Young Performance Research Articles

The Breach by Naomi Wallace (review)

Reviewed by: The Breach by Naomi Wallace Erica Stevens Abbitt THE BREACH. By Naomi Wallace. Directed by Sarah Frankcom. Hampstead Theatre, London. May 12, 2022. In an era of social crisis in Britain and the United States, this production of Naomi Wallace’s provocative coming-of-age drama The Breach marked a series of firsts. It was the first time this award-winning British-American playwright had been featured at London’s Hampstead Theatre, despite its ongoing commitment to innovative drama. It was the first production for this venue directed by Sarah Frankcom, known for her fearless dedication to contemporary playwrights during her tenure at the Manchester Royal Exchange. It was also The Breach’s English-language premiere. Ironically, this play, written by a Kentucky native, and commissioned by the Actors Theatre of Louisville, was firmly rejected for production by a number of American stages. In France, where translations of Wallace’s play are popular, and her Obie-award-winning drama One Flea Spare is in the permanent repertoire of the Comédie-Française, The Breach received its world premiere (as La Brèche) in a critically-acclaimed production at the 2019 Avignon Festival. (A Québécois version of La Brèche was performed in Montreal in 2021, and the play has recently been translated into German.) Set in Kentucky in 1977 and 1991, The Breach dramatizes the lives of four people—first as teenagers, and then, for the three of them who survive into adulthood, as grown-ups—as their youthful dreams collide with the realities of a country ravaged by the Vietnam War and the destructive impact of Reaganomics. The central figure is feisty sixteen-year-old Jude (Shannon Tarbet, a standout in a powerful cast). She fiercely guards her geeky, brainiac younger brother Acton (Stanley Morgan), carving out a basement sanctuary in their blue-collar home, where their hard-working widowed mother scarcely ever sets foot. When Acton is mercilessly bullied at school, he seeks protection from rich kid Hoke (Alfie Jones), and his eager sidekick Frayne (Charlie Beck). Thirteen years later, when the adult Jude (Jasmine Black-borow) returns to town after Acton’s suicide, she reunites with a grown-up Hoke (Tom Lewis), now CEO of his father’s pharmaceutical company, and a wary, chastened Frayne (Douggie McMeekin), still trailing in Hoke’s wake. As the past and present intersect, secrets are revealed, and troubling questions resurface: Did the boys drug and rape Jude on the night of her seventeenth birthday with her brother’s consent? Or were they tricked by the siblings into a promise of protection for Acton and a lifetime of guilt? Was a crime committed—and, if so, who were the victims? And what happens next? In the Hampstead production of The Breach, the cast members encircled each other in a series of scenes moving fluidly across time and place. Frank-com honoured the playwright’s stage directions to embody wild moments with still bodies, which meant that actors appeared to hover on the edge of disturbing encounters. This approach (ably assisted by choreographer Jennifer Jackson) worked best with the younger performers, who vibrated with barely-repressed energy as they paused, almost in mid-flight, to speak of their father’s fatal fall or the shocking arrangement to trade access to Jude’s body for Acton’s survival. In the older actors, this risky technique was only fully realized near the end, when Blackborow (as the adult Jude) stood quietly, almost transfixed, delivering a joyful speech about the new life she planned with her daughter. Supporting the productive tension between gritty realism and the surreal, dream-like nature of this [End Page 85] Click for larger view View full resolution Shannon Tarbet (Jude) in The Breach. Photo: Johan Persson. [End Page 86] Click for larger view View full resolution Stanley Morgan (Acton), Douggie McMeekin (Frayne), Jasmine Blackborow (Adult Jude), Shannon Tarbet (Young Jude) in The Breach. Photo: Johan Persson. disturbing narrative, Naomi Dawson created a minimalist set, both intimate and dangerous. Deftly lit by Rick Fisher, with a soundscape by Tingying Dong evoking the anarchic undertones of an American generation in transition, the performance space reinforced the play’s...

