Representation Of Experience Research Articles

Ján Jamnický’s Ten Days with Soviet Theatre

Abstract Art was perceived in the Soviet Union as a part of ideology and propaganda aimed not only at the domestic environment but also at foreign countries. State cultural policy was presented through a series of magnificent meetings and shows, to which also participants from abroad were invited. In the 1930s Moscow was the venue of several theatre festivals, which were attended by Czechoslovak theatre makers. In 1936 it was also attended by Ján Jamnický, the novice theatre director of the Slovak National Theatre in Bratislava. The Slovak theatre maker saw a lot of inspiring productions and experienced the initial period of a campaign aimed at suppressing the freedom of artistic expression. He became a witness to the twilight of Russian theatre avant-garde. The present paper describes the theatre experiences of Ján Jamnický in the Soviet Union and their impact on his life, production and style of direction. It points to a series of overlooked facts which are necessary for a complete understanding of the historical and artistic context of Soviet theatre and Jamnický’s journey.

“Put it Right”: Matilda as Author in Matilda the Musical

The astronomical success of Matilda the Musical can be attributed to a variety of factors, including the popularity of Roald Dahl himself. Yet, anyone who knows the novel cannot help but notice that this award-winning musical has made significant changes to the original plot. While revisions are to be expected when novels are adapted for stage or screen, the modifications made by playwright Dennis Kelly and lyricist Tim Minchin are not just theatrically expedient choices, but also intelligent expressions of a metatextual discourse on moral values and literacy that runs through Dahl’s oeuvre. By rearranging the chronology of events and placing Matilda’s active story-telling at the heart of the theatrical experience, Kelly and Minchin have paid structural homage to earlier Dahl novels in which the hero is ultimately revealed to be the author (James and the Giant Peach, The BFG and The Witches). As in these novels, first-person narration is used in the musical to emphasize Matilda’s moral imperative to act, sometimes questionably, within the context of her specific conflict. Moreover, the musical captures the metatextual essence of the character-as-author device, which encourages the reader and audience to associate literacy with moral superiority and which places authorship at the pinnacle of achievement.

Teatrietenduste sünkroontõlkest eesti keelest vene keelde aastatel 1944–1991 / Simultaneous interpreting of theatre performances from Estonian into Russian from 1944 to 1991

