Young Actor Research Articles

Russian roulette: Serbian pop culture and global soft-power conflict

This article focuses on the recent Russian and Serbian pop-political entanglement. Russians usually rely on hard-power elements like military, energy and economics, but in the last several years they became active as sport club sponsors, telecommunication provider’s partners and film producers. The article examines the latter phenomenon of increasing presence of Russian characters within Serbian media culture, whether it is domestic, Russian or American production, like in the case of Stranger Things, where a Serbian actor Nikola Đuričko plays a Russian smuggler. The central figure though is young actor Miloš Biković, hired many times by Russian film producers in the last decade. His film The Balkan Line (2019) is examined in this article as a representative of Russian soft-power influence as well as their geopolitical stance. The Balkan Shadows (2017–present) and Stranger Things (2016–present) are analysed as pro-western counterparts in this superpower struggle within Serbian media culture.

“Eating the Barrio”: Gastronomy and urban change in Santa Cruz, Lima

This article explores the impact of the gastronomic boom on gentrification processes in Lima, Peru, during the last two decades. It is an ethnographic study conducted in 2012, 2014, and 2016 in the Santa Cruz housing development, which used to be a working-class neighborhood located in the Miraflores district. The central focus is the analysis of the personal narratives of change and belonging of residents, workers, and visitors, supported by photographic practice. In particular, it is based on the experience of Carlos, a young actor who after living several years in London returns to Peru to start a business and, taking advantage of competitive prices in Santa Cruz, opens a gourmet bakery in the neighborhood. Using the notion of “cosmopolitan imagination,” we show the different ways in which Carlos recontextualizes his experience in London in the specificity of La Mar, negotiating the limits, meanings and values of the places, people, and cultural practices that arise from inhabiting this space of change. Ultimately, Carlos’s bakery becomes a meeting point for linking or negotiating different strategies and experiences of belonging to the area, materializing power dynamics that emerge inside and outside the business, thus shaping the commodification of Santa Cruz.

Mourning Lycidas in New York: Frank O’Hara’s James Dean elegies as a poetic coming-of-age narrative

ABSTRACT This paper examines Frank O’Hara’s two elegiac poems written on the occasion of James Dean’s death in 1955 and investigates their deep-seated yet intriguingly ambivalent relationship with the tradition of pastoral elegy. O’Hara’s poetry is characteristically marked by immediacy, spontaneity, and intimacy. When confronted by the death of his cultural alter ego, however, O’Hara almost self-consciously taps into the cliché-laden, pity-driven tradition of pastoral elegy both to enact a ritual of mourning for the dead and to address his sense of loss and grief. This paper discusses how O’Hara utilizes the rich thematic and rhetorical conventions of the pastoral elegiac tradition without diminishing the authenticity of poetic mourning. Concurrently, this paper further delves into how O’Hara uses a distinctively self-referential quality coded in the genre of elegy as a vehicle for affirming his vocational identity and establishing poetic authority. I will thus argue that James Dean elegies not only commemorate the truncated life of a rebellious young actor but also depict O’Hara’s own poetic rite of passage.

Scaramuccia nel teatro di strada. Una proposta di ‘attribuzionismo teatrale’

In the Museo di Roma at Palazzo Braschi there is a painting attributed to an anonymous Flemish painter of the 17th century depicting a theatre scene in Piazza Pasquino, whose iconography differs from the usual depiction of this subject spread by bamboozling painters in the 17th century.
 Instead of being crowded at the foot of a raised stage – as was typical in works depicting charlatans accompanied by the comedians of the Commedia dell’arte – the spectators are arranged in a circle around them. And, above all, the character in the centre of the scene has the physiognomy and costume typical of the actor Tiberio Fiorilli (1608-1694) as Scaramuccia. This identification is based on iconographic comparisons with printed works and two paintings by Pietro Paolini.
 Fiorilli’s presence in Rome and the social context in which he is documented are intertwined with the history of the urban space depicted in the painting, taking into account architectural, iconographic, and literary elements. On the basis of these elements, the work can be dated to between the 1630s and 1640s, a little-known period in Fiorilli’s life. Before conquering the stages frequented by the aristocracy and kings, the young actor may have begun to build his character in the street theatre made up of Commedia dell’Arte masks and charlatans with which the city was teeming.

