Trends In Theatre Research Articles

Ira Aldridge: The African Roscius (review)

Reviewed by: Ira Aldridge: The African Roscius David Krasner Bernth Lindfors, ed. Ira Aldridge: The African Roscius. Rochester, NY: Rochester UP, 2007. 288 pp., 19 illustrations. $55.00. Ira Aldridge (1807-1867) was one of the greatest actors of the nineteenth century. In today's parlance, his superstar status would be unimpeachable. Yet he has received less recognition for his achievements than his contemporary white luminaries. The objective of Bernth Lindfors's collection of primary sources and critical essays is to set the record straight by giving Aldridge his overdue credit. Acknowledging the book Ira Aldridge: The Negro Tragedian (1958) by Herbert Marshall and Mildred Stock as groundbreaking, Lindfors, the editor of this collection, sets out nonetheless "to fill some of the lacunae" left out of previous studies of Aldridge "by bringing together a number of essays that shed light on aspects of his existence that were not treated in sufficient depth" (2). In doing so, the book succeeds at portraying Aldridge admirably. The text is divided into two sections. The first reproduces nineteenth-century documents regarding Aldridge, most significantly "Memoir and Theatrical Career of Ira Aldridge, the African Roscius" (ca. 1848), an exaggerated but still informative account of the actor's life. The section offers newly translated news reports and letters that verify or reveal important data about Aldridge's professional and personal life. After a brief stay in New York, Aldridge realized that racism in the United States provided limited opportunities. He ventured to Europe, achieving recognition as one of the great leading actors of his generation. Aldridge's early career succeeded primarily in the provinces outside London rather than in the theatrical capital. In his middle-to-late career he gained success throughout Europe, including London. Known as the "African Roscius" (after the Roman actor Quintus Roscius Gallus), Aldridge played Othello, Lear, Macbeth, Shylock, and Aaron in Titus Andronicus, Mungo in The Padlock, and other roles with humanity, pathos, and eloquence heretofore unseen on the European stage. The second section consists of critical essays. Researchers Ruth Cowhig, Nichola Betŭsić, Joost Groenebour, Ann Marie Koller, and Krzysztof Sawala examine Aldridge's performances in England, the Netherlands, Germany, Russia, and Poland. Hazel Waters attempts to show how Aldridge fought racism by pushing "the boundaries of the roles available to him" (101). Joyce Green MacDonald argues that Aldridge challenged "the relevance of previous centuries' efforts by white actors to 'act black'" (137) by undermining the perceptions of blackness in new and innovative ways. Unsettling the fixed identity of Africans, Aldridge disrupted a theatrical trend by inserting interpretations that cut against the grain of stereotypes. Nicholas M. Evans asserts that Aldridge went to England and performed in roles antithetical to traditional popular minstrelsy, applying instead a "Du Boisian double consciousness" to his characterizations (163). Along similar lines, editor Lindfors adds that Aldridge established himself as a serious tragic actor by experimenting with "white roles," which resulted in challenging racist assumptions through a demonstration of his range and capacity. Aldridge's performances as Macbeth and Lear, writes Herbert Marshall, were intensely human, dispelling stereotypical caricatures. Keith Byerman observes that the actor's performance in comic roles, such as in The Black Doctor, also undermined prevailing perceptions. Aldridge was a superb actor, both comic and tragic, as this book evinces. In Shakespeare in Sable, the late theatre scholar Errol Hill noted that Aldridge was instrumental in bringing a naturalistic acting style to the European stage. His renditions of Othello and Shylock jettisoned the bombastic villainy that had been the bailiwick of other actors. Instead, he brought multi-dimension and nuance to his characterizations, fleshing out a three-dimensional portrayal. One of the most interesting essays in this collection is by Ann Marie Koller, who (following Hill's argument) [End Page 202] suggests that the great stage director the Duke of Saxe-Meiningen attended Aldridge's performance and was so impressed by the actor's authenticity that he was inspired to initiate his famed quest for stage naturalism. That Aldridge helped shape the future of the Western stage practice of realism and naturalism is a highly original and profoundly important idea. A further testament to Aldridge's acting skills is the fact that...

