Over the past 20 years European theatre underwent fundamental changes in terms of aesthetic focus, institutional structure and in its position in society. The impetus for these changes was provided ...by a new generation in the independent theatre scene. This book brings together studies on the state of independent theatre in different European countries, focusing on the fields of dance and performance, children and youth theatre, theatre and migration and post-migrant theatre. Additionally, it includes essays on experimental musical theatre, and different cultural policies for independent theatre scenes in a range of European countries.
The early drama of Eugene O’Neill, with its emphasis on racial themes and conflicts, opened up extraordinary opportunities for Black performers to challenge racist structures in modern theater and ...cinema. By adapting O’Neill’s dramatic writing—changing scripts to omit offensive epithets, inserting African American music and dance, or including citations of Black internationalism--theater artists of color have used O’Neill’s texts to raze barriers in American and transatlantic theater. Challenging the widely accepted idea that Broadway was the white-hot creative engine of U.S. theater during the early 20th century, author Katie N. Johnson reveals a far more complex system of exchanges between the Broadway establishment and a vibrant Black theater scene in New York and beyond to chart a new history of American and transnational theater. In spite of their dichotomous (and at times problematic) representation of Blackness, O’Neill’s plays such as The Emperor Jones and All God’s Chillun Got Wings make ideal case studies because of the way these works stimulated traffic between Broadway and Harlem—and between white and Black America. These investigations of O’Neill and Broadway productions are enriched by the vibrant transnational exchange found in early to mid-20th century artistic production. Anchored in archival research, Racing the Great White Way recovers not only vital lost performance histories, but also the layered contexts for performing bodies across the Black Atlantic and the Circum-Atlantic.
Theatre practice and applied theatre are areas of growing international interest. Applied Theatre is the first study to assist practitioners and students to develop critical frameworks for planning ...and implementing their own theatrical projects.This reader-friendly text considers an international range of case studies in applied theatre through discussion questions, practical activities and detailed analysis of specific theatre projects globally.In addition, the collection gathers together essential readings from many different sources to provide a comprehensive international survey of the field. Saxton and Prendergast infuse the text with a historical and theoretical overview of practical theatre and conclude each case study with useful suggestions for hands-on activities and additional readings. Compiled across five continents, the case studies cover a wide range of disciplines from theatre studies to education, medicine and law. Key issues explored are the balance of artistry and aesthetics, participation, ethics, as well as safety and assessment in theatre. With their background in drama education and pedagogy, the authors offer clear developmental approaches that transfer directly into practice and a critical model of audience education, applicable to both mainstream and applied theatre contexts. The book encourages students and practitioners to acquire a deeper, more concrete understanding of applied theatre.
Commercial theatre is thriving across Europe and the UK, while public theatre has suffered under changing patterns of cultural consumption—as well as sharp reductions in government subsidies for the ...arts. At a time when the rationale behind these subsidies is being widely reexamined, it has never been more important for public theatre to demonstrate its continued merit. In Resetting the Stage, Dragan Klaic argues convincingly that, in an increasingly crowded market of cultural goods, public theatre is best served not by imitating its much larger commercial counterpart, but by asserting its artistic distinctiveness and the considerable benefit this confers on the public.
Theatre Institutions in Crisis examines how theatre in Europe is beset by a crisis on an institutional level and the pressing need for robust research into the complex configuration of factors at ...work that are leading to significant shifts in the way theatre is understood, organised, delivered, and received.
Balme and Fisher bring together scholars from different disciplines and countries across Europe to examine what factors can be said to be most common to the institutional crisis of European theatre today. The methods employed are drawn from systems theory, social-scientific approaches, economics and statistics, theatre and performance, and other interpretative approaches (hermeneutics), and labour studies.
This book will be of great interest to researchers, students, and practitioners working in the fields of performance and theatre studies. It will be particularly relevant to researchers with a specific interest in European theatre and its networks.
