Theatre Work Research Articles

Technological and Artistic Challenges in the Re-Performance of Music Theatre Work FE…DE…RI…CO… (1987) by Constança Capdeville: From the Archive to the Stage

In this article a group of authors will discuss the documentation process carried out by Filipa Magalhães during her PhD research, who gathered all possible materials concerning the music theatre work FE...DE...RI...CO... (1987) by Constança Capdeville. She created a more complete script (based on the information left by Capdeville, such as scores, texts, drawings, sketches with stage indications, scripts containing the main lines, and scripts for sound and light) aiming to document the several layers of information in order to systematize the work for archival purposes. The music theatre as a performative genre is a synthesis of multimedia artform that involves technological resources (for example the magnetic tape medium), which are aimed to be preserved, exploited, and valorized in order to make re-performance feasible. We will focus on the understanding of the difficulties and challenges found to bring this performance back from the archive to the stage.

The role of higher education in sustainable creative careers: Exploring UK theatre graduates and theatre careers

This paper reflects on the systematic interconnections between creative workers and higher education institutions (HEIs). Despite the latter representing key intermediaries in creative industries’ development and creative workers’ career trajectories, the relationship between the two has rarely been framed in a relational and systemic framework. To do so, we chose the UK theatre sector as the case study and adopted a mixed methodology: UK Higher Education Statistical Agency quantitative data, which informed us on the employment state of workers 6 months after graduation, were combined with 21 semi-structured interviews with actors and actresses to understand the complexity of their relationship with HEIs. HEIs emerge as the initial door to paid jobs and professional networks for graduates and as employers for those in the later stages of their careers: the lack of formal ways to access jobs and the precarious working conditions for performers make hence HEIs a crucial force in shaping workers’ careers. Furthermore, HE remains throughout the career of theatre workers an important part of their portfolio, providing reliable income and more stable working patterns when needed. The paper concludes with the findings’ policy implications and the future role of HEIs in creative and cultural ecosystems.

Staging the Human Remnant in the Anthropocene: Breaking the First Wall in Bruno Latour and Frédérique Aït-Touati’s Inside

The relationship between theatre and the Anthropocene remains an understudied topic. First, there appears to be a tension between the Anthropocene as a concept that, by radically foregrounding a host of non-human agencies, shifts the focus away from human agency, on the one hand, and the theatre as an all-too-human medium on the other. Second, the theatre as a here-and-now space seems irreconcilable with the vast temporal and spatial scale of the Anthropocene, which entails an almost unmanageable complexity and unpredictability. Staging the Anthropocene, then, remains a theatrical challenge because of the renegotiated assemblage of human and non-human agency and the subsequent spatio-temporal epistemological challenges. This essay examines the extent to which theatre is equipped to stage the Anthropocene by analyzing and critically assessing Bruno Latour and Frédérique Aït-Touati’s Inside (2016) as a work of Anthropocene theatre. Via the experimental format of the lecture performance, the authors look for a new way to represent humanity’s place in the Anthropocene. This is most explicit in the way the performance breaks what I call the first wall, one of the affordances of the theatrical space, which is everything on stage that is thought to have no theatrical — and by extension moral and political — agency. As Inside renegotiates the relationship between human and non-human agency, the human loses its central position as protagonist and sole agent. The performance, however, never completely erases human agency from the stage but minimally salvages it, as such problematizing the modern scientific gaze of theoria.

Race & representation in applied theatre: walking a fine line to salvage empathy & creative imagination

ABSTRACT This article examines the evolving nature of how race and difference are represented in creative applied theatre work in classroom and community-based settings. The author uses several examples of performances and workshops she’s attended to ask important questions that point to the tensions percolating in our discipline around who gets to tell a story, how, and in what way this telling shapes perceptions and notions of the Other. At the heart of this inquiry is a desire to salvage creativity, play, and imagination in an environment that is increasingly fraught with cancel culture, virtue signalling, and identity politics.

