Theatre Troupe Research Articles

THE ROLE OF P.I. SHYPENKO IN REVIVAL OF THE TARAS SHEVCHENKO PRYLUKY CITY THEATRE DURING THE NAZI OCCUPATION (September 1941 – September 1943)

Summary. The aim of this research is to study the activities of Petro Ivanovych Shypenko, the manager and artistic director of the Taras Shevchenko Pryluky City Theatre, during the period of Nazi occupation of Pryluky city (September 1941 – September 1943). The methodology of the study is based on scientific principles, systematic approach and historicism. Specific searching and historical-systematic methods were used during the research. Also there were used methods of analysis, synthesis and generalization. The scientific novelty is that the biographical data of the theater director P.I. Shypenko were investigated on the basis of archival documents introduced into the scientific sphere for the first time. The role of P.I. Shypenko in renovating and development of the Taras Shevchenko Pryluky City Theatre was determined. The basic areas of theatre life were analyzed. Conclusions. Thanks to the hard work of P.I. Shypenko, the manager and artistic director of the theatre, the team continued the theatrical traditions of the pre-war period. Within two years the number of members of a theatre troupe increased and their creativity level rose. Artistic heritage of the team is characterized by dozens of premieres of classical works by Ukrainian and foreign authors, and also going on numerous tours to cities and villages of Chernihiv region.

ОСОБЛИВОСТІ РОЗВИТКУ АМАТОРСЬКОГО ТЕАТРАЛЬНОГО РУХУ В СХІДНІЙ ГАЛИЧИНІ НАПРИКІНЦІ ХІХ – ПОЧАТКУ ХХ СТ.

The article considers the peculiarities of the development of the amateur theatre movement in Eastern Galicia at the turn of the XIX – XX centuries and it is proved that the amateur movement contributed to the coverage of ethno-national peculiarities of the Ukrainian people as well as its language, traits of national character, worldview and, most importantly, national identity. It is shown that the secular culture in Western Ukraine intensified in the middle of the 19th century, which was the time of awakening of the national and social consciousness of the Ukrainian people. It states that the educational work conducted by the professional theater society “Ruska Besida” turned into new views of professional theater art of Galicia over time, whose activity was aimed at the formation and realization of the national personality, its spiritual potential, as well as humanization of the social relations.A distinctive phenomenon in the cultural and national life of Ukrainian Galicians in the early twentieth century was the creation of the Hutsul National Theatre. Theatrical activity of amateur dramatists became a driving factor in the national and cultural education of the local population in the late 19th – early 20th centuries. Amateur groups were organized under the auspices of the Ruska Besida Society, which were distributed in cities and towns of Eastern Galicia. They produced plays by both Ukrainian-language authors (I. Kotlyarevskiy, H. Tsehlinskiy) and foreign (M. Gorky, Moliere). The main function of amateur groups was to educate the broad sections of Ukrainians in the region, their national upbringing by means of theatrical art through the formation of linguistic culture, respect for national customs and traditions.The most extensive cultural and educational network in Eastern Galicia was Prosvita Society, which had branches and reading rooms in the most remote corners of the region. The activities of the amateur circles in the Prosvita centers focused mainly on the production of plays by Ukrainian authors – those were dramatic works, comedies and vaudevilles. In the history of Ukrainian theater amateur theatre troupes and playgroups played an important role, as they spread Ukrainian culture, conducted educational activities, contributed to raising the national consciousness of the Ukrainian people. The theater became a real stronghold of folk revival, pure folk language sounded from its stage; the plays themselves attracted audiences by colorful, bright national music raising educational awareness.

