Theatrical Event Research Articles

Voicing TYA festival’s audiences: reception of the Haifa International Children’s Theatre Festival

ABSTRACT The Haifa International Children's Theatre Festival is an annual family theatre festival held in Haifa. This qualitative reception study focuses on young audiences and the adults accompanying them. Considering the festival as a comprehensive theatrical event, this study explores how it is perceived by Israeli children and parents. Drawing on the interviews, our analysis explores the reception process, involving a sequence of actions undertaken by parents and children that result in a distinctive family experience. These actions include: choosing plays to attend; mediating theatrical knowledge; participating in performances; celebrating the festival as a theatrical event, and reviewing performances they attended.

Evolution of Theatrical Culture of Ukraine in the context of National Identity

The purpose of the article is to analyse the main aspects in the evolution of theatrical culture in Ukraine in the context of the formation and preservation of national identity. The research methodology is based on a combination of different approaches, including historical, sociocultural and artistic analysis of theatrical events and their interaction with political, sociocultural and economic factors. The historical approach enabled the author to trace the main stages of the development of theatrical culture in Ukraine, in particular the influence of political and social conditions on the formation of the national theatre. The artistic analysis enabled focusing on the aesthetic aspects of theatrical creativity, and the socio-cultural approach – to investigate the relationship between the theatre and society. Scientific novelty. The study is groundbreaking in its analysis of the impact of contemporary events, such as Euromaidan 2014 and the full-scale invasion of 2022, on Ukrainian theatre culture, as well as exploring the process of de-Russification in theatre. In addition, the article emphasises the role of individual artists and the development of modern drama, which underlines the theme of war and national identity. Conclusions. The process of formation of national identity in Ukraine in the context of historical events and cultural transformations was highlighted. Despite the various prohibitions of the desire to destroy national identity, the activities of outstanding national figures, in particular theatre figures, have always popularised Ukrainian culture. A promising direction in the development of theatre culture is to take into account all mental and ideological differences within the framework of Ukrainian values, since every Ukrainian is currently rethinking the question of their identity. The evolution of Ukrainian theatrical culture is an integral part of the process of formation and preservation of national identity. The theatre itself is an important tool of socio-cultural development, which helps Ukrainian society to realise its uniqueness and preserve its cultural heritage.

TBD

TBD is a multidisciplinary theatre event presented in Vancouver, BC, in 2015 and 2016. The project uses the Tibetan Book of the Dead as a structural anchor and guide to the audience’s sensual and emotional experience, exploring notions of death and dying, living in the present moment, avoiding distraction, and non-attachment. The first iteration involved 50 audience members, the following year that number was expanded to 100. TBD spans twenty-one days, with each audience member receiving a different kind of engagement each day, primarily in the form of audio or video podcasts or text messages delivered to their smartphones. Their phones also carried a family-location app that allowed Radix performers to locate them in public. Other events included four site-specific performances on specific days, home visits, items dropped at their doorstep, or posters placed in their neighbourhood. After an introductory day at the local cemetery’s communal hall, the audience’s experience begins with a podcast asking them to imagine that they have died and that Radix performers will be acting like their guides through the afterlife to their possible rebirth. In this sense the title offers a double meaning, the acronym suggesting both “To Be Determined” and the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Many audience members expressed profound experiences over the course of the event, with equal enthusiasm shared by the performers who each had compelling stories about their interactions. The Radix Collective refers to TBD as “internal theatre” because participants framed their experiences through the unique lens of their own personal lives, without divulging what they were going through. The impact of the production varied for each audience member, depending on their point of view and willingness to engage with the work.

Perioada nord-americană

The purpose of this article is to bring to the forefront the theatrical activity carried out for eight years by Theodor-Cristian Popescu in the North American cultural landscape. Following the path of the Romanian theatre director, the article presents the performances he directed during his master’s degree at the University of Montana and also the theatrical events he staged in Montréal and Toronto, once he moved to Canada. Drawing on a variety of sources (press articles – reviews, interviews, press releases –, as well as program booklets, grant applications or evaluations of his teaching activity), the article aims to provide the Romanian public with a detailed presentation of Theodor-Cristian Popescu’s theatrical activity abroad (theatrical animator, director, teacher).

