Theatrical Spectacle Research Articles

Watching War on the Twenty-First Century Stage: Spectacles of Conflict by Clare Finburgh

Reviewed by: Watching War on the Twenty-First Century Stage: Spectacles of Conflict by Clare Finburgh Inga Meier Watching War on the Twenty-First Century Stage: Spectacles of Conflict. By Clare Finburgh. Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2017. Cloth $102.00. 355 pages. Much ink has been spilled on the concepts of war and spectacle in the nearly two decades following 9/11. Positioning 9/11 and the “war on terror” as spectacle is certainly well-trodden ground, yet the significance of that connection has rarely been unpacked. Thus, despite the abundance of recent literature positioning violent conflict as spectacle, Clare Finburgh’s Watching War on the Twenty-First Century Stage: Spectacles of Conflict stakes out significant new territory in its examination of twenty-first-century warfare as theatrical spectacle. Specifically, Finburgh posits that twenty-first-century warfare has appropriated theatrical modes of representation, and interrogates the reasons for that appropriation while simultaneously examining theatrical productions that directly expose or subvert that appropriation. Though focused on theatrical representations in the UK (mainly London) post-9/11, the scope of her project is nonetheless breathtakingly vast and interdisciplinary, covering visual culture, performance studies, media studies, [End Page 142] trauma, neoliberalism, post-Marxism, and politics. Not surprisingly, she addresses a sizeable number of recent theatrical productions and a wide range of theatrical styles, drawing on an impressive selection of theorists. Finburgh seeks to formulate new discourses surrounding the reciprocal nature of war and spectacle, arguing that “Wars are presented as spectacle according to spatial, temporal and ideological formats, which control what we see and what we do not see. How, then, has recent theatre, itself a spectacle, enabled us to see the modes and apparatuses that produce spectacles of war?” (3). According to Finburgh, twenty-first-century conflict has “weaponized” (5) theatrical spectacle. How, she asks, can theatre function to demilitarize the images it presents, and can that demilitarization, in turn, extend beyond the walls of the theatrical space? Finburgh’s hope, throughout the book, is certainly in the affirmative. The book is organized into four chapters and a conclusion. In chapter 1, “An Introduction to War and/as Spectacle,” Finburgh extensively defines her use of the terms “war” and “spectacle” and lays her methodological groundwork, “by asking what we are authorized to see, and by whom, when we watch war” (7). Finburgh posits that, “spectacle refers not just to scenes for admiration or of abomination, but essentially to the ways in which these scenes are framed and presented” (16). While she covers familiar territory—from Jean Baudrillard to Paul Virilio to Jürgen Habermas—in discussing the weaponization of that spectacle as an instrument of twenty-first century warfare, she is incisive in her positioning of theatrical representation as “itself a kind of spectacle [which] inherently possesses the capacity to foreground the theatricality behind all spectacles” (51), using Tim Robbins’s Embedded (2004) and Robert Longo’s Men in the Cities (2014) as case studies to make her point. In “Helmets—Soldiering as Spectacle,” the book’s second chapter, Finburgh explores the role of spectacle in warfare, stating that “war’s main players—armies—are themselves always and already reinforced by spectacle” (65). The case studies she explores range from those that portray spectacle with “flamboyance” (67), such as Gregory Burke’s Black Watch (2006), to those that expose the “audience’s ghoulish desire to feast on spectacles of the suffering of the victims of war” (8), as seen in Howard Barker’s The Dying of Today (2008). Here and throughout, the case studies she draws upon do not fall into a singular stylistic category. Rather, she explores her subject matter with kaleidoscopic range to expose “the normalization and naturalization of spectacles of army warfare into perceived and accepted realities” (127). In chapter 3, “Headscarves—‘Terrorism’ as Spectacle,” Finburgh expands her argument from the previous chapter by examining plays and productions that explicitly challenge and deconstruct that spectacularization. She seeks to blur the lines of how terrorism is conventionally understood in the United States and the UK, both in terms of the victim/perpetrator binary and in terms of its media-supported [End Page 143] amplification through spectacle. The plays and productions examined...

