Theatre Project Research Articles

DramAcum – The New Wave of Romanian contemporary dramaturgy

During the nineties, a new theatrical trend developed. It was called New European Drama or New Writing. It was represented by authors such as the British Sarah Kane, Mark Ravenhill or the German playwright Marius von Mayernburg. The classical theatre will never be able to return to itself, unless giving the spectator the utopian sense of life that only a staged play could perform, not from a delusive perspective, but from a real and personalized perspective, giving a certain meaning to reality. Being against the conservatory type, the authors put an end to all the theatrical conventions. They considered that it had to come to a point of changing the old patterns, of introducing new themes, new structures, new means of performing in the attempt of seducing and shocking the audience. Most of the dramatic texts focus on the plots about hard human existence such as racism, madness, suicide, sexuality, drug addiction and any type of abuse. The language is vulgar and slangy. All the dramatic texts when performed on stage invade the personal space of the people watching, who is now considered one of the characters. It is not only the dramatic text that is taken into consideration, but the performance itself. The new type of theatre developed in Russia, Poland and Romania, giving specific projects (Teatr.doc, The Drama Laboratory and DramAcum). All were influenced by the verbatim dramatic style performed in theatres under the slogan of the in-yer-face. The study intends to explore the importance of the Romanian theatrical project – DramAcum, as a new type of theatre and dramaturgy.

The Bridge: The Political Possibilities of Intergenerational Verbatim Theater

This article introduces the reader to the work of Australian verbatim theater artists Donna Jackson, Bindi Cole Chocka, and James Henry. It describes the artists’ remount of Vicki Reynolds’s verbatim play The Bridge, which tells the story of the collapse of the Melbourne West Gate Bridge in 1970. I discuss the remount of the play as an intergenerational verbatim theater project which not only tells an important story from Australian working-class history to new audiences who haven’t heard it before, but also deepens the story through additional research and music. I also discuss the play as a project that uses political truths from the past to do new political work in the present.

Following Geri's Lead

Drawn from a keynote delivered for Timeless Portraits and Dreams: A Festival in Honor of Geri Allen (Harvard University, February 16–17, 2018), this personal essay shares observations about Allen's intellectual and artistic leadership in diverse roles including bandleader, teacher, curator, and artistic visionary. In addition to discussions of Allen's music and recordings, this essay also focuses on her collaboration with the author and actor/director S. Epatha Merkerson, which resulted in two musical theater projects, Great Jazz Women of the Apollo (2013) and A Conversation with Mary Lou (2014).

Breath-Body-Self: Reflections on Performance-Based Approaches to Breath through a Women’s Theatre Project in South Africa

ABSTRACTThis article explores the relationship between breath and emotion and between breath and image in an attempt to make theatre and performance that is inspired by a biography of the body. It investigates the body as a site for generating images for the purpose of performance-making. The article is a methodological study that draws from various traditions, methods, and somatic practices. It explores the relationship between body, breath, and feeling and how these impacts on the imagination in processes of producing images for performance-making. It further investigates whether breath can be experienced as an embodied element that is sensed somatically by performers. The author argues that it can, and in so doing may, act as a catalyst for activating memories, stories, and experiences held in the body of the performer.

Art project: the discourse of artistic culture of the beginning of the new millennium (at the intersection - crossover point)

The purpose of the article is to characterize the phenomenon of project activity - the "crossover point" and its distribution in contemporary artistic practice. The need for such an approach is due to the fact that the culture of arts in public practice is carried out in accordance with the laws of business, in which the commercial component becomes decisive. The methodology of the research is based on the interdisciplinary integration of methods of contemporary culturology and art criticism . The scientific novelty of the research is determined by the fact that the phenomenon of the project activity - the "crossover point" and its actualization in contemporary art practice, due to the growth of mass demand for entertainment and the musical and theatrical project as a new form of synthesis of several types of art, generated by the implementation of new technologies, are considered. Conclusions. The term "project" in the context of artistic practice is understood not only as the result of the original plan but as a unique set of coordinated actions aimed at achieving a particular cultural, aesthetic and artistic purpose. Throughout history, an active search for new forms of artistic creation is taking place to reflect and understand all the changes in reality. Artistic projects have become a logical manifestation of the development of culture. The project activity in the field of culture at the new level "connected" Ukrainian art to world art tendencies, fundamentally changed the picture of the life of the Ukrainian artistic culture. Artistic projects constitute a new form of syncretically synthesized spectacle, a phenomenon mediated by the peculiarities and realities of the world culture of the beginning of the 21st century. In the context of the article, "project integrity" is understood as the intersection of project design of ideas and their implementation ("crossover point"), multisectoral, but oriented to the current today, the future, which reveals the potential and social significance of cultural and creative practice. Creation of synthesized art "crossover-projects" requires the efforts of a group of managers and performers, taking into account market demand for artistic needs, a comprehensive perception of their wide audience, non-traditional approaches to the production of classical works, taking into account the specifics of location. Indicative in this respect is the project activity of T. Filevskaya, art director, curator of many projects devoted to Ukrainian avant-garde art, founder of the public organization "Malevich Institute". Her work fits into the concept of "crossover projects", which corresponds to the main principle - the synthesis of several types of activities: artistic, exploratory, artistic and artistic, with the creation of the event of events.

