Theatre Critic Research Articles

The Georges Banu Effect: The Critic as Artist and the Artist as Critic

This article is a portrait of, and a tribute to Georges Banu (22 June 1943–21 January 2023), one of the most influential theater critics of our time. It is meant to be a reflection on the uniqueness of Banu’s personality, between Romania and France, between Romanian and French, between criticism and artistry. Focusing on the impact of Banu’s words, it highlights the major traits of his style, which contributed to a different perception of criticism as a profession and as an act of cultural memory. The conclusion is that Banu’s charismatic presence in the theatrical scene of the past decades was as meaningful as his written critical legacy.

"Dzień jego powrotu" – w perspektywie krytyki literackiej i teatralnej dramatów Zofii Nałkowskiej

A comprehensive review of the literary and theater criticism concerning Zofia Nałkowska’s second play reveals a great discrepancy in the reviewers’ opinions (Karol Irzykowski, Antoni Słonimski, Jan Lorentowicz, Adam Grzymała-Siedlecki). It is an exceptionally peculiar testimony of reception, perhaps also revealing to some extent the reasons for the gradual turning away of the author of "The House of Women" from playwriting. The most important aim of the study is to show the text of the play itself ensnared by overpowering critical commentary and to reflect on Nałkowska’s precursory intentions, which were ridiculed by her harsh critics who did not recognize their potential.

The Original Bambi: The Story of a Life in the Forest by Felix Salten

Reviewed by: The Original Bambi: The Story of a Life in the Forest by Felix Salten Monica Strauss Felix Salten, The Original Bambi: The Story of a Life in the Forest, translated and introduced by Jack Zipes, illustrated by Alenka Sottler. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2022. 162 pp. The cover of this new translation of Felix Salten's Bambi by Jack Zipes imparts several competing messages. The title—The Original Bambi—steers prospective readers away from any lingering memories of the very popular Disney film that usurped Salten's vision. On the other hand, illustrator Alenka Sottler's frontal view of a long-lashed young fawn that graces the cover has not entirely let go of Disney's sugary interpretation. And although Salten did not intend Bambi to be a children's book, the bright green cloth binding of this Princeton University Press edition suggests otherwise. Bambi, which first appeared in serial form in Vienna's Neue Freie Presse between August and October 1922, was then published by Ullstein in 1923 and by Zsolnay in 1926. The book proved to be extremely popular and in 1928 was picked up by Simon and Schuster as one of its first literary ventures. The English translation, which was done by the 29-year-old Whittaker Chambers (later renowned for his activities as a Communist spy and then fierce anti-Communist), was so successful that it became the initial choice of the newly created Book-of-the-Month Club. With the premiere of Disney's Bambi in 1942, however, both Salten's authorship and Chambers's role as the essential linguistic go-between were completely overshadowed. Now Professor Zipes, a translator of German folk and fairy tales, has taken the opportunity of the lapse of Chambers's copyright to re-introduce Bambi, hoping both to give Salten his due and to improve on Chambers' effort. Aligning himself with those scholars who have seen Bambi as an allegory of the plight of the Jews, Professor Zipes opens his lengthy introduction with a comparison between the situation of the Jews in Austria and that of the animals in the forest. "As a Jew, [Salten] also knew what it meant to be pursued and killed. He knew how difficult it was to assimilate and play by the rules of a society that he and his ancestors had not created" (x). This is a far-fetched projection. Bambi was written in 1922 when Salten was one of Vienna's most popular and successful literary figures. And, surely, he did not know what it meant to be "pursued," if not killed, until the Anschluss sixteen years later. This radical opening sets the tone of the concise biography of Salten's early years that follows. Zipes emphasizes his outsider role among the more [End Page 115] privileged writers of the Griensteidl circle. His father's financial failures led to his having to grow up in a working-class district where he was often subjected to antisemitic bullying. Though he went out to work early and did not attend university, he was nevertheless publishing poems and stories before he was 20 and by 1894, age 25, was the theater critic of the Wiener Allgemeine Zeitung. Any biographer of Salten must wrestle with the essential contradiction between Salten's passion for hunting and his imaginative rendering of its threat to the animals themselves. Zipes hazards the guess that the careful stalking of prey required of a hunter gave Salten the insights into the real life in the forest as opposed to the idealized one of those who never ventured as far or as deep. In 2015, Sabine Struemper-Krobb published a detailed critique of Chambers's translation and concluded that it "simplified the novel, especially by reducing its transcendental dimension." She suggested that this reduction made for a greater emphasis on the "private, secular character of the natural world" and hence led the way to Disney's "radical rewriting." Zipes quotes Struemper-Krobb's reservations in his introductions but adds his own provisos. Chambers, he insists, fails to "capture a Viennese style of writing […] mistranslates idioms, omits phrases" (xviii). In Bambi's Forest, Salten has the animals communicate in the same manner as...

