Dramatic Literature, Criticism and Theory Commons^™

L'Habitació Del Nen O La Insuportable Elusivitat De L'Experiència, Sharon G. Feldman

Latin American, Latino and Iberian Studies Faculty Publications

Les obres teatrals de Josep M. Benet i Jornet estan marcades per un interès en l'experiencia polifacètica de la mirada i el paper del perspectivisme dins el terreny teatral. Un impuls aporètic guia bona part de la seva obra més recent, ja que ens condueix a mons misteriosos i a espais buits en què facilment podem perdre'ns o on ens costarà de trobar el camí. Una atmosfera de misted envolta una ttanscripció poètica de l'espai, ja sigui una realitat psíquica interior o un paisatge exterior. Són espais fràgils en concepció, sovint perillosament al punt d'esvair-se. Els títols epigramàtics d'algnnes de …

高行健之戲劇 : 理論與實踐, Ching Law

Lingnan Theses and Dissertations (MPhil & PhD)

高行健的戲劇作品與理論，兼備中西文化主題（motifs），東西方劇場的手法，最適合作比較文學的範例。本文全面分析高行健的劇作與理論，從主題與形式兩方面，審度劇作中重複出現追尋自我的主題。其劇作包括《絕對信號》、《車站》、《野人》、《彼岸》、《冥城》、《逃亡》、《山海經傳奇》、《生死界》、《對話與反詰》、《夜遊神》、《周末四重奏》、《八月雪》、《叩問死亡》；五個現代折子戲包括《模仿者》、《躲雨》、《行路難》、《喀巴拉山口》、《獨白》；一個舞劇《聲聲慢變奏》共計十八部戲劇。又整理探究理論文集《對一種戲劇的追求》、《沒有主義》、以及《文學的理由》。作者的主體意識扣緊不同時期的逃亡經驗，經一番外求與內尋的過程，不斷抗衡與否定不同的「他者」。這種抗衡，固然呈現人類本質的狀態，卻缺乏主體的自主性，也展示主題的矛盾。因為無論「他者」怎樣不斷置換為集體、強權、中國、性、慾望等對象，也不能抹殺其先於主體的實存性，反倒確立了主體的依附性。所以他的主體都一貫逃避中心、集體、缺乏實質的內涵，卻又內外交困，無法安頓。這種不斷反詰的精神，又反映在劇作的「間離」的形式上。高行健以敘事、三重角色與儀式（rituals），間離觀眾與角色。雖然他追求戲劇本質，嘗試回復中國儺戲與戲曲的傳統，也緊隨現當代劇作家如布萊希特（Bertolt Brecht）、惹奈（Jean Genet），但是難以調動觀眾的直覺感知經驗，達至娛人的目的。更有甚者，因為敘事手法的視點所限，宣揚個人主義的目的，昭然若揭。他的儀式意在增強戲劇的假定性，不在於回歸中國的佛道傳統，但效果不彰。他的「表演三重論」源於中國戲曲與布萊希特，貢獻止於為表演的監控意識命名，缺乏系統落實的方法，故難以與斯坦尼斯夫斯基（Konstantin Stanislavsky）、以及格羅多夫斯基（Jerzy Grotowski）的表演系統相提並論。本文試以高行健的劇作與理論，與現當代的國際劇作家、以及劇場理論家的成就互相發明，以鑑定其戲劇地位。

Interrogating Torture And Finding Race, Ayanna Thompson

Studio for Law and Culture

Antonin Artaud’s second manifesto for the Theatre of Cruelty cries out for a theatre that will depict “great social upheavals” and “conflicts between peoples and races.” Opposed to “disinterested” theatre, Artaud designed the Theatre of Cruelty to depict and affect not only the “tortured victims,” but also the “executioner-tormentor himself.” Artaud viewed both as trapped by “a kind of higher determinism” which he sought to alter through the Theatre of Cruelty (102). To usher in this new theatrical tradition, Artaud declared that the “first spectacle of the Theatre of Cruelty will be entitled: The Conquest of Mexico” (126). Explaining …

Incest And Empire In The Faerie Queene, Kent Lehnhof

English Faculty Articles and Research

"When considered in the context of Elizabeth's effort to silence all discussion of incest, Edmund Spenser's courtly epic aiming to cultivate favor with the monarch looks like a disastrous miscalculation, for incest appears throughout The Faerie Queene. Indeed, incest sits at the center (both literally and figuratively) of the Book of Chastity, the very book wherein Spenser encourages Elizabeth 'in mirrours more then one her selfe to see.' In the present essay, I investigate the apparently illogical and impolitic prominence afforded to incest in book three of The Faerie Queene, ultimately arguing that the imperialist logic underpinning the epic is …