Expo afterlife: corporate performance and capitalist futurity in the Carousel of Progress

This article discusses a theatrical spectacle created by Walt Disney and General Electric for the 1964 New York World’s Fair that has run for the last five decades: the Carousel of Progress, a history pageant that stages the evolution of domestic technology in the twentieth century. As a spectacle dedicated to celebrating tools that bolster women’s participation in the social reproduction of capitalism, the author argues, the Carousel shows how expos utilize theatricality in order to inscribe industrial technologies within corporate ideologies. By apprehending the Carousel of Progress as a site of corporate performance, the author demonstrates how the Carousel’s afterlife in theme park entertainment has enabled Disney to theatricalize disparate modes of capitalist futurity in response to shifting cultural sensibilities. The author situates the Carousel within an economy that has consistently presented female domestic labor as subordinate to corporate capital, culminating with its late-1990s staging of an illusory prefeminism, which fantasizes a twentieth century in which no feminist movement took place. Engaging with theories of corporate performance, this article takes up the Carousel of Progress’s production history as an indication of theatricality’s longstanding utility to corporate capitalism.

A INCOMPLETUDE NA CRIAÇÃO FRAGMENTÁRIA DO ESPETÁCULO PRAZER DA CIA. LUNA LUNERA EM RELAÇÃO COM CLARICE LISPECTOR

Este artigo analisa a dramaturgia fragmentária do espetáculo teatral Prazer, da Cia. Luna Lunera, em relação com a literatura de Clarice Lispector, estando ambos objetos de estudo em um permanente estado de incompletude. Entende-se aqui que esta característica fragmentária do espetáculo se aproxima do conceito de Teatro Pós-dramático formulado por Hans-Thyes Lehmann, e do conceito de Teatro Performativo formulado por Josette Féral. São realizados também estudos sobre características de narrativa fragmentária e descontínua no livro Uma aprendizagem ou o livro dos prazeres de Clarice Lispector, relacionando-as com o espetáculo Prazer.

Emancipar-se do [projeto contraprodutivo de identificar o] espectador

Definir quem assiste ou quem assistiu a um espetáculo teatral como “espectador” é defini-lo do ponto de vista do teatro. O risco é esquecer que, para que o espetáculo seja mais que um espetáculo, o público deve encarnar, diante da cena, aquilo que na sociedade não é da esfera do teatro. Nem coautor, nem “emancipado” da estrutura original que funda a função dramática na cultura ocidental, aquele que vem de fora assume aí o estatuto exigente de intermediário entre dois mundos.

Театралізація публічної смертної кари епохи Середньовіччя

In this article the theatrical and spectacular aspects of public executions have been analyzed based on example of the medieval Europe. Authors enrich the knowledge of medieval studies, expand and systematize the knowledge of theatrical spectacle, defi ning the role and place of the public execution in the context of social and cultural processes, analyze the function of medieval public executions as theatrical events.

Aleatorism and Sporting Performance

AbstractA sporting spectacle is an important cultural event, essentially influencing social and individual lives. In spite of this, there does not yet exist a monograph that analyzes, describes, and explains sporting performance from the point of view of aleatorism as part of the theory of sport and physical culture. Unfortunately, no monograph has developed this issue in a multi-aspectual, holistic, culturological, and philosophical way, dealing with its axiological values (aesthetic and praxeological). This applies to the relations between this phenomenon and the mechanisms that bring about the development and growth of interest in the social dimension.Generally, the theory of aleatorism has been applied in analyzing the phenomena of physics, music, and theatrical spectacle.The one relatively well-developed theory of performance is that of theatre spectacle. The above does not mean that the author aims to appreciate a sporting performance due to its links with theatre. He points to one of many possible aspects of a sporting spectacle, which are the assumptions of an aleatory nature included in its structure, plan, and the tactics of the game.