«Forgotten name... Yakov A. Rosenstein»

«Forgotten name... Yakov A. Rosenstein»

Being known, branching out: troupes, teams and recovery

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to reach beyond existing research into the mental health benefits of arts-based or educational opportunities, to discover the particular impact on members’ recovery processes of being part of a committed, long-term troupe or community – specifically focussing on specialist theatre companies.Design/methodology/approachFollowing a literature review investigating the growing number of theatre troupes for mental health service users, qualitative research was conducted into one such company. In-depth qualitative interviews were conducted with six company members. Thematic analysis of interview transcripts was then cross-checked and enriched through a group interview with six other members.FindingsTwo overarching themes emerged: the importance of “being known” within the company (key sub-themes included “intuitive democracy” and the “paradox of reliability”), and the ways in which individuals “branched out” from this secure basis into artistic, professional and voluntary roles, while remaining company members.Research limitations/implicationsThe findings from this small-scale study, while not necessarily generalisable to other long-term communities of care and learning with a “troupe” or “team” structure, would provide valuable starting points for a larger-scale investigation.Practical implicationsIf generalisable, institutions in the mental health and educational worlds should place more emphasis on developing and resourcing long-term models of support.Social implicationsThe specialist theatre company model contrasts with prevalent individualised, time-limited services for those experiencing mental ill health.Originality/valueThe study provides compelling narrative evidence to amplify understanding of how “connectedness” is experienced within a troupe, and may enable individuals with mental illnesses to progress further in their recovery journey.

Beyond the Sewol

On the evening of 15 April 2014, the Sewol Ferry set sail on its overnight journey from Incheon, in the North West of South Korea, to Jeju Island, 240 miles to the south. There were 476 people on board — 443 passengers, including 325 students and their teachers from Danwon High School. On the morning of 16 April, near Jindo Island, the ship made a sharp turn. According to the Automatic Identification System data, the ship veered, lost control, began drifting sideways and then capsized. The captain and crew were first to abandon the ship, after repeatedly telling the passengers to stay where they were. Over the next two hours, 172 passengers and crew were rescued, but many more were trapped inside as the ship sank. In total, 304 passengers were killed, including 250 of the high school students. Despite international outrage, there has not yet been a comprehensive investigation of what caused the Sewol to sink and why the passengers were not rescued promptly.The South Korean government's handling of the wreckage evoked public outrage as the government tried to evade culpability and hastily close the investigation. This tragedy became a turning point in South Korean history. Through this incident, the public began to question issues of community, education, government, law and violence in South Korea. Such cultural and political conditions might have created the urgency for artists to express their opinions and mourn the victims through performance. This essay examines how theatre troupe Yellow Ribbon's Living and Dying Next Door, the creation of commemorative classrooms and Jayoung Chung's Empathy commemorate and mourn the Sewol victims, and analyzes how such performances constitute interventions in public discourse that contribute to social change.

“Little Theater” in Twenty-First-Century China

This article provides an overview of China’s little theater since the turn of the millennium, arguing that present changes must substantially be considered in terms of responses of troupes and playwrights to the present commercial challenges faced by spoken theater troupes. By and large these shifts can be identified as part of popularization or fashionability. Specific strategies include attracting white-collar audiences with plots focused on romantic and extramarital embroilments, the challenges of technology, and an emphasis on the styles and trends of the leisure class. Formal experimentation is combined with genre plurality and a fragmentation of consciousness that is drawn from web culture. Highlighted cases include the Beijing Youth Theatre Festival and the little theater productions of the Beijing People’s Art Theatre.

강량원과 극단 동의 연극

강량원과 극단 동의 연극은 재현연극에서처럼 마음을 표현하는 기호체계로서의 육체를 지향하지 않는다. 그 대신에 관객의 감각적 지각을 유도하는 배우의 신체적 현존을 드러내고자 한다. 이로써 수행성의 미학이 작동할 수 있는 가능성이 열린다. 즉 몸성 소리성 공간성이 중요한 의미를 획득하며, 그런 가운데 관객의 신체 역시 감각적으로 개방되어야 한다. 다시 말해서 관객은 무대 위에서 배우의 신체가 드러내는 에너지 호흡 밀도 긴장 등에 대해서 언제나 감각적으로 지각할 수 있는 준비를 갖추어야 한다. 그 결과 관객의 지각을 통해 의식이 열리는 경험이 실행된다. 즉 지각과 의식은 동시에 작동하면서 관객은 창발적 의미 형성의 기회를 얻게 된다. 극단 동의 연극을 제대로 이해하기 위해서는 이러한 창발적 의미 형성에 대한 접근이 전제되어야 한다.BR 본고는 극단 동의 주요 공연 네 편에 대한 연구를 통해서 감각적 지각에 근거한 창발적 의미 생성이 이루어지는 방식과 함께, 더 나아가 무대와 객석 사이에 자동형성적 피드백-고리가 작동하는 상황들에 대해서 심층적으로 논구하였다. 이로써 관객이 각 공연의 주어진 상황에서 갖게 되는 육체적 감정의 내용 및 그 작동 방식을 추적하였다.