Suuline teatritõlge on jäänud marginaalse tõlkeliigina uurijate tähelepanu alt välja nii Eestis kui ka mujal. aastatel 1944–1991 on Eestis regulaarselt tõlgitud teatrietendusi eesti keelest vene keelde Tallinna Riiklikus Akadeemilises Draamateatris (Eesti Draamateatris), teater Vanemuises ja Lydia Koidula nimelises Pärnu Draamateatris (Endla Teatris). Kahes teatris on olnud tööl koosseisulised tõlgid, Pärnus vabakutseline tõlk. Artiklis analüüsitakse intervjuusid tõlkidega ning üldistatakse suuliseks esitamiseks tõlgitud kirjaliku teksti ettekandmise eripärasusi. Osutatakse, et teatritõlge ei ole valmis teksti ette- ega pealelugemine, vaid lõplik tõlge sünnib reaalajas, etenduse jooksul. In Estonia the simultaneous interpretation of performances from Estonian into Russian has a long tradition dating back more than half a century; it has not, however, drawn the attention of researchers, theatre critics and reviewers. International academic research mostly focuses on the sign language interpretation of theatre performances for the deaf community. The author’s approach to theatre interpreting is therefore based on this, except that the interpreter is making the performance accessible not to the hearing-impaired but to audience members who do not master the original language of the performance. In the context of this article, therefore, “theatre interpreter” refers to a simultaneous interpreter who interprets theatre performances. There are certain similarities between the preparatory work of simultaneous and sign language theatre interpreters (and, for that matter, with that of audio describers): they work with the written text and the spoken word as well as on their comprehension and awareness of stage improvisation by the actors, combining both preparation and spontaneity.When researching interpreting in Estonia from 1944 to 1991, the author established that this subtype of institutional interpretation took place in at least seven theatres. Performances were regularly interpreted from Estonian into Russian at three theatres: the Tallinn Drama Theatre, the Theatre Vanemuine in Tartu and the Pärnu Drama Theatre. At the Russian Drama Theatre, a few performances were also interpreted from Russian into Estonian. The theatres in Tallinn and Tartu employed staff interpreters, while the interpreter in Pärnu was a freelancer. In addition to these three interpreters another three also interpreted theatre performances once or twice. Archival research yielded factual evidence about the introduction of theatre interpreting in Estonia; this started in Tartu and Tallinn in 1952, and in Pärnu in 1967, where it was used during the summer season. Valeria Barsova, the staff interpreter at Vanemuine until 1995, was also temporarily tasked with interpreting operas in 1953; once she also interpreted a ballet at an open-air performance reading out the synopsis. Barsova had “a great voice for the microphone, a soft low alto, neither disturbingly sharp nor interfering, transmitting the meaning of the words expressed by the actors on the stage very clearly but almost as if unconsciously” (Süvalep 1978). Maia Soorm, a staff interpreter at the Estonian Drama Theatre in Tallinn for thirty-seven years, was awarded the Aleksander Kurtna Prize for her long-term dedication to theatre interpreting in 2010. Similar to her colleagues in Tartu and Tallinn, the interpreter who worked at the Pärnu theatre—Malle Šalda—got the job by chance. Neither she nor any of the other interpreters had any formal interpreter training. In addition to these three main interpreters, the author’s meticulous work in the archives led her to identify another three interpreters from the 1950s and 1960s: Helene Malin, Aleksandr Aisenstadt and Armilda Berzina.Estonia’s three long-term theatre interpreters, all of whom are highly competent in their field, mastered not only fluency in the source and target languages but also the metamorphosis from a dramatic text into a stage interpretation. A major contributing factor to this was their long-term relationship with the theatre they worked at and the opportunity they had to participate in the production process. Theatre interpreting is a hybrid form in which both interpretation and translation must be considered (Turner, Pollitt 2002: 41). Yvonne Griesel (2009: 125) recommends treating translators and interpreters as partners and language experts for the stage.In 1983, opera surtitles were introduced in the Canadian Opera Company. Since then, the use of surtitles has become widespread in opera houses all over the world. In operas, there is less improvisation than in drama productions. A lag between surtitles and the spoken word could have a detrimental effect on the entire production. Technical problems with surtitles can also disturb the audience members who do not understand the original. Despite such potential issues, over the last ten years surtitles have also begun to be used in many drama theatres. This is a particular way to solve linguistic issues at drama festivals. Static surtitles, however, do not take into account improvisation or contribute to the real-life theatre experience. The final version of theatre interpreting, on the other hand, is “performed live in real time” (Napier 2011: 373). Indeed, a good theatre interpreter may make the audience forget their headsets and the linguistic barrier.

Back to the Human in John Logan’s “Red”

Abstract Laureate play “Red,” by John Logan, is a dramatic representation of biographical facts about and intellectual positions of the Abstract Expressionist painter Mark Rothko (1903–1970). With the tool of semiotic methodology named “Dramatology” it is possible to appreciate both text and staging – which go beyond a theatrical experience. “Red” leads the reader/spectator to question current human pragmatism and environmental insensitivity. Its main character wants to change the usual perspective of seeing and understanding pictures in order to achieve a more emotional and enriching art experience. The staging embraces certain tasks such as the construction of a large-format frame and the application of red paint on a canvas to stimulate the audience’s senses, breaking theatrical illusion. Ecocriticism allows us to describe the dramatic strategies of “Red” that raise audience awareness.