Shifting South Korean Theatre: Jo-Yeol Park’s A Dialogue Between Two Long-necked People and Taesuk Oh’s Chunpung’s Wife

Spring 2009 47 Shifting South Korean Theatre: Jo-Yeol Park’s A Dialogue Between Two Long-necked People and Taesuk Oh’s Chunpung’s Wife Kyounghye Kwon1 Why is Waiting for Godot the most frequently staged Western play in Korean theatre history? Why are the absurdists Beckett, Pinter, and Ionesco among the top twelve most staged Western playwrights?2 Further, why is it that Korean scholar Junseo Im3 goes so far as to say that almost all South Korean plays since the 1960s have been more or less influenced by the Theatre of the Absurd, and that absurdist theatre can be regarded as a short cut to understanding Korean contemporary theatre?4 Beginning with a 1960 production of Ionesco’s La Leçon (The Lesson, 1951) by Sireomgeukjang (Experimental Theatre), numerous small Korean theatre groups staged Western existentialist and absurdist plays in the 1960s and 1970s.5 Korean directorYoung-Woong Lim has staged Waiting for Godot steadily for about forty years since 1969, and his 1988 production was lauded by Martin Esslin. In “The Reception of the Theatre of the Absurd and Korean Theatre,” Miyhe Kim analyzes this extraordinary engagement with Western absurdist theatre in South Korea, and traces the history of its reception. Kim departs from certain scholars’criticism that Korean theatre artists had received Western absurdist theatre and its aesthetics “uncritically” even when Western realism was not “adequately understood” in Korean theatre, thereby “possibly shaking the foundation of realistic theatre” in Korea. Instead, she argues that Korean theatre’s “active” reception of absurdist theatre should be respected because it has fostered the development of Korean theatre, although Korea should have approached absurdist theatre more judiciously and systematically.6 I would add that there is also no reason why non-realistic experimental theatre should have been explored only after Western realistic theatre7 had been thoroughly founded in Korea, especially given that, as my essay will show, non-realistic theatre is closer to Korea’s indigenous performance aesthetics. The suggestion that Korean theatre should follow the same artistic trajectory as the West (from the achievement of realistic theatre toward anti-realistic experimental theatre) implies an uncritical logic that privileges Western theatre history. As it has done thus far, Korean theatre must simultaneously negotiate the pluralities of global theatrical trends. Kim’s essay on the significance of Korean theatre’s reception of Western Kyounghye Kwon is a doctoral candidate in English at the Ohio State University with a Graduate Minor in Theatre and Performance. Her research and teaching interest areas include postcolonial theatre studies, 20th-century drama,AsianAmerican theatre, performance theory, and cultural studies. Her other scholarly essays can be found in Text & Presentation and Pinter Etc. (ed. Craig N. Owens, forthcoming). 48 Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism absurdist theatre is my starting point. However, departing from Kim’s focus on the production of Western absurdist plays, I will concentrate on Korean plays that sometimes controversially evoked absurdist styles, and will situate a notable aesthetic shift in Korean postcolonial theatre from the 1970s in its local and global contexts. Korean theatre of the post-colonial8 period emerged in the 1950s and 1960s, and thus converged with the Theatre of the Absurd. This took the form of a unique and significant global and local aesthetic interpenetration in Korean postcolonial theatre. When an aesthetic grown from one cultural location migrates to another domain, it is bound to undergo adjustments and alterations, develop different emphases and unexpected additions, and/or demonstrate resistance. In this essay, I will first treat Korean theatre’s active engagement with absurdist theatre in the 1960s not as a West-centered case of evaluation and imitation, but as a significant glocal aesthetic phenomenon; it is from this perspective that I will approach JoYeol Park’s A Dialogue Between Two Long-Necked People and Taesuk Oh’s early plays. However, when it comes to Oh’s later theatre from the 1970s and onwards, I will discuss a specific mode of glocality, which I call “glocal-locality”—that is, the intersection of the global, the local, and the restored local cultures from the past within the larger local. Glocality: Jo-Yeol Park’s A Dialogue Between Two Long-necked People Although...

E. Grishkovets as "Chelovek-Teatr" - Note on a New Trend in Post-soviet Theatre

E. Grishkovets as "Chelovek-Teatr" - Note on a New Trend in Post-soviet Theatre

Scenographies of the everyday in Contemporary German theatre – Anna Langhoff and Sasha Waltz restage the family drama

This article investigates what it means to move beyond the text in two works – Anna Langhoff's Frieden Frieden (Peace Peace) (1997) and Sasha Waltz and Guests' Allee der Kosmonauten (Avenue of the Cosmonauts) (1996, 1997, 2000) – chosen for the way they show how contemporary dramatic theatre and non-text based Tanztheater alike exemplify new directions in scenography. Through a focus on mise en scène, particularly scenography, movement and sound, the article will look ‘beyond the text’ to the performative, visual and aural image-making in these two productions as they shed light on tensions and debates in post-reunification Germany. The works are analysed as examples of a noticeable trend in 1990s' theatre that revisits the domestic spaces of everyday life within a post-communist frame of reference. The essay concludes by suggesting that this renewed interest is a critical response to the increasing pressures on the family of a deregulated, privatized, post-industrial economy. These politicized scenographies present the everyday as both violent and bizarre but they also open up possibilities for imaginative reconstruction and play.