Playing God: The Bible on the Broadway Stage by Henry Bial

Reviewed by: Playing God: The Bible on the Broadway Stage by Henry Bial Dan Venning Playing God: The Bible on the Broadway Stage. By Henry Bial. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2015. Cloth $80.00; Paper $29.95; eBook $29.95. 260 pages. The history of religious stories appearing on stage is a lengthy one, from Purim plays and the Oberammergau passion play all the way back to ancient Greek tragedies, and perhaps even earlier. Yet the history of adaptations of the Bible on Broadway is relatively brief, spanning little more than a century. In Playing God: The Bible on the Broadway Stage, Henry Bial delves into this history, exploring the aesthetic and theological challenges addressed by these productions. The book convincingly demonstrates that while adapting these biblical texts has frequently been appealing to artists, doing so successfully requires artists to nimbly negotiate a perceived distance between the sacred space of religion and the secular commercialism of Broadway. Bial's captivating argument is that to succeed, biblical shows on Broadway must balance "four 'performance strategies' that can, under the right conditions, overcome the crisis of representation and help performers and spectators achieve moments of transcendence: spectacle, sincerity, authenticity, and irony" (27). Many of the productions discussed in the book successfully accomplish this, "captur[ing] the imagination and approval of audiences and critics, secular theatergoers and spectators of faith" (174); however, Bial also examines works that failed to achieve critical or financial success. The examples Bial draws upon, including (Pulitzer) prize-winning dramas, popular musicals, as well as lesser-known works, allow him to convincingly pursue his argument while demonstrating his masterful archival research. As a way of demonstrating how American biblical drama is primarily limited to the last hundred years, Bial opens his book by examining a show that did not even reach Broadway, Salmi Morse's The Passion, which was prevented from opening in New York in the 1880s by religious protests and legal injunctions. In his introductory chapter, "Faith-Based Initiatives," Bial utilizes this example in order to helpfully define the many theoretical terms that guide his book, especially spectacle: "those elements of a performance—lights, bodies, scenic elements—that exceed the written text" (27), authenticity: "an element of the performance that is perceived as real rather than representational" (28), sincerity: or "consistency between one's professed beliefs and one's actual behavior" (29) and irony: a "form of humor or critique" that "prizes contradiction" (29). He also explores the vexed question of what constitutes a "faithful adaptation" when faith itself can be such a central question for artists, audience members, and critics; Bial notes that "the term 'faithful adaptation' is a telling one—it speaks to the quasi-sacred status of the source text" (21) even when that source text is not a holy book. The remaining chapters are devoted to specific examples of biblical adaptations on Broadway. In chapter two, "Ben-Hur, Biblical Fan Fiction," Bial creatively uses [End Page 172] an anachronistic term that comes from science fiction fandom to argue that the spectacle present in the 1899 theatrical adaptation of Lew Wallace's 1880 novel "cannot be so easily divorced from its religious subject matter" (36). Drawing upon Amy Hughes's Spectacles of Reform to argue for the social power of theatrical spectacle, Bial effectively asserts that the show's spectacle (real horses running onstage on treadmills, real dust during the chariot race) created a feeling of authenticity that "opens the spectator to the possibility of transcendence" (51). The next chapter, "In the Beginning," focuses on adaptations of the Book of Genesis, most notably Mark Connelly's 1930 Pulitzer-prize winning drama The Green Pastures, which featured an all-black cast. The production of Connelly's play was the first to put God the Father on a Broadway stage—and he was embodied by a black man. Bial compellingly argues that the play relied on "sincerity and simplicity" (77) to create a perception of authenticity, and was a major success with critics and audiences, as well as a crucial moment for "theater, religion, and race relations" (65) in the United States. The following two chapters, "These are the Generations of Noah" and "Why...

La Mélancholie Des Dragons by Phillipe Quesne, and: Gardens Speak by Tania El Khoury, and: Top Secret International (State 1) by Rimini Protokoll

