Theatre Script Research Articles

Digital Collage, Poster Design and Stephan Bundi: The Semiotic Analysis of Theatre Posters

The aim of this study is to assess the single expression in approaching the traditional and digital methods for the design of cultural based posters like theatrical posters in consideration with the posters as a graphic design tool. The digital collage, which is the way of expression created in the early 20th century by the art movements and artists using collage as aroused on the computer screens other than canvas through the technology, has also been used in graphic design. The digital collage facilitates the reflection of artist’s imagination to the screen by means of technology, allows the traditional collage to be used together with the digital. The semiotic analysis of theatre posters designed by Stephan Bundi between the years of 2012- 2015, who is considered as the one of the first users of these two methods, was conducted within the scope of study. The graphic codes utilized were analysed and the climaxes in the theatrical scripts were addressed in a single expression with these two styles. The posters designed within this period by Bundi, who had used the traditional collage and digital collage that considered as two different ways of expression in his cultural posters, were analysed on the basis of Peircian sign theory, through the use of icon, index and symbols, and their interpretation was elaborated accordingly. As a result of this study, the findings indicated that Bundi made two different styles into one way of expression, used the traditional methods together with digital collage in graphic design, chose the colour in posters in accordance with the content of play and interpreted the content in the cultural posters designed by the poster designer with his own style through digital collage method. In consideration with the analysed posters of Bundi, his frequent use of icon that is given under the Peircian sign theory was stood out.

Viaggi di immagini e parole. La didattica dell’italiano nella scuola primaria con gli albi illustrati e i silent books

Picturebooks (and silent books, with images only and without words) are children’s books commonly considered suitable only for young children of pre-school age or in the earliest years of schooling. For this reason, picturebooks are mostly neglected in teaching in higher educational stages. Nevertheless, the educational potential of picturebooks is considerable, especially in the later years of primary school. For example, in Italian language teaching, they can be extraordinary tools for planning didactic projects that allow instructors to integrate the teaching/learning of all linguistic skills and of metalinguistic reection, which are the main elements in the curricula related to Italian language teaching in Italian-speaking countries and contexts. The article aims to show the validity of the above claim by establishing a possible classication of picturebooks into six distinct types and by describing some didactic projects and activities developed in primary schools in Canton Ticino (Italian Switzerland). Focusing on the pleasure of reading engaging stories and on motivation, picturebooks enable teachers to pursue ambitious and challenging goals, such as creating one or more new picturebooks inspired by the one read initially or transposing a picturebook into a theatre script. At the same time, picturebooks enable students to develop their speaking, listening, reading, and writing skills.

占領期九州地区検閲台本群-ダイザー・コレクション-の再整理と公開( コレクションの構築と運営)

占領期九州地区検閲台本群-ダイザー・コレクション-の再整理と公開( コレクションの構築と運営)

Creating an Ethnodrama to Catalyze Dialogue in Home-Based Dementia Care.

This article describes the development of a theater script derived from a critical ethnographic study that followed people living with dementia--and their family and professional caregivers--over an 18-month period. Analysis of the ethnographic data yielded four themes that characterized home-based dementia care relationships: managing care resources, making care decisions, evaluating care practices, and reifying care norms. The research team expanded to include a colleague with playwright experience, who used these themes to write a script. A theater director was included to cast and direct the play, and finally, a videography company filmed the actors on a realistic set. To contribute to the qualitative health research and the research-based theater knowledge translation literatures, this article describes and explains the creative decisions taken as part of our effort to disseminate research focused on home-based dementia care in a way that catalyzes and fosters critical (actionable) dialogue.

Postdramatic Methods of Adaptation in the Age of Digital Collaborative Writing

The aim of our contribution is to shed light on the artistic process of theatrical adaption from a novel to a theatre script and, eventually, to the stage. Our example comes from contemporary European theatre: the production of Die Bruder Karamasow ( The Brothers Karamasow ) by Luk Perceval at the Thalia Theater in Hamburg, based on Dostoevsky’s eponymous novel (2013). We use digital text analysis and visualization to analyze the genesis of an adaptation. Our analysis is mainly based on a large set of different versions of the playtext. We visualize the working process during the nine-month process of adaptation and rehearsal. By automatically calculating and comparing the textual differences between each two subsequent versions, both stages of thorough revision and superficial text changes can be identified. We supplement this analysis with information on the working process given by Perceval himself during a recent interview in Hamburg, and with research on his previous methods of adaptation, using the archives of his original Flemish company Blauwe Maandag Compagnie.

