Theatre and Performance Studies Commons^™

Introduction – Les Régimes Esthétiques Du Corps Dans Le Monde Arabe, Gilles Suzanne

Regards

Que l’art, dans le monde arabe (qui nous servira de périmètre), voire, dans l’aire d’influence culturelle de l’Islam qui ne saurait s’y réduire, entretienne un rapport au corps, n’a rien d’une découverte...

Le Pouvoir Du Sang Féminin Dans L’Art Contemporain Arabe, Jana Mrad

Regards

After the 1970’s performances, and at the time the feminist collectives, whose artistic approaches often recall menstruation, emerged, feminine blood also found its place in the contemporary Arab art scene. Driven by a desire of emancipation and freedom, some Middle Eastern artists seized the feminine blood and made it into a paradigm in order to shed light on the female body and the way the latter is lived, perceived and controlled. By taking on this taboo, they found a way to elude censorship, waive the rules, cross the limits... in order to free women’s wounded bodies.

Résumé

Après les performances …

Le Corps Anamorphosé Dans Le Théâtre Marocain : Cas De Capharnaüm De Latefa Ahrrare, Imad Belghit

Regards

Given the territorial and cultural differences, some Moroccan plays produce a particular corporeality around which the scene is articulated. We then witness a questioning of ethos, a morality that incorporates postures and dispositions of the body. The show entitled Capernaum Auto-Sirate by Latefa Ahrrare is part of this scenic dynamic peculiar to the construction of corporalities in the context of contemporary Moroccan theater. The performance of this actress raises existential questions through her presence on stage and via a body subjected to the process of unveiling.

Résumé

Compte tenu des différences territoriales et culturelles, certaines pièces de théâtre marocaines produisent …

What Can A Body Do? Answers From Arab Cinema, Laura U. Marks

Regards

Baruch Spinoza’s statement “We do not know what a body can do” argues that bodies learn their powers not from divinely imposed laws but through experience in the world. Thought must pass through the body, in a way that menaces both existing thoughts and the body as it is at present. Great works of contemporary independent cinema in Arabic-speaking countries express the body’s forces of becoming in numerous ways, some of which this essay tracks: from not yet living to cultivating molecular forces, enfolding powers, expressing volatile passions, coming to life, and attaining adequate ideas. Some of these dynamics are …

Pays Rêvé (2011) De Jihane Chouaib, Joseph Korkmaz

Regards

The scenarist and director Jihane Chouaib returns, after a long absence, to her native country that she left during the war. She visits South Lebanon where she was born and wanders with her sister, who’s a dancer, in the places that marked her childhood. Her peregrinations are nostalgic and her memories are bitter-sweet. Her path crosses the path of the Lebanese-Canadian playwright Wajdi Moawad, of the director and journalist-photographer Katia Jarjoura, and of the French-Lebanese director Patric Chiha. To all these immigrants, Lebanon is the dreamed country that Jihane Chouhaib recalls through her view and her poetic comments.

Résumé

La …

Le Pouvoir En Images : Les Affiches Politiques Au Liban Entre 2005 Et 2010, Elie Yazbek

Regards

During the turbulent period following the assassination of Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in Lebanon, political posters were an important medium used by rival political parties to impose specific imagery on the public, contributing to set up a partisan discourse linked to the political position of each one. A war of images and slogans then took place, based on an audacious revaluation of the notion of image, reconsidered as both a symbol and an icon. The classical figurative representation system inherited from the Renaissance was confronted with ideological considerations that created a rupture and proposed original models of images.

Résumé

Durant …

Café Central, Joséphine Van Glabeke

Regards

Écriture blanche imprimée sur une tente en toile rouge vif, avec l’indication « Beirut » en exergue, pour rappeler où l’on se trouve…

Rethinking The Monstrous: Gender, Otherness, And Space In The Cinematic Storytelling Of Arrival And The Shape Of Water, Edward Chamberlain

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Through comparing the Hollywood films Arrival and The Shape of Water, this article explicates the films’ similar portrayals of gender, social collaboration, and monstrosity. Although the mainstream media in the United States has linked the idea of the monstrous to larger global forces, the two films suggest that “the monster” exists much closer to home. Hence, this article makes the case that monstrosity occurs in a variety of formulations such as the actions of national authorities like governmental officials that oppress and endanger a myriad of American citizens as well as newcomers. Further, this article makes the case that …

Monstrous Accumulation: Topographies Of Fear In An Era Of Globalization, Robert T. Tally Jr.

