Theme Of Festival Research Articles

Local Food Culture Festival Management Model in Papua

This research is a continuation of research and service as well as articles presented in international seminars and Bapenas FGDs. Research, PkM, International Seminars and FGDs from BAPENAS that have been carried out provide an illustration that Papua has great potential in local food, especially those made from sago. This is supported by the availability of sago forests and people who are starting to understand the preservation of sago forests and people who are creative in processing sago food in various preparations. However, the community has not yet found the right form to promote local food well and have a big impact. Conditions like this provide an opportunity for the government and academics to play a role in formulating the right strategy and realizing it in a major activity that can be known by many people nationally and internationally. One of the activities that can support the condition of people who are in this position is the government implementing a Local Food Culture Festival which is held on a scheduled schedule every year. This research aims to create a management model for local food culture festivals which is carried out in 2 (two) stages, namely Phase I (2023) sharing knowledge of the research team with festival management experts at UNY as well as concocting a suitable or appropriate form for festival management in Merauke Regency, as well as Benchmarking at several Cultural Festivals organized by the Yogyakarta Special Region Government (DIY) in September 2023, and Phase II (2024) the research team will carry out education and FGDs for 3 days for the Tourism and Culture Offices of Merauke Regency and South Papua Province as well as the candidates festival participants from the local food business community. The results of this research found that organizing a festival requires high synergy from the organizing team itself and from the government and sponsors. The most important thing is that it is necessary to carry out a survey or initial analysis of the festival theme which can describe the vision of the activities, potential and targets to be achieved by the festival. The budget and activity plan must be determined well in advance so that it can be included in the annual expenditure of sponsors or local governments. The selection of the organizing team must also be a professional team or a combination of a professional team and the sponsor, so that the implementation can go according to plan. Apart from that, the community must also be involved or empowered to participate. What is different about festivals held in the Papua region is the very dominant role of local communities involved in helping to improve the economy of the local population and promoting existing Papuan culture, apart from that there is still a lack of third parties who are willing to sponsor festival activities in Papua, especially Papuan cultural and local food festival.

The Role of Immersive Festival Experiences, Identity, And Memory in Cultural Heritage Tourism

This article provides insights for attracting short-haul visitors to cultural heritage festivals. We show how a set of experience dimensions work as value drivers to enhance a cultural heritage experience. Drawing on the experience literature we use structural equation modeling to test the relationships between attitude, memory, and revisit intentions. Empirical data were collected from short-haul visitors (from Scandinavia, Europe, and UK) at five Norwegian Viking festivals. Through an integrative framework we examine how appraisals of the experience are impacted by (1) identification with a festival theme, (2) entertainment value, (3) storytelling, and (4) personal interest. Key findings: attendee perceptions of experience dimensions have a positive influence upon their attitudes, memories, and revisit intentions; the formation of good and abundant memories strengthens the attitude–loyalty relationship; self-identification with heritage theme strengthens revisit intentions. The findings are timely as global emergencies increase the appeal of short-haul tourism.