No Man's Land

Harold Pinter's stoic 1975 play No Man's Land, starring Sir Patrick Stewart and Sir Ian McKellan, was staged at London's Wyndham's Theatre between September 20 and December 17, 2016, after a short tour of the UK. The production was a revival of its Broadway run in 2013 and 2014, where it played in repertory with Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, with the two knights also in the roles of Vladimir and Estragon, and both plays directed by Sean Mathias. Toward the end of its run, the performance of December 15 was broadcast live into cinemas in the United Kingdom and Europe, and live or soon after in the United States and other territories, as part of the National Theatre Live project. NT Live began broadcasting live theater in 2009 and to date has offered local access to over forty London stage productions to over 2,000 venues around the world. While these shows cannot offer the direct intimacy and collective experience that a live performance affords, they do capture aspects of the performances, often through the availability of close-ups, that theatrical experience cannot. Stewart's and McKellen's rich and nuanced performances of Hirst and Spooner, alongside those of Owen Teale and Damien Molony as Briggs and Foster, proved worthy of this level of scrutiny, and certainly merited the worldwide exposure.Set in an Endgame-like, rotund, paneled room, with a projected skyscape of a canopy of leaves overhead, the production visually is austere and claustrophobic. The décor omits the bookcases that Pinter designates for the sparse set, focusing instead on the centrality of alcohol in the bar that figures center-stage. Properties and costume establish a respect of period, with 1970s suits, Cuban heels, CND badge, cucumber sandwiches, and best china. As such, the production is openly naturalistic, and the acting style hits this straight off the bat. In their first scene, Stewart projects a clearly disoriented Hirst, manifesting some trembling, insecure signs of dementia (Oliver Sacks had been consulted by the production). He sits and tolerates the garrulous Spooner, presented by McKellen with relish as he owns the stage with his banter. The performance generates and sustains a level of hilarity as the two men engage, quickly winning over the live and cinema audiences, though the comedy is masterfully (at first) held in restrained and measured check. Where most productions of this play might promote an audience's investment swiftly in suspecting and wishing to learn more of Spooner's motivations, Stewart's troubled Hirst, bemused and vulnerable to exploitation, draws in our concern equally.The naturalism eventually gives way occasionally to other modes, most notably in the second act where a fortified Hirst reappears and bamboozles Spooner with his “memories” of him as Charles Wetherby. Something of the Didi and Gogo music hall revue appears in this exchange, as the two attempt to out-do one another, and the camera close-ups make this all the more evident. A quick visual joke is even inserted, with McKellan undoing his jacket and letting his paunch out, only to pull his belly back in when Stewart delivers the line about Spooner/Wetherby being of athletic stature. Other lazzi, such as Spooner's foolery over offering coffee and making a coin disappear, bring in touches of clowning levity that perhaps stand out more on screen than when appreciated at a distance from the stage. Certainly, the cinema audience might occasionally laugh where the theater audience did not, or before them, being able to see detail that was more obscure in the theater (including Stewart's brief corpse when he spills coffee on himself).Teale's Briggs, built like a nightclub gangland bouncer, and Molony's Foster, a lithe, sanguine manservant, are performed with considerable range and subtlety in this production, which affords them more vulnerability than these characters usually project. Perhaps a product of an overtly naturalistic approach to character motivation and backstory, Briggs's shift from self-confident threat in act 1 to a more contained and servile presence in act 2 is particularly notable.The NT Live showing offered audiences “added value” in the form of an after-show discussion with cast and director, chaired by Samira Ahmed. Interestingly, in this discussion it transpired that this production manifested something of a genetic connection to the original 1975 debut, when Hirst and Spooner were created by Sir Ralph Richardson and Sir John Gielgud. A nineteen-year-old Mathias had been present at the first night, and a devoted Stewart had gone to see the play three times in one week. The latter admitted to making use of two instances from that production, including Richardson's deliberately firm clink of bottle against glass with each refill. Nonetheless, the vision of Pinter's play in this production was original, distinct, witty, tense, and, in the final moments when Teale and Molony deliberately retreat from the fading pool of light around Stewart and McKellen, appropriately sour.

Transmission of Araquio Music, Songs, and Movement Conventions: Learning, Experience, and Meaning in Devotional Theatre

