649 research outputs found
Entering the Heart of Experience: First Person Accounts in Performance & Spirituality
No full textIn this paper, Middleton and Chamberlain introduce the inaugural publication of "Perspectives on Practice," which will be a new and ongiong section in "Performance and Spirituality" that will publish academically rigorous, first-person accounts of intersections between performance and spirituality.
In this article, the authors take up arguments for the development of a rigorous first-person methodology for consciousness research and apply them to the study of performance and spirituality. They outline the implications of adopting and including the first person perspective in performance research, and then explore its applicability to the particular case of the enquiry into relationships between performance and spirituality. They argue that the promotion of rigorous and contextualised first-person accounts can provide this field of study with significant data; high-quality descriptions of what Varela and Shear called “The View from Within.” Such descriptions could provide detailed insights into, for example, the nature of the performative phenomena which yield spiritual experience. Further, we shall explore the extent to which the adoption of the first-person mode of enquiry can increase, as well as illuminate, the experience in question
Interview with Mojisola Adebayo
No full textFranc Chamberlain interviews Mojisola Adebayo about her involvement in the Vidya Comes to Life project in Ahmedaba
Remembering Ivanov
No full textRemembering Ivanov… is a performance where the personal associations and memories of two actors in a rehearsal room become entangled with the characters and text of Chekhov’s play. By turns amusing, frustrating, touching, and perplexing, Remembering Ivanov… investigates the construction of memory, identity, reality, truth, and theatre.
Performed by Haley Bueno and Ann-Marie Taaffe, Remembering Ivanov… is a creative collaboration between the two performers, Franc Chamberlain and Inma Maya Pavó
Estimating Equilibrium Real Exchange Rates in the Franc Zone
No full textThis paper estimates the degree of real exchange rate misalignment in 12 CFA (Communauté Financière Africaine) franc zone countries over the period 1960--99. Allowing for contemporaneous error co-variances, due to observed cross-sectional dependence, we use seemingly unrelated regressions equation estimations to estimate the equilibrium real effective exchange rate and degree of misalignment in each country. We find significant differences across member-states, however, the largest economies--Cameroon, C�te d'Ivoire and Senegal--showed some striking similarities. Just prior to the 1994 devaluation, these three economies were much more overvalued compared with the smaller member-states, some of which were either marginally misaligned or virtually in equilibrium. In 1994, only C�te d'Ivoire is exactly in equilibrium as a result of the devaluation. Our analysis of misalignment for the period after 1994 suggests that some challenges lie ahead for the CFA franc zone, if fixed parity is to be maintained. Copyright 2008 The author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Centre for the Study of African Economies. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: [email protected], Oxford University Press.
The Pepys of London E11: Graeme Miller and the Politics of Linked' and 'An Interview with Graeme Miller: Walking The Walk, Talking the Talk: Re-imagining the Urban Landscape.
No full textBlood on the carpet
No full textBlood on the Carpet is a version of Aeschylus’ tragic trilogy The Oresteia, adapted and performed by first-year DTS students under the direction of Franc Chamberlain (with support from Gavin McEntee).
First performed in Athens roughly 2468 years ago The Oresteia dramatizes a change in notions of justice from blood revenge to trial by judge and jury. In the three plays of the trilogy, the shift to a democratic judicial system brings to an end the curse of the House of Atreus and its sequence of revenge killings.
Where it all began: It is said that Tantalus feasted with the gods and stole the divine nectar and ambrosia and was banished from Olympus. Inviting the gods to dine with him, he served them a stew made from his son Pelops (some say from his whole family) to test the gods’ omniscience. Of course they noticed and Tantalus was punished by being placed in the deepest pit of Hades where he still stands in a pool of water with a fruit tree above his head. When he reaches for the fruit the branches stretch away. When he dips for the water, it recedes of of reach.
Tantalus’ son Pelops was resurrected by the gods and had twin sons, Atreus and Thyestes, who murdered their brother Chrysippus, heir to Pelops’ throne, and were banished. The twins became joint regents of Mycenae/Argos but then quarreled over who should be king. Atreus discovered that his wife was having an affair with Thyestes and took revenge by killing Thyestes sons and serving them to him in a meal. Thyestes was banished and had another son, Aegisthus, by his daughter. Aegisthus’ mother, guilt-ridden, abandoned her baby on a mountain and he was found by a shepherd and taken to Atreus who brought him up as his own son. When he came to adulthood Aegisthus discovered his true parentage and killed Atreus.