Book Review of Performing Remembering: Women’s Memories of War in Vietnam, by Rivka Syd Eisner

This essay reviews Performing Remembering: Women’s Memories of War in Vietnam, by Rivka Syd Eisner. Performing Remembering serves as an ethnographic study and oral history, recounting the wartime experiences of the Former Women Political Prisoner Performance Group, a volunteer musical theatre troupe comprised of Vietnamese veterans from Vietnam’s Anti-French War and American War.

Yusuf Al-Ani’s dramatic journeys and his theatrical cane

Providing an account of al-Ani’s artistic development as both actor and playwright through his contemporaneous experience in the Iraqi theatre, Mehdi explores the role of folklore and theatrical realism in the manner developed by Bertolt Brecht, alongside progressive social and political concepts that all influenced al-Ani’s works. The harmonization of experimentation between the native expression evident in al-Ani’s writing and his directing, that is, the combination of originality and the folkloric aspect that captures the essence of the experience of the Iraqi individual provided the potential for Iraqi theatrical expression moving forward. The connection to al-Ani’s commitment to see such conceptual commitments be expressed through an Iraqi idiom provided the theatre with intellectual respect amongst Iraqi intellectuals, while his efforts to professionalize and develop Iraqi theatre troupes and production capacities led to a growing regional and global reputation. This development provided great opportunity not only for al-Ani but also for the Iraqi arts broadly and the theatre in particular. By developing deep roots within Iraq’s emerging public culture al-Ani supported Iraqi theatre-makers who followed to be afforded considerable opportunity. The debt that modern Iraqi theatre owes to al-Ani through his enormous talent and prodigious efforts to elevate the art form to the highest levels connects the artist to his society.

The Western Journals of Nehemiah and Henry Sanford, 1839-1846 by Kenneth E. Lewis

Book Reviews 159 with accounts of the local “drama” over the creation and maintenance of each theater complementing descriptions of the onstage theatrics. With booming economies—including copper mining in Calumet and logging in Manistee—a growing populace required diversion to stay out of trouble. Once upon a Time at the Opera House describes how these amusements were supplied and consumed. Michigan history devotees will find this handsomely designed book noteworthy. The stories in Coldwater, Manistee, and Calumet illustrate how collective amusements created a sense of community and town pride, and how they meshed with area custom (in Calumet, for example, the mining company’s strong influence led to the establishment of “mine time” versus “town time,” impacting theater attendance). But of equal interest is the broader view of how mainstream America in this era wound down. With its range of all-ages-friendly specialty acts, vaudeville was the primary entertainment form. Folks also liked familiarity: the excitement of Eliza crossing the ice in Uncle Tom’s Cabin; the moralism of the protemperance drama Ten Nights in a Bar Room; the novelty of non-actor celebrities (boxing champion John L. Sullivan, in his 1885 stage act, assumed “classic postures of Greek and Roman statuary”); and the loyalty of troupers like Jefferson, Maude Adams, and James O’Neill, who crisscrossed the country for decades in rip-roaring fare such as The Count of Monte Cristo, East Lynne, Seven Keys to Baldpate, and H.M.S. Pinafore. They enthralled audiences while supporting traditional Eurocentric values. The advent of motion pictures led to a sharp decline in the number of touring theater troupes, and sound on film further killed their ubiquity, but Harris preserves their legacy in lengthy appendices filled with “extra added attractions.” The author provides lively prose, and even if his use of perhaps-too-clever subheads throughout takes some getting used to, this is only a quibble over a worthy volume. Edwin M. Bradley Central Michigan University Kenneth E. Lewis, ed. The Western Journals of Nehemiah and Henry Sanford, 1839-1846. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2019. Pp. 378. Bibliography. Illustrations. Index. Notes. Cloth: $49.95. America’s antebellum West was marked by change, innovation, and economic opportunity for those who sought to settle and cultivate the vast array of natural resources the newly acquired territory’s agricultural 160 The Michigan Historical Review and mineral prospects offered. Mass forced migrations of Native Americans and land acquisitions such as the 1803 Louisiana Purchase, coupled with expanding waterways like the Erie Canal and the advancement of steam-power and railroads, allowed for fast and convenient trade and travel routes. While New Englanders and countless immigrants poured into the Great Lakes region in pursuit of new homes and brighter futures, many already wealthy and secure Eastern industrialists saw an opportunity to use the growing nation’s capitalistic framework and changing land policies to their own advantage. In Kenneth E. Lewis’s The Western Journals of Nehemiah and Henry Sanford, 1839-1846, the vital role these Easterners played in this economic transformation is masterfully chronicled through his use of the journals that narrated the westward speculative travels of Nehemiah Sanford and his son, Henry. Lewis provides guidance and context through use of narration, travel maps, and secondary scholarship as his audience is immersed into this world through the lens of the Sanfords. Introducing each of the three journals in sequence, Lewis fills in gaps and takes readers on a journey through this tumultuous and turbulent time in history preceding the Civil War, marked by a convergence of changing sociocultural norms and economic risk-taking. Unregulated, excessive bank loans contributed to a series of economic panics through the nineteenth century, to which the government responded by passing the Land Act of 1820, barring many immigrants and other settlers from acquiring loans with which to purchase tracts of land in the West. Seeing a lucrative investment opportunity to act as land speculating “commercial middle-men,” the Sanfords flocked to the West in search of land with the most prosperous agricultural potential to profit from prospective settlers (p. 7). In doing so, “their actions in selecting land and promoting its sale influenced the geographical form of...