An Investigation Into Lindsay Vickery's Rendez-Vous: An Opera Noir, Adam Willett

Theses : Honours

A study of Rendez-vous: an Opera Nair, a contemporary chamber opera written by Australian-born composer Lindsay Vickery (b. 1965). The opera was based upon the novel Djinn by the French postmodernist author Alain Robbe-Grillet. Vickery composed the opera over a two-year period from 1993-1995. It was finally performed in 2001 after some revision. The novel contained a non-linear narrative and film genre references. The non-linear narrative structure was represented through a serial-like musical device. Musical influences were derived from classical music and film. Applied technology was utilised in the composition process and in the final production with the introduction of …

Spell #7 And Ntozake Shange’S Project Of Anti-Drama, Robert Lublin

Robert Lublin

No abstract provided.

December 2005 - Volume V, Number 1, Theatre Arts Department

Sides (Newsletter)

SIDES Volume V Number 1 includes articles about the Doudna Fine Arts Center project and a "Where Are They Now?" section.

The Black Body As Souvenir In American Lynching, Harvey Young

Harvey Young

This essay reads the collection of body parts, in the aftermath of the lynching spectacle, as souvenirs, fetish objects, and performance remains. Along the way, it spotlights the importance of narrative to the souvenir, challenges the notion that performance disappears through an emphasis on its remains, and asserts that embodied experiences of the past can be accessed in the present.

2005 Cave Run Storytelling Festival Poster, Cave Run Storytelling Festival Committee (Morehead, Ky.), Morehead Tourism Commission (Morehead, Ky.)

Cave Run Storytelling Festival Posters

Promotional development poster for the Cave Run Storytelling Festival held on September 23 to September 24, 2005. Those performing included: Donald Davis, Bill Harley, Baba Jamal Koram, Mary Hamilton, Peter Cook, Judith Black, Antonio Rocha, and Syd Lieberman.

Arthur Miller's "The Crucible", Jerald Cohagan

Faculty Scholarship – Communication

Documentation includes research and analysis of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, from an initial reaction position, its production history, its critical reception, its scholarly reception, to an approach toward directing the play.

June 2005 - Volume Iv, Number 2, Theatre Arts Department

Sides (Newsletter)

SIDES Volume IV Number 2 features a piece about the construction of Doudna Fine Arts Center and a "Where Are They Now?" section.

Rodrigo García's Ruins, Sharon G. Feldman

Latin American, Latino and Iberian Studies Faculty Publications

Haunted by the spirits of the avant-garde, the work of Rodrigo García embraces a hybrid theatrical language that is at once profoundly rooted in the aesthetic tendencies of performance, installation art, and text-based drama. García, a playwright, director, designer, and video and installation artist of Spanish nationality, was born in Buenos Aires in 1964. Since the mid-1980s, he has lived in Madrid, a city that has served as a laboratory for his company La Carnicería, which he founded in 1989. A runner-up for the Marqués de Bradomín Prize on two consecutive occasions (for Reloj and Macbeth-lmágenes), García has staged his …

El Jardín De Las Delicias: Visiones Del Pánico Y Del Barroco En El Teatro De Arrabal, Sharon G. Feldman

Latin American, Latino and Iberian Studies Faculty Publications

Entrar en el universo de Fernando Arrabal es lanzarse súbitamente dentro de un mundo interior y onírico donde nada es seguro y todo está permitido. Aunque el espectador actual sería capaz de encontrar en las obras teatrales de Arrabal metáforas que hacen alusión a ciertas situaciones sociopolíticas de la historia reciente (sobre todo, de la España autoritaria del siglo XX), si uno las contempla según la forma de libre interpretación que el mismo autor propone, se convierten también en obras abiertas cuyas resonancias abandonan o trascienden las particularidades de cualquier contexto socio histórico específico: “Il faut que chaque lecteur, chaque …

Imagining Europe: Carles Batlle's Combat (Landscape In The Aftermath), Sharon G. Feldman

Latin American, Latino and Iberian Studies Faculty Publications

At the end of Suite (1999), an award-winning play by Catalan dramatist Carles Batlle i Jordà, there is a memorable scene in which the spectators observe the collapse of a doll house upon the living room floor. It is a metaphor of domestic, as well as global, instability—not to mention, an ironic reference to Ibsen—in which the audience is left to wonder whether the character of Berta, confused and disoriented in the suite of an old hotel, will return to the mirage-like image of bourgeois European domesticity, to a home and marriage without foundations, or whether she will flee to …

