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Dramaturgies of Interweaving explores present-day dramaturgies that interweave performance cultures in the fields of theater, performance, dance, and other arts. Merging strategies of audience engagement originating in different cultures, dramaturgies of interweaving are creative methods of theater and art-making that seek to address audiences across cultures, making them uniquely suitable for shaping people’s experiences of our entangled world. Presenting in-depth case studies from across the globe, spanning Australia, China, Germany, India, Iran, Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, Vietnam, the US, and the UK, this book investigates how dramaturgies of interweaving are conceived, applied, and rece...
This book interrogates anew the phenomenon of tradition in a dialogical debate with a host of Western thinkers and critical minds. In contrast to the predominantly Western approaches, which look at traditions (Western and non-Western) from a predominantly (Western) modernist perspective, this book interrogates, from an intercultural perspective, the transnational and transcultural consecration, translation, (re)invention, and displacement of traditions (theatrical and cultural) in the aesthetic-political movement of twentieth-century theatre and performance, as exemplified in the case studies of this book. It looks at the question of traditions and modernities at the centre of this aesthetic...
This book examines the radical reinterpretation of precursor texts and prompts as an innovative form of adaptation for the stage. In this context, stage adaptations are defined as active and risk-taking interventions on pre-existing sources, dramatic and otherwise, that can range from single-authored plays to collaborative creations and devising projects. Radical adaptations have the potential to constitute a cutting edge pathway of exploration in performance, by virtue of operating at the intersection between experimental practice and multiple creative transpositions and crossovers among genres and media. They offer a viable platform for the negotiation of topical concerns embedded into global cultural, socio-political and historical shifts, thus cultivating a genuine bond between theatre and society. This volume considers a range of case studies, from the work of Alexandru Tocilescu to Rimini Protokoll, and is vital reading for those interested in adaptation studies and forms of contemporary theatre practice.
Despite several decades of feminist activism and scholarship, women’s bodies continue to be sites of control and contention both materially and symbolically. Issues such as reproductive technologies, sexual violence, objectification, motherhood, and sex trafficking, among others, constitute ongoing, pressing concerns for women’s bodies in our contemporary milieu, arguably exacerbated in a neoliberal world where bodies are instrumentalized as sites of human capital. This book engages with these themes by building on the strong tradition of feminist thought focused on women’s bodies, and by making novel contributions that reflect feminists’ concerns—both theoretically and empirically—about gender and embodiment in the present context and beyond. The collection brings together essays from a variety of feminist scholars who deploy diverse theoretical approaches, including phenomenology, pragmatism, and new materialisms, in order to examine philosophically the question of the current status of gendered bodies through cutting-edge feminist theory.
This comprehensive, authoritative account of tragedy is the culmination of Hans-Thies Lehmann’s groundbreaking contributions to theatre and performance scholarship. It is a major milestone in our understanding of this core foundation of the dramatic arts. From the philosophical roots and theories of tragedy, through its inextricable relationship with drama, to its impact upon post-dramatic forms, this is the definitive work in its field. Lehmann plots a course through the history of dramatic thought, taking in Aristotle, Plato, Seneca, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Lacan, Shakespeare, Schiller, Holderlin, Wagner, Maeterlinck, Yeats, Brecht, Kantor, Heiner Müller and Sarah Kane.
The need for a research volume on European theatre music and sound is almost self-evident. Musical and sonic practices have been an integral part of theatre ever since the artform was first established 2,500 years ago: not just in subsequent genres that are explicitly driven by music, such as opera, operetta, ballet, or musical theatre, but in all kinds of theatrical forms and conventions. Conversely, academic recognition of the role of theatre music, its aesthetics, creative processes, authorships, traditions, and innovations is still insufficient. This volume unites experts from different disciplines and backgrounds to make a significant contribution to the much-needed discourse on theatre...
How can the dichotomy between body and language be overcome by means of the performing arts? What does the art of performing contribute to philosophical, ethical, and political thinking today? This book is a study of the body and language on the stage. Inspired by contemporary artistic research and performance philosophy, Esa Kirkkopelto proposes a new understanding of embodiment that has no direct counterpart in existing philosophies of the body, in natural science, or in everyday experience. The way a performer imagines their body in performance breaks with body–language dichotomies, so language and body can be conceived as co-original phenomena, beyond their anthropomorphic framing. Once we recognize the native relationship between body and language, we can acquire an evolutive perspective which reaches beyond ontological or transcendental paradigms, towards a more linguistic and corporeal coexistence of diverse beings. This book shows how radically different the universe appears when conceived through the performing body. It addresses artists and philosophers alike.
What happens in the relationship between audience and performer? What choices are made in the space of performance about how we attend to others? A Strange Proximity examines stage presence as key to thinking about performance and ethics. It is the first phenomenological account of ethics generated from, rather than applied to, contemporary theatrical productions. The ethical possibilities of the stage, argues Jon Foley Sherman, rest not so much in its objects—the performers and the show itself—as in the “how” of attending to others. A Strange Proximity is a unique perspective on the implications of attention in performance.
This ethnographic research project examines the generation of post-tariqa Tasavvuf (Sufism: a spiritual practice and philosophy recognised as the inner dimension of Islam) in a variety of private, semi-public, public, secular and sacred urban spaces in present-day Turkey. Through extensive field research in minority Sufi communities, this book investigates how devotees of specific orders maintain, adapt, mobilise, and empower their beliefs and values through embodied acts of their Sufi followers. Using an ethnographic methodology and theories derived from performance studies, Esra Çizmeci examines the multiple ways in which the post-tariqa Mevlevi and Rifai practice is formed in present-day...
This volume sets out a novel approach to theatre historiography, presenting the history of performances of Greek tragedies in Germany since 1800 as the history of the evolving cultural identity of the educated middle class throughout that period. Philhellenism and theatromania took hold in this milieu amidst attempts to banish the heavily French-influenced German court culture of the mid-eighteenth century, and by 1800 their fusion in performances of Greek tragedies served as the German answer to the French Revolution. Tragedy's subsequent endurance on the German stage is mapped here through the responses of performances to particular political, social, and cultural milestones, from the Napo...