Araquio, a verse play on the search of the holy cross, is an indigenous folk theatre in the town of Peñaranda, province of Nueva Ecija, Philippines that has survived for over a hundred years. This ethnographic-phenomenological study explores the holistic nature of the transmission and learning processes of araquio music and songs as a theatre-ritual. Its transmission as a social phenomenon is an avenue for music learning that may in fact overshadow its being a diminishing tradition. Using the framework of three modes of enculturation (Merriam, 1964) and interpretation of culture (Geertz, 1973), I investigate the music transmission and learning processes and sought to reveal how these processes were meaningful to the practitioners. Participants in this inquiry involve 21 adult practitioners, namely: 4 maestros (teachers of araquio), 3 female and 5 male personajes (characters of the verse play), and 9 musikeros (community musicians). An ethnographic method is employed using participant-observation and informal semi-structured interview script. Guiding questions have centered on how transmission and learning strategies, and meaning define these experiences. As a living oral tradition, intergenerational learning is found to be the product of transmission by enculturation occurring in the araquio and happens within genealogical generation. The practitioners, through the unspoken meaning of the tradition, have certain unspoken factors: unity of purpose, ancestral adhesion, unification of tribal strength, and shared experiences.

You Say You Want a Revolution? Records and Rebels 1966–1970: Victoria and Albert Museum, LondonSeptember 10, 2016–February 26, 2017CatalogueYou Say You Want a Revolution? Records and Rebels 1966–1970Edited by Victoria Broakes and Geoffrey MarshLondon: V&A Publishing, 2016.320 pp.; 200 color ills.Cloth $60.00ISBN 9781851778911

You Say You Want a Revolution? Records and Rebels 1966–1970: Victoria and Albert Museum, LondonSeptember 10, 2016–February 26, 2017Catalogue<i>You Say You Want a Revolution? Records and Rebels 1966–1970</i>Edited by Victoria Broakes and Geoffrey MarshLondon: V&amp;A Publishing, 2016.320 pp.; 200 color ills.Cloth $60.00ISBN 9781851778911

VRシアターにおけるパーソナルな鑑賞体験を支援する多人数ポインティング( 教育・訓練・支援)

VRシアターにおけるパーソナルな鑑賞体験を支援する多人数ポインティング( 教育・訓練・支援)

Mobile People, Weapons, and Data Streams; Mobile Audiences and Theatre Spaces: Rimini Protokoll’s Situation Rooms as a Globalised Theatre Experience

AbstractThis article explores Rimini Protokoll’s 2013 performance pieceTherefore, this article investigates the political and social thrust of

Drama for People ‘in the know’: Television World Theatre (BBC 1957–1959) and Festival (BBC 1963–1964)

This article provides a survey of the pioneering BBC series of theatrical adaptations Television World Theatre (1957–1959), examining BBC production documentation and audience research to identify the institutional discourses that surrounded the making and transmission of these programmes. Recurrent arguments throughout the production of the series form a framework of institutional expectations within which classic theatrical plays were commissioned, made and presented for BBC Television. Having identified these questions (relating to audience address, populism, and the viability of creating a unified ‘house style’ across the diverse plays included in an anthology series), the article assesses the contemporary press discourse surrounding Television World Theatre before concluding with a consideration of how the experience of Television World Theatre affected expectations the next time that the BBC attempted a similar project in Festival (1963–1964).

Deconstructing naturalization ceremonies as public spectacles of citizenship

ABSTRACTNaturalizations, unlike inaugurations and national party conventions, are one of the few daily repeated political theatre experiences, replete with monologs, dialogues, costumes, props, actors, stage managers, plural audiences, and staged practices. They serve as a public ritual to render foreigners into members. In so doing, they generate a citizen identity, reinforce the power of the state and confirm a relationship between new citizens, current citizens, and the state. In this article, through an interpretive process including participant-observation and grounded theory approaches, I question the presence, interaction, and roles of the multiple publics (immigrants, observers, civil servants, judges and non-governmental groups) in a naturalization ceremony. I present field notes and reflections from a ‘typical’ US naturalization ceremony. I deconstruct the choreography and structure of the public ritual to show what the public performance of naturalization tells us about what it means to be an American citizen. I explore what messages the state is trying to convey to naturalizing immigrants (and others) through the ritual of the naturalization ceremony. The locus of inquiry is New York City where 70,000 of the 680,000 naturalizations take place every year.

