving theatres. Despite this, the number of Deaf people attending is lower than expected (Lee), and Deaf theatre-makers suggest that SLIPs do not offer genuine accessibility (Bangs; Conley). My fieldwork, undertaken with audiences and theatre managers at SLIPs, as well as my interview with a practicing interpreter, joins a growing body of research that strongly suggests that SLIPs are not effective for Deaf spectators, demonstrably failing on three levels: failure to appropriately capitalize the theatrical space; failure to conceptualize the interpreter as performer; and failure to create a meaningful translation. “I feel I picked up half the performance and half the interpreter, but I had to take that and create something myself. It’s not good. It wasn’t clear.” This assessment, echoed in some form by all of the Deaf respondents, suggests that their ability to understand the play is compromised by the way the performance is delivered. If we consider theatre not as “stage art” but “communicative event” (Sauter), it becomes clear how and to what degree SLIPs by their very nature impede the participation of Deaf spectators. The data are not, however, all negative; opportunities to consolidate existing provision, improve it, or replace it with something better are also identified. Hence this essay argues that SLIPs as currently delivered are not effective in providing accessibility for Deaf spectators; instead, they represent a failed technique of theatre-making that has been largely abandoned by the Deaf community. However, if theatre-makers who are currently committed to maintaining the status quo are willing and able to recognize that SLIPs are a failed technique and to consider more creative uses of the financial investment in them, then it may be possible to develop genuinely accessible ways of engaging Deaf spectators. Researcher Positionality I am a hearing theatre director who has worked in opera, musical theatre, and most significantly, youth theatre (Richardson 2015). I began my engagement with the Deaf community over ten years ago while running a youth arts organization: a residential Deaf school relocated to the area in which my organization worked, bringing Deaf young people to rehearsals and Deaf adults to performances. Following convention, I initially used SLIPs in an attempt to provide accessibility, but [End Page 63] my instincts were that, in the standard model, these were ineffective. In response to those instincts I undertook several practice-based projects with the aim of improving accessibility, experimenting with the placement of the interpreter onstage, and (in a production of Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd) having lead roles simultaneously characterized by two actors, one signing and one singing, and using sign language in place of choreography for the chorus. This recent study follows in part from my realization that, during these projects, my exploration of the participation of Deaf people in theatre was conducted entirely from my perspective as a hearing person. Despite not working directly with Deaf people in theatre, I have made other efforts to engage with the Deaf community. I have learned British Sign Language (BSL) and subsequently developed friendships within my local Deaf community, and have worked with Deaf people in other capacities. These competences supported my efforts to recruit Deaf participants for this study, to generate data with them in their own language without relying upon an interpreter, and to translate that data into written English. All the quotes given in this essay, unless stated otherwise, are my own English translations of data generated in BSL from Deaf respondents. The Meaning of Deaf The term deaf means different things to different people. It signifies both audiological deficiency and a sense of cultural identity, the latter usually referenced in academic practice by...

The Federal Theatre Project in the American South: The Carolina Playmakers and the Quest for American Drama by Cecelia Moore