Reviewed by: La Mélancholie Des Dragonsby Phillipe Quesne, and: Gardens Speakby Tania El Khoury, and: Top Secret International (State 1)by Rimini Protokoll Matthew Robert Moore LA MÉLANCHOLIE DES DRAGONS. By Phillipe Quesne. Under the Radar Festival, The Kitchen, New York City. 01 11, 2016. GARDENS SPEAK. By Tania El Khoury. Under the Radar Festival, NYU Tisch Abe Burrows Theatre, New York City. 01 6, 2016. TOP SECRET INTERNATIONAL (STATE 1). By Rimini Protokoll. Under the Radar Festival, Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, New York. 01 6, 2016. Each year, the Public Theater's Under the Radar Festival introduces New York audiences to cuttingedge international theatre-makers. Although several of the 2017 festival's headliners were anything but obscure, their work powerfully challenged mainstream (American) definitions of theatre, suggesting an expanded performance frame and questioning the efficacy of live theatre engagement. Variously pointing to the audience's role as co-creators of the event, the potential of hybrid embodied/digital technologies to facilitate intersubjective experience, and the inherent theatricality of seemingly objective cultural spaces, the three shows I attended injected a decidedly postdramatic and anti-consumerist aesthetic into the city's season. Touring since 2008, Phillipe Quesne's La Mélancholie des Dragonsinterrogated the limits and processes of theatrical spectacle, asking viewers to marvel at the mundane and to notice their own role in the processes of creating meaning. Situational rather than plot-driven, the piece centered on seven metalheads, broken down in a snowy parking lot, where they inventoried the low-tech attractions of their mobile theme park for a mechanic friend, Isabelle. Largely devoid of spoken language, her name became a beckoning refrain evocative of childhood wonder as the "artists" eagerly rehearsed their eventual park opening. While it seemed that we were to accept the realistic circumstances of their predicament, it was not long before the stranded rockers were peeling back cotton batting (snow) to get at electrical cables and dragging props on from offstage, thereby undermining any sense of realism and highlighting the multiple frames of theatre at work in this performance about a deferred performance. The simplicity of their amateur "theatre"—a bubble machine, wigs "dancing" in the wind, a fountain made from a tiny pump and a Rubbermaid container—initially inspired chuckles. However, by the end of the performance/demonstration (if one accepted their invitation to imagine, to play), there was no denying the force of their aesthetic as they recreated the rhythms and scale of their production research (showcased in their park "library") through increasingly grand theatrical gestures. Romantic paintings, Artaud's theatre theory, and an Appian vision of mass and light took form against a backdrop of ordinary people playing with simplistic techniques. Seduced by the performers' earnestness and led by Isabelle's wonder, viewers entered a park of the mind in which their own associations operated creatively, placing their active gazes at the center of the theatrical event. In this potent state of disarmed curiosity and mutual effort, simple acts like a Scorpions' song on acoustic guitar and recorder or a Chinese New Year-style parade with inflated tarp-dragons, became incredibly moving performances while also remaining rather funny. Both actor and audience herself, Isabelle functioned throughout as our surrogate in the process of immersion and participation that the park hoped to stage. Her sincerity challenged us to suspend judgment as she modeled a new ideal of spectation. And when she climbed a ladder amid a stream of smoke and bubbles to reproduce Wanderer above the Sea of Fogby Caspar David Friedrich, she appeared as co-(re)creator and primary spectator of the work, provoking our spectatorial/imaginative experience and drawing audience and performer together in perceptual solidarity. Her simultaneous insider/outsider status overturned easy assumptions about audience passivity and our role in creating spectacle; her easy naiveté encouraged us to follow her into the possibility of profundity as we watched her being swept away by the world she had both created and imagined. Putting his audience onstage, Quesne deconstructed illusion and conditioned expectations, finally evoking theatre in its simplest and most beautiful terms. Stemming from a desire to overcome a kind of existential melancholy (embodied in the...