Formation of Associative Thinking of Future Conductors in the Process of Processing Music of Theater Genres

The specifics of the conductor's work on works of music and theater genres were studied, the components of this process and the importance of associative thinking were determined. The specifics of the genre of operetta, musical comedy, which consists in the fact that the main role in the productions of plays is played by the director, who builds the dramaturgical concept of the play, and in most cases is also the author of the script, is considered. Attention is drawn to the obligatory implementation of the stage work of the director in close contact with the conductor, who is responsible for the musical component of the performance. It is noted that the foundations of a conductor's professional skill are laid in the process of professional training and are consolidated during artistic practice in musical theaters. Attention is focused on the role of theatrical performance in the education of associative thinking in future conductors. The specifics of the conductor's work in the operetta theater and the opera theater are characterized as a means of analyzing the creative experience of outstanding artists. The role of the conductor's associative thinking is defined not only in psychological (as thinking with the help of images and associations) and art history aspects (as a subfactor of the synthesis of arts), but also from a sociological point of view — as corporate thinking based on interpersonal interaction of participants in the creative process, joint activity which is aimed at achieving a specific result. The need for creative adaptation of the score for a specific composition of the musical theater orchestra is substantiated. The nature of the conductor's creative interaction with the director, soloists, choir and orchestra is highlighted. Problematic aspects of students' artistic practice in musical theater are outlined and ways to overcome them are proposed. Attention is focused on creative competitions as one of the means of professional formation of conductors. Four pedagogical conditions and basic principles of formation of associative thinking of students of the opera and symphonic specialty are defined. The importance of associative thinking as a professionally necessary quality of a musical theater conductor is proven. It was found that the work of a musical theater conductor requires the formation of a set of professional competencies (professional skills, musical abilities, personal qualities, individual and psychological characteristics)

Operation Theatre Nurses’ Job Satisfaction in a Teaching Hospital in Mangalore - A Case Study

Purpose: Operation theatre management has always been a challenging aspect for any hospital administrator because it includes staff from various categories, a large amount of infrastructure, maintenance work, risk management, infection control priorities, and, most importantly, patient safety. Nurses play a crucial part in the healthcare team. Nursing work is demanding. Nurses work to prevent illness, promote health, and extend people's lives and the lives of the community. Nurses are involved in patient care, doctor care, and administrative care. Nurses' job satisfaction is crucial for healthcare institutions because it influences both the nursing care quality and patients' satisfaction. Design/methodology/approach: The research approach adopted is a descriptive study approach. Findings/Result: The individual's satisfaction levels can be influenced and shaped by various factors. Due to rising labor costs and the enormous shortage of nurses, satisfaction in the nursing job sector is a very important but also a crucial challenge for healthcare organizations. The key importance is the motivation of this discipline (Nurses) so that their involvement in the hospitals they work and practice their profession will be as satisfactory as possible. The aspects that affect a nurse's satisfaction with their work in operation theatres were identified to be appreciable salary with increment, duty time management, experienced staff as peers, reduced workload & stress, more leave privileges, teamwork, the advanced technology at work, in-service education & training, and more respect at their place of work, from the study as perceived by the operation theatre nurses’ themselves. Originality/value: Employee job satisfaction is the level at which an individual is content with a range of variety in their work, like the overall nature of their work. However, a person's needs and personality traits also have a role in their level of job satisfaction. Paper Type: Case study

The Place of Energy in Eastern Acting Practices and Its Reflection on Eugenio Barba’s Anthropological Theater Works

Bu makale çalışması, No, Kahtakali ve Jingju’dan yola çıkarak Doğulu geleneksel tiyatro uygulamalarında oyuncunun enerji kullanımını araştırmak, kültür ile bağlantılarının izini sürmek ve Doğulu formları yoğun olarak inceleyen/çalışmalarına dâhil eden Batılı uygulamacılardan Eugenio Barba’nın antropolojik tiyatro çalışmalarında nasıl algılandığını ve dönüştüğünü tespit etmek amacıyla kaleme alınmıştır. 20. yüzyılda Batı’da oyunculuk odaklı yaklaşımlarda ön plana çıkan beden ve zihin bütünlüğü doğrudan enerji ve mevcudiyet kavramlarıyla ilişkilendirilmiş, Barba’nın anlatım öncesi düzeyde çalışmalarının da temel konusu haline gelmiştir. Bu çalışmalarda enerji, kültürel bağlantılarından soyutlanarak oyunculuğa ilişkin kültür öncesi evrensel ilkeler olarak ele alınmıştır. Doğulu oyuncu içinse enerjinin, kültürle iç içe bir unsur olarak kavrandığı görülmüştür.