Reviewed by: The Federal Theatre Project in the American South: The Carolina Playmakers and the Quest for American Dramaby Cecelia Moore Elizabeth A. Osborne The Federal Theatre Project in the American South: The Carolina Playmakers and the Quest for American Drama. By Cecelia Moore. New Studies in Southern History. (Lanham, Md., and other cities: Lexington Books, 2017. Pp. x, 221. $95.00, ISBN 978-1-4985-2682-1.) At the height of the Great Depression, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt deployed the Works Progress Administration with the intent of providing relief to the unemployed by putting them to work in their fields of expertise. One arena was the Federal Theatre Project (FTP, 1935–1939), a nationwide network of theaters linked by goals, ideology, and resources but centered on the regional and local needs of their communities. Cecelia Moore's The Federal Theatre Project in the American South: The Carolina Playmakers and the Quest for American Drama focuseson the FTP in North Carolina, using clear and comprehensive archival labor to demonstrate the connections between the FTP and local and educational theater work already in place, as well as the conflict between national political forces and regionalism. Moore introduces the FTP through national director Hallie Flanagan's oft-quoted description of the different regions, highlighting Flanagan's assertion that the FTP's work in the South would be "'a folk play'" (p. 5). This description serves as inciting incident to Moore's explication and leads her to consider amateur, educational, and professional theater. Chapter 1 provides an overview of the history of the Carolina Playmakers, an outgrowth of the little theatre movement and spearheaded by Frederick Henry Koch (no relation to Koch Industries) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Chapter 2 builds on this discussion, offering a more focused interrogation of the role of race in community dramas and the various complications that confronted the FTP in the state. The third chapter concentrates on The Lost Colony, a hit historical pageant staged in Manteo, on Roanoke Island, as a case study for regional success. Chapter 4 highlights playwrights such as Zora Neale Hurston and two virtually unknown women writers, Loretto Carroll Bailey and Betty Smith, as one way of uncovering the vital work of largely unknown individuals. The final chapter traces the regional repercussions of national politics when the arts strive for local relevance, focusing on the FTP's downfall and the shortcomings of a regional model for a national theater. Moore's strength is her ability to dig deeply into the archival record and to flesh out the politics, social norms, and impacts of competing objectives and personalities. Her chapter on The Lost Colonyshowcases this skill. In it, she considers the "Manteo pageant venture [as] an attempt at people's theatre. . . . It would put the working-class people of Manteo onstage in a dramatization of their history and draw similar kinds of people to see it" (p. 85). In this effort, The Lost Colonyserved as a way to integrate theater and U.S. history, "to use the past to promote an inclusive, democratic future for the nation" (p. 85). Moore's detailed case study reveals intriguing information about how and why The Lost Colonywas created, the stakes of its success, and the troubling link between that success and the promotion of Roanoke as "the cradle of Anglo-Saxon civilization" in the United States, at the expense of Native and minority populations (p. 107). Moore's research is compelling and thorough, incorporating the major FTP archives at the Library of Congress and the National Archives, as well as [End Page 1048]numerous local collections that contribute to a deep understanding of North Carolina activities during this period. Yet there is a notable absence of secondary scholarship on theater history in general and the FTP specifically; works by Barry B. Witham, Amy Brady, Ann Folino White, and myself would have offered helpful insights into the many ways that theater intersects with issues of regionalism, censorship, American identity, race, and gender. Nevertheless, Moore's work should appeal to historians and students looking to learn more about this exciting moment in North Carolina and theater history. Elizabeth A...

Anarchism and Culture in Colonial Korea: Minjung Revolution, Mutual Aid, and the Appeal of Nature

The anarchist movement in colonial Korea (1910–1945) has long been remembered either as a radical and violent chapter of national resistance or as a minor, utopian strand of the broader socialist movement. Both views have some grounding in historical reality, but they also invite neglect of the tremendous cultural influence that anarchist doctrines exerted over a rapidly modernizing colonial nation. Building on recent revisionary studies of anarchism in East Asia, this article traces the ways in which anarchist ideas—particularly Piotr Kropotkin's theory of anarcho-communism—entered Korean culture via the transnational routes of Japan, China, and Russia and through a painstaking process of adaptation by local writers, poets, and other cultural operators. From Hŏ Munil's utopian peasant novel, Hwang Sŏgu's ecopoetry, and Sin Ch'aeho's revolutionary fantasy fiction, to Yu Ch'ijin's theory of people's theater, anarchism had a far more profound and diverse influence on modern Korean culture than has been previously recognized. A defining process in the politics of the 1920s was the ascendance of the term minjung, referring to the ethnonational Korean people. This article identifies popular revolt, mutual aid, and ethical naturalism as the three major themes of colonial anarchism that left an enduring legacy.

Integration, Turkish Theatre, and Cultural-Political Interventions in West Berlin: Vasıf Öngören's Kollektiv Theater (1980–82)