Neo-Naturalistic Drama: a Study of British Drama After 1950

The present paper is an endeavour to show the development of Neo-naturalism as a distinctive dramatic mode of social representation. Neo-naturalism is unanimously seen as a unique appearance of theatricality in the 1950s. In order to understand this Neo-naturalistic drama and its unparallel contribution, it is worthwhile to see how it emanated at a crucial historical juncture. It was a point in time when drama had lost its direction and purpose. Neo-naturalism appeared as a major dramatic model to reverse the inaction and decadence during the second half of the twentieth century. This paper also highlights the role played by John Osborne in being an initiator of this theatricality and taking this Neo-naturalism to a zenith. This Neo-naturalism achieved what was beyond the expectations of the dramatic critics during 1950s. Neo-naturalism can be seen as a force of social transformation and a committed defence against all evils of the society

Critical Disengagement: The Epistemic and White Supremacist Violence of Theatre Criticism in Canada and the USA

This article examines recent controversies sparked by the critical reception of work by Global Majority theatre artists in Canada and the USA, including Yolanda Bonnell, Yvette Nolan, and Antoinette Nwandu. It argues that, when faced with works that fall outside of their presumed expertise and experience, critics commonly resort to a strategy of critical disengagement, which displaces the focus from the work and refuses to evaluate it on its own terms. Through an analysis of case studies, we elucidate the concept of critical disengagement and its three distinct categories, ‘othering,’ ‘imposing’, and ‘self-staging’. These acts are representative of larger patterns in dominant theatre criticism practices, which are descended from neoclassical and Enlightenment formulations of criticism, and centre around the ideals of fair judgement and critical objectivity. When applied to the work of Global Majority theatre artists by a largely white critical establishment, they enact, consolidate, and reproduce what Gayatri Spivak calls epistemic violence. During this pivotal moment, as theatre communities in the Global North respond to calls for racial justice and decolonization, this article sheds light on the often overlooked role of criticism in sustaining white supremacy within theatre production and reception, and stresses the urgent need to re-imagine critical practices. Signy Lynch is a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Toronto Mississauga and recipient of the Governor General’s Gold Medal (York University, 2022). She has published articles on theatre criticism and intercultural theatre in Contemporary Theatre Review, Canadian Theatre Review, and Theatre Research in Canada. Michelle MacArthur is associate professor at the University of Windsor’s School of Dramatic Art. She has published articles in Contemporary Theatre Review, Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, Theatre Research in Canada, Canadian Theatre Review, and several edited volumes. She is the editor of Voices of a Generation: Three Millennial Plays (Playwrights Canada Press, 2022).

Is She A Woman?: Alternative Critical Frameworks for Understanding Cross-Dressing and Cross-Gender Casting on the Victorian Stage

As the study of nineteenth-century theatre has expanded over the decades, the extent and popularity of cross-dressing and cross-gender casting on the Victorian stage is being revealed. Yet there is an enduring tendency in Victorian theatre criticism to situate transvestite performances within broad-brush assumptions of binary attitudes towards gender amongst theatre audiences. Universalised gender norms and assumptions of binary thinking have long been discarded in critical analysis of Victorian fiction, and their lingering influence on Victorian theatre studies has arguably been unhelpful. Building on the vital pioneering work of Jacky Bratton, this article will focus on the careers of Louisa Cranstoun Nisbett and Mary Anne Keeley, two prominent and acclaimed mid-century actresses, drawing on reviews, memoirs, and commentaries on their performances to attempt to construct alternative theories for how they were viewed and understood. The critical and popular success of their performances and the language and ideas employed by reviewers and commentators to record and explain them reveal far more flexible, multiple, fluid, complex, and imaginative attitudes to gender roles and identities than allowed for in established critical narratives.