Yo soy de p fkn r

Based in a sociophonetic analysis of lyrics performed by eight male Reggaeton artists of Puerto Rican origin, this study combines raciolinguistic and variationist frameworks to examine the frequency of occurrence and underlying linguistic, musicological, and poetic factors conditioning the distribution of the lateral variant of syllable- and word-final alveolar tap /ɾ/. Given that this trait is regarded as a distinctive characteristic of Puerto Rican Spanish capable of indexing in-group membership alongside positive assessments of Puerto Rican national identity, the study explores the implementation of this feature in popular performances of Puerto Ricanness in the context of global Latin Urban Music (Delgado Díaz et al. 2021, Medina Rivera 1997, Valentín Márquez 2015).The results show that lateralization is more frequently used by contemporary reggaetoneros like Bad Bunny and Ozuna, whose professional careers began in an era in which Reggaeton enjoyed global accessibility, contrasted to the pioneering artists of the genre such as Daddy Yankee and Nicky Jam, who use the variant significantly less frequently. Additionally, the results suggest that, while the most recent tracks performed by newer artists exhibit the highest rates of occurrence, the inverse is true for artists whose careers began in the early 2000s before the global consumption of Reggaeton, who are documented as decreasing use of [l] in what is interpreted as an attempt to distinguish their works from younger performers. This work contributes to the growing literature regarding the linguistic construction of performative identities permeating the popular music industry, offering insight into the racialization of [l] as a distinct Puerto Rican feature relative to expressions of ethnonational pride

Pete Seeger’s Rainbow Quest: televisual old age, intergenerationalism, and US folk music

ABSTRACTIn 2009, television networks worldwide broadcast the performance of the nonagenarian Pete Seeger, an aging icon of the Sixties, accompanied by his son Tao, Bruce Springsteen, and a choir of children, at the inauguration of President Barack Obama, a figure intimately associated by many with a fulfilment of at least some of the progressive potential of the Sixties. The event encapsulated an overlooked legacy of the Sixties: televised old age and intergenerationalism. From 1965 to 1966, Seeger produced and presented thirty-nine episodes of Rainbow Quest, a television program in which the musician-activist shared songs and conversation with a diverse set of guests. The show has attracted the interest of several scholars for the ways it reflected Seeger’s enthusiasm for internationalism, multiculturalism, world “folk” music, and, surprisingly, the mass media. Yet few have given thought to the overrepresentation of older musicians on the show: over half of the episodes feature at least one guest in their late fifties or older, often paired with younger performers. The program represents a strident, if underrecognized, zeal for intergenerationalism on the part of an iconic Sixties performer, and challenges essentialization of the era as one of pervasive youth culture and generational division. This article reappraises Rainbow Quest with this age frame by identifying the role of aging and generational identity in the making of the show, and the risks of inadvertently reinforcing entrenched ageist tropes on television. Rainbow Quest also serves as a useful springboard for reconsidering some of the specific complexities of the folk revival, particularly its relative uniqueness as a site of intergenerationalism. Just as significantly, this article also situates notions of aging as significant threads in the interconnected and shifting web of race, class, and gender dynamics that characterized the Sixties, Seeger’s career, and the folk scene he helped build.

Authorship and Nostalgia in Contemporary Cowboy Repertoire

The genre of cowboy music, first developed by working cowboys in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, has been thoroughly documented by early folklorists, and revived by younger performers working as professional songwriters. Through an analysis of the cowboy classics recorded by Ian Tyson, and of six volumes of cowboy songs available in written form, this article proposes that despite the weight of tradition that cowboy repertoire bears, it has been one that favors new composition because it exists as a folk music, a commercial music, and an art music all at once. This article will also consider the significant role of place in Western song; for cowboy singers, the ongoing disappearance of an old West is a source of both despair and inspiration. In this sense, songwriters are not only responsible for creating a picture of a mythic West but also charged with reminding listeners that it should still exist, thereby shaping our knowledge and experience of the region through song. The resurrection of old repertoire is one of the ways cowboy singers can respond to anxiety over the vanishing West. These songs, alongside new compositions that maintain sentimentality for the past, serve a nostalgic function for audiences who long for a lost West but have never experienced it as it is portrayed in art.