Emerging through Fermentation

This year marks the 30th anniversary of Leonardo’s three decades-long partnership with MIT Press. As a tribute, amidst kickoff celebrations, this special, bilingual issue of Leonardo champions the power and promise of the creative spirit to counter the trauma and devastation of a tumultuous time.Created in collaboration with CYLAND Media Arts Lab, the efforts to bring Volume 55, Issue 6 to light required overcoming pressures of dislocation, discrimination, disaster, and war with all the associated anguish, fears, and insecurities. We deeply admire the courage, fortitude, and patient dedication of all those whose contributions made this special issue so special. We are especially grateful to our exceptional editorial colleagues, staff, and partners.Nonetheless, as the events of 2022 unfolded, questions arose regarding Leonardo’s decision to go ahead with this issue and publish work in English and Russian. The following statement reflects our response and our enduring commitment to creative collaboration: We stand for the free and open exchange of culture, ideas, and arts. Our deep partnership with the international arts organization CYLAND Media Arts Lab is an important collaboration that has expanded our international reach and understanding promoting international tolerance and cooperation. In light of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, our colleagues at CYLAND needed to evacuate their offices and homes in St. Petersburg and relocate to safe spaces in Armenia, the US, and Western Europe. As CYLAND no longer had safe access to their festival venue in St. Petersburg, we are privileged to stand by our colleagues and create open space for the exchange of ideas around arts, science, and technology as a statement against censorship and for freedom of expression.In addition to this publication, we have facilitated a satellite of CYLAND’s CYFEST on the theme of Fermentation, taking place at Arizona State University as a companion to the Emerge Festival (November 2022, postponed from March 2020), which Leonardo proudly co-sponsors. Like CYFEST, the Emerge Festival explores the future in evocative ways. This year’s Emerge Festival theme, Eating at the Edges, asks what it means to eat in an increasingly hostile and fragile world of environmental extremes, setting a compelling context for CYFEST’s Fermentation.Both themes resonate with Leonardo as we explore the alchemy of transformation, transmutation, and metamorphosis. Depending on its phase, fermentation can be invisible or unspeakably picturesque, grotesque, putrid, or intoxicating. What might we learn from the process of fermentation and what might emerge from it? Perhaps this is the quest for Leonardo to consider, not only in this special issue, but in the years to come as we find ourselves on the cusp of the next 30 years of provocative inquiry and adventurous publications. Thank you for joining us on this journey.

생태축제를 위한 문화예술 프로그램 연구

Eco festival is social interaction for building eco society through entertainment activities and preservation of eco environment. Eco festival applying regional eco asset is incresead as regional festival is getting more, but the program of eco festival is getting more umiformly. This study aims to suggest direction and plan of culture-art for eco festival using characteristics of space. Eco-friendly culture events at eco part similar to Ansan Reef Wetland are analyzed as case studies. Since eco park is not park categorization of part by law, many local government entitled ‘eco park’ indiscreetly, thus culture events at eco parks have character as local festival. Major contents are planed based on characteristics of main visitors group and eco-environment, and theme of event by supervised organization. Fall festival at Ansan Reef Wetland has basic direction for event: space usage to minimize harm eco-environment, focus on hearing as theme of festival, collaboration with culture-art organization, and participation of local artists. To preserve core value ‘ respect to eco-environment and enjoyment of art and culture’ for eco-environment, basic direction should be kept as below. First program of event should focus on unique differentiation of eco-environment. Second artists and experts specialized for eco-environment should be taken part in. Third healthy of hybrid between eco and culture-art with collaboration of organizations. Fourth eco-friendly visitors activities guideline should be made and be noticed to visitors.

The Public Life of Cinema: Conflict and Collectivity in Austerity Greece by Toby Lee