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

The predominance of the horror genre, broadly conceived, in recent years attests to the profound sense of anxiety and dread permeating late capitalist societies. As the processes and effects of globalization become more viscerally experienced, they are also often rendered invisible or unknowable, and individuals and groups find themselves subject to an immense array of forces beyond their control. The contemporary scene is crowded with monsters, from alien invaders to the zombie apocalypse, set against the backdrop of darkly fantastic landscapes and dystopian visions. Drawing upon a variety of Marxist cultural theory, Robert T. Tally Jr. explores the topographies of …

Introduction To The Monstrous Global: The Effects Of Globalization On Cultures, Ju Young Jin, Jae Roe

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

This special issue on “The Monstrous Global: The Effects of Globalization on Cultures” explores representations of the monstrous effects and products of globalization. The monstrous (as in The Monstrous Feminine by Barbara Creed) in this sense alludes to the ways in which local or national displays of fear and anxiety about the Other are embedded in struggles and tensions of global scale; the inability to cognitively map the effect of such global forces on local/national problems produces monstrous representations of the global. Global forces such as neoliberalism and reactionary nationalism, technology, climate change, migration and displacement lead to accelerating instability …

A Deconstructive Reading Of Taoist Influenced Chinese And American Poetry, Hong Zeng

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article “A Deconstructive Reading of Taoist Influenced Chinese and American Poetry” Hong Zeng attempts to deconstruct the logos status of "Nature" in Chinese natural philosophy and explore the tragic potentiality of such philosophy and poetry under its influence. It also analyzes its aesthetic strategies used to overcome historical tragedy, and how such tragic potentiality in classical Chinese philosophy and poetry break out into the imagery of death and fragmentation in modern Chinese and American poetry under its influence, including poetry by such poets as Hai Zi, Gu Cheng, Robert Bly and Wallace Stevens, and how it sometimes leads …

The Goddess Of Love In Sadomasochistic Costume: Roman Polanski's Venus In Fur, Alan P. Barr

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Throughout his career as a filmmaker, Roman Polanski has circled the subject of sex, its aberrations, its delights, and its risks. His twenty feature films are remarkably varied, yet characteristically probe the compelling, contradictory, and enchanting nature of human sexual behavior. He develops a cluster of images or tropes that appear across his films—from knives to claustrophobic settings—that advance his enquiry. Venus in Fur is Polanski’s most comprehensive portrayal of the intricacies of sexual conduct, employing a theatrical setting (rehearsing an adaptation of a notorious classic novel), amplified with cultural allusions and exploring the limits of role-playing. Normality and contentment, …

The Others (2001) By Alejandro Amenábar In The Light Of Valentinian Thought, Fryderyk Kwiatkowski

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

The article offers a Valentinian interpretation of the Hollywood film The Others (2001). A particular attention is paid to the ways in which cinematic motifs and narrative elements of the film draw on myths, ideas and symbolic imagery present in Valentinian works, especially in the Gospel of Truth (NHC I, 3) and the Gospel of Philip (NHC II, 3). In the course of the heuristic analysis, the paper argues that although the film employs Valentinian ideas, it depicts different understanding of the world. This issue is addressed in the last part of the article by situating the film within broader …

The Missing Archive Of Loss, Zeina G. Halabi

Regards

The article examines the power of visual archives and the implication of their absence on the work of mourning. It explores the photographic work of the Iranian artist Azadeh Akhlaghui, who retroactively assigned visual identities to the unrecorded death of prominent Iranian figures. The scenes of death, reconstructed in highly staged photographs, operate as the guardians of collective memory insofar as they enable the work of mourning – a process of reckoning with loss that ultimately frees the collectivity from enduring melancholia.

Résumé

L'article examine le pouvoir de l’archive visuelle et les implications de son absence sur le travail de …

Introduction, La Rédaction De « Regards »

Regards

Dans ce deuxième numéro de la nouvelle formule, Regards se penche sur la question du portrait et de l’autoportrait, qui occupent une place prépondérante dans l’histoire de l’art. La peinture et la littérature, tout autant que le théâtre, le cinéma et les arts visuels, ont tous été tentés de saisir, avec leurs caractéristiques respectives, les traits d’une personne, connue ou anonyme, tandis qu’écrivains et artistes se sont, à un moment ou à un autre, focalisés sur la représentation de soi.