Performance of Younger and Older Adults on Tests of Word Knowledge and Word Retrieval: Independence or Interdependence of Skills?

The purpose of this study was to examine the associations between vocabulary knowledge and word retrieval in younger and older adults. Three tests of word retrieval and 2 tests of word knowledge were administered to 140 Hebrew-speaking adults, half of whom were younger (M(age) = 24.20 years) and half of whom were older (M(age) = 74.83 years). Younger adults outperformed older adults on tests of retrieval, whereas older adults outperformed younger adults on tests of vocabulary, and no association was found between the 2 skills across the entire sample. Once age and education were taken into account, both skills contributed to the prediction of each other and were similarly related within each group. Older adults performed equally well when required to produce and recognize word meanings, whereas younger adults were better at recognition than at production. Older age is associated with better knowledge and with retrieval difficulties, yet individual differences in vocabulary within each age group affect level of retrieval, and variability in search skills affects performance on vocabulary tests. Although the assessment of vocabulary is not free of retrieval demands, older adults as a group are more successful than are younger adults at producing word definitions, most likely because their knowledge is more complete.

Staring at the (clitoral) sun: Arousing abjection in Ann Liv Young's The Bagwell in Me

Ann Liv Young's The Bagwell in Me, which premiered at The Kitchen in NYC, 2008, continues this experimental dance-theater artist's characteristically brutal, anatomizing exposure of the performers’ bodies through both sexual and violent narratives. This analysis examines how Young's construction of a certain type of subject on the stage challenges the subjectivities of her audience members, provoking moments of potential eruption. By setting up the possibility of abjection through the ambivalent dynamic of attraction and repulsion, and bombarding the audience with tropes that engender a push toward Georges Bataille's concept of “radical formlessness,” I argue, Ann Liv Young's performance places notions of the stable subject – composed of a “whole” body that is coherently organized and intelligibly coded in terms of sex, gender, sexuality and race – into question. Not only will this analysis explore how viewing oral sex as choreography speaks to Bataille's discussion of radical formlessness through decontextualization and the maddening effects of staring at the sun, but it will also interrogate how the same strategy of radical formlessness could have entirely different performative effects regarding the threat of bodily coherence and taxonomy within the narrative of historical racial violence.

Thoughts on Re-Performance, Experience, and Archivism

��� he term “re-performance” has a catchy refrain, a resonance with an implicit political if not seductive undercurrent, specifically in relation to art politics. To perform on some level is everyone’s dream. Yet to re-perform—what is that? Could it be that re-performance implies a fundamental need for artists to sustain the importance of their work as “live art” through some form of documentation? Hypothetically, this should include performances of some merit—whether by Joseph Beuys, Joan Jonas, Gina Pane, Vito Acconci, Dennis Oppenheim, Nam June Paik, Alison Knowles, Ann Hamilton, or Carolee Schneemann—that are reproduced synthetically ad infinitum over a period time in places other than from where they originated. It is a virtual idea to place performance art in an institution—a modern art museum, for example—where various works may be represented both as archival software and as ephemeral artifacts, documents, or notices of one kind or another. Meanwhile, research coming from various institutions appears bent on mining the same sources while alternative publications and Websites from less predictable sources are being ignored. On one level, the topic of re-performance appears to hold the attention of some observers in denial of more pressing issues, such as the impact of global economy on the future of a deeply faulted art market, now involving “live art”—a topic that deserves serious attention. Instead of going this route, it would appear that the topic at hand has become typically self-indulgent as increasing numbers of mostly younger performance artists—and museum curators who support them—are scrambling for appointments with destiny, hoping their work will be placed on virtual call in the future. One might say that to contemplate the exigencies of performing a work of body art by an artist from another time at another youthful moment, based on extant documentation, archived to the teeth, is like transferring a four-by-five-inch photographic negative into a digital image or copying a reel-to-reel Portapak tape into a DVD format. As Philip Auslander correctly, though reticently suggests in his superlative essay published in PAJ 84 (September 2006), there is the question as to whether performances produced on the basis of archival documentation might lose some of the vitality of the performance, assuming the vitality was there in the first place. 1 Assuming it was there, the question might arise as to what future artist would want to do it. Would he or she appear like a performance clone functioning

