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The Gerbini Letters, or, A Tale of Two Mothers
No full textThe book explores the connections between motherhood and the theater both on and off stage throughout the long eighteenth century. Although the realities of eighteenth-century motherhood and representations of maternity have recently been investigated in relation to the novel, social history, and political economy, the idea of motherhood and its connection to the theatre as a professional, material, literary, and cultural site has received little critical attention. The essays in this volume, spanning the period from the Restoration to Regency, address these forgotten maternal narratives, focusing on: the representation of motherhood as the defining female role; the interplay between an actress's celebrity persona and her chosen roles; the performative balance between the cults of maternity and that of the "passionate" actress; and tensions between sex and maternity and/or maternity and public authority. In examining the overlaps and disconnections between representations and realities of maternity in the long eighteenth century, and by looking at written, received, visual, and performed records of motherhood, Stage Mothers makes an important contribution to debates central to eighteenth-century cultural history
Bringing to the Surface Dormant Prejudice: Participatory Theatre for Education & The Necessary Rifts of Risk Taking
No full textThis articles charts a recent conference training event for TENet hosted in Spetses. The article explores several techniques resulting from longitudinal PhD research studies considering means to increase possibilities for change and impact within educational settings with vulnerable young people. The article draws upon social psychological, social constructionism and educational rhetoric as a conceptual framework to explore strategies offered by participatory theatre to challenge dormant prejudice in light of the rise of Golden Dawn and blame culture results from the current economic crisis. The article proposes the need for changes in thinking and political motivation of theatre in education, most specifically exploring links between participatory theatre, witnessing and doubt as forms of action to awaken critical though, shift social blame and thereby propose strategies to challenge detrimental constructs that lead to violence, aggression and prejudice. The paper explores two new strategies, which have been trialled and proven successful in deprived schools in inner city London, used as training tools as part of the conference/summer seminar series in July 201
Performing Architectures
No full textAn online portfolio including architectural, scenography, and educational projects by Andreas Skourtis
Introduction (To Acting Out Trauma Special Issue)
No full textEvoking Freud’s essay ‘Remembering, Repeating and Working Through’, first published in 1914, the title of this special issue of Performing Ethos invites us to think about the ethics of enactment and performance in relation to remembrance and the event of trauma
Review: Mladen Ovadija’s the Dramaturgy of Sound and Postdramatic Theatre
No full textA review of Mladen Ovadija’s the Dramaturgy of Sound and Postdramatic Theatre for 'Comparative Drama' 48.
Going Straight: The Politics of Time and Space in David Eldridge’s Incomplete and Random Acts of Kindness
No full textAmelia Howe Kritzer states that a contemporary British play is commonly thought of as political if it presents "a political issue or comments on what is already perceived as a political issue" (10). Since 1989, however, the economic and political system in the UK has become increasingly monologic. In such a monologic political system, Shavian dialogic forms of political theatre, which present a dialectical discussion of a political issue, lose their efficacy. As a result, some British playwrights have moved toward more interventionist strategies of political engagement, which involve our lived experience of social structures through their dramaturgy. These plays re-order normative representations of social structures, of offering a symbolic re-ordering of social structures within their form. As such, their form represents what Adorno terms, "and analogy of that other condition which should be" (194). David Harvey argues that in late capitalist society, our experience of time and space has become increasingly compressed. Consequently, our temporary axis of succession, which constitutes the fundamental organisation of Shavian drama, no longer reflects our lived experience of time in the world outside the theatre. Therefore, plays that re-order structures of time and space have political efficacy in that they expose a gap between representations of time and space as linear and concrete and our lived experience of time and space as compressed. This essay argues that David Eldridge's 'Incomplete and Random Acts of Kindness' articulates a complete breakdown in the temporal axis of succession in its structure. Its dramaturgy reflects the experience of space-time compression. Thus, it is a highly political play, not on the basis of its content, but in terms of the way in which its structure mediates and negotiates our lived experience of social structures under the pressures of late capitalism
'Rehearsing the Unrehearsed': Reflections on the Concept of Presence in Dramatherapy and Performance Training
No full textThe phenomenon of therapeutic presence is notoriously difficult to articulate and may benefit from dialogue with the discipline of performance studies. This paper discusses how qualities of therapeutic presence can be contextualised as performative in nature. Qualities of presence in both the therapist and the performer are discussed, with specific reference to Eugenio Barba and the cultivation of presence in training both the actor and the therapist. The author then reflects on the piece ‘The Artist is Present’ by Marina Abramovic for its capacity to explore presence and intimacy within a performance piece
From the Mouths of Mothers
No full textA powerful, short verbatim play assembled from mothers' experiences of their children being abused.
A verbatim play, created from the testimonies of seven mothers who have had to come to terms with the devastating reality of their children being sexually abused. In a society in denial of the widespread occurrence of the sexual abuse of children, and with a system ill-equipped to deal with the families, the women tell the often harrowing stories of how they have struggled to access medical and social services for their families as well as justice from the courts
The Contemporary Ensemble: Interviews with Theatre-Makers
No full textQuestions of ensemble – what it is, how it works – are both inherent to a variety of Western theatre traditions, and re-emerging and evolving in striking new ways in the twenty-first century. The Contemporary Ensemble draws together an unprecedented range of original interviews with world-renowned theatre-makers in order to directly address both the former and latter concerns. Reflecting on ‘the ensemble way of working’ within this major new resource are figures including:
Michael Boyd, Hermann Wündrich, Yuri Butusov, Max Stafford-Clark, Elizabeth LeCompte, Lyn Gardner, Adriano Shaplin, Phelim McDermott; and Emma Rice;
representing companies including:
The RSC; The Berliner Ensemble; The Satirikon Theatre; Out of Joint; The Wooster Group; Kneehigh Theatre; Song of the Goat; The Riot Group; The Neo-Futurists; Shadow Casters; and Ontroerend Goed.
All 22 interviews were conducted especially for the collection, and draw upon the author’s rich background working as scholar, educator and dramaturg with a variety of ensembles. The resulting compendium radically re-situates the ensemble in the context of globalisation, higher education and simplistic understandings of ‘text-based’ and ‘devised’ theatre practice, and traces a compelling new line through the contemporary theatre landscape