Musicality of Language and “Corporeal Writing” in La Tragédie de Salomé (1907)

ABSTRACTThis article explores the seemingly paradoxical role of dance when the aesthetics of a literary movement such as Symbolism aspires to a wordless genre—a paradox articulated by Stéphane Mallarmé in his famous coinage “corporeal writing.” I propose a reevaluation of Symbolist thought on the musicality of language as a possible means of reconciling the disparity between pure words and pure movement. A Symbolist conception of the arts as analogous to one another allowed for poetic writing, through the intervening medium of sound, to approach dance through an integration of meaning and movement. Using the ballet-pantomime La Tragédie de Salomé (1907) as a case study, I argue that Florent Schmitt's score transfers the essence of language into music that, when accompanied by the synesthetic performance of Loïe Fuller, evoked the multisensory theatrical experience to which Symbolist dramaturgy aspired.

Tragedy and Dramatic Theatre by Hans-Thies Lehmann

Reviewed by: Tragedy and Dramatic Theatre by Hans-Thies Lehmann David Krasner TRAGEDY AND DRAMATIC THEATRE. By Hans-Thies Lehmann. Translated by Erik Butler. Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2016; pp. 466. Few theories pose as great a challenge to define as those of tragedy. From ancient Greece through the Renaissance and into the modern age, the idea of what constitutes tragedy has been examined and reworked by philosophers and theorists, with shifting emphases. Hans-Thies Lehmann's dense, yet important book takes on the enormous task of defining tragedy historically and onstage, as he works to "identify the continuity of a tragic motif that admittedly does not proceed smoothly" (7; emphasis in original). Lehmann begins his examination with Aristotle amid the Attic "palaia diaphora" (24)—the ancient quarrel between philosophy and theatre. Next, he examines Hegel's influential, though static, theory of tragic conflict, declaring it concrete but bookish; whereas Nietzsche, Lehmann argues, situates tragedy theatrically—in gesture, music, and the theatrical event. Examining tragic concepts like rupture, suspense, overstepping, immoderation, excess, intrigue, violence, death, Lehmann asks: Is tragedy defined by character overreach (Aristotelian hubris), compassion (Lessing), or conflict (Hegel)? Is it a mode of aesthetic experience (genre) or is it tied to speech acts (Benjamin) or tethered to text (Szondi)? Is it quotidian (Maeterlinck) or quixotic (Heidegger)? Is it post-dramatic (Artaud, Brecht) or is it a theatrical experience defined viscerally, vicariously, and representationally through madness, horror, and shame? Can we define tragedy as an ethical experience (Kant and Hegel), or as an experience of pity and terror (Aristotle)? Is its focus on hyperbole and blood-soaked revenge (Seneca) or on transgression (Bataille)? Is it best explained using the concepts of imaginary versus symbolic (Racine through a Lacanian lens)? Is it modern, as in words defining "the theatrical images of what dramatis personae endure" (219), or postmodern, as in theatrical and gestural—that is, temporal and spatial, with minimal words. And if it is a theatrical experience located in the observer-audience, must it be collectively affirmed in order to verify its corporeal authenticity? [End Page 121] Ultimately, the issue that Lehmann raises is: What defines the tragic experience in the theatre, given theatre's ephemerality? Throughout his book Lehmann argues that tragedy is not literature, but theatre: "If we consider that tragic experience is a mode of representation … and view it as specific to the theatre …, then we may grasp the actuality of tragic experience in a way that goes beyond inherited notions of tragedy as a literary form," yielding "tragedy-as-concrete-theatrical practice" (120). One example (among many) is Antigone: the tension between civic authority (Creon) and defiance (Antigone) creates a theatricalized forum for meaningful observations of public and private life. As Hegel reminds us (and as A. C. Bradley reinforced), it is not that Antigone or Creon is unimpeachably perched on the moral high ground, but rather that her/his uncompromising position provides dramatic intensity, uncertainty, and tragic consequences. Tragedy receives its special force by presenting the contrast of two worldviews engaged in irreducible conflict in the immediacy of a theatrical event—forces oscillating before the eyes and ears of an audience. Likewise Othello, in which Lehmann argues that audiences observe in real-time characters locked in internal and external struggles that reflect on the tragic nature of truth, where "one party takes pride in fabricating falsehoods" while another "wants to have someone to trust" (235; emphasis in original). These theatrical oppositions of conflict and sanctimony (Antigone) or trust and deception (Othello) create a powerful tragic magnification of human volition. Tragedy and Dramatic Theatre is a tour de force of intellectual insight, copiously researched by an experienced scholar. In attempting to define the idea of tragedy, we risk running afoul of Wittgenstein's meme that if we cannot distinguish between things and how they function, then we cannot talk about them. But for Lehmann, the enticement of tragedy lies in what he calls "an understanding of our failure to understand"; in other words, if tragedy acts incorrigibly on our psyche and provides a fillip to our self-knowledge by allowing us to vicariously imagine the incomprehensible, then tragic experience "involves self-confrontation and self-foreignness," as...