A Theater that Begins with a Human. Community Theater as a New Art Form

In our new column, “In Simple Words,” we will publish materials that, as the title states, are written in simple words, without trying to be “scientific”. These articles are more like essays, representing their authors’ views and reflecting socially significant topics. “Real people, real stories, real us,” that’s what Elena Kim and Asya Belyaeva, creators of Moscow-based “This Is Us” community theater, say about themselves. Community theater is a new concept in performing arts, but numerous experts have already noticed its therapeutic power. Here, viewers tell their stories and see them immediately come to life on stage, thus becoming co-creators of the performances. This opinion piece by Elena Kim describes how and why community theater works and how it presents a model of the world and our relationships in the world.

Dementia, Language, and Performative Force: The Case of Laughter

Abstract This article considers the form of dementia conversation as it features in literary memoirs, in sociological and drama research papers, and in theatrical works, exploring the intersubjective nature of such conversation, and in particular the way that laughter serves to structure it and connect those who engage in it. In losing our ability to remember, we also lose our ability to expect: to anticipate and organize future time. Those with dementia continue to be able to initiate, conduct, and organize conversations in time, however, and to regulate shared affect, via the “melody” of speech. We examine the ways in which certain forms of language and extralinguistic gestures remain in place when propositional speech is lost. These are forms of conversation that wield some illocutionary force, perform some action, in making ongoing relationships possible, functional, and even fulfilling. The discussion builds on the work of theater scholar Elinor Fuchs—her memoir about her mother's dementia, but also her writing about theater and the insights its formal modes have given her into dementia and ageing in general—to formulate an account of dementia language and the way it operates, as theater does, in the mode of Now.

Les dramaturgies de l’existence, ou le tragique quotidien au théâtre : Karolina Czerska, Tadeusz Kantor i Maurice Maeterlinck. Dramaturgie istnienia [Tadeusz Kantor et Maurice Maeterlinck. Dramaturgies de l’existence

The dramaturgies of existence, or the tragedy in everyday life in theatre: Karolina Czerska, Tadeusz Kantor i Maurice Maeterlinck. Dramaturgie istnienia [Tadeusz Kantor and Maurice Maeterlinck. Dramaturgies of existence] Karolina Czerska’s book offers a comparative study in which the theater of Maurice Maeterlinck is confronted with the theatrical work of Tadeusz Kantor. The author has set herself two major objectives: on the one hand, she wants to popularize Maeterlinck’s dramaturgy with the Polish public, and on the other, she evokes the works of the Belgian writer in the context of Kantor’s stage productions, which agrees to revisit and reconsider the work of the Polish theater director from a new perspective. By comparing the work of these two theater men, Czerska examines four themes where their artistic concepts seem similar: the conceptions of the “tragique quotidien” (tragedy in everyday life) and the “invisible”, the construction and status of the character as well as the function of the actor.

Shaw in America (Bernard Shaw on the American Stage: A Chronicle of Premieres and Notable Revivals)

Shaw in America (Bernard Shaw on the American Stage: A Chronicle of Premieres and Notable Revivals)

Iraqi Political Theater: More than a Comment


 This study aims to shed light on the Iraqi political theatre , and how the political events especially war effected the on the theatrical works. The researcher chooses the Iraqi playwright Ali Abdul nabi Az-Zaidi as representative .The study gives short introduction on the Iraqi political events starting from 1980`s , then it deals with (Rubbish) (Qummama) and this play shows the destruction of Iraqi social life after long eight years of war , the play tells the story of a solider comes back from a war with an obstruction to find that his wife and mother have lost their chastity and worked as Prostitutes. The play is full of dark images which show the devastating effect of war on both human and society .

Performing Aboriginal Rights in 1951: From Australia's Top End to Southeast

In 1951, performers from Daly River and Tiwi Islands Aboriginal communities staged a corroboree strike. The musicians and dancers had routinely entertained visiting cruise ships in the Darwin Botanic Gardens, but now joined dockside workers to protest the jailing and exiling of two Aboriginal agitators Lawrence Wurrpen (Urban) and Fred (Nadpur) Waters. In Melbourne, the Australian Aborigines' League expressed solidarity with the Darwin strikes and protested the exclusion of Aboriginal voices from the Jubilee of Australian Federation. The League's leaders Doug Nicholls and Bill Onus produced a new work of musical theatre featuring east coast Aboriginal performers Fred Foster, Margaret Tucker, Georgia Lee, Harold Blair, and others in ‘Out of the Dark — An Aboriginal Moomba’. In this paper we examine political uses of performance in Australia's assimilation era, and show how Aboriginal agitators used music and dance to connect struggles for rights across Australia, and to keep cultural identity alive. In doing so we show how performance operated both as work and as assertion of cultural sovereignty.