Els Paisatges Del Teatre Català Contemporani: De Benet I Jornet A Cunillé, Sharon G. Feldman

Latin American, Latino and Iberian Studies Faculty Publications

Voldria començar amb Amèrica, i no pas amb Catalunya, amb un retrat del paisatge del desert de Jean Baudrillard, en el qual aquest intellectual francès ens ofereix una perspectiva poeticofilosòfica europea d'un vast territori pos diferenciat:

La grandeza de los desiertos consiste en ser, en su aridez, el negativo de la superficie terrestre y nuestros talantes civilizados. Son lugares donde los talantes y los fluidos se rarifican y las constelaciones descienden directamente. [...] El silencio del desierto también es visual. Lo conforma la extensión de la mirada que no encuentra sitio donde reflejarse. [...] El desierto es como una red …

El Teatre Català Contemporani, L'Esfera Pública I La Figura De L'Autor: Retalls De L'Època De La Transició, Sharon G. Feldman

Latin American, Latino and Iberian Studies Faculty Publications

En els darrers anys, al paisatge político-cultural que envolta Barcelona no li han faltat els seus bans moments de melodrama, d'acusacions enceses i de rampells d'histèria, que s'han pogut presenciar sobre i fora de l'escenari, tant a nivell públic com privat. Efectivament, en el món teatral català no és gens estrany que la vida real es confongui amb la de l'espectacle, oferint-nos reiteradament exemples del que el director Albert Boadella, al seu assaig El rapto de Talía, anomena el «virus exhibicionista» o «frenesí» que ha assetjat la societat contemporània. A Barcelona, com a altres llocs del món occidental, un dels …

Unshap'd Monsters: Political Farce On The London Stage, 1717-1737, Melissa Ann Bloom

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation reexamines the role of John Gay's and Henry Fielding's anti-government satirical farces during the politically contentious 1720s and 1730s in London. Although their plays were and still are considered, variously, burlesques, entertainments, farces, and satires, I call them satirical farce for two reasons. First, contemporaries used the term farce as much to signify political and social stances as dramatic type or function. Those political and social stances are the central focus of this dissertation. Second, I see in this collection of plays—Gay's Three Hours After Marriage (1717) and The Beggar's Opera (1728), Fielding's The Author's Farce (1730), The …

Stages Of Evil: Occultism In Western Theater And Drama, Robert Lima

Studies in Romance Languages Series

“The evil that men do” has been chronicled for thousands of years on the European stage, and perhaps nowhere else is human fear of our own evil more detailed than in its personifications in theater. In Stages of Evil, Robert Lima explores the sociohistorical implications of Christian and pagan representations of evil and the theatrical creativity that occultism has engendered. By examining examples of alchemy, astronomy, demonology, exorcism, fairies, vampires, witchcraft, hauntings, and voodoo in prominent plays, Stages of Evil explores American and European perceptions of occultism from medieval times to the modern age.

Truly An Awesome Spectacle: Gender Performativity And The Alienation Effect In Angels In America, Allen Gorney

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Tony Kushner's two-part play Angels in America uses stereotypical depictions of gay men to deconstruct traditional gender dichotomies. In this thesis, I argue that Kushner has created a continuum of gender performativity to deconstruct these traditional gender dichotomies, thereby empowering the effeminate and disempowering the masculine. I closely examine Kushner's use of Brechtian and Aristotelian tenets in the first Broadway production of the play to demonstrate that Kushner sought to induce social awareness of gay male oppression, contingent on the audience's perception of Kushner's deconstruction of the traditional gender dichotomy. I also scrutinize the role of the closet and its …

La Fragilitat Del Paisatge, Sharon G. Feldman

Latin American, Latino and Iberian Studies Faculty Publications

Dins de la galáxia teatral formada per estrelles de grans i petites dimensions que és l'escena catalana contemporània, Josep M. Benet i Jornet (Barcelona, 1940) és com un cometa; no un d'aquells estels fugaços que apareix en una de les seves obres més reeixides (Fugaç, 1992), sinó com un cometa la trajectória creativa del qual ha estat marcada per un procés constant d'evolució i renovació estètiques, un cometa que ha deixat una lluïssor indeleble, que li ha permès d'omplir el buit entre generacions. Es podria afirmar que Benet i Jornet és el dramaturg en vida més eminent i …

Cultural Memory And War Trauma In Sam Shepard’S A Lie Of The Mind, States Of Shock And The Late Henry Moss, Katherine Weiss