Review of Apmhitryon; or, the Two Sosias dir. by Michael Cordner

Reviewed by: Review of Apmhitryon; or, the Two Sosias dir. by Michael Cordner Elaine McGirr Review of Apmhitryon; or, the Two Sosias. Dir. Professor Michael Cordner Jun 15-18 2017 University of York, Department of Theatre, Film & Television, https://amphitryontftv.com/ Jupiter desires the beautiful but faithful Alcmena, so assumes her absent husband Amphitryon's form to enjoy her. Mercury takes on Amphitryon's servant Sosia's shape to keep watch. The early return of the real Amphitryon and Sosia threatens to expose Jupiter's deception and destroy the domestic peace just as the victorious Amphitryon returns home from his foreign wars. This basic summary makes it easy to see the attractions of the Amphitryon myth for dramatists: a plot that unites theatrical spectacle with questions of identity and constancy, metatheatrical commentary on the art of acting or impersonation, and the opportunities provided for both heroics and farce by the intermingling of gods and mortals. John Dryden's 1690 Amphitryon does all this and more, and for this reason [End Page 112] was popular with actors and audiences for well over a hundred years. Michael Cordner's new production for the University of York proves that Amphitryon works as effectively in the twenty-first century as it did in the Restoration. Click for larger view View full resolution Click for larger view View full resolution [End Page 113] The play marks a departure from Dryden's earlier tragicomedies, such as Marriage a la Mode (1673), which neatly separates high and low plots until the comic denouement restores right rule at home and at court. Amphitryon's structure and conclusions are altogether messier, befitting Dryden's sense of the post-Glorious Revolution settlements and appealing to modern suspicion of overly tidy narratives. Amphitryon's two plots – Jupiter's impersonation of Amphitryon to enjoy Alcmena and Sosia's comic attempts to know himself when faced with his double, the disguised Mercury – interrupt each other and share stage space throughout the play, leading to intrigue, accident, and a questionably happy ending. Alcmena's story is hard to parse without clear generic guidelines: how audiences feel about what happens to her depends on whether she is in a comedy or tragedy. Jupiter's desire to "owe nothing to so dull a name as Husband" is taken straight from a Restoration proviso scene, in which the gay couple pledge to retain the passionate intensity of courtship; at the same time, Alcmena's unwitting adultery is also the plot of she-tragedies, such as Thomas Otway's The Orphan (1680) in which Monimia is tricked into consummating her marriage with her husband's twin – and must die for this sexual fault. Is Alcmena the passionate mistress or the ruined wife? When it premiered in 1690, Amphitryon was one of the highlights of an otherwise disappointing season. The play, groused John Downes, was one of the handful that succeeded more than "indifferently." This faint praise is a useful summary of the play's performance history: Amphitryon; or the Two Sosias had a good initial run, thanks in part to Henry Purcell's contribution of three original songs, and was revived regularly, but not frequently, throughout the Restoration and eighteenth century before falling out of the repertory in the mid nineteenth century as newer versions of the Amphitryon myth succeeded Dryden's telling. Michael Cordner's production is the first modern revival of note. Thomas Betterton created the role of Jupiter, the god who upstages mortal Amphitryon at every turn; indeed, Amphitryon was given to lesser actors from the role's inception. Joseph Williams, the original Amphitryon, was ever but a pale imitation of Betterton. This casting would seem to encourage audiences to see Jupiter as the worthier lover, and thus also encourage audiences to sympathize with, rather than condemn, Alcmena. This solicitation of audience sympathy became more explicit when the role passed from Betterton to the seductive Robert Wilks, who made Jupiter one of his signature roles. His Jupiter attracted audiences and Alcmenas for more than twenty years. Betterton was a heroic lead; Wilks a romantic one. In the hands of Betterton or Wilks, Jupiter's seduction plot fell neatly into comic rake territory. Throughout the Wilks...

Operation:Orfeo - its Act of Enunciation


 
 
 Operation:Orfeo is a theatrical spectacle of a very particular nature, lasting some 80 minutes. It unfolds in a separate scenic space mounted on the stage. This scenic space is comprised of a thick picture frame surrounding a square space, measuring 6x6 meters, inside which a staircase is mounted, across the entire width of the square, from top to bottom. The stairs are lit in such a way that the space does not unfold unambiguously both horizontally and vertically (as staircases usually do). It primarily appears vertical, as a surface provided with a horizontal grid, fastened in a picture frame. In this room, on these stairs, a total of 14 players sing in different positions all through the performance. 
 
 

Carmen em perspectiva dialógica: reverberações inquietas de um processo de construção dramatúrgico-performativa no contexto universitário

O objetivo deste texto é refletir sobre o processo de construção dramatúrgica do espetáculo Carmen, realizado no contexto da Graduação em Produção Cênica da Universidade Federal do Paraná. As relações com a teoria se estabelecem a partir da perspectiva dialógica que tem na produção intelectual de Bakhtin e o Círculo, sua principal ancoragem. Os resultados apontam para aproximações entre a esfera educacional, o discurso cênico e a consequente mobilização da noção bakhtiniana de relações dialógicas, o que sugere diferentes possibilidades para se pensar a construção dramatúrgica em uma concepção alicerçada no corpo como enunciador e produtor de sentidos.