Directing Observership: Learning through Observation—In the Rehearsal Room with Tony Award–winning Director Kathleen Marshall

Directing Observership:Learning through Observation—In the Rehearsal Room with Tony Award–winning Director Kathleen Marshall Anne Healy (bio) The creative work of artists developed in the rehearsal room is sacred—a collective theatre/music/dance hive-mind coming together to create theatre. The creative space must be carefully protected so that artists remain free to experiment, explore, fail, and triumph without fear of judgment. With these ideas in mind, I hope to share with you some of my observations from the rehearsal room of the musical My Paris that was in development by Goodspeed Musicals during the summer of 2015. This journey began more than five years before when I received emails and flyers from Good-speed Musicals in East Haddam, Connecticut, advertising an "Observership Opportunity," where an early career director could join the Goodspeed team for a show and "learn while observing." From my early days in New York City auditioning for and performing in musicals during the late 1980s through the 1990s, I knew what a transformative learning experience the rehearsal room could be, especially with a creative team and performers who were working at the highest level of the industry. But my personal experience in commercial theatre to date only afforded the opportunity given a professional actor in the rehearsal space. So, as a relatively new stage director (since 2004), I longed for the opportunity to observe and learn from an accomplished, respected, and established director. With such an experience, could I expand my directing skills? Develop my ability to express a play or musical visually, aurally, physically, and technically? Could I learn what skills and attributes an established director possessed that makes that director effective? And finally, was I modeling effectively to my students, according to current processes relevant in the commercial theatre arena? Those questions and others compelled me to apply for the Goodspeed Musicals Observership Program. Thus I found myself in mid-life, as an early to mid-career director, in the quiet village of East Haddam on a morning in late June 2015 for "Bagelrama," the opening breakfast ceremony launching development rehearsals for a new musical about Toulouse-Lautrec titled My Paris. It Takes a Village—and a Dream Team Assembled on that first morning were the entire Goodspeed Musicals' executive and production staff, apprentices, interns, and even some volunteer staff. Also in attendance were the creative team, production staff/apprentices/interns specifically in residence for the production. The large rehearsal room was filled to capacity. The My Paris musical theatre "dream team" boasted Tony Award–winning director and choreographer Kathleen Marshall, a libretto by Tony-, Emmy-, and Pulitzer Prize–winning author Alfred Uhry, music by award-winning Armenian French singer-songwriter and author of London's West End version Lautrec Charles Aznavour, English lyrics and arrangements by Tony Award–winning composer and lyricist Jason Robert Brown, and music supervision and orchestration by David Chase, who most recently music directed television's The Sound of Music Live! This impressive team was joined by a cast of fourteen high-profile Broadway performers (fig. 1). [End Page 231] Click for larger view View full resolution Fig. 1. Goodspeed Musicals My Paris creative team: Alfred Uhry and Kathleen Marshall (front) with David Gardos and David Chase (back). (Photo: Diane Sobolewski.) The prospect of an observership with Marshall was both exciting and daunting. Before my arrival I read multiple articles regarding her directing style and philosophy in an effort to educate myself on her work as a director, since my observership did not involve direct interaction with the director or production—only a seat in the room. Through my research I learned that she came to directing through the world of choreography, beginning as an assistant to her brother, Rob Marshall, in such shows as Kiss of a Spider Woman and She Loves Me, both in 1993. In several written and video interviews Marshall talked about the importance of mentoring through assistantships and observerships. In Victoria Myers's Women and Hollywood blog she asks Marshall, "what's something you think people can do to improve gender parity in theatre?" To which her interlocutor responded, "I think that one of our responsibilities as women working in theatre...