Adelaide Ristori sublime declamatrice dantesca sulla scena italiana e internazionale del secondo Ottocento

This essay examines the presence of Alighieri’s poetry in the repertory and the self-promotion of Adelaide Ristori. During her career the exceptional tragic performer showed a clear interest in recitals where she used to combine excerpts from famous tragedies and Italian classics. Among others the Divina Commedia’s episodes were accurately selected to please the European public. The format conception was influenced by the collaboration with the young actor Ernesto Rossi, her scene partner in Paris with the Compagnia Reale Sarda between the months of June and August 1855, who was an excellent Dantean reciter. Reviews, reports, and playbills testify that over the years Ristori assimilated and re-elaborated the practice by way of an original dramaturgical operation. Her ability to recite the poem, particularly the Inferno’s fifth canto, emerged several times between 1856 and 1865, when she acted in London and in Paris. According to a consolidated bibliography, the Ristori’s international triumphs launched the season of the Italian Grande Attore. The recitation of Dante’s popular plots contributed to the success of the actress outside and inside Italian borders, and it represented both a typical brand of ‘Italianness’ and a masterpiece of her theatrical creations.

Developing a Sustainable Development Goals Research Hub among MERCOSUR’s Universities: A Case Study

The United Nations 2030 Agenda places universities as a hub of idea generators, which impulse and improve sustainable development. In the agenda, universities are considered vital to realizing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), because they are where experienced actor and young actor converge. These actors are good at developing actions of change, breeding innovation and creating a vision to the future. South Korea is one of the countries that took hold of the 2030 Agenda, providing an example of good international cooperation. The country is also known for its adaptable educational programs, which suits the complex and fast-changing demands of the world. South Korea has been working about its capacity to integrate the Sustainable Development Goals into the body of university students and academic research from the base generations. In the MERCOSUR, the Sustainable Development Goals advance in the university’s agenda have been pragmatic and differs from country to country. This paper treats a South Korean university, Yonsei University, as a role model of a research hub for the Sustainable Development Goals, and demonstrates that the model has been evoked for students and to stimulate its replicability in the MERCOSUR. This action would be highly benefited because of the Free Trade Agreement between MERCOSUR and South Korea.

Implementation of the myth of the cultural hero in the social and political reality of Ukraine

The article analyzes populist trends in the modern social and political space of Ukraine, in particular, the process of introducing the myth of the cultural hero. The methodological foundation is Jungian philosophy, which recognizes that social activity is caused by the motivational forces of the collective unconscious (C. Jung, E. Fromm, J. Campbell). The hypothesis is put forward that the political choice of the electorate is a manifestation of the objectification of the universal cross-cultural myth. During the analysis of the architectonics of the corresponding myth, 11 mythologemes were found, combined into a narrative about the evolution of a prominent person. The presence of these mythologemes in the television series “Servant of the People”, which contributed to the victory of the young actor Vol. Zelensky in the presidential elections of 2019, was traced. It is concluded that the mentioned cinematographic product covertly influenced the electoral position, forming it by means of instrumental labelling based on a myth imprinted in the subconscious.

웹기반 실험을 통해 살펴본 연령에 따른 긍정정서 편향과 자기연령 효과의 차이

Emotional information conveyed through facial expressions captures people's attention. While negative emotions closely related to general human survival tend to attract attention, as aging progresses, people tend to shift their attention more quickly to positive emotions than negative ones. This study utilized the dot-probe task to examine whether positive emotion bias varies with age among adults aged 20 to 69. Additionally, this study aimed to investigate whether the own-age effect occurs using photos of two age groups (i.e., a young actor and an elderly actor). The results of the study showed that participants of all age groups tended to focus more on positive emotions. The results also showed the own-age effect such that 30’s age group payed more attention to positive and negative facial expressions of the young actors. These results suggest that positive emotions are recognized as important social information for all age groups, and attention bias differs according to the nature of the stimuli.