Changing Body And Society: A Speculative Examination Of Portraiture In Choucair’S Non-Representational Corpus, Kirsten Scheid

Regards

What ways do portraits relate people to aesthetic practices and social configurations when representational and individualizing assumptions that ensue from figurative art cannot be assumed? If social being is not given, an art act might be seen to affect primarily an artist’s relation to the possibility of subjectivity. The idea that the audience of an artwork includes the artist herself raises questions about her self-understanding and social being.
Building on my ethnographic research, I conduct a speculative examination of portraiture in relation to the career of Saloua Raouda Choucair towards founding a local art history. To conduct my review, I …

Portraits De Téléspectateurs Turcs : Enquêter Au Coeur Du Quotidien, Nese Öztemir

Regards

Dans le cas de la recherche en SIC, le portrait s’avère être une méthode adaptée pour pénétrer dans le contexte « naturel » de réception et ainsi rendre compte de ce qui se passe « autour de » la télévision. En ce sens, la pratique télévisuelle en Turquie constitue un levier intéressant pour étudier la façon dont l’organisation genrée du monde domestique travaille les rituels de réception. Comme le résume Pasquier (1999 : 233), regarder la télévision, c’est vivre une expérience organisée et socialement normée.
En s’appuyant sur les portraits individuels, travaillés dans le cadre d’entretiens semi-directifs menés dans deux …

Chouchou, Figure Gravée Dans La Mémoire Collective Du Théâtre Libanais, Rawan Kachmar

Regards

Chouchou is the nickname of Lebanese artist Hassan Alâ’ed-dine (1939-1975). Hassan founded the Lebanese National Theatre (1965-1975), the first daily theatre in Lebanon. This theatre produced, during a ten-year period, twenty-six comedic plays in which Chouchou played the main character. Who is Chouchou, though, and how did he turn into a star in the eyes of the Lebanese general public of theatre? Chouchou — with his strong Beiruti accent, a vortex of extravagant movements, a sensitive soul with a fragile heart, a conman with his distinct moustache — appropriated his own unique physical and speech mannerisms, which rendered him a …

جان شمعون وتاريخ لبنان المعلّق, Hady Zaccak

Regards

Jean Chamoun is one of the main Lebanese documentary filmmakers. After taking part in the Palestinian Political Cinema in the seventies, he documented, with his wife, the Palestinian filmmaker Mai Masri, the main events of the Lebanese War, the resistance in South Lebanon in the eighties until the liberation of the South from Israeli occupation in 2000, and the 2006 war. In his work, Chamoun focused on the human being in his daily life and continuous struggle for dignity under the strain of history. His social and political documentaries, as well as his sole fiction drama – extremely popular but …

العروض الفنية المعاصرة – التجهيز والأداء الفني تأثير التراث والمجتمع والسياسة, Hana Kaaki

Regards

A review of contemporary artistic practices in Lebanon in relation to tradition, the socio-cultural context of production, and politics.

Beyrouth Vagabond, Pascale Feghali

Regards

Starting from the filmed narrative of three characters — Abou Youssef, a homeless person found during the day at the Sanayeh public garden; a security person in charge of a crumbling building in the Grand Hotels’ sector; and Fatmeh, who squats in an abandoned property in the same sector — this article introduces us into the heartland of Beirut through the eyes of tramps and vagabonds. It is made up of narratives and counter-narratives built on elements of reality but that, in fact, speak of another dimension of reality where truth is no longer an issue. The stories are set …

La Naissance De L’Autofiction Silencieuse Dans Le Cinéma D’Elia Suleiman : « Hommage Par Assassinat » (1992), Sandra Fatté

Regards

This article questions the link between the aesthetics of silence shaped by Suleiman and his quest for identity. Through the analysis of the second short film by this Palestinian director, Homage by Assassination (1992), we underline this aesthetic and its stakes. In this film, Elia Suleiman incarnates ES, the silent character who appears for the first time on screen; he will be present in his three subsequent feature films. The story takes place one night during the Gulf War in a New York apartment where ES investigates the notion of identity. We introduce the notion of silent autofiction before analysing …

Statement Of Creative Practice: Creative Making And Vr Literature, Mez Breeze

Journal of Creative Writing Studies

Editor's Note
Mez Breeze authored her artist’s statement in virtual reality. You can view Mez’s artist’s statement even without a VR headset. Just click this link: https://bit.ly/2Kov372
You’ll need this password to access it: XR_PlayG