Applied Theatre: Research-Based Theatre, or Theatre-Based Research? Exploring the Possibilities of Finding Social, Spatial, and Cognitive Justice in Informal Housing Settlements in India, or Tales from the Banyan Tree

This article draws on a twenty-year relationship of short-term interventions with Dalit communities living in informal settlements, sub-cities and urban villages in Mumbai, that have sought to create public theatre events based on research by and with communities that celebrate, problematise and interrogate sustainable urban living. In looking back over the developments and changes to our working methods in Mumbai, I explore how the projects priorities the roles of the community as both researchers and artists. I consider where a specific applied theatre project, which focuses on site specific storytelling with Dalit communities in Worli Koliwada and Dharavi, functions on a continuum of interactive, participatory, and emancipatory practice, research and performance. Applied Theatre practices should not and cannot remain static, they need to be constantly reformed and as practitioners and researchers we need to constantly re-examine the ways in which we work. This chapter poses two central questions: firstly, can this long-term partnership between practitioners, researchers and artists from the UK and India working with community members genuinely be a space for co-creating knowledge and theatre? And secondly, if so, is this Theatre-based Research or Research Based Theatre? I interrogate Applied Theatre’s potential to create a space of cognitive justice, which must be the next step for applied theatre, along-side its more widely accepted aims of searching for social and spatial justice and which places the community as both artists and researchers. The Dalit social reality is one of oppression, based on three axes: social, economic and gender. The chapter explores how working as co-researchers and the public performance of their stories has been a form of ‘active citizenship’ for these participants and is a key part of their strategy in their demand for policy changes. In looking forward I ask how working in international partnerships with community members can promote cognitive justice and go beyond a merely participatory practice. I consider why it is vital for the field that applied theatre practice includes partners from both the global south and north working together to co-create knowledge, new methods of practice to ensure an applied theatre knowledge democracy. In doing so I will discuss if and how this work might be considered to be Theatre-based Research.

Театральна діяльність на Буковині в умовах Другої світової війни (1941-1944 рр.)

The purpose of the study is to analyze the conditions of theater activities in Bukovyna during the German-Soviet war, based on the available sources and existing developments of theater history researchers. The methodology of the study is based on the principles of historicism, objectivity, system and the use of methods of analysis and synthesis, problem-chronological, biographical, historical-genetic ones. The scientific novelty lies in the fact that for the first time in Ukrainian historiography, the state of theatre activities during World War II, specifically the period of the German-Soviet campaign in 1941-1944, of the Romanian theater in Bukovyna was comprehensively analyzed. Conclusions. Thus, during the German-Soviet war, the theatrical activities remained an important component of the cultural space of Chernivtsi, a means of citizens' education. Despite the restoration of the National Theater, theater troupes from various cities in Romania, mainly Bucharest and Iași, presented their activities in the city and the region. The repertoire of the theaters included both world classics and Romanian drama, as well as plays on historical and patriotic topics. The theater faced the task of eliminating the 1940-1941 gap in cultural ties. Sometimes theatrical events carried some propaganda that was considered acceptable in wartime conditions. There was a practice of theatre tours in the cities of Bukovyna and Northern Bessarabia, which took place in 1942-1943. During the war, the fates of Romanian actors and actors of the Chernivtsi Ukrainian Regional Theater were different. Some actors were arrested by the Soviet authorities at the beginning of the German-Soviet war and in its final period.

Ruralidades, património cultural, associativismo e turismo nos tempos das humanidades digitais

The chronicle "Ruralities, Cultural Heritage, Associativism and Tourism in the Times of Digital Humanities" addresses the pertinence of generalised access to historical legacy, highlighting the importance of cultural heritage, associativism and tourism in rural contexts in the digital age. The text questions who is interested in heritage, such as medieval chapels or castles, and argues that although history offers deep understanding of the past, its appreciation is not always understood by today's society. Exploring the impact of digitalisation, virtual reality and immersive experiences, we highlight a project in Sabrosa, Portugal, which uses new technologies to promote the Medieval Necropolis of Touças. This project includes theatrical events, digitisation of archaeological artefacts and the creation of virtual guides, with the aim of involving local communities and visitors. In addition, the chronicle describes the Learning Villages International Network (LVIN #C) initiative, funded by the European Commission, which seeks to promote education for culture, heritage and tourism in rural areas. The text highlights the interaction between digital humanities, sustainability, experiential tourism and cross-border cooperation, emphasising the importance of educational and cultural initiatives for rural communities.