Sarah Kane y el espectáculo del dolor

This article analyses the chief characteristics of Sarah Kane's dramaturgy both its textualand scenic dimensions. Links are established with the English theatrical trend of the 90's, known as in yer face, and the influences of Antonin Artaud on Kane's conception of theatre as 'a spectacle of pain' comes under consideration. This study basically focuses on Kane's piece, Phaedra's Love , while considering other pieces of the playwight.

Danjūrō's katsureki‐geki (realistic theatre) and the Meiji ‘theatre reform’ movement

Among the new tracks kabuki ventured to explore during the Meiji era in order to keep up with the rapidly changing times, the ‘reformed’ realistic historical theatre known as katsureki‐geki is usually credited as having been the most modern‐minded, even though its theatrical failure is largely acknowledged. With the approval of the Establishment and the collaboration of literati from the Reform Society, the genre was essentially built upon the ‘reformed’ acting style which Ichikawa Danjūrō IX wanted to impose in order to rejuvenate kabuki's tradition. This article presents the major tenets of the reforms attempted by the great actor and tries to confront them with the kabuki tradition as well as with European nineteenth‐century theatrical trends. It concludes that, despite Danjūrō's prestige and dedication, katsureki was mostly a dead‐end that could neither rejuvenate kabuki nor lead to a radically new form built upon the ruins of traditional theatre.

“Access to rather than ownership of”: South African theatre history and theory at a crossroad

Abstract This article offers a concise overview of South African theatre history and theory to date, with an evaluation of possible areas that have been neglected. It also considers present trends in theatre—both mainstream and community theatre within the context of the cultural debate in South Africa. The article also considers how approaches by critics from other parts of Africa may be of benefit to South African theatre historians and theorists.

Laughing all the way to the Ghetto: Lesbian Farce

This article focuses on the nature of farce as a British theatrical genre with reference to lesbian theatre in particular. Farce is explored as a political weapon and as such is deconstructed in its traditional reactionary form in the cultural context of modern British theatre. The rest of the article focuses on a production by Red Rag Women's Theatre Company, Ooh, Missus!, which attempted a radical pastiche of the Whitehall farce from a lesbian perspective. It ends with an analysis of the current trends in lesbian theatre in London. The main assertion of the article is that lesbian theatre in the eighties and early nineties has adopted an overtly “out” and confident identity with a clear set of acceptable humourous forms and characters. The closed nature of these “givens” is questioned in this article.

A Theatre of Their Own: the Cultural Spaces of Moscow and Leningrad Amateur Studios 1957–1986

In a society where is at a premium and families wait years for their own apartment, the allocation of physical serves as a powerful means for social and control. In the Soviet Union, this phenomenon affected not only kolkhozniki and other individuals who hoped to attain residency permits in major cities. These policies also hobbled the development of organizations which offered alternative viewpoints to official ideology. In the post-Stalin period, urban complexity made strict control increasingly difficult, and professionals and amateurs together began to carve out new in officially sanctioned amateur (samodeiateVnye) theatres. Known as studios for their commitment to training and experimentation, the best of these troupes created innovative productions that made a noteworthy impact on the landscape because of their marginal amateur status. Their contribution goes beyond their revival of the small stage as a provocative medium for performance. Their survival in spite of bureaucratic obstacles ensured an enclave for other nonconformist performers and spectators dissatisfied with orthodox theatre in particular and Soviet society in general. As a result, these ensembles provided for behavior and values that participants perceived to be discouraged elsewhere. Using various metaphors of space, an examination of these amateur troupes in Moscow and Leningrad highlights their significance for both theatrical trends and broad changes in Soviet society during this period. Notions of cultural space encompass the impact of physical locations as well as abstract spaces that define relationships among various groups in a society. The ability of supposedly powerless individuals to redefine these offers insight into their ability to control change in modern societies, including those dominated by authoritarian regimes. The study of amateur theatre within the paradigm of presents an opportunity to situate theatrical developments within the Soviet Union's broader socio-cultural context. As such, it bridges the disciplines of theatre and history. In most cases, scholars of Soviet theatre focus their analyses on innovations in dramatic texts and production techniques; if included, contextual

Notes sobre els autors mallorquins contemporanis

A study of the activity and dramatic production in Majorca from the immediate post-war to the present. Starting from the regional theatre, with its exclusively commercial vocation, the author goes on to analyze the attempts of providing theatrical plays with solid cultural bases, by the dignification of the dramatic text and the synchronization with European theatrical trends, as well as by employing the most experimental formulae.