Atreus, however, had two sons who survived him: Agamemnon, who married Clytemnestra, and Menelaus, who married Clytemnestra’s sister, Helen. When Helen was abducted by Paris and taken back to Troy, the two brothers put together a task force to bring her back. Before the ships could sail, though, Agamemnon had to sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia to the goddess Artemis. The siege of Troy lasted ten years, during which time, Clytemnestra, angry at the killing of her daughter, started an affair with Aegisthus and plotted her revenge on her husban
Michael Chekhov's Ensemble Feeling
No full textI'd suggest that Chekhov is generally thought of as paying particular attention to the individual's creative imagination rather than to the ensemble. In To the Actor, for example, there is very little discussion of ensemble. Chapter 3 is entitled 'Improvisation and Ensemble' but there is very little explicit focus on the ensemble. This explicit emphasis on the individual is there in Lessons for the Professional Actor (du Prey ed,1985), and Lessons for Teachers of his Acting Technique (du Prey, ed, 2000) -- and I think that this is also true of The Path of the Actor (2005). Recent publications on Chekhov (Petit, 2010; Ashperger, 2008) also focus on the individual actor. There is no index reference to 'ensemble' in Chekhov's work in either version of my essay in the First & Second editions of Hodge's book (1999, 2010) -- but there are in my Michael Chekhov (2004).
This explicit emphasis on the individual, I would argue, isn't made in opposition to an emphasis on ensemble, rather Chekhov's work focuses on a network of relationships which might also be termed 'ensembles'. The importance of the ensemble is a given for Chekhov and his exercises in improvisation, atmosphere, Feeling of the Whole etc are ways of developing effective ensemble practices. I don't think that is a particularly difficult point to argue and one piece of evidence would be the reviews of Chekhov's production of The Possessed on Broadway (1939). The Possessed had a poor critical reception but one thing the critics seemed to agree on was the strength of the ensemble (Chamberlain 2004 p.91) -- although some of them read it through a suspicion of ensemble work
Steps Towards an Ecology of Performance
No full textOur aim in constructing our keynote events was to present a spectrum of approaches to the conjunction of performance and ecology, to give some account of what has been done in writing and in practice. We also wanted to demonstrate in our methodology some of the dynamics of the conjunction; to raise some questions both about the 'ecology' of a 'performance' in a group setting and to suggest some topics for further speculation. Since we adopted an interactive approach, picking up approaches and points for discussion from each other and moving, physically and metaphorically, around the space, we cannot completely reproduce the process and directionality of that event in writing. Instead, we offer a set of notes and topics, written individually by each of us but woven together in what seems like a useful sequence, but which is not, either in its sequence or in the exact words, a replica of what occurred in the session. We will cover much if not all of what we tried to raise there, and there may be occasional additions. We start to think about the complexity of what might constitute an ecology of the theatre. Although we do not ignore text, we focus principally on the nature of performance training and practice and the kinds of 'ecological' knowledge which can be identified here, the relationship between performance and site/location/environment, and the ways in which thinking about theatre and performance as an ecology problematises what goes on. We question the nature/culture binary which would keep the two separate, and we’ve tried to come up with different ways of addressing that. We also challenge the idea that human beings, and by extension theatre, are in some way separate from nature and the animal
Relative financial benefits of Swiss Franc and Euro-denominated mortgage loans in Poland
No full textThis paper evaluates financial benefits obtained by private clients of banks in Poland resulting from Swiss franc- and euro-denominated mortgage loans against Polish zloty mortgages. As fx mortgage loans were commonly used in period 2005-2009 and quickly dominated Polish banking sector (as well as sectors in many other CEE countries), they became a fundamental element of banks’ assets and a source of risk for borrowers. The main goal of the paper is to evaluate if fx mortgage loans, are more cost-efficient, than loans taken in domestic currency (PLN). To assess the financial benefits, the author proposed mathematical model of repayment of mortgage loans taken in the period 12.2004-12.2012 based on variable interest rates and actual exchange rates. Upon the data obtained from the model, the author used eight ratios for assessments of benefits. The analysis of benefits of fx borrowers was conducted per borrower, per period (month) as well as in form of cumulated benefits for all borrowers and all months of crediting. Upon the research one may find that since 2005 most beneficial in Poland are mortgage loans denominated in euro. They are generally more cost-effective than loans denominated in Polish zloty and most popular in period 2005-2009 fx loans in Swiss franc. The investigation of relative benefits showed also that the most commonly used fx loans denominated in Swiss currency are globally more expensive for borrowers than domestic currency loans. The exception are 30-years loans taken in 2009 and 2011
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