Integration, Turkish Theatre, and Cultural-Political Interventions in West Berlin:Vasıf Öngören's Kollektiv Theater (1980–82) Ela Gezen (bio) Introduction The mid-1970s and early 1980s witnessed the development of a very active Turkish art scene in West Berlin.1 Various cultural institutions were integral to this process, especially the Kunstamt Kreuzberg and Neukölln (Arts Council for the districts of Kreuzberg and Neukölln), the Künstlerhaus Bethanien (Artists' House Bethanien, a center for arts and social affairs), the Deutsch-Türkische Gesellschaft e.V. (German-Turkish Society), and the Türkischer Akademiker- und Künstlerverein (Turkish Academics and Artists Association). Frequently collaborating with one another, these organizations sponsored recurring cultural events, such as ausländischer Berliner (foreign Berliner), the Fest auf dem Mariannenplatz (Festival on the Mariannenplatz), and the Türkische Kulturwochen (Turkish Cultural Weeks). Financially supported by the Berlin Senate, these public events showcased a variety of genres and media, including music, visual arts, theatre, and film; participants and organizers alike aimed to promote Turkish culture beyond folklorization, Orientalization, and essentialization. Particularly prominent among the rosters of participants were Turkish theatre ensembles. A majority of these ensembles, such as the Berlin Oyuncular (Berlin Actors, 1976), the Kreuzberger Türkische Volksbühne (Kreuzberg Turkish People's Theatre, 1978), the Türkisches Arbeitertheater [End Page 301] (Turkish Workers' Theatre, 1979) and the Kollektiv Theater (Collective Theatre, 1968) included professional theatre practitioners who had left Turkey for political reasons.2 In this essay, I will focus on the Kollektiv Theater, an ensemble that was founded by dramatist Vasıf Öngören3 in Turkey. Re-established in West Berlin after his emigration from Turkey in 1980, the Kollektiv Theater contributed to political debates on integration in West Germany through theatre. Rather than analyze specific productions, I will instead situate Öngören's ensemble's theatre practice with respect to efforts by Turkish artists and intellectuals during the late 1970s and early 1980s, discussing the project both as an early manifestation of Turkish self-presentation in West Germany, and, more specifically, as a key part of the formation of a Turkish public sphere in West Berlin. First, I will examine the founding of—and interactions between—the institutions mentioned above, which were designed to promote cultural events. As I will show, cultural practices, and specifically theatre, were understood as crucial factors within discourses on integration (as opposed to assimilation). The Kollektiv Theater's programming and contributions will be read as a current within broader efforts to represent Turkish culture as multi-layered and as essential to political debates on integration. This essay concludes by asking how we may relate Turkish theatrical activities in the early phase of Turkish migration to theatre practices today, such as the postmigrant theatre movement. Cultural-Political Interventions and Collaborations Turkish artists, intellectuals, and academics founded associations in West Berlin throughout the 1970s and 1980s in order to establish institutional settings for the planning of cultural activities, with collaborative efforts presenting a particular priority. Two institutions which I would like to highlight specifically are the Türkischer Akademiker- und Künstlerverein (Turkish Academics and Artists Association) and the Deutsch-Türkische Gesellschaft (German-Turkish Society), which were crucial for self-advocacy and self-representation through culture as well as for collaborations with local and district authorities charged with sponsoring cultural programming such as the Kunstamt Kreuzberg and Kunstamt Neukölln. Established in 1980, the Deutsch-Türkische [End Page 302] Gesellschaft aimed to foster "mutual understanding between the Turkish and German population" while promoting the "integration of the foreign population by maintaining their cultural identity."4 This entailed efforts to foster the necessary conditions for an understanding of "differing historical, social, political, and cultural conditions, and the awareness of their changeability."5 Integration, here, was understood as realizing and implementing political and social equality while also increasing the willingness of Germans to actively participate in this process. The Deutsch-Türkische Gesellschaft underlined the bidirectionality of such processes of integration by involving Turks and Germans equally, while foregrounding as a premise the familiarity with changing societal conditions in both countries. In addition to organizing cultural events, its objectives included taking positions on current issues...

Textuality for Play Script Analysis

Texture is the basis for unity and semantic interdependence within text. Any text that lacks texture would be isolated sentences that have no relationship to each other. Robert De Beaugrande and Wolfgang U. Dressler defined a text as a “communicative occurrence which meets seven standards of textuality”–Cohesion, Coherence, Intentionality, Acceptability, Informativity, Situationality and Intertextuality, without any of which the text will not be communicative. This study is to use textuality as a method of analysis of Bertolt Brecht’s short play text, “A Case of Betrayal”, second playlet in 〈Fear and Misery of the Third Reich〉 that is one of Bertolt Brecht’s most famous plays and the first of his openly anti-Nazi works. I try to use ‘Cohesion & Coherence’ as main tools for analysis of the Brecht’s short play script in this study. Directors, actors, and stage designers must read play scripts with special attention using imaginary for stage, because play scripts are not only as texts for reading but also as scripts for being staged. Every single theater work process based on drama includes the course of reading and analysis. Actors and directors have to prepare grounds to support characters’ acting and director’s work & design on the analyzed result. It would be a effective method for theatrical people to use textuality as a tool of play script analysis in the course of rehearsal.