Otherness and the Interludes: actors and audiences

The topic of ‘Otherness’ has made possible an investigation into the distance between audience and performance. The actors themselves are essentially strangers to the onlookers and during a performance this separation is exploited as part of experience of theatre, as a contribution to entertainment as well as meaning. By considering the theatrical characteristics of four sixteenth-century interludes we find that the separation can be effective, but it is also apparent that these plays have ways of working across the gap to make use of the intimacy which can be established. Besides consideration of some of the typical features of interludes, there is attention to theatrical conventions, including the role known as the Vice, to the ways of using the performance space, and to comic routines and wordplay. It becomes apparent that the audience can never be allowed to forget that they are watching a play and not real life, and that the distance between actors and audience is a valuable theatrical asset for experiencing these plays.

Together, Apart: Liveness, Eventness, and Streaming Shakespearean Performance

Over the past several years, Shakespearean performance has been reaching audiences through a new trend: live theatrical performances streamed digitally to remote audiences. Recently, two such programs—the National Theatre's NT Live and the Royal Shakespeare Company's Schools' Broadcasts—have utilized streaming technologies to expand the reach of Shakespearean (and non-Shakespearean) performance in attempts both to maintain current audiences and to attract new ones. Though the two programs each target different audiences (NT Live broadly attracts theatre-goers in the UK and abroad, while the RSC's Schools' Broadcasts specifically target Key Stage 3 and 4 students in the UK), both employ digital technologies to provide audiences with access to the live performance event while eschewing their physical presence at the performance site. Since definitions of liveness often rely on the audience's physical presence to witness the theatrical event, has Shakespearean performance begun to move beyond such definitions? Streaming does allow institutions to bring theatrical performances to remote audiences live (or seemingly live), but the ways in which remote audiences experience the performance event fundamentally differs from the experiences of on-site audiences. While the differences between these two ways of experiencing Shakespearean performances may not be as separate or divisive as they once seemed, the success of programs such as NT Live and the Schools' Broadcasts signals a shift in our conceptions of liveness. I argue these programs represent new models where eventness, rather than a traditional definition of liveness, becomes a defining characteristic of the theatrical experience.

"Intimacy" at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse

"Intimacy" at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse Sarah Dustagheer The Sam Wanamaker Playhouse (SWP) opened next to Shakespeare's Globe on London's South Bank in January 2014. The new theater is described, by the Globe, as an "archetype" of a Jacobean indoor playhouse and is based on the Worcester College plans for an unknown seventeenth-century indoor playhouse. Following these designs, the SWP is a U-shaped theater, with galleries surrounding a pit of seating and a small platform stage; it is a candlelit space and holds approximately 340 people. One word has reoccurred in reviews and responses to this new theater and the Jacobean repertory performed in it: "intimate." This is an "intimate venue," declared Henry Hitchings in the Evening Standard; the theater has a "smallness and intimacy" (Paul Taylor, The Independent), or an "intimacy and delicacy" (Natasha Tripney, The Stage). Similarly, actors working in the space describe it as "so intimate" (Emily Barber and Fiona Button) and "much more intimate" than the Globe (Dickon Tyrrell). Before the SWP's opening, theater historians writing on indoor Jacobean theaters were similarly drawn to that word to describe such venues: "smaller, more intimate performance spaces" (White 145); indoor playhouses had a "greater intimacy" than outdoor ones (Sanders 74); the Blackfriars "institutionaliz[ed] intimacy" (Menzer 169). Moving Shakespeare Indoors is an edited collection that marked the opening of the SWP and includes several academics who had contributed to the research for the playhouse's design; in it Penelope Woods suggests that "intimacy is overdue attention and exposition, particularly from historians," particularly as we experience the first performances in the SWP (159). Although in this publication Woods and Paul Menzer offer some consideration of intimacy, I want to take up the challenge by examining at length a very complex term that is predominantly deployed by reviewers and historians with too little or no exposition at all. Analyzing what [End Page 227] intimacy means at the SWP over the first two years of its use reveals much about the unique environment of the playhouse, its actor/audience dynamic and modern interpretations of the Jacobean indoor repertory. Moreover, as work on intimacy in performance has arisen from analysis of very recent theatrical trends—immersive theater experiences, site-specific productions, and one-on-one performance—considering intimacy at the SWP demonstrates the distinctive place of this Jacobean archetype in the contemporary theaterscape. Theatrical Intimacy "A good working definition of intimacy recognizes that the ultimate definition is unobtainable," writes psychologist Karen J. Prager (13). Intimacy is a slippery term and one that shifts meaning across space, time, cultural frames, and disciplines. Intimacy has been examined in myriad ways in psychology (Prager; Meares; Mashek and Aron), sociology/philosophy (Giddens; Innes; and Zeldin) and in contemporary cultural studies (Rojek; Illouz). While drawing on these bodies of work, it is important to narrow focus on intimacy in the theater, a comparatively under-examined idea, in order to understand what occurs at the SWP. An intimate "theatrical performance" is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as one that "aims at establishing familiar and friendly relations with the audience" ("intimate," adj. 3.e.); and the entry appears under the meaning of "intimate" as "Close in acquaintance or association; closely connected by friendship or personal knowledge; characterized by familiarity (with a person or thing)" ("intimate," adj. 3). The centrality of "closeness" in this definition reminds us of the original etymology of the word from the Latin intimus, meaning "inmost." Thus intimate theater appears to denote a relationship between actors and audience members within a given space, one that fosters a closeness between these two agents; a closeness that results in a form of "intimacy" as in "closeness of observation, knowledge or the like" (OED, "intimacy," n. 1.c). Such a definition parallels those in psychology where an "intimate interaction" is defined by the type of close communication it produces; for Prager and Linda J. Roberts these interactions are marked by self-revealing behavior, positive involvement with the other and shared understandings where "both partners experience a sense of knowing or understanding some aspect of the other's inner experience" (45). "Intimate" as a verb means "to make known," deriving from the Latin...