To Catch a Tiger by Its Toe

This article discusses a global theatrical spectacle that Moral Re-Armament (mra), a spiritual movement originating in the United States, produced in 1961. mra used contemporary protests in Japan, and actors ostensibly involved in them, as a strategy to bolster its authority in the context of U.S. Cold War policy in East Asia. How it claimed to represent Japan to the world and attempted to transform itself into the spokesman for the “Free World” offers insight into the symbolic position of East Asia in the United States and the areas it sought to influence during the early 1960s, a key moment in the intensifying U.S. involvement in East Asia, and offers a case through which to explore Christina Klein's model of “Cold War Orientalism.” mra tapped into this more inclusive discourse and also exploited ignorance in the United States about Japan to bolster widespread misconceptions about demonstrations in Tokyo. While introducing mra’s history, this essay teases out a gap between the reality and representation of Japanese politics and protest in the case of The Tiger, which reflects the historical context in which popular culture excluded real knowledge about how U.S. foreign policy affected, and often threatened, local political autonomy.

The Ob-Scene of the Total Work of Art: Frank Wedekind, Richard Strauss, and the Spectacle of Dance

This article examines the musical, literary, and theatrical practice of a group of early German modernists — above all Richard Strauss and Frank Wedekind. All of them turn to dance, its unmediated physicality, and its erotic charge to articulate a response to Richard Wagner's theatrical project, specifically the concept of the total work of art. Although Wagner had included a few ballet numbers in his mature operas, he treated the form (and the number as such) as a threat to a specifically operatic plenitude of sensuous meaning—dance, he feared, threatened to dance music and drama right off the stage. I argue that this allowed certain post-Wagnerians to interrogate Wagner's aesthetic through the category of obscenity — the dancer who, by dint of her brute physicality, could disturb and misalign theatrical spectacle became an important figure in their art. After a planned collaboration on a number of ballets came to naught, Strauss and Wedekind each turned to their native media to stage and interrogate balletic forms: Strauss through the medium-scrambling Dance of the Seven Veils in Salomé, Wedekind by inserting his ballet drafts into a strange novella, Minehaha, Or on the Bodily Education of Young Girls. Strauss's collaboration with Hugo von Hofmannsthal, which was to prove far more consequential and productive than the one with Wedekind, likewise began with an abortive ballet draft, and again came to reflect on dance's role in other media (opera and theater, in this case). Their reflections on the role of dance in operatic and theatrical spectacle find their expression in Elektra's final dance, which turns on its head the mysterious persuasiveness that Wagner had feared in dance and that Wedekind and Strauss had used to such effect in Salomé: a dance so expressive no one is moved by it.

Book Review: Staging the People: The Proletarian and His Double, Vol. 1 The Intellectual and His People: Staging the People, Vol. 2 by Jacques Rancière