Reviewed by: The Public Life of Cinema: Conflict and Collectivity in Austerity Greece by Toby Lee Lydia Papadimitriou (bio) Toby Lee, The Public Life of Cinema: Conflict and Collectivity in Austerity Greece. Oakland: University of California Press, 2020. Pp. xxi + 193. 6 illustrations. Paper $29.95. Using as a case study her extensive on-site ethnographic work on the Thessaloniki Film Festival (conducted mainly between 2008 and 2010), Toby Lee offers a thorough, far-reaching, and ultimately empowering reconceptualization of the public value of cinema and of cultural production more broadly. Countering arguments that seek to establish the significance of the arts, she provocatively but compellingly argues in favor of their "insignificance within dominant hierarchies of value" (22). "The value of mereness," Lee's argument goes, lies in the fact that the arts can "harbor more radical, agonistic and dissenting forms of collectivity" (22), enabling spaces of political possibility that more consequential, serious, or sober fields of social practice preclude. In other words, the arts, publicly funded independent cinema among them, matter because their "essential futility" (152) can create opportunities for encounters in which contestation and dissent can be variably and potently expressed. Greece offers a very appropriate context for the development of such an argument. The sociopolitical and then financial crisis (or "trouble") that the country and its citizens experienced during the period of Lee's ethnographic work led to various manifestations of "conflict and collectivity," some of which—the ones explored here—crystallized around cinema (10). Conceptualizing the crisis as the effect of "complex and uneven processes of nonlinearization, political and economic Europeanization and the growth of state patronage that were set in motion in the previous period" (16), Lee locates its beginning in the events of 6 December 2008, when police killed a young man in Athens. By autumn of 2009, when the severity of the fiscal deficit began to become widely known, the group Filmmakers of Greece (FOG) had already formed to protest "what they saw as incompetence, corruption and lack of transparency in the formation and implementation of national film policy" (21). In November 2009, FOG boycotted the Thessaloniki Film Festival by refusing to have their films screened. [End Page 251] The festival, and especially its fiftieth anniversary that year, offers fertile ground for Lee's examination of the public value of cinema, its "public thingness" (3). In seeking to articulate film's public value, the book focuses on various encounters between the festival and its public audience(s). Chapter 1 situates the festival within local, national, regional, and European contexts, and within its own geography, while also explaining Lee's involvement with the festival as a participant observer. In chapter 2, Lee explores "forms of publicness" by focusing on some of the publics that the festival produces, addresses, and responds to. Highlighting not only their plurality but also the coexistence of "varying discourses and practices of publicness" (77), she draws on specific issues, events, and moments of tension during the 2009 festival. These included controversies over whether all English should be translated into Greek for Q and As and award ceremonies (59–60), seat swaps on opening night between those interested in the opening ceremony who left when it concluded and those wishing to see a film's premiere who arrived late (62–67), and the festival's staging of its own publicness for purposes of publicity, referring to the "Street Cinema" sidebar program that aimed to "take cinema out into the street" (68). Ultimately, Lee concludes that the festival's various publics and the ways they engage with the festival are irreconcilably different from one another and do not converge to constitute a single uniform experience—nor, as Lee points out, should they aim to. Chapter 3 examines the ways in which the festival depoliticized its own 50-year history and sought to create continuities by downplaying and suppressing that history's many internal inconsistencies. Noting the "untimely timelessness" (79) of the ways in which the 2009 festival's theme—"Why cinema now?"—was addressed in the festival's official discourse, Lee focuses on three instances in which the festival did engage with its past: an honorary awards ceremony that functioned as...

Shall our dance heal us? Thematic explorations of cultural diversity for national unity in selected dances at NAFEST 2012

Since the amalgamation of Nigeria in 1914, managing its cultural diversity has proved to be onerous. Hence, one of the tasks imposed upon the handlers of the National Festival of Arts and Culture (NAFEST) is to position culture as a tool to negotiate national unity. This paper examines the thematic treatment of national unity and peace through cultural integration in selected dance performances of the 2012 edition of the National Festival of Arts and Culture (NAFEST) in Nigeria. The study adopts the participant observation research method for data collation, and borrows insight from the theory of multiculturalism to interrogate the selected dance pieces. A descriptive and interpretative analysis of four States’ dance entries at the festival, reveal an exploration of the dynamics of the ethno-cultural and political interactions within each State. We also find that deliberate efforts were geared towards addressing the festival theme of peace and economic empowerment in the dance performances under study. The study, therefore, recognizes NAFEST as a viable platform to negotiate national unity. It also identifies that the artistic exploration that led to the creation of the dances under study, has positive implications for national cohesion, peace, and development. The study concludes by advocating a viable choreographic approach which could further entrench the ideology of NAFEST as a unity festival.