"Miking Against COVID in Bangladesh"

Monzur Patwary of the Task Force for Global Health presents an array of tailored cultural responses to COVID-19 developed in his native Bangladesh. Underfunded centralized health services collaborate with NGOs in the creation of lively public service announcements in local dialects, video endorsements by faith leaders, and works of popular theater, art, and visual culture.

Pier Paolo Pasolini and the Sacred

Pier Paolo Pasolini (1923–1975) fashioned poetry, prose, cinema, and theatrical works, and how he conceived of the sacred is more thoroughly understood in relation to his working biography. Two films, The Gospel According to St Matthew and La Ricotta, together with his tragedies, overwritten on the Greek plays The Eumenides and Medea are here in focus, indicating why Pasolini drew on Mircea Eliade’s method of integrating historical, phenomenological, and hermeneutical approaches. Declaring himself a Marxist, Pasolini did not accept Eliade’s theory in full, while the two concepts that most link him to Eliade are the latter’s ‘eternal return’ and ‘hierophanies’. Pasolini had grown up immersed in the natural world of Friuli, Northern Italy, and he considered hierophanies as an immanent manifestation of the sacred in nature. In doing this, he discovered both the immensity of the archaic peasant world and the cosmogonic matrix of his religion. Pasolini’s ontological vision of being led him to define the eternal return as the cyclical time of nature, the movement of life in respect of the inscrutable laws of the cosmos and the transcendent supernatural. Cyclical time meant death and resurrection and thus the possibility of regeneration, like a seed that dies to become a plant.

When life imitates art: Watchlist and the impossible pandemic

Oscar Wilde (1891/1909) declared that it is not Art that imitates Life but Life that imitates Art. What happens when an artistic work, pitched as “soft sci-fi”, predicts something both decidedly unpleasurable and, later, alarmingly prophetic? Such is the case with Watchlist (2020), a new Australian theatrical work written prior to COVID-19, which warns of impending environmental catastrophe and ends with the release of a zoonotic pathogen. The debut production in 2021 was performed amid the global reality of the continuing pandemic which rendered the play a prescient cultural artefact and complicated the audience reception of the work. This study expands from Wilde’s concept of counter-mimesis into the theoretical frameworks of Hans Robert Jauss (1982) and Susan Bennett (1997), who provide an alternative to author-centric, practice-led research while laying the blueprint for a dialectical exchange between Life and Art. The dialectical exchange is then explored in the genre of science fiction more broadly, including both literature and franchise filmmaking. Through this analysis, the authors break down the binary of Life and Art, building from Jauss and Bennett, to demonstrate the advantages of this alternative critical vocabulary.

“The Winter of Our Discontent”: An Interview with Playwright Terri Power

This interview with Terri Power, conducted by Alexa Alice Joubin, focuses on the representations of trans masculinity in Power’s play Drag King Richard III. For nearly two decades Power has been at the forefront of trans and queer representation in performances of Shakespeare. Weaving a personal story of the 1990s with Shakespeare’s early modern disability narrative, Power’s adaptation reveals that the gender binary was enforced even in queer circles in the 1990s, coding lesbian identities as either butch or femme. The interview concludes with her suggestions for future work in transgender theatre based on her collaboration with trans actors beyond Richard III.