Traditional games and child-centred development: affirming disabled and female bodies in applied theatre projects in Zimbabwe

Traditional/indigenous children’s games are yet to be appreciated as sites of critical engagement. The limited available literature on traditional children’s games is mainly focused on the deployment of traditional games in the teaching of conventional curriculum subjects. On the other hand, applied theatre projects appear to mainly rely on ‘foreign’ games. Curiously, there seems to be bias towards theatre games from North America, South America and Western Europe. We concede that, to an extent, the deployment of foreign games has revolutionized and radicalized applied theatre practice in Zimbabwe. However, there is hardly any serious scholarship that examines implications of infusing traditional children’s games within gender and disability discourse for child-centred development. This article addresses the extent to which applied theatre practitioners may appropriate traditional children’s games in the quest to deploy theatre as a site of critical engagement against pervasive hegemonies such as masculinity, neo-colonialism and ableism that may impede on human-/child-centred development. Drawing from Africana Womanism and Critical Disability Theory, we argue that although currently few applied theatre practitioners are deploying traditional children’s games, there is scope for appropriating and contextualizing traditional games in subverting imposed ableist and gendered hegemonies. Applied theatre projects can offer space to recover the rich intangible heritage that is embodied in traditional games. Having established that indigenous African children’s games affirm the material body in general, we recognize the potential of applied theatre contexts to act as sites of taping from the wisdom of the past in order to invent the future in which Africa/Zimbabwean children are proud of their bodily realities as centres of human growth and self-construction.

Theatre & the Environment: Cross-Cultural Exchange Through Travel and Performance Activism

Performance activism, collaborative and cross-cultural, were keys to the success of EnviroLab Asia's clinic trip to Thailand in May 2018. Working with peers in Thai universities, this writer reflects on the degree to which her immersion in local environmental struggles in Thailand, and the compelling theater project that grew out of it, also has helped her understand some of the same pressures that confront her home communities in Africa.

Always (K)new: Recombining Identities and Queering Narratives through a Transcultural Theatre Project

Always (K)new: Recombining Identities and Queering Narratives through a Transcultural Theatre Project

Alberto Sartoris’ Contribution to the Architectural Culture of Theatre: From the Private Theatre of Casa Gualino to the Avant-garde Theatre for Geneva

In the last twenty years Alberto Sartoris has been the subject of numerous celebrative publications: despite this critical fortune, catalogs of exhibitions and essays dedicated to him are mostly referred to specific episodes of his career, the aspects of his relationship with the architecture of the theater has always remained in the background, in spite of this very rich bibliographic production. The aim of this research is therefore to add a further piece to the complex artistic-theoretical activity of such a multifaceted person, analyzing Sartoris' contribution to architecture of the theatre through the analysis of his main projects and his theoretical contribution to design. His eclectic personality allowed him to successfully apply in many disciplines, so as to be recognized as one of the most important precursors of rational architecture in Italy and abroad. Sartoris' “lyrical rationality” is also clearly visible in his experimental avant-garde theatre project of 1929 whereby he can coherently deal with theatre themes, favoring a rational stage performance, with the involvement of large masses of spectators, a trend typical of architecture in the first half of the twentieth century.