LA BELLE DANSE ON THE HABSBURG COURT STAGE AT THE END OF THE XVII — FIRST THIRD OF THE XVIII CENTURIES

Since its foundation in the first half of the 16th century, the Austrian Habsburg court has focused its cultural attention on Italy. This was due to many factors, among which in the XVI century one can name the undoubted cultural superiority of Italy among other European countries, in the first half of the XVII century — the marriages of the Habsburg emperors with the Mantuan princesses, in the second half of the same century — the competing policy of the Holy Roman Empire towards France; the latter factor also extended to the beginning of the XVIII century. As with other European courts, the dance culture of the Habsburgs began with court ballets, which gradually transformed into stage dance, and the dance turned into a professional one. At the same time, the center of dance culture moved from Italy to France, where already in the first half of the XVII century a set of choreographic techniques arose that raised dance art to a new level. Ballet was a significant interest of the French monarch Louis XIV (r. 1643–1715). This led to the establishment of the world’s first dance academy at the royal court, which played a crucial role in the development and spread of the French style of dance. Therefore, despite the anti-French policy of the Habsburgs, the style developed at Louis XIV’s Royal Academy of Dance and called la belle danse was practiced on the stage of the Vienna Court Theater. The article examines the background, appearance, place, role and significance of la belle danse in productions of the Habsburg court stage using specific examples of theatrical events.

Hogyan befolyásolják a politikai értékek a színház működését? : Az észtországi Tartu példája összehasonlító európai perspektívában

The paper introduces the results of an empirical research studing the functioning of theatre (the production, distribution and reception domain and their relationships) in the city of Tartu. All public theatrical events during one year were counted and categorized into types and genres. In addition, quantitative and qualitative audience and reception research was carried out. The methodology was developed by an international research group STEP (Project on European Theatre Systems) and comparative aspects of the study are also presented. Even though theatre systems have cultural roots and clearly are the outcomes of particular cultural, political and social history, it is also the priorities in theatre politics and the structure of the theatre system that have a direct influence on the functioning of theatre.

Acting on Emotions: Designing with the relational dramas in welfare systems

As welfare systems worldwide face increasing pressures, there is a growing need for actionable approaches to transform them into more adaptable and sustainable forms. Service design is suggested to support such transformations. While early service design focussed on experiences, it has recently adopted systemic perspectives to address the complex interrelations among actors in service systems. However, this shift has neglected how these relations are experienced emotionally by the actors involved. Since emotions are integral to how actors understand, navigate and form agency, overlooking them can hinder service design’s ability to support welfare systems transform into more adaptable forms. This research aimed to integrate experiential and systemic perspectives in service design to support actors in transforming complex welfare systems. To explore this, a transdisciplinary research-by-design study was conducted. Drawing on recent service design research and relational sociology, the study was informed by the concept of emotional reflexivity and a service ecosystem design framework. Situated within the Norwegian child welfare system, this research involved over 100 system actors. Systems oriented design and theatre practices were used to facilitate emotional reflexivity among system actors about the complex, and sometimes difficult, relational dynamics they were embedded within. The four-month collaboration culminated in an interactive theatre event involving 800 participants, followed by facilitated conversations among system actors. By focussing on diverse emotional experiences within the child welfare system, three pairs of propositions for incorporating emotions into systemic approaches to service design were developed: 1) adopting a systemic view of emotions, 2) mirroring emotions to support reflexivity, and 3) facilitating conversations about emotional tensions. We discuss the implications of these propositions for practice and theory and how they can advance systemic approaches to service design within complex welfare systems.

Magic of Presence

Every habitual visitor remembers some magic moments of theatrical events: a striking feeling of immediate presence. What are these experiences of presence about? What triggers them, under which circumstances do they take place? This text is an attempt to point out some decisive parameters that facilitate strong experiences of performative situations. On the basis of a new rhombic model, I will show how these parameters coordinate the senses of the beholder and create magic moments of presence. Then, presence remains as future memories of the past.

When the Utopian Performative Encounters Beauty

I remember the first time I came across the utopian performative: the butterflies in my stomach, the overwhelming feeling of hope and happiness it produced. Jill Dolan [2005] points to those moments during performances when the audience comes together and feels hopeful; moments that constitute inspiration for change: for the performer, the spectator, and maybe even the world – and which are often (understandably) politically or socially charged.But my experiences were different: my feeling of hope was not emerging after watching a political vision of the future, but during and after my encounters with beauty. I began to wonder: can a profound sense of beauty that brings the feeling of hope and love, also have the potential to change the world?In this article, I explore the aesthetics of the theatrical event and its effectiveness in bringing out utopian performatives. Theoretically, I draw on Erika Fischer-Lichte’s aesthetics of the performative to show how the language of performance analysis can access a theatrical (aesthetic) experience and on the theory of affect in performance to understand my experience; also, I supplement Dolan’s theory with Dorthe Jørgensen’s experience of beauty to extend her thinking into non-political experiences and grasping them more fully.As an example, I discuss Oratorium Dance Project (Lodz 2011).