Fiction Strengthens Research: A Review of Patricia Leavy's Fiction as Research Practice: Short Stories, Novellas, and Novels

Arts-based research (ABR) is a form of qualitative research that includes genres such as poetry, music, theatrical scripts, visual art, novels, and short stories. Fiction-based research is one type of ABR that utilizes the strength of fiction to connect with readers and to portray real life and genuine human experiences. The author, Patricia Leavy, wrote a text that thoroughly explains the meaning and evaluation of fiction-based research. In addition, she provides exemplar pieces and uses her eight criteria to assess the research. Lastly, the text explains why fiction is an important pedagogy to use with students. Twenty-first century skills and love of research, writing, and reading are important components to fiction-based research.

Engaging with a history of counselling, spirituality and faith in Scotland: a readers' theatre script

This paper presents an abbreviated version of a verbatim script developed from oral history interviews with individuals key to the development of counselling and psychotherapy in Scotland from 1960 to 2000. Earlier versions were used in workshops with counsellors and pastoral care practitioners to share counter-narratives of counselling and to provide opportunities for conversations about historical and contemporary relationships between faith, spirituality, counselling and psychotherapy. By presenting intertwined histories in a readers' theatre script, the narrative nature of lives lived in context was respected. By bringing oral histories into virtual dialogue with each other and with contemporary practitioners, whether through workshops or through publications, the interplay between individual, institutional and societal narratives remains visible and open to change.

From Opera Boat to Silver Screen: Visual and Sonic Culture of Cantonese Opera (尋覓粵劇聲影: 從紅船到水銀燈) by Sai-shing Yung (review)

Reviewed by: From Opera Boat to Silver Screen: Visual and Sonic Culture of Cantonese Opera (尋覓粵劇聲影: 從紅船到水銀燈) by Sai-shing Yung Min Wang From Opera Boat to Silver Screen: Visual and Sonic Culture of Cantonese Opera (尋覓粵劇聲影: 從紅船到水銀燈). By Sai-shing Yung. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 2012. [xliv, 285 p. ISBN 9780198002086. HKD $118.] Illustrations, maps, appendix. [End Page 670] Compared with other historical studies of Cantonese opera and its subcategories, the book written in Chinese by Sai-shing Yung, From Opera Boat to Silver Screen: Visual and Sonic Culture of Cantonese Opera, is distinguished by its research perspective on Cantonese opera in Hong Kong and other regions. Rather than a monograph focusing on one subject, Yung’s book is a collection of twelve essays published between 2002 and 2011, which are arranged respectively in twelve chapters, each chapter a different approach to Cantonese opera. The twelve essays in the book are organized under two general topics. One deals with the performing arts and cultural influences of Cantonese opera, and the other with the opera (as well as its subcategories) produced in stage performances, record companies, and film industries. In accordance with the two topics, a discussion of three media instrumental to the development of Cantonese opera in Hong Kong and other regions during most of the twentieth century is carried throughout the book. The first one, the red boat, conveys a specific way of life, that of the older generations of Cantonese opera artists and their way of making a living. Painted in red, the boat is a traditional transportation vehicle that carried the performers and their stage properties—“red boat troupes” (pp. xxii–xxiii)—to different villages and towns, mostly along the inland waterways of Guangdong and Hong Kong, where the troupes landed to give performances. Yung believes that what is new about the performances of the red boat troupe is that in the 1920s they were no longer disorganized and were handled for the first time as a business. The emergence of the red boat troupe facilitated subsequent developments in the theater. It is Yung’s intention to use the opera “boat” in the book title to symbolize how Cantonese opera became a commercial institution from the late nineteenth century to the 1920s. The second tool, phonographs and records imported from Western countries, popularized Cantonese opera in recorded format in the 1920s throughout southern China and Hong Kong. Traditionally, audiences approached Chinese theater through two materialized formats, either live performances on stage or theatrical scripts in texts. Live performances, “theater on stage,” in other words (p. 35), were offered to both illiterate and literate people. Theatrical scripts, “theater in text” in Yung’s words (p. 35), could only be enjoyed by the educated. “Theater on record,” “the third format of theater” (p. 47), restricted neither to a designated place nor to a written text, allowed more audiences to enjoy the opera, and the audience more freedom when enjoying the theater. The popularization of Cantonese opera is the main topic of the first two chapters. When describing the transnational production of Cantonese opera records by British, German, and American record companies during the first ten years of the twentieth century, Yung says: “the global mobility of Cantonese opera is a historical landmark for the production and dissemination of the Chinese theater” (my trans.; pp. 54–55). The third tool is the film industry. Cantonese opera used to circulate only in Cantonese-speaking communities in Guangdong and Hong Kong. Cantonese opera in the 1930s, however, was also available in movie versions to the Cantonese population in both Southeast Asia and North America. The marketing of Cantonese opera by the movie industry was most expansive, Yung stresses, from the mid-1950s to 1968. The operation of the film industry by both Chinese performers and investment companies to disseminate Cantonese opera is the main focus of the last nine chapters (chapters 3–12). These chapters are all valuable, because they provide rich sources about performing artists, investment companies, and even ideological interventions around the 1950s, all of which answer questions about the activities and kinds of Cantonese opera that existed in Guangzhou, Hong Kong, and other regions. Yung locates his discussion of Cantonese opera...