축제 서비스스케이프가 축제이미지, 감정반응, 행동의도에 미치는 영향 : 진안 홍삼축제를 사례로

The Effect of the study is investigate of festivalservicescape on festival image, emotional response, and behavioral intention for tourists participating in Jinan Ginseng Festival in 2018 Jinangun, Jeollabukdo. The Jinan red ginseng festival starts in 2013 and runs for 6 times until 2018. It is a festival held under the theme of ginseng, a special product of Jinan. The image of the festival theme is stronger than any festival. And the entrance of the festival is concentrated in one place, and the arrangement of the festival is a festival that plays a big role for the tourists participating in the festival. Therefore, the festival service landscape tries to investigate the influence of the relationship between the festival image, the emotional response and the behavioral intention. This study was to investigate the influence structure of the variables on the festival servicescape based on the theories of literature research and previous studies in order to identify the cognitive image, emotional image, emotional response, and factor structure of the behavioral intention. First, the influence of the festival servicescape on the festival cognitive image was influenced by the factors of 'fidelity', 'information', 'design' Respectively. Second, the influence of the festival servicescape on the festival emotional image has a significant influence on the factors of 'fidelity' and 'suitability' except the 'information' and 'design' Respectively. Third, all four factors of festival servicescape have a significant influence on the influence on the emotional response to festival servicecape. Fourth, all four factors of festival servicescape were found to have a significant influence on the influence of festival service landscape on behavioral intention festival cognition Image, and emotional image were all significant influences. Fifth, festival cognitive image and emotional image had significant influence on emotional response and behavioral influence on festival image. Sixth, the effect of the festival on the behavioral intentions of the emotional response showed that the higher the emotional response of the festival participants, the higher the intention to act.

The Effect of Culture Tourism Interpreter's Role on Visitors' Festival Theme Awareness and Satisfaction

The Effect of Culture Tourism Interpreter's Role on Visitors' Festival Theme Awareness and Satisfaction

Consumer's Attitude towards Ramadan Advertising

Advertising in the Ramadan is at peak in Pakistan and other Muslim countries. It now resembles other festival theme based advertising. In view of the lack of the studies on the issue, this study has adopted the constructs commonly used in measuring attitude towards advertising. The adapted questionnaire was administered to a population of 320, and the valid sample size was 303. After ascertaining normality, validity, and reliability, initially overall model was tested through multiple regressions. Subsequently, hypotheses were tested separately through simple regression. The study found that entertainment, information, credibility and good for the economy and irritation positively influence consumers' attitude towards advertising. The study validates all the results, except irritation. This relationship is positive in this study but is inconsistent with earlier studies that found a negative relationship between irritation and attitude. The media industry will benefit from the finding of this study in developing right communication strategy on Ramadan Theme advertising. This study has not explored the effects of demographic factors and the moderating effect of different media, which could be incorporated in future research.

Eighteenth International Istanbul Theatre Festival (review)