Katherine Weiss

Sergi Belbel's Theatre Of Pain, Sharon G. Feldman

Latin American, Latino and Iberian Studies Faculty Publications

Dins la seva memoria ("Within his Memory"), a Catalan play written by Sergi Bel-bel in 1986, begins in total darkness, an imprecise empty void in which the spectator hears only the deep, rhythmic gasps and sighs of the anonymous protagonist. ' As the stage lights slowly rise during this "preliminary" scene, Ell (or, "He," as the protagonist is generically called) is depicted on his knees, masturbating with his back to the audience. At first glance, his violent, self-inflicted pleasure may be interpreted as an ultimate affirmation of life; yet, his autoerotic gestures are also imbued with memories that carry …

December 2004 - Volume Iv, Number 1, Theatre Arts Department

Sides (Newsletter)

SIDES Volume IV Number 1 includes an article welcoming new faculty Allison Cameron, and a piece on the Liz Marfia and Phil Ash wedding on October 10, 2004, attending by 26 Theatre Arts alumni.

2004 Cave Run Storytelling Festival Poster, Cave Run Storytelling Festival Committee (Morehead, Ky.), Morehead Tourism Commission (Morehead, Ky.)

Cave Run Storytelling Festival Posters

Promotional development poster for the Cave Run Storytelling Festival held on September 24 to September 25, 2004. Those performing included: Barbara McBride-Smith, Bobby Norfolk, Charlie Chin, Susan Klein, Beth Horner, Doug Elliott, Willy Claflin, Lyn Ford, and Roy Bookbinder.

Comic Ritual In A Tragic World: Lessons In The Metaphor Of Drama, Daniel Larner

Fairhaven Faculty Publications

Metaphor and drama share an essence: transformation. A metaphor carries one world of meaning to another, enlarging what it comes to by what it brings along with it. What is at stake is a meaning, which is transformed to something quite beyond its original state.

Drama takes an action done by characters, and transforms it from the mundane to the meaningful, carrying meaning from the realm of its factuality to wider worlds. Seen this way, drama transforms all action to the act of understanding, of putting some sort of prop under mere fact, of supplying--by some combination of rational, imagistic, …

Metaphor Ii: Understanding Dramatic Form In The Transportation Systems Of Metaphor, Daniel Larner

Fairhaven Faculty Publications

This paper is a continuation of an investigation into the essence of metaphor. I will argue here that dramatic action seems to epitomize that essence and intensify it. Further, I will argue that the world of tragicomedy is an ancient, almost genetic metaphor for the course of human events and the way of the world. It is a form of perception, a way of knowing. The vitality of contemporary tragicomedy, and the analogy between dramatic action and the metaphors of physics show us how fundamental this view has come to be.

June 2004 - Volume Iii, Number 2, Theatre Arts Department

Sides (Newsletter)

SIDES Volume III Number 2 includes a welcome to new faculty Chris Mitchell and a "Where Are They Now?" section.

The Politics Of Sleepwalking: American Lady Macbeths, Katherine Rowe

Katherine Rowe

No abstract provided.

Dins La Nostra Memòria, Sharon G. Feldman

Latin American, Latino and Iberian Studies Faculty Publications

L'àmbit espacial de la cultura catalana configura un paisatge fluid i dinàmic, un espai simbòlic d'emoció, percepció i subjectivitat. De la mateixa manera, Barcelona ha sorgit i ressorgit al llarg d'aquest segle i del passat com un espai transcultural fluid de migracions. En una ciutat en què en l'actualitat almenys el 12% de la població prové de fora de les fronteres espanyoles, tot faria pensar que els dramaturgs catalans se senten ara especialmente inclinats a considerar l’espai del pluralisme cultural que és per a'ells «casa seva». Tanmateix, al teatre el procés d'autoreconeixement i el desig d'autoconscienciació es complex. Referintse al …

Plague, Pestilence & Pollution : Berkoff's Collision With Aeschylus And Sophocles, Michelle Aslett

Theses : Honours

Our humanity is bound to perennial themes in drama, so when a classic play is adapted to 'suit' contemporary audiences, the revised version will often reflect the zeitgeist of the times in which it was produced. The magic of retrospection then allows us to examine the social and political particulars that influence the adapted as well as the original work. Indeed, Steven Berkoff's reworkings of both Aeschylus' Agamemnon and Sophocles' Oedipus Rex reflect an unsettled and divided British context in the throes of ideological upheaval during the 1970's and early 1980's. While consistent criticism of leadership and political strife in …