The 2023 Theatre Olympics in Budapest

The account here is in the spirit of the short pieces that periodically used to appear under the rubric ‘Reports and Announcements’ at the back of New Theatre Quarterly. Its purpose is to invite the journal’s readers from all over the world – and they are truly from across our whole planet – to be aware of the very existence of a major theatre event of socio-historical and artistic significance to our shared field of interest; and to give them some insight into the evolution of this event in its interface with political and social change, which, in the current times, have become increasingly brutal. The theatre field is vast, as vast and varied as the approaches and perspectives within it, the positions long held, shifting, or newly taken, and the stakes at play, differently for different people in different political, social, and cultural contexts. The Theatre Olympics, established in 1995, seek to pay tribute to, and activate interaction between, the multifarious humanity that makes theatre and is embodied in it.

The Audio Describer As Cast Member

NOTE: This abstract is based on a professional audio description experiment for two productions at Arena Stage in Washington, DC, USA. It does not follow a traditional research model but is rather a report of practical work in the field of live audio description for theatre. Live audio description can be made cost-effectively available at each performance of a performing arts production. This chapter will demonstrate how it is possible to create accessibility for blind theater-goers on a par with sighted audience members. Similarly, multiple language and sign interpretation can be made available at all performances of an event. In 1981, a formal audio description service—the world’s first—was begun under the leadership of a blind woman at The Metropolitan Washington Ear, a radio-reading service based in Washington, DC. Radio reading services still exist throughout the United States with the participation of volunteer readers; I began working as a volunteer reader at The Ear in 1972 and was proud to be a founding member of its audio description service. Radio reading services are heavily dependent on volunteers and The Ear’s audio description service was also structured around voluntary contributions of time and effort. Cognizant of the limits on the times of people who often maintain full-time employment elsewhere, audio description was conceived as a service that would be offered at only two performances of a theatrical run and preparation for the audio described performances was based on the observation of only two or three performances early in the run. It was understood that optimally audio description would be prepared with more in-depth observation of the theatrical event, even during rehearsals, and that audio described should be offered at every performance in the run of a show. But the limitation of the volunteer structure prohibited that arrangement. The proliferation of audio description for live theatrical events in the United States is based on this volunteer, limited preview/two-described-performances model. With support from the D.C. Aid Association for the Blind, the Audio Description Project of the American Council of the Blind proposed a more expansive audio description arrangement for two productions again at Arena Stage. We collaborated with Arena on the experiment: an audio describer attended rehearsals for each production, met with the stage director, actors, the designers (scenic, costumes, lighting, sound) and developed an audio description script throughout the three-week rehearsal period. The script was then available for that same describer to voice at every performance beginning with opening night and with, of course, an eye on stage action as minor changes in action could occur from performance to performance. The describer, essentially, was a “cast member”, attending every rehearsal and performance. The arrangement had two benefits over the traditional model of audio description development for live performance: time was available to carefully observe the theatrical process and construct descriptive language that was more thorough and considered; and people desiring the service could attend any performance with no advance notice and be assured of access to the visual aspects of the production. Other innovations included Braille and large-print programs, models of the set and props in the lobby, and a tactile “scrapbook” of costume pieces. It was gratifying to note that attendance for the productions by people using audio description tripled over levels experienced at Arena using the traditional volunteer model.

Enacted Offstage Images, Reported Onstage Action, and Parallel Fictional Worlds in Dead Centre’s Chekhov’s First Play (2015) and Tim Crouch and Rachana Jadhav’s Total Immediate Collective Imminent Terrestrial Salvation (2019)