Miller, BPAT, and the Dynamics of East-West Collaboration

Abstract While the 2013 Arthur Miller Journal essay by Ou Rong and me focuses on Miller's collaboration with Ying Ruocheng alone, this essay explores Miller's collaboration with the entire Beijing People's Art Theatre cast and crew involved with the staging of Death of a Salesman in 1983. Through detailed analysis of overlooked materials it attempts to accentuate Miller's late-life East-West collaboration and renewal of theatrical innovation.

A People's Theater on Skid Row

In Acting Like It Matters, James McEnteer gives a compassionate account of John Malpede—actor, activist, and co-creator of the political theatre troupe the Los Angeles Poverty Department (LAPD)—and of the Skid Row community that is the organization's heart and soul. The story of Malpede and the LAPD is one of life as art and art as life, and its protagonists are the dehumanized homeless citizens of Los Angeles and their compatriots in cities across the United States and the world, who represent a growing part of today's global working class pushed out of the formal economy.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.

Java's "First People's Theater": Thomas Karsten and Semarang's Sobokartti

Java's "First People's Theater": Thomas Karsten and Semarang's Sobokartti

Shakespeare on Page & Stage: Selected Essays ed. by Stanley Wells, Paul Edmondson, and: Great Shakespeare Actors: Burbage to Branagh by Stanley Wells

Shakespeare on Page & Stage: Selected Essays ed. by Stanley Wells, Paul Edmondson, and: Great Shakespeare Actors: Burbage to Branagh by Stanley Wells Denis Donoghue (bio) Stanley Wells, Paul Edmondson (ed.) Shakespeare on Page & Stage: Selected Essays, (Oxford University Press, 2016), 300 pp.; Stanley Wells, Great Shakespeare Actors: Burbage to Branagh (Oxford University Press, 2015), 288 pp. Stanley Wells took his first steps into the academic profession by editing several Elizabethan plays, and his next by joining T. J. B. Spencer in the University of Birmingham's Shakespeare Institute project of a New Penguin Shakespeare, which Wells completed in 1980. He is one of the most admired textualists of Shakespeare. He knows the plays not like the back of his hand, but like his fingertips. I am ready to accept—a claim he has not made—that he has seen the plays performed more often, and more differently, than any other scholar alive. For him, a play is the play as performed, understood on the suggestive evidence of a text and then brought forward as a memorable event on a stage. Shakespeare on Page & Stage is a generous selection of his writings, divided into four sections: "Shakespearian Influences," "Essays on Particular Works," "Shakespeare in the Theatre," and "Shakespeare's Text." Every essay is a pleasure. Wells writes most engagingly, quotes well, knows the literature of his subject, the theatrical history of every play, the disputes among the critics. He is hardly ever contentious. Clearly he doesn't like Jan Kott's Shakespeare Our Contemporary, which appeared to great acclaim in English translation in 1964, but he is so generous to it that his account could be mistaken for praise. There is only one piece of phrasing that I winced at, where Wells refers to the New Cambridge Shakespeare, then edited by J. Dover Wilson: In 1964 it was struggling towards completion, which it achieved belatedly in 1966 with the publication of the now half-blind but eternally sprightly Wilson's edition of the Sonnets, the Introduction originally printed independently as a mischievous riposte to A. L. Rowse's views on the biographical aspects of the poems. Four winces, to be accurate. Among the many pleasures in Shakespeare on Page & Stage, the essay I most enjoyed was "Peter Hall's Coriolanus, 1959." Wells saw it several times: a great play (T. S. Eliot called it, "with Antony and Cleopatra, Shakespeare's most assured artistic success"); a brilliant director; two great actors (Laurence Olivier as Coriolanus, Edith Evans as his mother Volumnia); a distinctive set by Boros Aronson; the smaller parts played by formidable actors, Harry Andrews, Ian Holm, and Roy Dotrice; and, as it happened, outside the theatre, there was a strike by the print industry, inciting images of burly shop-stewards, sullen workers, tense masters. Wells leads us equably through these items and recalls the moment—the "point" as theatre people call such thrills—when Coriolanus mocks the soft talk of Menenius and Cominius: [End Page 291] Cominius: Away! The tribunes do attend you: arm yourself To answer mildly; for they are prepar'd With accusations, as I hear, more strong Than are upon you yet. Coriolanus: The word is "mildly." Pray you, let us go: Let them accuse me by invention, I Will answer in mine honour. Menenius: Ay, but mildly. Coriolanus: Well, mildly be it then. Mildly! Wells reports that, instead of speaking the final word aloud, Olivier, "after a long pause, simply mouthed it." An unforgettable tour de force, Wells took it to be. Not everyone agreed with him, some thought it vulgar, but no matter, Wells has never lost the thrill. The scene of Coriolanus's death is another great point. Wells, generous to his colleagues, lets Kenneth Tynan describe it: At the close, faithful as ever to the characterization on which he has fixed, Olivier is roused to suicidal frenzy by Aufidius's gibe—"thou boy of tears!" "Boy!" shrieks the overmothered general, in an outburst of strangled fury, and leaps up a flight of precipitous steps to vent his rage. Arrived at the top, he relents and throws his sword away. After letting his voice fly high in the great, swinging line about how he...