C’est fort la France! by Paule Constant

son mari dans la même guerre et élèvera seule leur fils.Florian,“expert en brigandagerie” à Saint-Pierre, trouve son métier de bijoutier créole à Fort-de-France.Ainsi, les enfants Saint-Aubert grandissent, se marient et ont leurs propres enfants dans le contexte des événements historiques des années 1900–1920. Ils vieilliront et verront leurs enfants continuer la saga des Saint-Aubert et de la Martinique, dont les maints rebondissements ne décevront pas le lecteur. Bob Jones University (SC) Jeremy Patterson Constant, Paule. C’est fort la France! Paris: Gallimard, 2013. ISBN 978-2-07-013931-6. Pp. 251. 17,90 a. Does a novelist write to tell the truth or to hide it? Or could it be“pour faire apparaître un univers plus cohérent [...] [et] pour rendre acceptable ce qui ne l’a pas été” (221)? The unnamed narrator of C’est fort published in her youth an autobiographical satire called Ouregano, which is also the name of Constant’s first novel (1980). Both the real and the fictional Ouregano are portraits of French colonial life in the 1950s seen partly through the eyes of a young girl whose father is the idealistic medical officer of an isolated French outpost in Africa. The narrator of C’est fort tells us that some 25 years after her book’s publication, the wife of the former colony’s administrator, whom she calls Mme Dubois, comes into her life to insist that the book inaccurately represents the people and events it is based on. Listening to Mme Dubois’s recollections, the narrator realizes that she misunderstood key situations and, to her present amazement, that she left out the most dramatic events she herself witnessed. She now asks herself, “Pourquoi écrit-on un roman en omettant la raison pour laquelle on l’a écrit?” (25). She realizes that the problem of truth is complicated by the fact that what you see is determined partly by where you stand; witnesses of the same events interpret them differently . Ironically, the narrator had been shocked earlier when she discovered that she did not appear at all in an autobiographical novel written by the man who had been her African playmate: “il y a pire que d’entrer à titre de personnage dans un univers romanesque, c’est de n’y pas entrer du tout” (220). Listening to Mme Dubois and re-examining her own memories, she develops a more balanced picture of French colonials; she now thinks they often were innocents trapped in a system they could not control and inadequately informed about the Africans they lived among. She also learns something about the problems they faced, which included inadequate medical supplies, a sleeping sickness epidemic, and tensions between different African clans. In a presentation on YouTube, Constant insists that C’est fort la France! is “parfaitement inventé”and not the“récit de [son] enfance,”but the very disclaimer makes one wonder which of its people and events might be drawn from life. Constant previously explored the relationship between reality and fiction in her Goncourt-winning Confidence pour confidence (1998), in which Aurore Amer, a novelist much like herself, is hosted by an 198 FRENCH REVIEW 87.3 Reviews 199 American academic who plans to plagiarize Amer’s signature novel based on an African childhood and pass it off as her own autobiography. In the present novel, Constant (now a member herself of the Académie Goncourt) continues to probe the subject of truth and fiction with thoughtfulness enlivened by a generous but sly humor. College of San Mateo (CA) Susan Petit Deitz, Ritt. Rêver local. Madison: Incidence, 2013. ISBN 978-1-481-03402-9. Pp. 120. $9.95. Deitz is executive director of the Professional French Masters Program at University of Wisconsin, Madison. His previous publication, La colonie, ou l’invasion québécoise (2010), was a theatrical script about the state of Wisconsin being liberated from English domination by the province of Quebec. This notion of a Francophone Wisconsin sets the stage for Deitz’s latest book in which the American narrator shares dreams he had in French. Dreaming in a foreign language is often...