Sergey Durylin on Shakespeare in the Russian Theatre: On the Question of the Modalities of Theater Critical Writing in the USSR in the 1930s–1950s

The article examines Sergei Durylin’s writings in the 1930s–1950s as a theater critic (in particular, writing about Shakespeare in the Russian theater), interpreted as a marginal hypostasis of this author’s work. The methodological basis for the study is the method of context-hermeneutic approach applied by E.A. Korshunova to the work of Durylin the writer. Theater criticism became one of the main areas of Sergei Durylin’s work after his two exiles. Durylin’s historical research on Shakespeare on the Russian stage was never published (with the exception of actor’s biographies, where Shakespeare’s roles were touched upon), but his newspaper texts were published quite actively. In radical early Soviet rhetoric, he develops the most important provisions of the contemporary interpretation of Shakespeare: the opposition of the ‘active’ Soviet and decadent, ‘passive’ pre-revolutionary interpretations of Shakespeare’s plays; democratism of the ‘best’ examples of pre-revolutionary Shakespeare and Soviet interpretations of roles; correct understanding of Shakespeare exclusively in the Soviet theater. The rhetorical mask of a theater critic of a vulgar sociological nature developed by Durylin became his personal way of putting into print important ideas and topics: covering the history of Shakespeare on the Russian and Soviet stage.

ГАЗЕТА «НОВИЙ ЧАС» (1923–1939 рр.) ПРО ТЕАТРАЛЬНЕ ЖИТТЯ ГАЛИЧИНИ

The article examines the peculiarity of the coverage of theatrical life in Galicia in the «Novyi Chas» newspaper (Lviv, 1923–1939). The subject of the materials offered to readers is analyzed, and determines their genre affiliation, among which, in particular, with articles and reviews prevailing among them. Newspaper publications dedicated to the activities of theaters and organizations involved in the development of theatrical art in Galicia during the 1920s and 1930s are considered. These included: the «Ukrainskyi Teatr» cooperative (Lviv) and the «Prosvitianskyi Teatr» society (Sokal). The articles are mentioned, particularly those that raised topical issues of the theater sphere at the time, such as the lack of a repertoire that would contribute to the national development of society and limited funding. The circle of authors of «Novyi Chas» are outlined, wich consisted of publicists, theater critics, and cultural figures who have made a significant contribution to the development of Ukrainian theater and actively popularized it among the public, particularly A. Budzynovskyi, P. Lysiak, S. Chernetskyi. Keywords: Theater subjects, performance, the audience, «Novyi Chas» newspaper, «Ruska Besida» society, article, review.

伊井蓉峰一座による『８１３』上演(1923)

This paper discusses 813 (1923) performed by Ii Yoho’s theatre company at the Hongoza (Hongo Theatre). This play is an adaptation of Maurice Leblanc’s detective novel, 813; however, some of the characters and settings have been replaced with Japanese alternatives, and some scenes have been omitted. Ii Yoho (1871–1932) is considered a leading actor of the Shinpa: a new theatre school known to be significantly different from traditional Kabuki, which was established in the Meiji era. He first appeared on stage at the Seibikan in 1891 and remained at the forefront of Shinpa until his death in 1932. His productions are considered to be influenced by Kabuki, exposing him significantly to the disdain of theatre critics. Consequently, Shinpa is now regarded as an imitation of Kabuki. Early-Shinpa was undoubtedly influenced by Kabuki; however, it sought its own unique style as well. Kawakami Otojiro (1864–1911), a leading actor of Early-Shinpa, is thought to have spent his life working on a style of theatre that differed from Kabuki. Predominantly for this reason, some researchers argue that Early-Shinpa and Shinpa should be classified as separate genres with different lineages. However, there are elements in the staging of 813 that suggest a continuity between Early-Shinpa and Shinpa. The first reason is that it is an adapted detective play. The early-Shinpa frequently staged detective plays based on newspaper reports of crimes and detective novels from the West. Such performances continued existing until the early Showa period. Ii Yoho also staged detective plays. The staging of 813, based on Leblanc’s detective novel, suggests that Ii adopted the performance of detective plays from Early-Shinpa; another reason is the use of spectacular stage design in its production. In the pre-production publicity, Ii had touted the newly designed stage set as a selling proposition of 813. The sets were equipped with devices such as trapdoors, lifts and hidden spaces, and a film was used to represent the big fire scene. These techniques were once the specialty of Kawakami Otojiro. In the staging of his 1894 trilogy of works Igai (meaning ‘unforeseen’), Mata-Igai and Mata-Mata-Igai, he utilized the latest technology of his time. Notably, the appearance of a full-scale locomotive on stage in Mata-Mata-Igai was applauded by the audience. It is thought that Ii’s attempt to attract audiences with the latest stage sets was greatly influenced by the work of Kawakami. In summary, the performance of 813 shows Shinpa still retains some of the characteristics of Early-Shinpa in the Taisho period.