The role of the estate art and private enterprise in the development of the ukrainian professional music and drama theater

The role of the estate art and private enterprise in the development of the ukrainian professional music and drama theater

ЦІННІСНО-ОРІЄНТОВАНА ОРГАНІЗАЦІЯ ДІЯЛЬНОСТІ СУЧАСНОГО УКРАЇНСЬКОГО РЕПЕРТУАРНОГО ТЕАТРУ

The article is devoted to the problem of searching the organizing conception of the activity of such social institution as the modern Ukrainian repertoire theater. The last one perishes because of the contradiction between its statutory unprofitability, supported by budgetary financing, and the market structure of living environments. One of the possible concepts here can be a value-oriented organization of the repertory theater. The unconditional value of the theater is its organizational culture. Its formation requires a balanced use of motives and stimulus. Under such conditions it is advisable to take as its central index the creative and production potential that requires the development of appropriate competencies and competences. The potential is determined by both the resource base and the possible efficiency of its use. Therefore the indicator characterizing the potential of the theater is represented by the vector quantity. An analytical description of this quantity is proposed in the article. The matrix "Resource-sufficiency / Efficiency of resource use" is proposed for the purpose of developing managerial decisions on further increasing the creative and productive potential of both the employee and the theater troupe. The unconditional sign of the development of the theater is the positive dynamics of its creative and production potential. Only with such dynamics is the competitiveness of the repertory theater in market economy ensured.

Theatre and sustainable territorial communities: A case study in Northern Portugal

To consider culture as the fourth pillar of sustainability implies new intellectual and political debate at both the theoretical and the empirical level, revisiting knowledge already established within economics and the sociology of development on the centrality of culture as a framework, a resource and a strategy for local and community development. When considered in the context of rural sustainability, rural territories pose specific problems. On the one hand, demographic and socioeconomic imbalances represent hard restrictions on the ways that resources and agents can be mobilized as part of development processes. On the other hand, the richness of material and non-material heritage, the vividness of oral traditions, a strong sense of community and cultural identity, are important local assets that can be transformed into effective instruments for development via appropriate policies and programs.This paper discusses the challenges and opportunities for applying culture as an instrument of rural sustainability by exploring the specific case study example of a long-term artistic and cultural intervention project in Northern Portugal. The project involves a professional theatre troupe delivering performance-based, creative and educational activities within a number of rural communities. The project is itself a partnership between a group of professional artists and five municipalities in Northern Portugal; its aim is to use the rich non-material local heritage as a basis for collective involvement in a sustainable culture-driven development strategy. The paper traces the evolution of the project over a 10 year period since its inception in 2004 and reveals empirically the ways in which it has impacted upon local development, highlighting the potential of culture as an instrument in rural sustainability.