Illusive utopia Kim, Suk-Young
2010., 20100602, 2010, c2010.
eBook
No nation stages massive parades and collective performances on the scale of North Korea. Even amid a series of intense political/economic crises and international conflicts, the financially troubled ...country continues to invest massive amounts of resources to sponsor unflinching displays of patriotism, glorifying its leaders and revolutionary history through state rituals that can involve hundreds of thousands of performers. Author Suk-Young Kim explores how sixty years of state-sponsored propaganda performances—including public spectacles, theater, film, and other visual media such as posters—shape everyday practice such as education, the mobilization of labor, the gendering of social interactions, the organization of national space, tourism, and transnational human rights. Equal parts fascinating and disturbing, Illusive Utopia shows how the country's visual culture and performing arts set the course for the illusionary formation of a distinctive national identity and state legitimacy, illuminating deep-rooted cultural explanations as to why socialism has survived in North Korea despite the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and China's continuing march toward economic prosperity. With over fifty striking color illustrations, Illusive Utopia captures the spectacular illusion within a country where the arts are not only a means of entertainment but also a forceful institution used to regulate, educate, and mobilize the population.
Some of theater’s most powerful works in the past thirty years fall into the category of "verbatim theater," socially engaged performances whose texts rely on word-for-word testimony. Performances ...such as Fires in the Mirror, The Laramie Project, and The Vagina Monologues have at their best demonstrated how to hold hard conversations about explosive subjects in a liberal democracy. But in this moment of what author Ryan Claycomb terms the “rightward lurch” of western democracies, does this idealized space of democratic deliberation remain effective? In the Lurch asks that question in a pointed and self-reflexive way, tracing the history of this branch of documentary theater with particular attention to the political outcomes and stances these performances seem to seek. But this is not just a disinterested history—Claycomb reflects on his own participation in that political fantasy, including earlier scholarly writing that articulated with breathless hopefulness the potential of verbatim theater, and on his own theatrical attendance, imbued with a belief that witnessing this idealized public sphere was a substitute for actual public participation. In the Lurch also recounts the bumpy path towards its completion, two years marked by presidential impeachments, an insurrection, a national reckoning with racism, and a global pandemic. At the heart of the book is a central question: is verbatim theater any longer an effective cultural response to what can look like the possible end of democracy?
In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the American theater emerged as a crucial cultural space for debates around gender stereotypes, gendered conduct, sexual desire, the politics of intimacy ...and domesticity, female authorship, as well as the complex intersections of gender and other markers of cultural difference, such as race, ethnicity, socioeconomic class, age, or nation. This collection explores the role of gender in the formation of American theatrical culture in this period. It features essays on well-known early American dramatists such as Susanna Rowson or Judith Sargent Murray, but also sheds light on anonymous authors and more obscure theatrical practices.
The APPLIED THEATRE series is a major innovation in applied theatre scholarship: each book presents new ways of seeing and critically reflecting on this dynamic and vibrant field. Volumes offer a ...theoretical framework and introductory survey of the field addressed, combined with a range of case studies illustrating and critically engaging with practice. Series Editors: Sheila Preston and Michael Balfour
Applied Theatre: Economies
addresses a notoriously problematic area: applied theatre’s relationship to the economy and the ways in which socially committed theatre makers fund, finance or otherwise resource their work. Part One addresses longstanding concerns in the field about the effects of economic conditions and funding relationships on applied theatre practice. It considers how applied theatre’s relationship with local and global economies can be understood from different theoretical and philosophical perspectives. It also examines a range of ways in which applied theatre can be resourced, identifying key issues and seeking possibilities for theatre makers to sustain their work without undermining their social and artistic values. The international case studies in Part Two give vivid insights into the day-;to-;day challenges of resourcing applied theatre work in Chile, Canada, the UK, New Zealand, Hong Kong and the US. The authors examine critical issues or points of tension that have arisen in a particular funding relationship or from specific economic activities. Each study also illuminates ways in which applied theatre makers can bring artistic and social justice principles to bear on financial and organizational processes.
PDF