Rêver local by Ritt Deitz

Reviews 199 American academic who plans to plagiarize Amer’s signature novel based on an African childhood and pass it off as her own autobiography. In the present novel, Constant (now a member herself of the Académie Goncourt) continues to probe the subject of truth and fiction with thoughtfulness enlivened by a generous but sly humor. College of San Mateo (CA) Susan Petit Deitz, Ritt. Rêver local. Madison: Incidence, 2013. ISBN 978-1-481-03402-9. Pp. 120. $9.95. Deitz is executive director of the Professional French Masters Program at University of Wisconsin, Madison. His previous publication, La colonie, ou l’invasion québécoise (2010), was a theatrical script about the state of Wisconsin being liberated from English domination by the province of Quebec. This notion of a Francophone Wisconsin sets the stage for Deitz’s latest book in which the American narrator shares dreams he had in French. Dreaming in a foreign language is often a sign that the learner truly is beginning to comprehend that other language. Yet, he suggests, one should say the same for one’s childhood or locations appearing in dreams. He invites readers to consider his actual dreams, produced during sleep, though they will sometimes be embellished with lies or, conversely, with events that really did happen. With this word of caution, the narrator leads us through a series of French-speaking locales in his dreams, ranging from Milwaukee Street to a Parisian neighborhood, the Grande Bibliothèque du Québec in Montreal, a villa in the South of France, and back to the narrator’s childhood home at 216 Main Street. The early highlight of the text is a discovery along the bike path:“Ce matin, sur la piste cyclable, je suis tombé sur un corps de femme” (19). If we are to believe the narrator, this did happen; he swears on it and invokes witnesses. This story awakens the reader’s curiosity before being plunged into the absurd world of dreams. The dreamer encounters enigmatic characters like the pot-smoking“Roi de la République”fleeing from an all-female librarians’ association in protest to his elimination of funding. This common dream of being chased gives way to the more violent one of a female teacher’s beheading in “L’Algérie.” One could pursue a Freudian analysis of these and other dreams in their depictions of women. But another anxiety-inducing dream of public speaking (“Merci de cet accueil si chaleureux”) allows us to glimpse the narrator’s intent as his academic speech derails before the audience:“Je suis plutôt venu rêver,moi-même,avec et devant vous”(59).This serves to remind the reader to dream along with the dreamer. While some of the topics are frightening,Deitz’s narration keeps from being too morose with a good dose of humor and cameo appearances by James Brown, Bill Cosby, and Alain Robbe-Grillet. Toward the end of the book, a dream character uses the word véluptueux, which the narrator explains in parentheses: “(Il ne parlait pas français, mais s’il me parlait cette langue-là il aurait dit véluptueux au lieu de voluptueux)”(113).The author himself makes a few similar substitutions: péonies for pivoines (34), lumières de soleil for lunettes (38), récuper for récupérer (68), and montrez for montez (97). Were it not for the presence of other typos, these could be chalked up to being part of the bizarre dream experience that Deitz shares. All in all, readers will likely find this short book both amusing and bemusing. Bowling Green State University (OH) Jennifer K. Wolter Delacourt, Grégoire. La première chose qu’on regarde. Paris: Lattès, 2013. ISBN 9782 -7096-4286-6. Pp. 264. 17 a. Ce troisième roman signé Delacourt est une histoire toute légère de coup de foudre qui tourne autour d’une confusion d’identité. Nous avons une narration relatée au passé simple à la troisième personne,focalisée principalement à travers Arthur Dreyfuss, un garagiste de vingt ans qu’on nous décrit comme“Ryan Gosling,mais en mieux”(16). La comparaison n...

Cultural Signification through Reader’s Theatre: An Analysis of African American Girls and Their Hair

Abstract This article explored the role of hair in Sylviane Diouf’s Bintou’s Braids and focused on the impact of hair as a cultural signifier on girls and the curriculum. The article examined the ability of this children’s text to address female beauty standards and suggests the use of literary techniques, such as reader’s theatre, to recognize and critically explore diverse issues among children. The work specifically: (1) deconstructs messages about hair norms, with particular emphasis on black female hair in one children’s text, and (2) transforms the selected text into a reader’s theatre script for use in elementary classrooms, suggesting an array of literary construction and usage types in children’s classroom communities to support increased literacy engagement. This article expands the body of inquiry on hair and its impact on the curriculum by examining the relationships between the cultural power of hair, literacy, performance and African American girls. The literature has established the unique responses of diverse girls to literary constructions, and several studies provide alternatives for deciphering the meaning of texts and utilizing the empowering aspect of girls through literacy. Likewise, this article qualitatively examined Diouf’s Bintou’s Braids for its use of various aspects of identity development such as affirmation, ritual and social responsibility. The reader’s theatre adaptation, Little Bintou Loves Her Braids, begins to address the current inadequacy of literary offerings in the genre.