Jacques Ranciere Staging the People: The Proletarian and His Double, Vol. 1, Verso, London, 2011; pp. 239, 9781844676972, 19.99 [pounds sterling] (pbk) Jacques Ranciere The Intellectual and His People: Staging the People, Vol. 2, Verso, London, 2012; 177 pp: 9781844678600, 19.99 [pounds sterling] (pbk) Within these two volumes by Jacques Ranciere are compiled a dozen or so essays from 1975-85, most published originally in the journal Les Revoltes Logiques. This was a journal headed up by Ranciere at the Centre de Recherche des Ideologies de la Revolte. The essays marked his movement away from an earlier influence under Althusser, with whom he collaborated in Reading Capital (1965), and a movement toward the post-68 critiques of structuralist Marxism. These essays thus begin a 'critical stance toward Marxist dogmatism' in these terms (Volume 1:8), and a process of profound reappraisal of Marxist fundamentals, particularly regarding class. In particular, the articles are an attempt to understand why the movements of '68 were such a failure, and second, to understand and counter the consequent coagulation of disillusionment and cynical resentment on the part of the frustrated 'intellectuals' towards a proletariat that had infuriatingly failed to stick to the dialectical script of historical materialism. Fundamentally, Ranciere begins here an argument he lays out more explicitly in the Emancipated Spectator (2011b: 32), in which he counters the charge (now axiomatic) that the signs of '68 have been appropriated by capital. The take-home message from this now dominant attitude being that we should all accept the futility of class struggle in the face of capitalism's mighty adaptability and assimilability (Volume 2: 42). Instead, for Ranciere our frustrated cynicism stems from a persistent and compulsive return to a highly problematic positionality as intellectuals, thinkers, artists, etc. This positionality is that of the intellectual--whether radical or cynical--who says to some objectivated and auto-generated other, 'Here is the reality that you cannot and wish not to see'. In the 19th and 20th centuries, intellectuals in Marxist and socially critical movements have constituted the proletarian class as just such a auto-generated 'other'. However, in his line of thinking, this does not mean that critical theory has failed or become irrelevant, or that it is epistemologically passe. Ranciere reasons that today's cynical apologetics regarding the futility of class struggle through critique is mobilised out of exactly the same assumptions and modes as the critical theory that such cynics deem superannuated (201 lb: 29). Though the 'message' today is different--cynical, rather than critical --it is the failure to break out of the same 'positionality' that is the common characteristic and common problem. This presentation shows us how the enduring validity of the emancipatory struggle is wrongly discredited, and that emancipatory critique itself still has life in it, but only if we can desist from the compulsion to resume the discursive positionality defined above. The title of the volumes plays on a pun between the ostensible contents, which revolve around historical instances of theatrical production, spectacle, and dramatisation, on the one hand, and Ranciere's theoretical argument regarding 'the distribution of the sensible' in the political aesthetics of oligarchic capitalism, on the other. Evidently, Ranciere wishes these essays to contribute to a 'staging of the people'. He is attempting to counter the positionality of the intellectuals through the kind of historical scholarly practice attempted in these essays. Therefore, together the two volumes do not construct a systematic argument. As a collection of thematically and critically related articles, the effect is rather to meander contemplatively through a variety of empirically vital and textual settings: from the California Gold Rush through 19th Century French theatre to the trade unions of Vichy. …

Traje de luces: The Daub, the Art, or the Cra" ?

Corrida the toros is considered a symbol of Spain. Corrida as a spectacle similar to a theatre spectacle is subject to rules. All elements of the spectacle, stages as well as tools used during corrida fall under strict rules, the same applies to the costumes worn by “actors” taking part in the corrida. Traje de luces – a lucent costume, which next to the bull itself is regarded as the most recognisable symbol of corrida. Matador’s outfit is considered as a piece of art by ones, others will see it as a ostentatious costume. What is it in reality? The answer to this question is not easy and obvious. The delicate handwork and fivestar materials position the costume of the matador as a work of art; however, garish colouring and exaggerated embellishments seem rather gaudy. Traje de luces should be always considered in a wider context, because only in that case its symbolism and meaning can be actually interpreted. Outside the corrida de toros the bright costume of the matador is only a colourful outfit, however in its natural environment, that is on the arena, it gains a completely different meaning. In this article, I will introduce various points of view on the topic.

Reading Publicity Photographs through the Elizabeth Robins Archive: How Images of the Actress and the Queen Constructed a New Sexual Ideal

In this article, I trace the origins of the normalization of pornographic tropes as the new sexual ideal in contemporary visual culture to late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century publicity photos of actresses and monarchs by examining one prominent transatlantic actress's collection of publicity photos, the Elizabeth Robins Papers at the Fales Library at New York University. As I show, around the turn of the twentieth century, a new standard of idealized feminine beauty was produced by the combination of two contradictory images of celebrity: the distant decorum of the monarch and the perceived erotic sexuality of the actress. The mass production of publicity photographs, which took the form of cartes-de-visite in the 1860s and cabinet photos in the 1870s, broadened the spectrum of sexuality by positioning these two quintessential celebrity types—the actress and the monarch—in relation to the tableau vivant and to existing and emerging tropes of portraiture. The image of the actress existed in relation to several mutually dependent discourses in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: the rise of photography in relation to other art forms; the rise of theatrical spectacle in relation to advertising, consumerism, and fashion; the rise of women's public role in relation to sexuality, the body, and beauty culture; and the paradoxical democratization of celebrity culture as related to the monarchy. All of these factors center on a figure who lived so vividly in the public imaginary that she could be found in multiple spaces: on the stage, in stationers’ shops, on postcards, in newspapers, in photograph albums.

