In this rich memoir, the first of two volumes, Paul Farmer traces the story of A39, the Cornish political theatre group he co-founded and ran from the mid-1980s to the early 1990s. Farmer offers a ...unique insight into A39’s creation, operation, and artistic practice during a period of convulsive political and social change. The reader is plunged into the national miners’ strike and the collapse of Cornish tin mining, the impact of Thatcherism and ‘Reaganomics’, and the experience of touring Germany on the brink of reunification, alongside the influence on A39 of writers Bertolt Brecht, John McGrath and Keith Johnstone. Farmer, a former bus driver turned artistic director, details the theatre group’s inception and development as it fought to break down social barriers, attract audiences, and survive with little more than a beaten-up Renault 12, a photocopier and two second-hand stage lights at its disposal: the book traces the progress from these raw materials to the development of an integrated community theatre practice for Cornwall. Farmer’s candour and humour enliven this unique insight into 1980s theatre and politics. It will appeal to anyone with an interest in theatre history, life in Cornwall, and the relationship between performance and society during a turbulent era.
This paper analyses the poetics of confrontation used by theatre director Fadhel Jaibi,particularly through his performance Yahia-Yaïh-Amnesia. It uses Michel DeCerteau's conceptof 'tactic' and ...'strategy' from his book, The Practice of Everyday Life, as a framework for analysisin order to show how Jaibi used performance as his tactic to oppose the regime's strategies inpre-revolutionary Tunisia, creating thereby a poetics of confrontation to challenge both theregime and the people who were subjected to it. It shows how Jaibi constructed the elementsunderpinning his poetic sof performance by fusing the texts produced by Jalila Baccar with thephysical work of the actors, playing particularly on rhythms of speech, action and sound. Itexplains how Jaibi integrated these elements into a politics of confrontation which includedthe audience. It discusses how, through his artistic work, Jaibi obliged the audience to confrontthe prevailing repressive reality as well as society's acceptance of the existing political situationand social norms. His poetics of confrontation targeted a change in perception, which rejectedthe limits imposed by the regime and coercive social forces in favour of democracy,anticipating and accompanying the social upheaval provoked by the Tunisian revolution in2011.
Los textos acá reunidos son el registro de escrituras espaciadas en el tiempo, que reflexionan sobre el devenir de las prácticas teatrales durante los últimos cinco años. Estos trabajos representan ...una mirada crítica a la producción reciente del teatro y las manifestaciones de las artes vivas tanto en Chile como Argentina, más específicamente sobre producciones culturales acontecidas en las ciudades de Santiago y Buenos Aires, teniendo como eje el cruce entre documento, violencia y política.
The paper discusses Oliver Frljić’s production of Klątwa(Engl.: “The Curse”) which is based on the play with the same title by Stanisław Wyspiański. Klątwapremiered in Teatr Powszechny in Warsaw on ...18 February 2017 and created the biggest theatre scandal in the early theatre history in Poland as both the right-wing government and the right-wing movement in Poland regarded it as blasphemous and – unsuccessfully – tried to prevent further performances. In KlątwaOliver Frljić questions the understanding of historiography promoted by the Polish government that prefers to focus only on stories about heroes and he criticises both the abuse of power in the church and in the institutionalized theatre. The strategies of Oliver Frljić’s political theatre are analyzed in the light of Jacques Rancière’s thoughts about critical theatre. In Klątwa Frljić develops a theatre of dissensus in the sense of Rancière. He undertakes a “dissensual re-configuration”1of political theatre by changing the frames, by playing around and by questioning the means used in theatre. But Frljić also deviates from this strategy when he creates images on stage that convey meanings directly and simply. Yet, these images fit into Frljić’s strategy of questioning the official Polish historiography by deconstructing the symbols it is based on. Oliver Frljić’s theatre of emancipation, a theatre that believes in the potential of the spectator to emancipate him- or herself as suggested by Rancière in The Emancipated Spectator (Rancière 2009), manages to make visible authoritarian and undemocratic developments in Polish politics and to offer a critical approach to history in contrast to the one-sided view the Polish government tries to establish.
1Rancière 2010, p. 140.
Making Your Own Story of It Füllner, Niklas
Nordic theatre studies,
05/2020, Volume:
31, Issue:
2
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
The paper discusses Oliver Frljić’s production of Klątwa(Engl.: “The Curse”) which is based on the play with the same title by Stanisław Wyspiański. Klątwapremiered in Teatr Powszechny in Warsaw on ...18 February 2017 and created the biggest theatre scandal in the early theatre history in Poland as both the right-wing government and the right-wing movement in Poland regarded it as blasphemous and – unsuccessfully – tried to prevent further performances. In KlątwaOliver Frljić questions the understanding of historiography promoted by the Polish government that prefers to focus only on stories about heroes and he criticises both the abuse of power in the church and in the institutionalized theatre. The strategies of Oliver Frljić’s political theatre are analyzed in the light of Jacques Rancière’s thoughts about critical theatre. In Klątwa Frljić develops a theatre of dissensus in the sense of Rancière. He undertakes a “dissensual re-configuration”1of political theatre by changing the frames, by playing around and by questioning the means used in theatre. But Frljić also deviates from this strategy when he creates images on stage that convey meanings directly and simply. Yet, these images fit into Frljić’s strategy of questioning the official Polish historiography by deconstructing the symbols it is based on. Oliver Frljić’s theatre of emancipation, a theatre that believes in the potential of the spectator to emancipate him- or herself as suggested by Rancière in The Emancipated Spectator (Rancière 2009), manages to make visible authoritarian and undemocratic developments in Polish politics and to offer a critical approach to history in contrast to the one-sided view the Polish government tries to establish.