Tunisian Theater Through the Lens of Revolution: Theatrical Expression as Resistance, Anxiety, Aspiration

By comparing pre- and post-2011 Tunisian theatrical scripts and performances, this report analyzes instances of resistance to political oppression. The Tunisian theater provides space for free expression against the way in which the Tunisian government has handled its power, especially with regard to Islamic terrorism, not only before but also after the revolution. The present report also suggests that the pre-revolution plays represent resistance to the Tunisian pre-revolution regime that stifled political, religious, and cultural free expression. Despite the new political plurality that sprang up in 2011 in reaction to the revolution, however, resistance to the post-revolution political system also forms the central focus in the later plays that highlight oppression.

توظيف التراث في النص المسرحي الفلسطيني

This research studies the integration of heritage in Palestinian theatre scripts. It also observes the nature and the forms of heritage in Palestinian scripts. Through the study of intellectual and aesthetic awareness, the study aims at recognizing forms and contents of Palestinian theatre scripts and analyzing regional Arab attempts to authenticate Arab and Muslim theatre. This study particularly aims at recognizing the mechanism of integrating heritage in Palestinian scripts through the study of two scripts for two Palestinian authors: Gassan Kanafani (Al BaB) and Emil Habi (Lka’a Bn Lka’a). Choosing intentionally these two scripts forms the research justifications for exploring the use of heritage in Palestinian script. تتناول هذه الدراسة موضوعة توظيف التراث في النص المسرحي الفلسطيني. كما أنها ترصد طبيعة المصادر التراثية وأشكالها التي أفاد منها المسرح. والتعرف على مدى تأثره بالمحاولات الرائدة في توظيف التراث وتأصيل المسرح العربي على مستوى الشكل والمضمون، انطلاقاً من حالات الوعي الفكري والجمالي، وبما أن النص المسرحي الفلسطيني لم يكن هو الآخر بمعزل عن البحث عن هوية عربية للمسرح تستمد مقوماتها من التراث العريق للعرب والمسلمين، فقد جاءت هذه الدراسة للتعرف على آلية توظيف التراث في النص المسرحي الفلسطيني من خلال دراسة نصين مسرحيين لاثنين من أهم المؤلفين الفلسطنيين هما : غسان كنفاني وإميل حبيبي، وهذا ما تتأسس عليه أهمية هذه الدراسة التي سيحاول الباحثان من خلالها رصد توظيف التراث في النص المسرحي الفلسطيني، من خلال الاختيار القصدي لعينتين هما مسرحية "الباب" لغسان كنفاني، ومسرحية "لكع بن لكع" لأميل حبيبي.

Telling tales, performing justice: the political subject of the Ḥikāya

If Arabic drama and Greek theatre shared the same beginnings (both emerging from ceremonies of fertility), then why have the Greek traditions of theatre, tragedy and comedy been read as political but the Arabic traditions dismissed as ‘folkloric’? Consider three texts: an eighth century theatrical script called Mu ākkamat al- hulafā' (‘Trial of the Caliphs’), a thirteenth century shadow-play titled al-‘Ajīb wa al- harīb (‘The Bemusing and The Strange’) and an oral tale told among the women of Tetoun in Morocco (who trace their ancestry to al-’Andulus in Spain) titled ‘Ali wa Ya hzil? (‘Ali, and a Spinner Too?’). All three texts illustrate Arabic dramatic traditions from different times and places and each constitutes a genre of ikāya (Arabic for tale, pl. akāya or ikāyāt). Can these akāya articulate a way of being political that has remained non-articulable within western political thought? To begin to answer such a question, the article first offers an account of a subject that has been recognised as political that of the public spheres. Through the telling of three akāya, the article aims to put into tension this recognisable political subject of public spheres with a subject that positions itself differently in relation to justice and rights. Do the political subjectivities uncovered through this tension operate within existing understandings of the political or do they uncover the limits of such understandings and make possible new interpretations?