Kunstiliste maailmade kehastamine Karl Ristikivi „Hingede öö” näitel [Embodiment of Artistic Worlds on the Basis of Karl Ristikivi’s Novel "Night of Souls"

Artikkel lahtub teatriteaduses populaarsest ja kirjandusteaduses marginaalsest kehastamise ( embodiment, embodied experience ) moistest ning vaatleb kirjandusliku maailma kehastamist kui taju-, tolgendus- ja koosloomeprotsessi kahel tasandil: lavastaja-etendaja ja vastuvotja (lugeja/vaataja/osaleja) vaatepunktist. Naiteteosteks on Karl Ristikivi eesti kirjanduse klassikasse kuuluv romaan „Hingede oo“ (1953) ja Laburintteatriuhenduse G9 samanimeline osavotuteatri lavastus (2018), mida vastuvotjad pidasid romaani kongeniaalseks tolgenduseks. Vordleme romaani ja lavastust ning etenduse vastuvotjate tajukogemusi romaani lahilugemisel sundivate meeleliste kogemustega. Analuus toetub nimetatud teostele ning lavastuse trupi ja 20 vastuvotjaga labi viidud fookusgrupi intervjuudele. Votmesonad: eesti kirjandus, kehastamine, osavotuteater, retseptsioon ----------- The article explores embodiment as a process of perception, interpretation and co-creation of a literary world from the point of view of producer (director/performer) and receiver (reader/spectator/participant). Estonian classic novel Night of Souls by Karl Ristikivi and the participatory theatre project of the same title by Labyrinth Theatre Group G9 serve as the empirical material of the research. The article compares the literary work with the production and the perceptions of the novel and the production. The analysis relies on a close reading of the novel and on interviews with the producers and 20 spectators. Three forms of embodiment were detected. First, embodiment as a sensuous concretisation of a literary work, through which storyteller’s or main character’s bodily experiences are taken on by the reader/spectator, i.e. gradual immersion into a fictional world and identification with a character takes place. The second form is related to the embodiment of a textual/ fictional world on stage. In theatre theory, embodiment usually only depicts a relationship between a performer and his/her role, but in this article the term denotes materialisation of the whole fictional world. Thus staging is a specific process of perception, interpretation and co-creation that transforms a script into a stage production. The third form of embodiment is characteristic for participatory theatre, where spectators have the possibility to perform somebody in a fictional world or theatre game. The reception research of Night of Souls demonstrated that predominantly the spectators embodied themselves, i.e. a performation of individual existence was realised. Since open participatory theatre works enable receivers to fill gaps with their personal mental and psychical material, spectators interpreted the production either as an artistic environment/world, an exciting role play, a psychotherapeutic trip into personal worlds, or a metaphor for life pilgrimage. Embodiment as a research instrument highlights the embeddedness of body and soul in perception and cognition of an environment/the world. The main character of Night of Souls realises that analysis of singular objects is not reliable, especially when caught by a memory or existential space. Embodiment leads both the character and the reader or spectator to a holistic perception and cognition of the (fictional) world. Keywords: Estonian literature, embodiment, interactive theatre, reception

Applying/Contesting the Brechtian "Model": Calcutta Repertory Theatre's Galileor Jibon (Life of Galileo)

This essay focuses on a two-fold conceptualization of theatre making pertaining to the production of Galileor Jibon (Life of Galileo, 1980), a Bengali translation of Bertolt Brecht's Leben des Galilei, by the Kolkata-based theatre group Calcutta Repertory Theatre in association with Fritz Bennewitz, a Brecht "expert" from the German Democratic Republic. The two-fold conceptualizations hinge around the contradictions regarding, on the one hand, the application of the Brechtian "model" of theatrical practices as espoused by Bennewitz and, on the other, its simultaneous contestations brought forward by the actual realizations of the actor's practices, as particularized by Shombhu Mitra, the actor playing Galileo. At stake here is an appraisal of a Marxist cultural practice within the period of cold-war mobilizations in the global South as might be exemplified in this particular theatre project involving Fritz Bennewitz.

Moment Work: Tectonic Theater Project's Process of Devising Theater by Moisés Kaufman and Barbara Pitts McAdams et al.

Moment Work: Tectonic Theater Project's Process of Devising Theater by Moisés Kaufman and Barbara Pitts McAdams et al.