Reviewed by: Eighteenth International Istanbul Theatre Festival Amy E. Hughes Eighteenth International Istanbul Theatre Festival. Istanbul, Turkey. 10 May-5 June 2012. Turkish theatre today is on the verge of enormous change. Arguably, the current situation can be traced to April 2011, when a 31-year-old woman walked out of a play. The woman was Sümeyye Erdoǧan, the youngest daughter of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoǧan—the leader of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), a neoliberal political organization whose conservative religiosity and attempts to suppress free speech have increasingly polarized Turkey over the past decade. At the performance in a state theatre in Ankara, an actor (who claimed not to have recognized her) allegedly mocked Sümeyye during an improvisational sequence; feeling insulted, she left. A year later, Istanbul mayor Kadir Topbaş (a protégé of Erdoǧan) instituted new rules regarding repertory selection for the city's municipal theatres, including an ambiguous mandate requiring that all plays reflect the "ethical values of the society." Angry resignations and vehement protests by artists and audiences followed, to no avail. The prime minister seized the opportunity to rail against Turkey's theatre-makers and spectators, characterizing them as arrogant elitist outliers. Even more distressingly, Erdoǧan threatened to terminate all governmental subsidies for state theatres. The eighteenth International Istanbul Theatre Festival (2012) opened shortly after this highly publicized debate over artistic expression and public funding. The festival program included almost forty productions by Turkish companies, as well as five shows from other countries. Istanbul Kültür Sanat Vakfı (Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts [IKSV]), one of Turkey's most important cultural organizations, organizes the biannual theatre festival, as well as festivals showcasing film, music, dance, design, and visual art (the internationally acclaimed Istanbul Biennial). The founder of the republic, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, began supporting Western artistic practices as a way to modernize Turkey; since then, subsidized arts companies have provided opportunities for reflection and experimentation. In light of the uncertainty surrounding the future of theatre here, the festival's theme in 2012 ("Freedom-Questionings") seemed particularly relevant. Click for larger view View full resolution Members of Diyarbakır Şehir Tiyatrosu performing Antigone. (Photographer unknown.) The sense of uncertainty that permeated the festival was evident to me even during Samuel Beckett's Play, directed by Şahika Tekand under the aegis of Istanbul Şehir Tiyatroları (Istanbul Municipal Theatres). Tekand has attracted considerable attention internationally since founding her own company, Studio Oyunculari, in 1990. Her productions have been featured at prominent venues and festivals in Germany, Greece, and Japan, among other countries. Tekand's stunning, thoroughly engrossing rendition of Play (in Turkish translation) constituted her first project with Istanbul's municipal theatre. In Turkish, the word for a theatrical play is oyun, a homonym that can also mean "game" (similar to Spiel); Tekand consciously mined and explored this double entendre. As written, Play depicts three people—M, W1, and W2—interred in urns up to their necks. The members of this love triangle bitterly complain about the light, their lives, and one another. In Tekand's production, each actor (fifteen in all) inhabited one square of a massive grid of boxes that filled the stage. Although the actors could not see one another, their bodies were fully visible to the audience. During a fast and furious sixty minutes, [End Page 258] the musicality of Beckett's text was foregrounded through repetition, stylized gestures, and text spoken in unison. Words flew by with amazing speed; small gestures and strange postures took on incredible (if illegible) weight; and the buoyant energy of the performers was palpable. The ensemble's precision was reminiscent of a dance troupe—a result of Tekand's distinctive directorial approach, which she calls the "Performative Staging and Acting Method." Light was deployed in such exacting and assertive ways that it seemed like a character in itself. During quiet moments, disembodied heads emerged slowly from the black void; during more tumultuous sequences, the claustrophobic compartments were illuminated in a flash—just long enough for a performer to stomp a foot, or guffaw, or hiccup—before the play/game mercilessly moved on, built to a crescendo...

WATCHING WOMAN AND WATER

I am being haunted by a dance I saw more than a year ago. Ever since it was performed as part of the Actions of Transfer: Women's Performance in the Americas conference at UCLA in November 2008, I have been reviewing it in my mind every few weeks. I am unsettled by its seeming simplicity and by the integrity and power that this simplicity conveys. Therefore I am writing not about a work I have just seen, but rather one I have been rewatching for several months. The dance, titled Woman and Water, was created and performed by Alutiiq artist Tanya Lukin Linklater. It premiered on 22 May at Visualeyez 2006, Canada's seventh annual festival of performance art, produced by Latitude 53 Contemporary Visual Culture; the festival's theme was “Domesticity,” and it was curated by founder Todd Janes in Edmonton, Alberta. When she was invited to UCLA, Lukin Linklater inquired about the availability of water near the conference where the piece might be performed, and, upon seeing the site, determined to stage the work in the plaza in front of Royce Hall, which is adjacent to a large fountain. This is what I remember watching:

지역축제 정착화 과정에서의 콘텐츠 변화양상 -나주 영산강문화축제 사례를 중심으로-

Korean local festival had grown rapidly quantitatively and qualitatively for past 10 year. And also problems of domestic local festival had been indicated much by specialists and researchers who plan festival. But most precedent researches are stopping in problem presentation that is based in one point of time. In the meantime, most the very best culture tourism festivals are meeting fixing step through trial and error in historic process more than 10 years. It is important to solve fundamental problem that understand process so much. This research analyzed festival contents change aspect on fixing process as local representative festival by time-series analys, Yeongsangang culture festival to example. By the result, the biggest problem is that unclearness of festival subject by wide festival theme establishment is connected by losing festival`s identity.