Философский код в спектаклях Анатолия Эфроса 1960-х годов

The poetics of Anatoly Efros’s performances and his metaplot in the directing process in the context of the theatre aesthetics of the Soviet era was often analyzed from the point of view of hermeneutics. Many reviews of his contemporaries are written from this perspective. The approach to the analysis of Efros's work by codes, described in detail by the French theatre critics Anne Ubersfeld and Patrice Pavis, seems to be the most accurate for understanding the deep semantic structures of his individual productions and his work as a united whole. On the example of the performances On the Wedding Day (1964), 104 Pages About Love (1964), My Poor Marat (1965), A Movie Is Made (1965), The Seagull (1966), Molière (1966) there is considered the transformation of the social theme, which initially dominated in the artistic semiotics of Efros, into a metaphysical one. The philosophical code of Anatoly Efros’s performances at the Lenin Komsomol Theatre is connected with the director’s comprehension of spiritual life, the problem of the characters’ internal choice, their transcendence, the rapidly changing time, the ideas of the existentialists and European philosophy of the 20th century that were penetrating social mind. This is verified by the fact of Efros’s performances in the genre of tragedy at the Theatre on Malaya Bronnaya. They are Romeo and Juliet (1970), The Man from the Outside (1971), Don Juan (1973), The Marriage (1975) and Othello (1976). Efros tried to make this genre up-to-date, not via laboratory testing of book concepts, but, first of all, overcoming the boundaries of the theatre, immersion in the spiritual life of the hero and artist, and lyricism.

Theoreticalunderstandingof «choregraphicculture» conceptinscientificdiscourse

The purpose of the article is the theoretical understanding of the «choreographic culture» concept in scientific discourse. Research methodology. The method of system analysis has been applied to study choreographic culture and its understanding as a unique cultural phenomenon; the method of terminological analysis of concepts has contributed to the understanding and comprehension of the content essence of the definition of the concept of «choreographic culture». Scientific novelty. A conceptual understanding of the author's definitions of the concept of «choreographic culture» presented in the scientific works of leading foreign researchers has been carried out; essential features of the concept of «dance», starting from antiquity to the 17th century; its transformation has been analysed in the context of the development of folk choreographic culture of Ukraine in the 20th-early 21st centuries. Conclusions. The analysis of research on the problems of choreographic culture proves that it is characterised as a complex concept with the inclusion of scientific records of dances, creative personalities (directors, artists, teachers, art critics, musicologists, and theatre critics) inherent in the art of choreography. The study has revealed that in the scientific dimension of the XX–XXI centuries. most of the works are devoted to the stages of the formation and development of Ukrainian choreographic culture, its role in the preservation of national cultural values, the generalisation of the creative heritage of outstanding ballet masters, the regional specificity of Ukrainian folk dance, and an attempt to introduce the concept of «choreographic culture» into the scientific discourse. It can be noted that the development of choreographic culture invariably involves constant updating of theoretical analysis and the establishment of new aspects of understanding its specificity at the request of modern cultural processes.
 Key words: culture, choreographic culture, choreographic art, theory of choreography, history of choreographic culture, outstanding representatives of choreographic culture and art, dance.