Review: Hippie Modernism: The Struggle for Utopia

Hippie Modernism: The Struggle for Utopia Walker Art Center, Minneapolis 23 October 2015–27 February 2016 Cranbrook Art Museum, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan 18 June–9 October 2016 Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive 8 February–21 May 2017 In the summer of 1967 nearly 100,000 people made their way to San Francisco, converging in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood during what became known in the popular press as the “Summer of Love.” In retrospect, the events marked more a death knell than a climax, as those at the epicenter well knew. The Diggers, a local radical collective and street theater troupe, staged a funeral service on 6 October 1967 at Buena Vista Park in which participants carried and then set afire a coffin symbolizing the demise of the “hippie,” a figure they contended had been conjured by the mass media and commercialized to the point of losing any genuine cultural or political purchase. “Hippies” and 1967 continue to be easy signifiers, however, and in 2017 numerous cultural institutions in San Francisco dutifully organized commemorations of the fiftieth anniversary of the Summer of Love. These included an exhibition at the de Young Museum focused on “art, fashion, and rock & roll” and local-history-centered shows at the California Historical Society and the San Francisco Public Library. On a different order from these mostly nostalgic and adulatory exhibitions was Hippie Modernism: The Struggle for Utopia , curated by Andrew Blauvelt. Originally staged at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the version at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA) was augmented with items selected by guest curator and …

Lit Lists: 4 Theater Troupes with an Activist Twist

THE THEATER OFFERS a rich experience of immersive storytelling, gripping monologues , and enthralling action. Whether you’re a fan of Shakespeare’s comedies or tragedies, operatic or contemporary musicals , or good-old drama, there’s a production out there for you. While many people immediately think of Broadway in New York or the Globe in London, a multiplicity of well-reviewed theater groups exist in the world, and many of them engage in socially active projects. Here are several troupes that go beyond the stage by bringing an activist twist to their work. OREGON SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL Located in Ashland, Oregon, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival is a not-for-profit professional theater founded in 1935 with the values of excellence, inclusion, company, and stewardship. Its eight-month-season runs include up to eleven plays, ranging from Shakespeare to musicals to world premieres. OSF proclaims a foundational philosophy of diversity and inclusion for their actors, stories, and even audiences across socioeconomic, age, disability, and racial/ethnic spectrums. Special performances , targeted initiatives, and educational opportunities open the door to many who wouldn’t otherwise be able to participate. In addition, OSF emphasizes representation in its productions, such as director Bill Rauch’s production of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma with same-sex lead couples and other LGBTQ casting, which ran from April to October 2018. TEN THOUSAND THINGS THEATER COMPANY Founded and led by Michelle Hensley from 1991 till her retirement in 2018, Ten Thousand Things is a theater company in Minnesota whose mission is to bring “lively, intelligent, professional theater to people with little access to the wealth of the arts.” It emphasizes the value of all life experiences and backgrounds as well as how every individual brings creativity and participation to a production, including the audience. Productions take place without a stage, instead using a well-lit space encircled by chairs, and are performed at homeless shelters, correctional facilities, low-income senior centers, reservations, after-school programs, women’s shelters, and locations in rural Minnesota before coming to a limited run of paying audience shows. AJOKA THEATRE Founded in 1983 by Madeeha Gauhar, who passed away in April 2018, Ajoka is a socialactivist theater group committed to peace and tolerance in Pakistan and the larger region. Its mission is to create “socially meaningful theatre and thus contribute to the struggle for a secular, humane, just, and egalitarian society in Pakistan,” to which end it has worked with production companies from across South Asia, including Bangladesh and India when doing so was considered treasonous. Spreading a message of peace, unity, and appreciation for the arts, Ajoka brings together civil-society personalities with those of the theater—it organized the Panjpaani Indo-Pak theater festivals for peace and founded the Theatre for Peace project, which holds festivals, seminars, workshops, and collaborative productions with theater groups from Pakistan and India. KRÉTAKÖR FOUNDATION The Krétakör Theatre was founded in 1995 by Árpád Schilling and operated as a Hungarian theater company without a permanent building until 2008, when it was reorganized into the Krétakör Foundation. The foundation today is a production company and center for contemporary arts that promotes participation and broad involvement in social dialogue, especially in Hungary and the wider European community. While still immersed in its theater roots, the Krétakör Foundation goes beyond the stage with workshops, training, and social and creative projects, such as the Free School program, which ran from 2013 to 2016 with each year focusing on issues of integrated education for students from different social backgrounds, political/social and public life, and democracy education at school, respectively. PHOTO COURTESY OF TEN THOUSAND THINGS THEATER COMPANY lit lists 4Theater Troupes with an Activist Twist by James Farner James Farner is a WLT intern studying English writing and religious studies at the University of Oklahoma. In his free time, he’s either listening to a podcast or working on The Aster Review, an OU student arts publication. Kimberly Richardson from Kira Obolensky’s Park and Lake. Photo © Paula Keller WORLDLIT.ORG 7 ...