College Programs for Professional Ballet Dancers: The Impact on Career Transition

Preparing dancers for the transition to a new career after their performance years are over is a challenge. Lack of education experience outside of dance can put dancers at a distinct disadvantage in today's competitive workforce. This study evaluates the impact of Fordham University's program designed to meet the academic needs of professional dancers. Of 66 dancers who had attended the Fordham program since 1988, 39 completed a questionnaire requesting information about their work and college experience. The findings revealed several factors that influenced these dancers to attend college, including geographical location, tuition reductions, and scheduling adjustments. Financial awards from Dance On, a non-profit organization, also played a role, particularly in the younger performers. These results suggest that Fordham's program, in conjunction with Dance On, may serve as a model for enrolling professional dancers in college.

Brokering Glory for the Chinese Nation: Peking Opera's 1930 American Tour

Brokering Glory for the Chinese Nation: Peking Opera's 1930 American Tour Nancy Guy On 29 December 1929 a company of some twenty Peking opera actors, musicians, and artistic advisors left Shanghai for the United States. Head ofthe troupe was China's foremost actor ofPeking opera, Mei Lanfang, who was already an international sensation.1 The tour, to at least five major U.S. cities, would be a brilliant success. With a tremendous demand for tickets, the engagement in NewYorkwas extended from two to five weeks, during which Peking opera played to capacity houses. Scalpers were able to sell tickets that had cost $3.85 at the box office for as much as $18.00.2 The critic for the New York World proclaimed that it was one ofthe "most exciting evenings" that he had ever spent in a theater.3 Mei's success in New York was so great that a banquet held in his honor, sponsored by the newspapermen's club, was attended by five thousand guests, including the city's mayor, Jimmy Walker. Tables at the affair, which was held shortly after the 1929 stock market crash, were priced at $500, while booths in the balcony went for $1000 each.4 Upon arrival in San Francisco, the troupe was met by a huge delegation headed by Mayor James Rolph, Jr.5 Mei's tour was to receive an equally warm welcome in Chicago, Los Angeles, and Honolulu. What, then, accounted for the tour's enormous success? The answer must lie with the Chinese motivation for organizing the tour and the reasons for the warm embrace of this aesthetically unfamiliar art form by American audiences. Performance is a dualistic process; presenters have certain aims and audience members have particular needs and expectations. A common assumption is that presenters primarily aim to give an aesthetically pleasing 377 378Comparative Drama performance.This viewoverlooks othermotivations thatmaybe ofequal, and sometimes even greater, importance. Likewise, the reason that a person attends (or a crowd flocks to) a performance may exceed hoping to experience an artistically satisfying moment. Mei Lanfang's 1930 tour to the United States (see fig. 1) provides an opportunity for examining the motivations of both presenters and receivers , and in this instance demonstrates that the Chinese and Americans entered into a discourse with each side having its expectations fulfilled . The highly favorable reception of the tour was by no means an accident, for the Chinese tour organizers had systematically studied the desires and aesthetic preferences offoreigners who had attended Peking opera performances (and Chinese culture in general) in China. They acted as "culture brokers" representing their own culture to nonspecialized others.As Richard Kurin has argued, culture brokering involves"the idea that these representations are to some degree negotiated, dialogical, and driven by a variety of interests on behalfofthe involved parties."6 To understand the context ofthe success ofMei's troupe in America, we need to know the environment in which the tour was conceived and launched. How did conditions in China shape the motivations of tour supporters and the touring performers? What were the prevailing conditions in American culture that helped to create an atmosphere ofreceptivity to this foreign and aesthetically unfamiliar art form? But we need to begin with the central figure in this story: Mei Lanfang. Born in 1894 to a prominent family of Peking opera performers, Mei was a superstar in his lifetime, and he remains one of the most important figures in the history ofthe genre. He made his stage debut at the age ofeleven and had achieved national fame by his early twenties. His specialty was the performance ofyoung female roles, and his performing style remains one ofthe most popular and widely practiced for such roles on the Peking opera stage. Cross-gendered performance was commonly though not exclusively practiced in China well into the midtwentieth century. In fact, several ofthe last century's most important Peking opera performers, known as the "four great dan" (si da ming dan) ofwhich Mei Lanfang was one, were male performers of young female roles.7 On accountofMei's stature, asubstantialbodyofwritings existswhich coversmanyaspects ofhislifeandartisticwork,includingthe 1930American Nancy Guy379 Fig. 1. Front cover of the program for Mei Lanfang...