Abstract
Constructing creative writing in XR (aka Extended Reality: an umbrella term that covers Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, Mixed Reality, and a fourth category called Synthetic Reality), and VR in particular, is an exciting and recent phenomenon in the Electronic Literature field. This proposed Statement of Creative Practice will examine the scope and reach of XR artforms while focusing in particular on the subset of …

Basho & Friends Literacy Game For Tablet, Joshua Korenblat

Journal of Creative Writing Studies

Basho & Friends is an in-progress prototype for an interactive children’s book. Here, children ages 8-13 collaborate with young Basho, the legendary founder of haiku poetry, to become poets themselves. This project exemplifies a “convivial tool,” defined by philosopher Ivan Illich as a platform designed to promote creative expression. Here, we imagine new possibilities for reading, sensemaking, and creative writing based on past forms and ideas. Through poetry, Basho promotes meaningful principles of literacy and sustainability today. Children can engage with Basho’s story in an historical context and practice haiku to see themselves as authors of their life stories.

Fanfiction As Performative Criticism: Harry Potter Racebending, Khaliah A. Petersen-Reed

Journal of Creative Writing Studies

Fanfiction anatomizes a text and in this textual nakedness fanfiction writers recognize gaps in their chosen source texts and seek to supplement these deficiencies through literary disruption. This essay focuses on the kind of fanfiction that critically disrupts through artistic cultural production—a practice that I am labeling performative criticism. I look at Racebending fanfiction that intervenes in the gaps of the Harry Potter series—specifically the gaps related to race. Using fanfiction produced by Harry Potter fans, I will show that by reading and writing fanfiction these writers are blurring demarcation between creative writing and literary criticism.

This Is (Not) A Game: The Adjunct Experience As Playable Fiction, Lee Skallerup Bessette

Journal of Creative Writing Studies

How can a never-ending running 8-bit game be a piece of protest art? In examining her own experience in a related netprov protesting the treatment of adjuncts, the artist explores issues of agency, exploitation, and the very nature of games and playing in her artist’s statement on her game, Adjunct Run: https://adjunctrun.readywriting.org/.

Machine Co-Authorship(S) Via Translative Creative Writing, Aaron Tucker

Journal of Creative Writing Studies

This paper argues that machine translation and a symbiotic ecosystem of authorship are central to the poetic works of Aaron Tucker and reveal larger ethical paths for machine-human relationships. In particular, the elements of chance alongside the intersemiotic translative acts that are the nature of human-computer relationships give space to a potential futurity that challenges a human-centric understanding of “reading” and “writing” and generates a type of literature that encourages a reader to better understand their own interactions within their daily digital environments.

The Many Authors Of The Several Houses Of Brian, Spencer, Liam, Victoria, Brayden, Vincent, And Alex: Authorship, Agency, And Appropriation, Zach Whalen

Journal of Creative Writing Studies

The Several Houses of Brian, Spencer, Liam, Victoria, Brayden, Vincent, and Alex is a computer-generated children’s book of 53,651 words and 350 unique illustrations arranged over 800 pages. The text is a cumulative poem in the style of the nursery rhyme “This is the House that Jack Built,” but with a house for each of the eponymous seven individuals, and with each of their houses containing many more types of things. These houses, these things, and these words were chosen by a Python script that I wrote, and the resulting novel--which can be viewed on my Github repository--is …

Atari, Creative Making & Zombie Computers: Robbo. Solucja., Piotr Marecki

Journal of Creative Writing Studies

In 1989, Janusz Pelc wrote the game Robbo on an 8-bit Atari, one of the first personal computers, which enjoyed a cult-like status in Poland before the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Robbo, a small robot, collects screws and has to get through 56 planets. The game has achieved cult status, spawning hundreds of remixes and modifications. Beginning in the 1980s, fans (once mainly young boys, today adult men) played this game, collecting screws and running away from enemies such as bats, flying eyes, devils etc., while drinking beer, smoking cigarettes, eating crisps and telling jokes. One …

Digital Participatory Poetics And Civic Engagement In The Creative Writing Classroom, Liza D. Flum, Emily Oliver

Journal of Creative Writing Studies

This article explores the ways a team-taught course, “Public Poetry in a Digital World,” supported community-building through participatory action and digital creative making. Using digital texts responding to current events, this course fostered students’ civic imagination and invited them to make connections among their own lives, their communities and poetic civic media. This class facilitated critical community engagement through digital pedagogy and final projects in which students performed public scholarship. Ultimately, this course serves as a case study of how teaching born-digital texts with digital tools can expand the capacity of the creative writing classroom.