Lit Lists: 4 Theater Troupes with an Activist Twist

Lit Lists: 4 Theater Troupes with an Activist Twist

Stages of Struggle and Celebration: A Production History of Black Theatre in Texas by Sandra M. Mayo, Elvin Holt

CLA JOURNAL 241 Book Reviews Mayo,SandraM.andElvinHolt.StagesofStruggleandCelebration:AProduction History of Black Theatre in Texas. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2016. 317 pp. ISBN: 978-1-4773-0820-2. $29.95 Paperback. Stages of Struggle and Celebration: A Production History of Black Theatre in Texas is the first and only book to undertake a comprehensive study of black theatre organizations in Texas. Co-authored by seasoned theatre practitioners Sandra Mayo and Elvin Holt, the book draws upon a wealth of research on the most prominent and best documented theatre organizations in five major cities in Texas: San Antonio, Austin, Dallas, Fort Worth, and Houston. Stages of Struggles and Celebration provides historical background on active, thriving theatres as well as defunct theatre organizations. Many of the contemporary theatres in Texas emerged to replace theatres that struggled but failed to maintain solvency, and Mayo and Holt clarify for the reader that the black theatre tradition of struggle and celebration in Texas shares a common ground with black theatres across the nation. Mayo and Holt have skillfully compiled,analyzed,and contextualized extensive research on the Lone Star State black theatre organizations. The co-authors have organized the book into two sections with six chapters and an afterword. In Part I, “Setting the Stage,” the co-authors provide an excellent synopsis of the history of black theatre in Texas, one that includes a brief overview of black minstrelsy of the 1800s, black musicals, the Negro Little Theatre Movement, historically black college theatre troupes, and the emergence of the black professional theatre companies. The study provides a context for black theatre by first offering a definition: “Black Theatre in Texas, established and sustained by black theatre professionals trained in the Western theatrical tradition, does not simply imitate theatre in the larger context; infused with a black artistic sensibility, black theatre in Texas fundamentally enriches the Western theatrical experience and is enriched by it.” (7) Referencing W.E.B. Du Bois’ theory of black theatre, namely that black theatre must be about us, by us, for us and near us, Mayo and Holt provide insightful examples of the ways in which Texas black theatre companies created a brand that reflected the culture of the communities they served while reaching outward to absorb the cultural influences of black theatre theorists and practitioners across the United States. One case in point was Myra Davis Hemmings, a graduate of Howard University in 1913 who studied under Alan Locke and Montgomery Gregory when they were theorizing black theatre. Ms. Hemmings returned to San Antonio to make a career of directing plays at schools, churches, and community gatherings. This one instance of the direct influence of key figures like Locke 242 CLA JOURNAL Book Reviews and Gregory on Texas black theatre history offers validation that Hemmings and her contemporaries in Texas joined and contributed to the Negro Little Theatre Movement that emerged in Texas in the 1920s and 1930s. Mayo and Holt’s research rightly includes the nine historically black colleges and universities of Texas (HBCUs) that contributed to the Negro Little Theatre Movement spreading across the country. Highlighted are Wiley College’s Log Cabin Players, Prairie View A&M’s Charles Gilpin Players, and Texas Southern University’s University Players. The burgeoning black theatre of the 1920s around the nation and specifically in Texas continued its upward trajectory into the 1960s and 1970s where,according to Mayo and Holt,black theatres nationwide organized more than 600 community and university theatre programs. The growth of black theatre in Texas signaled the tremendous efforts of blacks across the country to build and sustain theatres, including such companies as the Lorraine Hansberry, the Oakland Ensemble, the Berkeley Black Repertory Theatre, ETA Creative Arts Foundation, Penumbra, and many others. In Part II of Stages of Struggle and Celebration, titled “Their Place on the Stage: Representative Organizations,” Mayo and Holt focus chapters 2 through 6 on the development of black theatre organizations past and current in select urban cities in Texas. The chapters in this section of the book represent a major contribution to theatre history, black theatre history, Texas history, and women’s history because of the predominantly female-run theatres in the Lone Star State...