The Performance of Younger and Older Adults With Retardation on a Series of Language Tasks

Three experiments were performed with groups of persons with mild to moderate levels of retardation between the ages of 20 to 36 and 55 to 77 years. The ability of these subjects to perform language tasks with heavy processing demands was examined. These tasks included following syntactically complex directions, recalling facts from an expository passage (fact recall), and retelling a narrative passage (story recall). The abilities of subjects in the two groups were examined and performance was compared. It was found that the performance of the subjects did not differ on two of the three tasks. The younger subjects performed significantly better than the older subjects on only the fact recall task.

Hypnotic Age Regression and Cognitive Perceptual Tasks

Abstract This study hypothesized that subjects in a hypnosis and age regression condition would show “younger” performances on three cognitive tests than subjects given simulation instructions. Previous equivocal evidence of hypnotic age regression may be due to the poor control of methodological and conceptual variables which this study attempted to rectify. Subjects were screened on the Barber Susceptibility Scale and assigned to two conditions. Eight high-susceptible subjects underwent hypnosis and age regression and eight low-susceptible subjects simulated hypnosis and age regression. The Stanford Binet, the Bender-Gestalt, and the Draw-A-Person tests were administered prior to and after the experimental suggestions. Results were in the opposite direction than hypothesized. Repeated measures of analysis of variance indicated that simulating subjects achieved “younger performances” than hypnosis and age regression subjects. However, subjects in the hypnosis and age regression condition reported profound changes in their feelings and memories which simulators did not report. The implications for hypnosis research and clinical practice are discussed.

Meat production from pigs which have farrowed 1. Reproductive performance and food conversion efficiency

SUMMARYThe reproductive performance and food conversion efficiency ofyoung female pigs (gilts) destined for slaughter after weaning their first litter were investigated using four treatment groups of 19 Landrace × (Landrace × Large White) gilts. In two treatment groups gilts were mated at pubertal heat and suckled for 5 to 11 and 35 to 42 days respectively. These gilts were slaughtered following weaning. A third group of gilts were conventionally mated at third oestrus and suckled for 35 to 42 days. These animals acted as controls for reproductive performace. The fourth treatment group consisted of unmated gilts, slaughtered at 118 kg live weight, which served as controls for food conversion efficiency, growth rate and carcass measurements.There were no significant differences in either the number or weight of piglets born in any of the treatment groups. The food conversion efficiency and growth rate of the mated gilts was significantly (P< 0·001) worse than that of the unmated gilts marketed at heavy weights. Of the mated gilts those mated at puberty and weaned at 35 to 42 days had the best overall feed conversion efficiency (4·56: 1) between the start of the experiment and weaning and required less food per piglet reared to 6 weeks of age than the gilts mated at third heat.

A note on the effect of interrupting auditory signals on the performance of younger and older subjects.

A note on the effect of interrupting auditory signals on the performance of younger and older subjects.