2017 Black Tent Theatre Project in Gwanghwamun Square: Staging Tragic Memory and Building Solidarity through Public Theatre

2017 Black Tent Theatre Project in Gwanghwamun Square: Staging Tragic Memory and Building Solidarity through Public Theatre

Moment Work: Tectonic Theater Project’s Process of Devising Theater by Moisés Kaufman and Barbara Pitts McAdams

Moment Work: Tectonic Theater Project’s Process of Devising Theater by Moisés Kaufman and Barbara Pitts McAdams

‘작은극장 프로젝트’의 학교 교육적 측면 고찰 - ‘2016 한여름밤의 작은극장’을 중심으로 -

‘작은극장 프로젝트’의 학교 교육적 측면 고찰 - ‘2016 한여름밤의 작은극장’을 중심으로 -

Українське театральне мистецтво в контексті європейських міжнародних театральних фестивалів

The purpose of the study is to identify the effectiveness of the interaction between Ukrainian and European theatrical art on the experience of international theatrical festivals in Ukraine and in Europe, the Ukrainian theaters’ participation in international theatrical festivals, studying the influence of this experience on the festival movement in Ukraine, and also on the intensification of the integration process Ukrainian theatrical art into the European cultural space in the context of Ukraine’s European choice. Research methods. A comparative method of research has been used when European and domestic theatrical festivals have been compered, the historical method has been used to study the history of the birth and development of individual international festivals; the cultural method of research allowed to analyse the organization of international theatrical festivals in Europe and in Ukraine, their interaction and influence on the festival movement in Ukraine, the formation of the national school in marketing of the festival product. The scientific novelty of the research consists in expanding the information field of the stated theme, covering new festival events, their organization and marketing, diagnosing the state of the festival movement in Ukraine and its integration into the European cultural space, as well as the influence of the international festival movement on the Ukrainian theater development and the formation of a national schools marketing festival product. Conclusions At the time, an urgent need to improve the practice of organizing and conducting theatrical festivals in Ukraine, both international and domestic, the formation of a national school in marketing of the festival product, an urgent need for the introduction of European festival experience into the practice of conducting Ukrainian international and domestic theatrical projects, their structural enrichment and enhancement of the initial component.

Театрально-образовательная среда – основа для развития творчества и одаренности детей

The article is devoted to the issue of artistic and creative development of children in the implementation of musical and theatrical projects that contribute not only to their knowledge of the world through their own creative activities, but also to the development of their creative inclinations and talent. The methods and methodical approaches of musical and theatrical activity organization of children which allow to influence pedagogically effectively on development of their creative abilities are offered. Examples of musical and stage works for children, which have a huge developmental potential, are given.

Towards a probody aesthetics: ageing and occupationally damaged bodies in performance

ABSTRACTThrough this reflection on ageing and occupationally damaged bodies in performance, I argue that a probody aesthetics is fundamental to generating and sustaining care in community-engaged theatre projects. Such aesthetics is concerned with adopting a body-centric approach to making community-engaged theatre and arts, which insists artistic creations and acts of creation could be a form of care provision. Informed by the medical sciences, probody aesthetics consciously highlights care at the level of anatomy and biomechanics. In this article, I propose somatic ergonomics, physical ergonomics and collaborative ergonomics as ways of advancing understanding of probody aesthetics towards implementable practices.

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

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

New Education beyond the school: Rosemarie Benjamin’s Theatre for Children, 1937-1957

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the work of Rosemary Benjamin’s Theatre for Children in Sydney as a compelling narrative of the New Education in Australia in the late 1930s, an historical moment when theatre for children emerged as a cultural experiment rich in educational ideas.Design/methodology/approachContemporary sources and archival records are explored through several interpretive frames to develop a historical account of Benjamin’s Theatre for Children from 1937 to 1957.FindingsBenjamin’s concept of children’s theatre was shaped by English progressive education as much as the Soviet model she extolled. She pursued her project in Sydney from 1937 because she found there a convivial European emigré community who encouraged her enterprise. They understood her Freudian ideas, which commended the use of the symbolic resources of myth and fairy tales to help children deal with difficult unconscious material. Benjamin also analysed audience reactions applying child study principles, evidence of the influence of Susan Isaacs and the New Education Fellowship. More successful as a Publicist than a Producer, Benjamin was able to mobilise support for her educational cause among performers, parents, cultural figures and educational authorities. Her contribution was to pave the way for those who would succeed with different models of theatre for children.Originality/valueThis is the first study to employ archival sources to document the history of the Theatre for Children, Sydney and address its neglect as a theatre project combining educational and theatrical values.