Trends in Zimbabwean Theatre since 1980

At independence in 1980, Zimbabwe's black majority govemment adopted a policy of reconciliation as a strategy of transfoiming black-white relations which for over ninety years had been characterised by relations of stark inequality. The effect of the policy of reconciliation was further enhanced by the formation of a government of national unity which included in its cabinet some members of the white minority regime. Theatre in Zimbabwe since 1980 has, in the main, been a response to these policies of reconciliation, non-racial development and socialism. Thus an analysis of Zimbabwean theatre is in many ways an assessment of the successes and obstacles in the development of a non-racial and socialist culture in Zimbabwe. Since 1980 a number of trends in Zimbabwean theatre have developed. The first trend is that of theatre that had its roots in the liberation struggle in guerrilla camps in Mozambique and Zambia and inside the country's liberated zones. This is the theatre used by combatants to articulate the people's role and aspirations in waging a war of liberation. It was used to effectively tell the story of colonial occupation and the revolutionary history of the people's resistance since 1896. In the liberated zones inside the country, an all-night song-dance-political rally called Pun1gwe became the medium for the dramatisation of the people's struggle (Chinlur eniga) and the inevitable defeat of colonialism in Zimbabwe. This dynamic use of the diverse and popular forms of indigenous performing arts, for instance traditional dance, ritual dances, poetic recitation, chants, slogans, songs and story-telling enabled the combatants to mobilize the peasants to articulate their opposition to the settler white minority regime, and to consolidate the peasants solidarity with the liberation struggle despite the punitive strikes by the forces of the Smith regime. The Pungwe enabled the combatants to concretise the ideology of socialism as an instrument of transferring political and economic power to the indigenous people of Zimbabwe. In some ways, the new artistic experience forged largely in the guerrilla camps was not fully exploited once the war had ended. At independence, theatre artists who had been involved in the use of theatre as a revolutionary tool for articulating both the experience and the ideological dynamics of the liberation struggle returned home from Mozambique, Zambia, Tanzania, Europe, America and many African countries. Those who had been pioneers of this radical and innovative theatre were, upon their return home, either appointed to senior government positions or

Myths and Realities of Contemporary French Theater: Comparative Views ed. by Patricia M. Hopkins, Wendell M. Aycock, and: An International Dictionary of Theatre Language ed. by Joel Trapido, Edward A. Langhans, James R. Brandon

Reviews89 tainly is) because it is and should be a pleasure to such a great number of readers who would not go out of their way to read a book on a musty subject like theatre history! WILLIAM I. OLIVER University of California, Berkeley Patricia M. Hopkins and Wendell M. Aycock, eds. Myths and Realities of Contemporary French Theater: Comparative Views. Lubbock: Texas Tech Press, 1985. Pp. 195. $50.00. Joel Trapido, Edward A. Langhans, and James R. Brandon, eds. An International Dictionary of Theatre Language. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1985. Pp. xxxi + 1032. $95.00. Myths and Realities of Contemporary French Theater is a collection of twelve essays that constitute the proceedings of the Seventeenth Annual Comparative Literature Symposium held at Texas Tech University in the spring of 1984. While the quality of the ten symposium lectures is uneven, as in most Festschrifts, the two keynote addresses heading up the volume are of particular value. "Is There Something Rotten in the State of French Theater?" by Jeanyves Guérin offers an informed and clear summary analysis of what went wrong with French theatre after the post-World War II "golden age" when plays by philosophers, poets, novelists, and absurdists, as well as by major dramatists like Ghelderode and Anouilh, graced the stage each season. Although most critics pinpoint 1968—that watershed year in recent French cultural and political history—as the beginning of the decline, Guérin traces the problem further back, to a politicization of French theatre that with hindsight can be detected as early as the 1950's. The rise of "Brechtomania" is cogently elucidated, except for a teasing, incomplete paragraph about Adamov's development under that influence. Closely behind followed the apotheosis of Artaud and then Guy Scarpetta's ultra-modernism and, in the 1970's, foreign directors like Grotowski, Wilson, Ronconi, and Stein. Claiming that "no dominant view characterizes the present time," Guérin devotes fully half of his essay to a discussion of various trends of the 1980's: commercialism , internationalization, rediscovery of the classics, legitimization of the anti-theatre of the 1950's, théâtre du quotidien, performance of academic commentaries on the text, baroque spectacle burying the text, and other related phenomena. The essay is especially useful in that it does not become overburdened with the contributions (or adverse influence) of the current generation of leading French directors, but instead clarifies larger issues for the general reader. The fact that little else of this scope has been published in English on these broad trends in French theatre since the 1960's is driven home by a glance at the other essays in this collection: the most recent French plays discussed anywhere else in the book are Arrabal's Architect and the Emperor of Assyria and Genet's The Screens, both of the 1960's. The second keynote address, George Woodyard's "Myths and Realities in the Latin American Theater: The French Connection," is a useful survey of major Mexican, Venezuelan, Argentine, and Cuban playwrights, 90Comparative Drama organized according to successive waves of French influence, from existentialism to Artaud and Genet. This address is nicely complemented by one of the Symposium lectures, "Variations on the Theme of Cruelty in Spanish American Theater" by L. Howard Quackenbush, which covers many of the same dramatists mentioned by Woodyard, but a different selection of plays. Both authors make it clear that the widespread application in Latin America of the theories of Brecht and Artaud was more vehemently political or violent or ritualistic than in Europe; even Theatre of the Absurd, which in Europe was studiously nonpolitical, took on strong political overtones when adopted by Latin Americans. The names that dominate the Symposium lectures are Brecht, Artaud, and Genet. The three essays on Genet offer some interesting critical insights, especially Rufus Cook's "Quest for Immobility: The Identification of Being and Non-Being in Jean Genet's The Balcony" and Mary Ann Witt's "Spatial Narration in Jean Genet's Notre Dame des Fleurs and Le Balcon." Cook convincingly argues that Genet eliminates any distinction between being and non-being in that the ideal mode of being for Genet's characters is the projection of an image...