Dostojevski na sarajevskoj pozorišnoj sceni / Dostoevsky in Sarajevo Theatres

The paper presents part of a research dedicated to the study of the theatrical adaptations of the great Russian classics in Sarajevo theatres, performed in the period between 1921, when the National Theatre was founded, and 2007. It focuses primarily on the literary and theatrical reception of the opus of Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky. Since the founding of the oldest theatre in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1921, followed by the founding of other Sarajevo theatres (most notably the Chamber Theatre 55), Sarajevo has seen nine premieres of Dostoevsky. The paper will present various directorial concepts and dramatizations of Dostoevsky’s novels, most of which were met with disappointing reviews. An analysis and synthesis of Bosnian and Herzegovinian literary and theatrical criticism pertaining to the above-mentioned opus compared to Russian critical thought will be presented as well. We will introduce the theoretical ‘view’ of some issues which are inevitably presented to researchers when it comes to the prose works, or classical novel adaptation for theatre.

«Новая драма»: pro et contra

At the end of the 20th – the beginning of the 21st century there were serious changes in the poetics of drama, defining the strategy of artistic forms and features of artistic consciousness. This gives the right to single out the history of the “new drama” in a separate period of the literary and theatrical process. A new book by the Belarusian researcher S.Ya. Goncharova-Grabovskaya “Modern Russian Dramaturgy (late 20th – early 21st century)” is devoted to generalization and comprehension of this period, which is considered and announced in the presented review. The book examines the main trends in the development of the Russian drama at the turn of the 20-21st centuries: the history of the emergence of the “new drama” movement, aspects of poetics (hero, conflict, chronotope, language), genre-style vector (social drama, documentary drama, monodrama, remake plays, drama of the absurd) – all that defines the specific features of the modern dramaturgical process. The focus is on the plays of famous playwrights, which have been staged in theaters in Russia and Belarus, have received positive reviews in criticism. The peculiarity of the reviewed book is that it analyzes modern Belarusian drama, traces its connection with the Russian. The book includes overview chapters reflecting the genre and style parameters of drama, a list of plays, information about playwrights, control questions and assignments. The scientific and methodological publication under review is expected to be in high demand not only in the philological environment, but also among theater critics and theater historians.

Stand in and be Counted

Making the ignominious eponymous, Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (1966) combines elements of two plays by giving Shakespeare’s characters the lead parts in a transplanted Waiting for Godot (where, of course, the title character is never seen at all). Stoppard’s The Real Inspector Hound, which had its premiere in 1968, is also set in someone else’s theatre, and again highlights two marginal figures, the critics Birdboot and Moon, who have been sent by their papers to review a murder mystery. One of the two is more marginal than the other, as we immediately find out, because Moon is a second-string irked by lack of recognition. It is not enough, he complains, ‘to wax at another’s wane, to be held in reserve, to be on hand, on call, to step in or not at all, the substitute, the near offer’. Stoppard himself had been substitute theatre critic of the Bristol Evening World, while dreaming of being a foreign correspondent. As he pulled himself up by his bootstraps, however, he soon found the boot was on both feet, when he was taken on by Scene magazine as not only the number one critic but also his own second-string. ‘Being short of money’, he told Mel Gussow in April 1972, ‘the magazine had this critic Tom Stoppard and a man named William Boot who wrote about the theatre. I was both of them’—although the pseudonym had previously had another role, as the accidental foreign correspondent in Evelyn Waugh’s farcical novel Scoop.1

:Unfixable Forms: Disability, Performance, and the Early Modern English Theater

:<i>Unfixable Forms: Disability, Performance, and the Early Modern English Theater</i>

Shaw the Fighter (Bernard Shaw and the Censors. Fights and Failures, Stage and Screen)

Shaw the Fighter (Bernard Shaw and the Censors. Fights and Failures, Stage and Screen)

Svend Borberg: Punktummet, der ikke blev sat

Svend Borberg: The punctuation mark that was never written. Undiscovered works by a playwright with an international outlookThis article focuses on two hitherto undiscovered, unrealized works by one of the most remarkable, and controversial Danish playwrights and theatre critics from the interwar period, Svend Borberg. Borberg was a rare modernist and internationally oriented voice in Danish theatre, and the two works, the biblical comic opera Susanna and the pantomimic ballet, Stambul brænder [Stambul Burning] adds not only an important missing link in Borberg’s oeuvre, but also in those of his collaborators, the composers Knudåge Riisager and Alexander Tscherepnin.