Shakespeare’s "Othello" beyond the boundaries of the page: An analysis of two filmic productions

http://dx.doi.org/10.5007/2175-7917.2015v20n2p11O objetivo deste artigo é observar e analisar duas produções fílmicas da obra Otelo, de William Shakespeare. A primeira, intitulada Othello, foi dirigida, produzida e estrelada por Orson Welles em 1952, e a segunda, também intitulada Othello, foi dirigida por Oliver Parker, em 1995. O interesse principal do estudo dessas produções é observar - à luz dos princípios de adaptação teatral de Jay Halio (2000), Patrice Pavis (1992), e Allan Dessen (2002) - como cada diretor construiu em suas produções fílmicas o momento da sedução que acontece na Cena III, Ato III, do texto shakespeariano. A análise aponta que duas concepções diferentes, separadas no tempo e no espaço, são capazes de fazer com que a atemporalidade de Shakespeare transcenda e mostra aos espectadores modernos que a capacidade artística humana é capaz de atravessar fronteiras inimagináveis de criatividade e transformar uma grande obra literária em um exímio espetáculo (fílmico ou teatral).

Hypercarceration: A Neoliberal Response to “Surplus Population”

The skyrocketing increase of U.S. incarceration rates from the late 1970s onward indicates a particular neoliberal response to what Marx analyzed as the deep-structural production of “surplus population” by capital. This essay reevaluates the classic contributions of Marx and of Rusche and Kirchheimer and relates them to approaches that emphasize racial continuity, from “convict leasing” to the “New Jim Crow” of the current incarceration system. What is needed is a multifaceted approach that accounts for the overdetermination of class and race relations. Today's U.S. prison system is a particular way of “managing” the devastating social consequences of high-tech capitalism that has lost its hegemonic ability to mobilize its subjects on a “voluntary” basis. A part of the surplus population needs to be sacrificed in a theatrical spectacle in order to keep the working class, the poor, and the threatened middle class complacent and under control.

“Quick Comedians”: Mary Sidney, Samuel Daniel and the Theatrum Mundi in

Critical discussions of Cleopatra’s resonance in Renaissance drama have long been dominated by Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra, a trend that has often marginalised Mary Sidney’s play, The Tragedy of Antonie, as well as its source, Robert Garnier’s Marc Antoine, and its sequel, Samuel Daniel’s Cleopatra. It has been a commonplace to regard Shakespeare’s play, with its expansive time-frame and its representation of events like the Battle of Actium, as antithetical to the neo-classicism that characterises these other works. However, this essay argues that these plays should be considered as part of a shared tradition that emphasises Cleopatra’s retreat into the private space of her tomb and her resistance to becoming a theatrical spectacle. I explore the ways in which each of these plays responds to the uses of the theatrum mundi as a means of constructing and mediating an image of sovereign authority and conclude that Cleopatra eventually comes to repudiate such processes by using the private space of the tomb as a means of reconfiguring and reasserting the ways in which her political image will be submitted for posterity.

“Give me mine angle”: fishing for a moral in Antony and Cleopatra

This essay, which focuses on Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra, takes as its starting point an early scene in which Cleopatra calls for her angling rod and imagines herself fishing, an episode which has been used to illustrate the queen's mercenary hedonism. Building on recent scholarship that underscores the play's fundamental ambivalence, this article reads Antony and Cleopatra through the lens of the angler, or fisherman, a complex literary figure associated with seductive temptation and devilish deceit as well as apostolic cunning and ministerial accommodation, and in either case bound up in questions concerning the roles of rhetorical deception and theatrical spectacle. By associating Cleopatra with such a complicated figure, Shakespeare offers his own baited hook, dramatizing for his audience the perilous limitations and consequences of their own interpretive commitments.