Incident at Vichy

Incident at Vichy

"And, I Know Things Now": A Tribute to Sondheim

"And, I Know Things Now"A Tribute to Sondheim Gina Masucci MacKenzie (bio) When I first started directing musical theatre, twenty years ago, I decided that directing Into the Woods would be a fun challenge. I was working on my PhD and wanted local actors to have the same passion for Sondheim and literature that I did. They did not, but they were talented, and we learned a lot from each other, about life and about Sondheim. On instinct, my "Little Red," a very talented and very innocent young actor, decided to carry the knife given after she killed the wolf, in her corseted top, between her breasts. The Freudian imagery was lost on her and most of the cast. It was so very Sondheim though. His work does many things, but what it does best is teach us to trust our instincts, our deep-seated, dark feelings, as truth and to follow them, even when we know they will hurt, because the hurting is better than numbness. As Joyce's short stories demonstrate his mastery of the epiphany, so Sondheim's musicals all have that "Aha" moment, where not only the characters, but the audiences realize how little they have known, how much they still do not know, and how much they might not ever want to know. That liminal space that Sondheim creates in every musical is the one that should be mourned the most. For some that is the space of grief, and Sondheim shows us that. For the Witch, again in Into the Woods, her life is devastated by her daughter's insistence that she knows everything. Since the ancient Greeks, that kind of hubris always leads to demise, and here it is no different. Rapunzel, the Witch's "adopted" daughter, dies at the foot of the giant, running from her mother who tried to keep her from all knowledge. Before her death, the Witch sings to her: Stay with meThe world is dark and wild.Stay with me [End Page 189] While you can be a childWith me. There is an implied connection between childhood, order, innocence, and ignorance, while adulthood has knowledge but is solitary and a bit unhinged. If left in that dichotomy, nearly all of Sondheim's musicals would be less-than-intriguing non-spectaculars. That, dichotomy, however, does not hold. It is complicated by the liminal space where we know that we don't know and that is good. It is uncomfortably good. Because the greatest lesson that Sondheim teaches both actors and audiences alike is how to be comfortable with discomfort, that pain itself can be the resolution. West Side Story, A Little Night Music, Sweeney Todd, Follies—none of those pieces give the audience a satisfying ending. The protagonists in them are either dead or defeated at curtain's close, but they are good endings, for Sondheim. For each character left alive, there is knowledge and some, more intangible recognition that there is still a profound lack (of knowledge) that has to be lived with, and that lack will actually make living better. Will Maria be better without Tony? Will the audience be? Maybe not individually better, but universally, yes, because there is knowledge now of the profound racial and ethnic hatred in their community. Can it get better? That is unknown, and Sondheim doesn't fall into the happy-ending false hope trap. There is no resolution, only the knowledge that the audience doesn't know what happens next in our racially charged and torn society. They didn't know when the show debuted in 1957, and we still do not know. That lack of knowing is disconcerting, even terrifying, as we face the injustice surrounding us, but it also motivates us to work toward change. Sondheim's work does that; it pushes his audiences to change. Some might consider that space of the unknown the space of motivation. Lacan would say it's the movement toward jouissance. It's uncomfortably stimulating, delightfully painful, oxymoronic, and exquisitely jarring. Jouissance and Sondheim's work seem to have much in common. In Passion, it is the only explanation for how Giorgio, a young solider, can prefer Fosca, an...

“Pay Attention!” Thornton Wilder’s Correspondence with Timothy Findley: A Literary Friendship

Abstract This article introduces Canadian writer, Timothy Findley, to Wilder scholars through surviving letters, postcards, and a telegram that Wilder wrote to Findley between 1954 and 1970. When they met, Findley was a young actor in London, England, with a role in The Matchmaker. Wilder became an invaluable mentor and wise adviser to the young Canadian and, as this correspondence shows, he was one of the first to encourage Findley to become a writer. Although Findley’s correspondence with Wilder does not appear to have survived, it is clear from Findley’s journals and some of his novels that Wilder influenced his life and art with his encouragement and his artistic practice. As Findley achieved success, he followed Wilder’s example by helping other, younger writers. The title, “Pay attention!” was one of Wilder’s most concise instructions. Findley did just that throughout his life.

Stage speech as a important component of professional skills in mastering the profession of actor