1Rancière 2010, p. 140.
How should theatre talk to children about migration and its politics, about death and separation, about arrival and new hopes? What tone—when speaking of violence and torture, injustice and political ...manipulation, losing one’s family and language, seeking safety and new friends—should the artists take on? Should this conversation be educational, protective, cautious, neutral, or entertaining? How should artists shape their work for children of different ages to help them respond to the scope and complexity of the topic? Estelle Savasta’s play Traversée (2011) provides some responses to these questions. It engages with the pedagogical and artistic traditions of making “emancipatory theatre for children,” and it allows the conversation about war and migration to take place. Director Milena Buziak’s 2016 staging of Traversée presents an example of Theatre for Young Audiences (TYA) that takes on the responsibility of making its spectators politically aware and emotionally engaged, specifically when it comes to their understanding of social injustice today. By engaging with the most urgent political issues related to global migration, this article provides an example of making theatre for children political.
This essay aims to read from the concept of urgency, some of the rewrites of Antigone in Latin America that have been configured around processes of violence and forced disappearances. It also ...confirms the current relevance of the tragedy of Sophocles that is reinvented in the contemporary scene, in the form of devices capable of reaching a political dimension through a poetic of sensitivity. The urgency is presented as a creative impulse that the devices elaborate as a theatrical event and appears not as a rush but as a space for action, which is not subject to the rational or productive conception of time.
Resumen: El presente ensayo se propone leer desde el concepto de urgencia, algunas de las reescrituras de Antígona en Latinoamérica que se han configurado en torno a procesos de violencia y desapariciones forzadas. Constata, asimismo, la vigencia de la tragedia de Sófocles que se reinventa en la escena contemporánea, bajo la forma de dispositivos capaces de una afectación política tejida como poéticas de la sensibilidad. La urgencia se presenta como impulso creador que los dispositivos elaboran como acontecimiento teatral y aparece no como premura si no como un espacio para la acción, el que no está sujeto a la concepción racional o productiva del tiempo.
The article is a preliminary effort to join neo-positive and historical institutional analysis from comparative politics with insights from discursive and phenomenological analysis. It highlights a ...message arising from a South Korean film related to moral–ethical dimensions and the implications of development policy. Taken in symbolic as well as empirical terms, the film proffers that economic development policy not attending to political institutional development—including correct institutional practices at the micro-level—is feeding Asia’s demons (e.g., asuras) rather than its forces of stability and (rational, democratic, participatory) political order. The film suggests that institutional atrophy and social decay may emerge from the breakdown of political institutions and participatory politics as a political system moves from rationalized institutions and practices into what the current work calls, “mafia politics.” Political ritual and political theatre are actively employed in the film in ritualized acts of the desecration of political order. The current work suggests that the analysis of symbolic representations relating to ritual politics and performativity (e.g., “political theatre”) located in certain art forms, such as international film, may be useful in studies of religion and politics, and in qualitative comparative political and historical institutional analysis more broadly.
Focusing on the experiences of people in Russia and Ukraine,
Staging Democracy shows how some national leaders' seeming
popularity rests on local economic compacts. Jessica Pisano draws
on long-term ...research in rural communities and company towns,
analyzing how local political and business leaders, seeking favor
from incumbent politicians, used salaries, benefits, and public
infrastructure to pressure citizens to participate in command
performances.
Pisano looks at elections whose outcome was known in advance,
protests for hire, and smaller mises en scène to explain why people
participate, what differs from spectacle in totalitarian societies,
how political theater exists in both authoritarian and democratic
systems, and how such performances reshape understandings of the
role of politics.
Staging Democracy moves beyond Russia and Ukraine to
offer a novel economic argument for why some people support Putin
and similar politicians. Pisano suggests we can analyze politics in
both democracies and authoritarian regimes using the same
analytical lens of political theater.
On the British stage, political theatre, which emerged in the twentieth century, has been linked with the problems of the working class as initiated in the 1920s until the early 1960s. With the end ...of the official censorship of theatre in 1968, political theatre in Britain experienced a period in which socialist works marked the stage. Nevertheless, the 1990s challenged the association of political theatre with the conditions of the working class. Considering the current political and social events in Britain and around the world, it is appropriate to underline that political theatre is not only in a constant flux, but its definition has been once again challenged. In this regard, Brexit can be considered as one of the most significant movements to influence the understanding of political theatre in the twenty-first century. Consequently, this study aims to analyse
(2017), a co-production by the
and Headlong Theatre Company and discuss their contribution to the changing definition of political theatre.
will be further explored regarding their influence on the popularity of monologues as a mode of performance.
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