"Chasing Two Hares" Ballet by Yurii Shevchenko as a Unique Phenomenon of Ukrainian Musical Culture

The purpose of the article is to consider the specific characteristics of Ukrainian ballet as an original phenomenon of modern musical culture, the case study of "Chasing Two Hares" ballet by Yurii Shevchenko, a composer. The research methodology consists in specifically scientific methods (historical, system-analytical, hermeneutic, and generalisation), which allow to conduct an objective study of the specifics of Ukrainian ballet as an original phenomenon of modern musical culture. Specific musicological methods are also applied. The analysis of musical notation is used to consider the musical form of ballet, its harmonic structure, rhythm, and melody. The study of a ballet production enable understanding the author's use of ballet music to create an atmosphere, express emotions, and convey the plot. The performative analysis helps study the interaction of ballet music with other elements of ballet. The scientific novelty is in substantiating the specifics of Ukrainian ballet as an original phenomenon of modern musical culture, the case study of "Chasing Two Hares" ballet by the composer Yurii Shevchenko and updating the meaning of the composer's work in the context of the latest conditions of functioning of the Ukrainian musical theatre. Conclusions. The actualisation of theoretical studies in the field of musical culture and art is determined by the demand for the study and explanation of their intensive development. The experience of creating various forms of ballet and theatre music manifests the specific characteristics of modern musical art in Ukraine. In this context, consideration of the specifics of Ukrainian ballet as an original phenomenon of modern musical culture, the case study of Yurii Shevchenko's ballet "Chasing Two Hares" is considered relevant. Researching the theatrical and musical works of Y. Shevchenko and his music for the "Chasing Two Hares" ballet, we justify that ballet music appears as an expression of a new theatrical language – the language of optimism and high moral qualities. At the same time, musical theatre acquires psychotherapeutic characteristics, helping to survive the complex realities of life and restore faith in justice, which is especially relevant in today's realities. Yurii Shevchenko's compositional work, on the example of the "Chasing Two Hares" ballet, is an original phenomenon of modern musical culture and constitutes a significant component of Ukrainian culture and art. Key words: "Chasing Two Hares" ballet, Yurii Shevchenko, Victor Litvinov, ballet music, choreography, musical theatre, theatre music.

Around the Originality of the Dramatic Work of Louis-Benoît PICARD

This article focuses on the problematic of the originality of the theatrical work of Louis-Benoît Picard (1769-1828). He repeatedly recognized that several sources of inspiration allowed the production of all his comedies to great success. The use of intertextuality as a methodological tool revealed in a text expose the relations of obvious or latent co-presence between several authors. This study clearly established that authors such as Molière, La Bruyère, Gresset, and Beaumarchais have had a major influence on the theatrical work of Picard. However, this is not without ignoring the influence of Picard himself on later literary productions. This intertextuality of Picard's work broadens the horizon of the decoding of its originality to decline in the effective adherence of his work to the cyclical changes that distinguish it from its predecessors. Keywords: Louis-Benoît Picard, theater, Originality, Sources of inspiration, Influence.

Experimenting with Failure

In his article ‘Mindless Modernism’, published in 2013, Joshua Gang expressed his scepticism about the established narrative of modernism’s so-called inward turn. In his view, the notion that modernism was concerned with exploring the complex intricacies of human consciousness offers at best a partial view of the influence of psychology on the period’s most formally experimental literature. ‘In treating the introspective mind as a self-evident truth of modernism’, Gang warned, ‘we preclude rather than encourage new approaches to the period, particularly if those approaches are invested in the history of science, analytic philosophy, or the empirical study of mind.’1 The article was a necessary reminder that ‘psychology, and modernism’s relationship to psychology, did not end with introspection’.2 In many ways, Joshua Powell’s Samuel Beckett and Experimental Psychology: Perception, Attention, Imagery is the kind of scholarly work that Gang called for. Published in Bloomsbury’s Historicizing Modernism series, the book focuses on Beckett’s theatre and prose works from the late 1950s to the late 1980s. Powell argues that Beckett’s works are not simply artistically radical but can also be understood as scientific experiments. The book’s aim is to outline ‘the extent to which the psychological experiment comes to inform Beckett’s own experimental methods, and ultimately what these methods can be seen to achieve’ (p. 9). There are six main chapters in the book, most of which focus on a specific work (Not I, That Time, Footfalls, and Nohow On get individual chapters), through the lens of psychological concepts such as inattention or face-reading. Powell’s approach is significant in two respects. First, he shifts the focus from Beckett’s canonical early novels towards his less famous later plays such as Not I or That Time. Second, he largely bypasses the conversation about Beckett’s relationship to psychoanalysis (which he correctly argues has long dominated critical discussions) in favour of less frequently explored commonalities between Beckett’s work and behaviourism and gestalt psychology.