The purpose of the study. To analyze essential characteristics of stage speech in actor’s profession and to distinguish the aspects relevant in forming of future actors’ professional skills. An additional purpose of the research lies in exploration of significance of all stage speech skills acquired in the course of training and practical activities in young actor’s professional career.
 The methodology. The methodology of the paper is determined by the specifics of the article’s subject and purpose. The basis of the research is determined by historical-chronological, typological, analytical and complex methods along with the use of own methodological materials and generally accepted theatrical literature, archival materials and periodicals on the subject. To solve the set tasks, analytical-synthetic methods of source processing and art analysis (particularly in the part of practical review of using the exercises for breathing posture, development and correction of diction and pronunciation) have also been used, as well as the comparative-historical approach (to outline the state of stage speech development in Ukraine and across the world).
 Conclusions. We revealed the pedagogical conditions for formation of performing skills and professional speech potential in those who master the art of acting through professional training at higher educational institutions. It is appropriate to introduce special courses in practical areas of “Verbal interaction training” and “Training of actor’s acting skills”. Such conditions are fully justified theoretically and proven experimentally in the course of educational process in higher educational institutions and by practical experience in theatrical realities of state and private creative teams. The semantic component of working with words and speech practice in students’ training in the acting field has been defined, structural components, criteria and indicators have been outlined, with performing skills’ levels having also been described to further assess the mastery of acting in the course of professional training. Having analyzed various sources on the subject of the article, we can summarize that perfect mastery of stage speech is one of the future actor’s most significant indicators emphasizing his/her skills. 
 The scientific novelty. In the framework of analytical research, the mechanisms for development of basic professional skills of stage speech in students of higher educational institutions applying for the first (bachelor’s) level of “dramatic theater and cinema” acting art educational curriculum were analyzed.
 The practical significance of results obtained. The research results may be used to improve educational curricula that need to be implemented for the purposes of developing better and more productive skills of professional stage speech. They may also be used in preparation for individual practical lessons, lecture courses on “Stage speech” subject to train future professional actors of theater and cinema.

The Metamorphoses of Drama Pedagogy in European Arts High Education Institutions Between Constraint and Initiative

In recent decades, the professional and artistic training of the emerging actor in the European area has required significant adjustments. Drama schools in Europe have had to respond positively to the introduction of the Bologna system, whose initial aim was to homogenize the university curriculum at European level. But we must keep in mind that these aspects are the outcome of intense transmutations of an evolving society. Under these circumstances, today's actor is no longer just a drama performer. The concept of his performance, be it artistic, is present in many fields of activity. The show is everywhere; it went out of the theater hall to be present in the street, at rock concerts, at fashion shows, at all type of events, including sports. Today’s actor is asked to perform in theater halls, but also in cinemas, or media, to get acquainted with new technologies. From this perspective, should drama schools train actors for all these fields or only for drama? Should there be a separate training for each of these categories or the initial, basic drama training responds to the new skills required of the young actor? At European level, there is a need for pedagogical cooperation in arts high education. Drama schools strive to expand their teaching methods panel, trying to facilitate the coexistence of Stanslavskian methods with the artistic practices of Brecht, Grotowski, Eugenio Barba. The phenomenon itself is accelerated by the development of international trade. Of course, there are international festivals and events that allow drama schools to present their creations, research in the field of drama pedagogy and to give students-actors of different nationalities the knowledge of various artistic traditions. Today, exchanges of students and teachers take place regularly within the European Erasmus + program. Whether we are referring to Western Europe or Eastern Europe, we find that the rapid evolution of society is naturally reflected in the emergence of new drama forms. This makes the mission of drama schools difficult. It seems complicated, but it may not be impossible to predict the type of artistic training that an emerging actor should receive in an arts high education institution. Moreover, the clear boundaries between the various fields are fading. Contemporary artists like to explore territories bordering the artistic fields, using different methods and techniques, and multidisciplinary is a predominant feature of our era. The educational institutions that train future actors prove difficulties to change their curriculum taking into account the rapid metamorphosis of reality. Could interdisciplinary intervene in this context as an alternative solution that brings together both defining and specific aspects of arts pedagogy? The answer could be affirmative provided that it represents an opening and it is understood as a means of integrating and sustaining the dynamics of each field of activity taught for the training of the future actor.

A Letter from Eugene O'Neill to Patrick McCartan (June 11, 1934); or, Yeats, the Abbey Theatre, and Days Without End (April 16, 1934)

A Letter from Eugene O'Neill to Patrick McCartan (June 11, 1934); or, Yeats, the Abbey Theatre, and <i>Days Without End</i> (April 16, 1934)