‘WHY ARE DIONYSIAN ARTISTS MOSTLY WORTHLESS PEOPLE?’ ARISTOTLE'S ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑΤΑ ΕΓΚΥΚΛΙΑ IN CONTEXT

ὥστε καθάπερ τοὺς ὑποκρινομένους,οὕτως ὑποληπτέον λέγειν καὶ τοὺς ἀκρατευομένους.Arist. Eth. Nic. 7.3.1147a22-4In Attic Nights (= NA) 20.4, Aulus Gellius reports how his Athenian teacher, the Platonist L. Calvenus Taurus (fl. c.a.d. 145), advised one of his pupils to temper his devotion to stage actors and to turn his attention to the study of philosophy. Wishing to divert his (rich) student from associating with theatre people (hominum scaenicorum), Taurus assigned the daily reading of a specific chapter from Aristotle's Προβλήματα Ἐγκύκλια (= fr. 209 Rose). He sent his student an extract from the book, which Gellius quotes (in Greek): ‘Why are Dionysian artists mostly worthless people?’—the problem is still extant in the Aristotelian collection of Problemata physica that came down to us (Pr. 30.10.956b11–15). The explanation Aristotle suggested (in Gellius’ version) is that ‘these men are least familiar with reason and philosophy (λόγου καὶ φιλοσοφίας), since they devote most of their life to the necessary arts (ἀναγκαίας τέχνας), and because they are in an intemperate state (ἐν ἀκρασίαις) most of the time, sometimes even in difficulties (ἐν ἀπορίαις), both of which conditions cause meanness (φαυλότητος)’.

The Cultural Value of Older People's Experiences of Theater-making: A Review.

Although a number of existing reviews document the health and social benefits of arts participation by older people, there are none which focus specifically on theater and drama. This article presents the findings of a study conducted as part of the UK's Arts and Humanities Research Council "Cultural Value Project." The 2-year (2013-2015) "Cultural Value Project" sought to make a major contribution to how we think about the value of arts and culture to individuals and to society. It made 72 awards: 19 critical reviews of existing bodies of research, 46 research development awards to carry out new research, and 7 expert workshop awards to facilitate discussions among academics and practitioners. Together, these awards explored the components of cultural value and the ways in which cultural value is evidenced and evaluated. Following an extensive search of academic databases and E-mail requests via relevant organizations and networks, 77 publications formed the basis for our own critical review. Our findings highlight the benefits and value of older people's theater and drama participation on health and well-being, group relationships, learning and creativity, and draw attention to the importance of the esthetic value and quality of older people's drama. Despite the recent surge of interest in this field (a third of the reviewed literature was published between 2010 and 2014), we suggest that there are multiple areas for further research.

To Kill a Mockingbird as a case study for examining artistic practice in relation to theatre for young audiences in Canada today

Young People's Theatre (YPT) is celebrating its 50th anniversary this season in 2015/2016. It is the oldest continuously operating theatre company in Toronto and is a national producer and presente...