Pausing on a Sunday: Sondheim and the Composition of the Secular in the American Musical

The abundance of Bible story–based plots and preponderance of Jewish lyricists in musical theatre suggests religion should play a central role in its study. Yet religion is not a major theme in musical theatre criticism. This article suggests this silence is a symptomatic forgetfulness of the default secular operative in American musical theatre and its analysts in theatre studies. Focusing on Stephen Sondheim (1930–2021) as an artist of particular accomplishment within the raced, gendered, and religious aesthetic of the American musical’s secularism, it examines “Sunday,” the Act One closer to Sunday in the Park with George (1984), as a climax of such expression. “Sunday” is an instruction manual on what the secular is, conveying in its lyrics, compositional location, and author’s autobiography the story of religion’s hiddenness in the American musical. Sondheim’s “Sunday” is a way to see how musical theatre regulates religion on stage.

Artistic practice of technical components of monologue speech of actors

The purpose of the work is to investigate the peculiarities of the verbal means of expression of the actor in one-man shows. The research methodology is based on the application of a set of scientific methods, including systems, analysis, synthesis, as well an art history approach, which allowed to obtain objective results. The scientific novelty of the work lies in the generalization of the theoretical analysis of monologue performances staged on the Ukrainian stage, with an emphasis on the technique of speech expression and its artistic skill in the performance of actors. Conclusions. Various elements of theatrical performance are highlighted. Consideration of theoretical studies of the role of the monogenre in the performing arts, the main means of self-expression of monomart, the triad of this form of theatrical action - text, director, actor. Analysis and classification of narrative models of one-man shows: traditional narrative of a character, literary interpretation, performance in a play, actor as the second "I" of the hero, play-emotion, play-removal, play-memory. Determining the main structural parameters of the actor's stage behavior in a solo performance in a complex relationship of roles, author and character, the degree of acting, reincarnation in the image - the inclusion of plasticity, psychophysical state of the actor, purposeful volitional action, assimilation of various forms of stage space. Based on the analysis of research by scientists and theater critics, certain aspects of the historical development of solo performances, the process of their formation and their popularity in modern theatrical art have been clarified. Keywords: mono-performances, theatrical speech, acting skills, diction, artistic theatrical practice, acting language.

Drama Critiques’ Database

Drama Critiques’ dataset was produced as part of Mylène Maignant’s PhD project at the Ecole Normale Supérieure (Ulm) between 2018 and 2022. Her research aims to explore the reception of contemporary London theatre (2010 to 2020) by analysing a large corpus based on the reviews written by two distinct groups of theatre critics: the journalistic one on the one hand, and the digital one on the other hand (bloggers). By relying partly on the data made available by <em>Theatre Record</em> (<a href="https://www.theatrerecord.com/" target="_blank">https://www.theatrerecord.com/</a>) and by automatically extracting the content of 28 blogs, we built a corpus constituting more than 40,000 theatre reviews. Only 36,000 are open access, as some of the bloggers have not given their authorisation yet. The purpose of this data collection consisted of exploring the similarities and differences between these two literary communities. We were interested in better understanding the cultural discourse both journalists and bloggers construct. Given the amount of data, we relied on digital technologies to investigate this field. Using various digital techniques, such as computational linguistics, sentiment analysis, and Geographic Information Systems, we conducted a number of different analyses to map this cultural phenomenon. If some publications have already tackled the literary theme of English digital theatre criticism, none of them have examined it from a computational perspective. Drama Critiques’ dataset is then the first corpus which not only offers so many contemporary reviews based on journalists and bloggers’ publications, but which also proposes a study of its content (<a href="https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6799656" target="_blank">https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6799656</a>). Repository location: <a href="https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6799656" target="_blank">10.5281/zenodo.6799656</a>.