Lies from Outer Space: The Martians’ Famous Invasion of New Jersey

Over the course of time, people have been told many lies concerning the Red Planet. Maybe the most renowned one dates back to the late 1880s, when, owing to an error in translation, scientists were led to believe in the existence of canals on its surface – canals instead of channels – which meant that Mars must be inhabited. More recently, in 1976, a lively discussion arose about the “face on Mars”, something that was spotted by the Viking 2 spacecraft in the region of Cydonia and was later dismissed as a mesa whose unusual shadows had cheated the eye. But the biggest lie of all was told in 1938, when a young actor (Orson Welles) decided to play a Halloween trick with the help of the then-rising medium – the radio. It was not really a lie in the strictest sense of the term. It was not a hoax or a fake, either – it was, in narratological terms, what is commonly called the suspension of disbelief pushed to its extreme. In this essay I am going to reconsider this event mainly in the light of two main conditions concerning lying, namely untruthfulness and the intention to deceive. Our specific case is further complicated by a third factor, that is the fact that somebody lies to someone who is believed to be listening in but who is not being addressed. I will also highlight the aftermath of this mass deception which, despite being followed by a number of disclaimers, actually overturned the utopian portrait of Martians, initiating a long literary and filmic theory of alien invasions.

The feminisation of youth: Rahman’s stardom in Malayalam cinema of the 1980s

ABSTRACT Anchored on the figure of the young Malayalam film actor Rahman and his mercurial rise to popularity in the 1980s, this paper argues that ‘youth’ bears within itself the desire to transcend the gender barrier and fashion a shared sensibility and subjectivity that reaches its peak in the neoliberal moment, thus signifying a new metrosexual, even androgynous, subject who is able to speak for the aspiring global citizens of the region. Rahman signifies a break in the traditional, hegemonic imagination of South Indian masculinity that is rooted in the region, and instead stands for the new configuration of cosmopolitan youth that emerged in the 1970s and 1980s as a result of the migration to the Persian Gulf and the inflow of money and consumer goods from there – a category of youth whose self-fashioning was inflected in a significant way by their consumption practices. Certain representational techniques also resulted in a queering or androgyny of the youthful figure that he personified, suggesting the liminality of gendered identity in youth. Apart from textual analyses of a selection of his films, I also draw on popular reportage around his stardom in the form of news reports and gossip columns published in the leading Malayalam film weekly, Naana, in the 1980s. While the former helps to outline the representational function of Rahman’s body in film narratives, the latter supplements this with data on how the ways in which his figure was imagined and received, both within the industry and among fans, contributes to fashioning a new youth subjectivity.

Wir sind noch einmal davon gekommen/The Skin of Our Teeth

Wir sind noch einmal davon gekommen/<i>The Skin of Our Teeth</i>

Проблемы смыслополагания в горизонте цифровой культуры

Meaning-constitution and creativity processes in contemporary culture have ob­viously been changed under the artificial intelligence’s conditions as “natural-ar­tificial intelligence” system starts to contribute to creativity as meaning-constitu­tion and creativity processes. Аrtificial intelligence seems to be a relatively young actor in the human culture. Its conceptual framing as well as its philo­sophical contribution to meaning-constitution processes requires special research efforts. Search for the new ways of meaning-constitution conceptual framing in conceptual culture’s horizon, is consists of different actors including artificial intelligence facilities, already posed numerous epistemological and ethical prob­lems, is the purpose of the present research. Research strategy and meaning-con­stitution analysis requires to separate meaning-constitution approaches in con­temporary research tradition on micro- and macro-levels. As for micro-level approaches to consciousness are concerned, I arrive to the conclusion, that artifi­cial intelligence contribution in creativity processes requires macro-level ap­proach to contemporary culture. I am trying to analyze artificial intelligence – within the framework of the macro-level approach – as a special actor, sophisti­cated phenomenological contemplations and B. Latur’s actor-network theory be­ing relevant to the study of this subject matter.

And so she plays her part: An autoethnographic exploration of body image, consent, and the young actor

ABSTRACT Through the lens of the author’s experiences as a former young actor, adult TYA practitioner, and individual in recovery for an eating disorder, this autoethnographic exploration weaves together personal narratives to examine youth bodies, body image, consent, and the role of the adult for young in youth theatre and theatre education spaces.

Living in a modern way in The Moon is Blue (1953, Otto Preminger): mid-century modern architecture, interiors, and furniture

This article focuses on The Moon is Blue (1953, Otto Preminger), a light-hearted romantic comedy starring Maggie McNamara as an aspiring young actor, Patty O’Neill, and William Holden as architect Donald Gresham. The first Hollywood movie largely set inside a high-end Mid-Century Modern domestic interior, it features some top-quality machine mass-produced furniture by leading US designers and manufacturers. After considering the design production team, I discuss the ways in which the film promotes the furniture and the performance of modern ways of living. I also discuss how the film uses the interiors in a neighbouring apartment as a counterpoint to that of Gresham.