The Reader's Theatre Script for “Lifelong Impact: Adult Perceptions of Their High School Speech and/or Theatre Participation”

This article includes a reader's theatre script adapted from a full-length qualitative study, “Lifelong Impact: Adult Perceptions of Their High School Speech and/or Theatre Participation.” The report first reviews reader's theatre as an arts-based form of research representation and presentation, then surveys key figures from qualitative inquiry and theatre education involved with interdisciplinary collaborations. The coauthors then discuss one of their key learnings from their experiences with performing the research, labeled “reinteracting the data”—a triple compound word of acting, reacting, and interacting with the dramatized text and our audiences.

Performed Ethnography and Research-Informed Theatre: A Reflective Assessment

Performed ethnography and research-informed theatre scripts can be difficult to evaluate. They are hybrid texts created by practices that have evolved in two different worlds each with multiple ways of evaluating the strengths and limitations of individual projects. In this article, I use Laurel Richardson's five criteria for evaluating “creative analytic practices” as a framework to assess the strengths and limitations of my latest research-informed play Harriet's House. In doing so, I hope to illustrate how the framework might be used by other playwrights and researches to assess both their own and other people's performed ethnography and research-informed theatre projects.

Approaches to Developing Research-Based Theatre

This article explores the literature to identify and describe three general approaches used in the development of research-based theatre scripts: collective, playwright-centred, and composite. Each approach is situated within both conventional and research-based theatre literature. After elucidating each approach, a representative project of each approach is explored in depth. Discussions of the projects, undertaken in 2009 at the University of British Columbia, provide insight into some of the tensions inherent in working in each approach.

Readers’ Theatre: A Communication Tool for Colorectal Cancer Screening

Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the second leading cause of cancer mortality for Alaska Native people, yet it can be almost totally prevented through colonoscopy screenings. A 25-minute Readers' Theatre script was developed with and for Alaska Native and American Indian Community Health Workers (CHWs) and the people in their communities to provide CRC screening information, model ways to talk about CRC screening, increase comfort with talking about CRC, and encourage healthy lifestyle choices. Grounded in Indigenous methodologies, this paper describes the collaborative development, implementation, and evaluation of a CRC Readers' Theatre. 94% (161/172) of participants from 11 Readers' Theatre completed a written evaluation. 90% (145) of participants reported feeling more comfortable talking about CRC and 77% (124) described healthy changes they planned to make. Readers' Theatre was associated with increased knowledge, comfort talking about CRC, and served as a catalyst for positive intent to change behavior.

Finding the Necessary Distance

Over the past two decades, methodological approaches that operate at the intersection of theater and ethnography have gained both popularity and critical attention. However, given the newness of these endeavors, certain methodological and theoretical elements of such approaches remain unexplored. This is particularly the case in fields such as health research, where people often use theater as a tool of knowledge translation. This article aims to broaden and enrich the growing canon of work in this area in two directions. First, it provides an empirical example of a theatrical script that emerged from a health research project informed both by ethnographic and creative, performance-based practices. In this project the authors used fictionalized accounts of history to help audiences engage with contemporary cultural/ethical issues regarding pandemic planning and response. Second, the authors theorize that this project can be usefully understood as having incorporated a hermeneutic approach to inquiry, and we introduce the notion of mimetic distance as a means of making sense of this project’s success. This article asserts that these theoretical contentions provide further interpretive and creative scope for ethnographic research–based theater and, thus, can usefully expand this growing field.

ARTISTIC SCRIPTS, NARRATIVES, AND THE THEATRE: IDENTITY CONSTRUCTION PROCESSES IN THE MEXICAN-AMERICAN CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT

Analysts in the subfield of social movements recognize the importance of culture, and by extension, artistic mediums to facilitating solidarity between members of a community that in turn spurs them to social or political action. This study uses both primary and secondary sources to examine theatrical works linked to the Chicano movement. In particular, we are interested in the ways dimensions of collective identity such as negotiation, boundaries, and consciousness surface in narratives or texts. Theatrical scripts, we argue, give clear indications of group mobilization efforts. Through a textual analysis of plays, we also observe that Chicano theater draws on group history, language, and folklore as it defines and reinforces identity. Analyzing works of theater from the 1960s Chicano movement, along with contemporary pieces, provides a look into the ways that collective identity is used in different time periods, in comparable and contrasting ways, and shows both the constancy and trajectory of the movement.