축제만족도가 재방문의사와 추천의사에 미치는 영향

축제의 양적 팽창에도 불구하고 지역축제에 대한 만족도는 몇몇 축제를 제외하곤 그리 높은 편이 아니다. 이는 지역축제의 본질적 목적에 비해 경제성을 강조한 나머지 지역축제의 개최목적인 지역관광산업의 발전, 지역문화의 보전, 지역주민의 여가기회확대, 지역공동체 의식의 함양, 지역이미지 제고 등을 고려하지 못한 축제들이 우후죽순 생겨나고 지역주민과 관광객의 만족을 높일 수 있는 행사내용과 형식들이 차별화되어 있지 못한 것에 기인한다고 볼 수 있다. 본 연구에서는 이러한 점을 고려하여 문화체육관광부의 축제평가기준을 토대로 제24회 김포문화예술제에 참여한 관광객과 지역주민에 대한 설문조사를 실시하여 지역축제 만족도 결정요인을 규명하고 이를 통해 지역주민과 관광객간의 재방문의도와 추천의도에 미치는 영향을 분석하여 향후 김포문화예술제가 성공적인 지역축제가 될 수 있도록 축제마케팅 전략수립에 유용한 시사점을 제공한다. The purpose of this study is to examine the difference between festival visitors motivation and satisfaction by visitors' past experiences at Gim-po Culture & Art Festival 2008, Which is the 25th, is holding soon. Gim-po Culture & Art Festival has unique aspect that it is organised various experience programs and items which stress the importance of environment mix in Han river, Gim-po's port, totemism, agriculture and so on. A Study is analysed through research that is consisted of motivation and satisfaction factor's item of 23 local festival visitor to study factors of determination of local festival visitor's motivation and satisfaction level. Data were collected with a structured questionnaire at the 24th Gim-po Culture & Art Festival, 695 sample were used for statistical analysis. This research data is analysed by 4 statistical techniques, which are t-test, Cross-tab analysis, reliability analysis, factor analysis and regression analysis. As the results of this research, festival visitor's satisfaction were composed of four factors; festival theme, physical facilities, festival information service, souvenir and food. Festival satisfaction and motivation appeared the difference between first-time visitors and repeat visitors. The result of this paper may help festival planner and marketer for festival marketing strategy.

Art as Festival in Heidegger and Gadamer

In 'Art as Festival', I put Heidegger and Gadamer into dialogue concerning their respective critiques of traditional aesthetics and their more positive views on the work of art. I use the festival theme to examine some of the philosophical issues in Heidegger's and Gadamer's approaches to the work of art. Specifically, I look at the way both figures conceive the work of art as an encounter which, like the festival, involves a transcendence of subjectivity in an encounter with an event - in this case, the artwork - which the individual does not direct, but rather in which they participate. Putting the theme of festival into play also provides a useful critical lever, especially in the way that it raises important issues of community. More specifically, reflecting on the festival celebration raises questions of the nature of this community, of the relation of the community created in the festival event to the community of the everyday, and thus also of the relation of the aesthetic and the political.