The Development of Indonesian Modern Theatre: Four Periods of Creativity from 1970 to 2015

Indonesian modern theatre can be divided into four periods of creative work. Theatre emerging in the 1970s was driven by leaders like W. S. Rendra and Arifin C. Noer, who internalized traditional heritage in the landscape of modern consciousness. In the 1980s figures like Nano Riantiarno linked traditional forms in a more accessible and popular style using music and caricature, while Boedi S. Otong explored a kind of narrative collage and poetic theatre for presenting urban circumstances of Jakarta. The 1990s generation of artists, formed by their urban reality and divorced from village or ethnic theatre experiences, addressed tradition in a fragmentary, personal “mixed salad” ( rujak ) mode. With the fall of the Suharto government in the late 1990s a new style developed that took on themes suppressed during the New Order government. An ever-evolving relationship between traditional performance and contemporary theatre has existed. Artists have sometimes adopted traditional elements and at other points subverted aesthetic heritages.

Transições canceladas: teatro e experiência no Brasil (notas para um programa de trabalho)

Recorrente nos títulos da maior parte das obras clássicas de interpretação da vida cultural e social no Brasil, a ideia de formação nunca se estabeleceu como modelo de compreensão do teatro entre nós. Sinal de uma experiência feita toda de cancelamentos, essa ausência ou insuficiência impõe outras exigências interpretativas. Das relações entre forma social e forma estética, certamente emerge a experiência teatral, entre nós, como depoimento acerca do tempo presente, na ordem de um teatro mundial – desde a colônia, se quisermos, aos diversos estágios do capitalismo e seus desenvolvimentos.

O luto transformado em luta: uma experiência de Teatro do Oprimido com pessoas cegas

Este trabalho se propõe refletir sobre as questões do trauma e do luto a partir de uma experiência de Teatro do Oprimido com pessoas cegas. O contato com os desafios vivenciados cotidianamente pelos participantes, trazidos à tona durante o processo da oficina por testemunhos e pela prática teatral, possibilitou estabelecer relações diretas com a dificuldade de elaboração da perda e seus desdobramentos na vida em sociedade. A reflexão sobre esses temas motivou ainda o debate sobre a possível função do encontro coletivo e artístico para se vislumbrar novos caminhos de transformação humana e social.