Amateur theater plays by Serbian migrants in Vienna

In the last twenty years, several cultural and educational organizations developed amongstthe Serbian migrants in Vienna, and they engage in presenting modern day Serbian culture and the lives of migrants in a different light and with a different approach than some otherclubs of our former migrants. The goal we have set with this study is to present just onesegment of these activities, and those are the amateur theater plays that our migrants takepart in playing themselves and about themselves. After a short overview of the generalcharacteristics of migrant theater troupes, and after giving several vivid examples of thosetroupes in Europe, we have set our sights on the group “Non-Aligned Dilatants” which wasfounded by Darko Markov, Serbian writer, amateur actor and director, who surroundshimself with Serbian migrants and together with them makes all sorts of shows in which theycomically portray the life, work and day to day activities of our migrants in Vienna. In ourstudy of the “Non-Aligned Dilatants” we have used the methods of observation, informalconversation, interview and questioners, along with the information available on the websiteand Facebook page of Darko Markov. In the conclusion of the study, we have deliberated thefuture of migrant theater troupes through the following aspects: problems with migrantenthusiasm and the energy needed to hold the troupes together for extended periods of time,secondly - to find the appropriate finances, thirdly – question of the content of playsregarding migrant’s and post-migrant’s destiny, and finally the problem of the language usedin plays (i.e. migrant’s native or the language of the immigrant country). Key words: migrants, amateur theater plays, post migrant theater, Vienna, Darko Markov

Performing Comic Failure inWaiting for GodotwithJingjuActors

Since the 1980s the Taiwanese theatre troupe Contemporary Legend Theatre (CLT) has been devoted to transformingjingjuby way of adapting world classics. Through an analysis of its adaptation of Samuel Beckett'sWaiting for Godot(2005), this article considers how CLT pushes the boundaries ofjingjuacting, which is made up of singing, speaking, dance-acting and combat. To meet Beckett's challenge of performing comic failure, CLT integratesjingjurestraint and Western slapstick. In so doing, CLT liberates the actors’ bodies fromjingjuconventions to produce a new aesthetic, which also gives the original play a new metaphysical interpretation.

Global Currents, Musical Streams: European Opera in Colonial Southeast Asia

The advancement of the new transportation and communications technologies in the nineteenth century changed the landscape of the trade between Asia and Europe. Steam transportation, the telegraph, and the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 heightened the pace of material trade and labour migrations (including cultural workers), along with commercial transactions of cultural goods and performance cultures. These steamships that carried the raw products from East to the West also carried musical instruments, musical scores, and opera and theatre companies from Europe to Asia. This article surveys primary archival sources and recent literature on the itinerant European opera companies that arrived in Southeast Asia in the nineteenth century and analyses the economic and sociological aspects of this phenomenon. This article also examines the local responses to the travelling theatre troupes which took residencies in the different Southeast Asian cities.