This essay addresses how the collision of image, text, and speech in contemporary scripted performances discloses something significant about both being in and thinking about the theatre. It examines cases wherein recent examples of theatre practice disrupt long-standing expectations about the form and function of reported offstage action. While Tim Crouch and Rachana Jadhav’s Total Immediate Collective Imminent Terrestrial Salvation (2019) literalises the relationship between text and performance by putting the play script in the hands of the audience and employing illustrations as a means of reporting that inverts established ekphrastic modes, Dead Centre’s Chekhov’s First Play (2015) literalises offstage presence through the audio narration of a figure named as ‘The Director’. These acts of staging literally key conceptual and practical challenges of theatrical representation work in both cases to reveal instances of mimetic disjuncture. Audiences are not sure which version of each performance to invest in: the staged action or illustrated text of Terrestrial Salvation and the onstage adaptation or The Director’s critical reporting in Chekhov’s First Play. By making available different versions of the same theatrical event, each production connects resonantly to a cultural moment wherein we are often exposed to alternative narratives but may not always recognise or acknowledge these alternate perspectives. Reviewed together, these two productions present a wide-ranging sensorial problematising of theatrical representation. They construct points of meaningful divergence through unscripted performances and the disaggregation of actor and character. Methodologically, this essay works to address these questions of representational multiplicity through a form of discursive practice that reports between the two case study examples. This approach serves to reveal the discourse of theatre and performance studies as frequently grounded in ekphrastic reportings that recount theatrical images no longer available to view. The argument marks out first how reported action and other forms of ekphrastic representation have historically been about what cannot be staged in order to propose that what comes to be unrepresentable in these examples – even as it is the means of representation – is theatrical performance itself. The essay then traces how these metatheatrical questions related to the representational affordance of these performances – in this case to do with impossibility of representing the theatre itself – ripple into wider consequences that can have substantial implications related to race, freedom, and collective endeavour.

Conjuring Up a King

Conjuring Up a King

Theatrical Architecture in the Andrzej Pronaszko’s Conception of Stage Space.

The work of Polish stage designer Andrzej Pronaszko embodied in a particular manner a certain turn to a new approach to the organization of stage space, which appeared to be a characteristic process for the Polish and European theatre of the first half of XX century. Pronaszko cooperated intensively with professional architects, which had a considerable effect upon his conception of stage space. The article reviews projects of the artist, which proved to be a realization of his conception of stage space referred to the „theatre of the future”: the stage design for the „Golem” play (1928), set up on the circus arena and the theatrical architectural projects of Simultaneous theatre (1928-1929) and the Mobile theatre (1934). Each of those three was created in cooperation with an architect (with Szymon Syrkus in the first two cases and with Stefan Bryła in the third one). In Polish theatre between two World Wars, scenography came out as a special domain of an avant-garde activism manifesting an uprise of the „theatre of the future”, which offered prospects of some extraordinary perceptional experience. The reviewed projects presuppose overrunning the boundaries of conventional theatre and using innovative engineering solutions in stage organization, lightning and sound engineering. They became an ambitious attempt to change drastically the mode of theatrical event at the level of the space architectonics and extend thereby theatre’s capabilities in dealing with dynamics of spectacle. The artist created new conditions for affecting the spectator’s comprehension of the stage performance.

A Theatre of Networks: Reconceptualizing Theatre Criticism and Theatre as an Event

Abstract: Historically, scholarship on theater criticism has examined the boundaries of the genre and the role of the critic, while more recent works explore the changes in critical practices. This essay, however, offers a new model for understanding theater criticism, redefining reviews as “critical paratexts” (Genette) that co-construct the “theater event” in the public sphere. Taking as its case study Can Dündar’s #WeAreArrested , this paper contextualizes reviews to reveal various heavily institutionalized “critic functions” (Foucault) available for British reviewers. Ultimately, it suggests a new framework for studying theater as a cultural and political construction with more dimensions than the production/performance alone.

“Exotic Sensation” or “Völkisch Art”? Press Reviews of the Indisches Ballett Menaka (Menaka Indian Ballet) on Tour Through Germany, 1936–1938

The tour of the Indian Ballet Menaka through hundreds of German cities between 1936 and 1938 left a large footprint in the form of theatre reviews. This article focuses on the role of these performances in actualizing a specific knowledge about India that was, firstly, based on the assumption of the consanguinity of Indo-German peoples and, secondly, on a vision of history as a realization of the utopian ideal of cultural regeneration through art. This article thus hopes to articulate the ways in which the unique experience of this Indian theatre event served as an instrument for consolidating a völkisch/racialized perception of art in general, and of music in particular.

THE GENERATOR:: for Any Numberof Staged Readings

In the paper, the authors discuss the concept of staged readings, arguing that they are the predominant performance format for presentations of young playwriting. However, such presentations should not be understood as an intermediate stage between reading and performing but as a fully-fledged and independent artistic genre. Many staged readings thus lose the function of “first information” about the text and its author. Instead, they have become a proper way of performing a text, thus opening up a wider area for theatrical experimentation. Using concrete examples, the authors will reflect on practices characterised by the text becoming the main or even the only thing necessary for a theatrical event and reading (in all its possible ways and forms) becoming the key theatrical means.