Showing West: Three Prairie Docu-dramas, Eight Plays For Young People

Showing West–the fifth entry in NeWest’s Prairie Play Series – makes available three playscripts which exemplify and account for an important trend in theatre on the prairies in the past 10 years.

The career of Alexandra Denisova: Vancouver, de Basil, and Cuba

WHEN YOUNG PATRICIA MEYERS began studying ballet in Vancouver, British Columbia, in the mid-1930s, there were few opportunities for serious dancers in Canada. To have a career she had to go abroad. The story of how she became Alexandra Denisova, a principal dancer with the de Basil Ballet Russe, and as the wife of Alberto Alonso played an important part in the development of the Cuban ballet before going into musicals and films, reveals much about the dance world of the 1930s and '40s. In 1934 the American dancer June Roper slipped quietly into Vancouver to visit a sister who had settled there and was shortly commandeered into teaching dancing at a projected school for the theatre arts. Before the visits of the Ballet Russe companies, ballet connoted to many the toe dancing in the music hall and pantomime forms that a generation of new Canadians had seen on the English stage.1 Daughters from middle-class families were enrolled in dancing schools primarily to acquire social graces, and the rigid discipline of ballet was generally reserved for children requiring therapy for physical defects and problems. Prospects of a career in dancing, locally or otherwise, were rarely entertained. Vancouver society matrons subscribed to The Dancing Times and religiously kept abreast of theatrical trends in England. June Roper's picture on the cover of the February 1929 issue of the journal heralding her debut in the Cochran Revue had come to their attention, and stories of her accomplishments preceded her arrival.2 It was thus known that she had studied as a child with the Cecchetti disciple Ernest Belcher in Los Angeles, that she had been a stunt woman in silent films, and that she incorporated ballet technique and spectacular physical feats into her adagio dancing. She had sought ? 1979 by Leland Windreich

Observations On The Viennese Theater

VIENNA, one of Europe's oldest theatrical capitals, is worth our attention not only because of the vigor of its theatrical life but also because of its reluctance to go with international theatrical trends and its preference for a path outlined for it by its own rich theatrical tradition. In observing the Viennese theater one is forcefully reminded of the truism that although theater and literature are related they are not identical with one another. In the theater the literary component, the logos, has to share its place with the play component, the mimos. A struggle between the two for ascendency is discernible throughout the history of the European stage. Great theatrical performances have often been the result of a happy synthesis of these two elements. Where one of them has heavily predominated at the expense of the other, the outcome has usually not been a happy one: a preponderance of the mimos favors a theater that is purely amusement and entertainment, and-worse perhaps-that of the logos brings about bloodless, academic performances. The prominent, contemporary Viennese playwright Fritz Hochwalder pleads for a mimos-dominated theater: "Theater is by no means literature. It may become literature. From the viewpoint of the stage, literature is only the noble patina which the products of great theatrical periods acquire with age…