Peformance Review: IX Cairo International Festival for Experimental Theatre

Reviewed by: Cairo International Festival for Experimental Theatre Holly Hill Cairo International Festival for Experimental Theatre. Cairo, Egypt. 1–11 September 1997. Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. Mary Salem and Rainsford in Chapel of Change’s The Descent, directed by Rainsford. IX Cairo International Festival for Experimental Theatre. Photo uncredited. Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 2. Cast members of the Rebellious Theater of Cairo’s A Journey, directed by Hany Ghanem. IX Cairo International Festival for Experimental Theatre. Photo uncredited. Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 3. The Grandmother in Intisar Abdel-Fattah’s A Hymn, directed by Abdel-Fettah. IX Cairo International Festival for Experimental Theatre. Photo uncredited. Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 4. Aegisthus and Clytaemnestra in the Spring Theater of Athens’s production of Atrides, adapted from texts by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides by K.H. Myris, directed by Yiannis Margaritis. IX Cairo International Festival for Experimental Theatre. Photo uncredited. Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 5. Clytemnestra (Chrisanthi Douzi) in the Spring Theatre of Athens’s production of Atrides, adapted from Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides by K.H. Myris, directed by Yiannis Margaritis. IX Cairo International Festival for Experimental Theatre. Photo uncredited. Few international capitals are more theatrical than Cairo, with its mixture of modern people, ancient landmarks, bustling markets, and daredevil traffic woven around the silvery ribbon of the Nile. The IX Cairo International Festival for Experimental Theatre skillfully integrated city, theatrical venues, and sixty-six presentations from thirty-eight countries and five continents to create an electrifying atmosphere. On a given night, a guest of the festival might journey from the Khan el Khalili bazaar area, where productions from Bulgaria and Egypt were mounted in a partially restored medieval merchants’ hostel, to more centrally located stages to see performances from Kuwait or Britain at the National Theatre, then on to the Puppet Theatre to squirm in its child-size bucket seats during a play from Cameroon or a coproduction from Spain and Venezuela, then across the Nile to see Australians or Egyptians on the main stage of the sumptuous modern Opera House, and finally to the Sound and Light Theatre at Giza for productions from Greece and Japan. The program consisted of thirty-four official shows as well as a large number of fringe entries. Added to these were two days of symposia on this year’s Festival theme of Feminist Theatre, with one day devoted to Experimentation on Dramatic forms in Women’s/Feminist Writing and the next to Experimental Trends in Performance and Systems of Work in Women’s/Feminist Theatre Troupes. Yet amid all the ebulliance, some sour notes intruded: a third day of panels on the heritage and future of Arabic theatre featured only male speakers, and not one play in the entire Festival was written or directed by a woman. In a supposed tribute to feminist theatre, women artists and scholars were still sent the age-old message to be glad that they were recognized at all, but to let men get on with the real work and reap the rewards. The Festival opened at the Opera House with The Descent, an exemplary experimental performance by Australia’s Chapel of Change. Without dialogue, the scenario was created, directed, and performed by Rainsford, in collaboration with actress/dancer Mary Salem. Her long dark ringlets falling onto the spangled bodice of a belly-dance-like costume, Salem played with liquid grace a young widow crazed with grief, slowly renewing her commitment to life through a series of rituals led by the priestly character of Rainsford. Image by image, a sense of sanctity was built in a setting covered with fine salt and hung with gauzy white drapes: Rainsford sculpted by light in a pose suggesting Christ in the Pietà; Salem inside a cocoon as Rainsford meticulously swept the white salt into clouds and circles suggesting anything from the dust of eternity to making a clean sweep of life’s inessentials; Salem gradually shedding her colorful costume for the white robes of an acolyte; and finally a sequence where the actors played with a golden ball before finally...

North Korea in 1989: Touched by Winds of Change?

The Festival The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) missed the excitement of the 1988 Summer Olympic Games in Seoul, but its day in the sun came 10 months later when Pyongyang hosted the thirteenth World Festival of Youth and Students (WFYS), a gathering of people from 180 nations. On July 1 the grand opening ceremony was held in the newly renamed May Day Stadium under the festival theme of antiimperialism solidarity, peace, and friendship. By all accounts the festival was staged successfully. Pyongyang had been preparing for four years, reportedly spending $4.5 billion on construction of facilities, some of which were originally intended for the Olympic Games. The Koreans reportedly received a grant of $33 million from Moscow to help pay the costs, but on seeing the many imposing buildings and the lavish entertainments staged by North Korea, the Soviets questioned the wisdom of a developing country spending so much money to stage such an exhibition. Moscow's dissatisfaction with lavish spending was not the only criticism directed at the festival. According to an Associated Press dispatch from Pyongyang, the Danish and Finnish delegations embarrassed North Korean authorities during the opening ceremony by unfurling banners that criticized Pyongyang's human rights abuses. And as might be expected, some Western journalists returned to their countries to report on the regimentation they had witnessed in North Korean society. But all in all the festival was impressive in scale and execution. Despite the closed and secret nature of North Korean society, Pyongyang found the means to open its arms to welcome foreign guests. The effects of this opening on local citizens (i.e., those relatively few who were exposed to foreigners) can be