Pub Date : 2024-03-06DOI: 10.1353/cdr.2024.a920791
Paul D. Reich
<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span> <p> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> Under the Influence:<span>Adaptation, Adultery, and Acceptance in Anton Chekhov's <em>Uncle Vanya</em> and Ryusuke Hamaguchi's <em>Drive My Car</em></span> <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Paul D. Reich (bio) </li> </ul> <p>In <em>A Theory of Adaptation</em>, Linda Hutcheon defines adaptation in three ways: "an acknowledged transposition of a recognizable other work or works; a creative <em>and</em> an interpretative act of appropriation/salvaging; [and] an extended intertextual engagement with the adapted work."<sup>1</sup> Ryusuke Hamaguchi's 2021 film <em>Drive My Car</em> embraces all three of Hutcheon's definitions, often in surprising and compelling ways. Those familiar with the works of Haruki Murakami can not only trace the influences of the titular story, but two additional stories from the author's 2017 collection <em>Men Without Women</em>. However, it is arguable whether Hamaguchi explicitly "acknowledges" the "transposition" of Murakami's "Scheherazade" or "Kino" in his film. Hamaguchi expands what is merely a referent text in Murakami's "Drive My Car"—Anton Chekhov's 1897 play <em>Uncle Vanya</em>—into an additional, shaping textual influence.<sup>2</sup> This brings the total count of adapted texts in his <em>one</em> film to <em>four</em>. Viewers should not be surprised then at its nearly three-hour running time.</p> <p>While each of the adapted texts have their own relationship with the film, <em>Uncle Vanya</em> has the most thorough and sustained one. It also works to satisfy most completely the second and third parts of Hutcheon's definition. With Chekhov's play, Hamaguchi is engaging in a "creative <em>and</em> an interpretative act of appropriation/salvaging" as he's performing "an extended intertextual engagement with the adapted work."<sup>3</sup> The film can be divided into four acts, a nod to the traditional structure of Chekhovian dramas, including <em>Uncle Vanya</em>. Hamaguchi employs the play's dialogue <strong>[End Page 183]</strong> as background in the developing relationship between the film's protagonist—Yusuke Kafuku (played by Hidetoshi Nishijima)—and his driver—Misaki Watari (played by Toko Miura)—selecting key moments in Chekhov's work to act as critical commentary on the film's events. Most of the film's action also revolves around the rehearsal, staging, and first performance of the play. These moments work to address and resolve Kafuku's relationship with his deceased (and unfaithful) spouse, Oto, and join the work done in Murakami's short fiction. However, Hamaguchi pushes beyond Murakami's simple (and often dull) examinations of men in marital crisis to include, instead, women such as Lee Yoon-a (played by Park Yu-rim) who act to recover from her child's death. The director employs <em>Uncle Vanya</em> as a therapeutic device, one which the performers and audience can engage as the
{"title":"Under the Influence: Adaptation, Adultery, and Acceptance in Anton Chekhov's Uncle Vanya and Ryusuke Hamaguchi's Drive My Car","authors":"Paul D. Reich","doi":"10.1353/cdr.2024.a920791","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/cdr.2024.a920791","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> Under the Influence:<span>Adaptation, Adultery, and Acceptance in Anton Chekhov's <em>Uncle Vanya</em> and Ryusuke Hamaguchi's <em>Drive My Car</em></span> <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Paul D. Reich (bio) </li> </ul> <p>In <em>A Theory of Adaptation</em>, Linda Hutcheon defines adaptation in three ways: \"an acknowledged transposition of a recognizable other work or works; a creative <em>and</em> an interpretative act of appropriation/salvaging; [and] an extended intertextual engagement with the adapted work.\"<sup>1</sup> Ryusuke Hamaguchi's 2021 film <em>Drive My Car</em> embraces all three of Hutcheon's definitions, often in surprising and compelling ways. Those familiar with the works of Haruki Murakami can not only trace the influences of the titular story, but two additional stories from the author's 2017 collection <em>Men Without Women</em>. However, it is arguable whether Hamaguchi explicitly \"acknowledges\" the \"transposition\" of Murakami's \"Scheherazade\" or \"Kino\" in his film. Hamaguchi expands what is merely a referent text in Murakami's \"Drive My Car\"—Anton Chekhov's 1897 play <em>Uncle Vanya</em>—into an additional, shaping textual influence.<sup>2</sup> This brings the total count of adapted texts in his <em>one</em> film to <em>four</em>. Viewers should not be surprised then at its nearly three-hour running time.</p> <p>While each of the adapted texts have their own relationship with the film, <em>Uncle Vanya</em> has the most thorough and sustained one. It also works to satisfy most completely the second and third parts of Hutcheon's definition. With Chekhov's play, Hamaguchi is engaging in a \"creative <em>and</em> an interpretative act of appropriation/salvaging\" as he's performing \"an extended intertextual engagement with the adapted work.\"<sup>3</sup> The film can be divided into four acts, a nod to the traditional structure of Chekhovian dramas, including <em>Uncle Vanya</em>. Hamaguchi employs the play's dialogue <strong>[End Page 183]</strong> as background in the developing relationship between the film's protagonist—Yusuke Kafuku (played by Hidetoshi Nishijima)—and his driver—Misaki Watari (played by Toko Miura)—selecting key moments in Chekhov's work to act as critical commentary on the film's events. Most of the film's action also revolves around the rehearsal, staging, and first performance of the play. These moments work to address and resolve Kafuku's relationship with his deceased (and unfaithful) spouse, Oto, and join the work done in Murakami's short fiction. However, Hamaguchi pushes beyond Murakami's simple (and often dull) examinations of men in marital crisis to include, instead, women such as Lee Yoon-a (played by Park Yu-rim) who act to recover from her child's death. The director employs <em>Uncle Vanya</em> as a therapeutic device, one which the performers and audience can engage as the","PeriodicalId":39600,"journal":{"name":"COMPARATIVE DRAMA","volume":"269 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140043632","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-03-06DOI: 10.1353/cdr.2024.a920797
<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span> <p> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> Contributors <!-- /html_title --></li> </ul> <p><strong>Jeffrey M. Brown</strong> is Associate Professor of English at Saint Joseph's University, where he teaches courses in modern literature, theatre, and the medical humanities. His current research considers the ways in which the theatre both models and elicits modes of affective engagement that are central to medical education, narrative medicine, and bioethics. His work has recently appeared in the journals <em>Modern Drama, Text & Presentation</em>, and <em>Life Writing</em>, as well as in the essay collection <em>Cli-Fi and Class: Socioeconomic Justice in Contemporary American Climate Fiction</em> (University of Virginia Press, 2023).</p> <p><strong>Araceli González Crespán</strong> is Associate Professor at the University of Vigo in Spain and a member of the NETEC research group (http://netec.webs.uvigo.es./en). Her current research deals mainly with female playwrights in contemporary American theatre and addresses notions of sexuality, gender, ethnicity, and difference. Her book <em>Desafío y Convención. Imágenes de la mujer sureña en Lillian Hellman</em> (2005) analyzes the representation of female characters in Hellman's southern plays. Her most recent publications are "The Cuban Rafter Crisis on Stage: Humanizing the Experience of Refugees in María Irene Fornés' Manual for a Desperate Crossing" in <em>American, British and Canadian Studies</em> (2022); and "Wonder, Refuge, Promise: Explorations and Discoveries of America in Maria Irene Fornes' Final Plays" in <em>Latin American Theatre Review</em> (2022).</p> <p><strong>Nicholas Duddy</strong> is a doctoral candidate in English at Balliol College, University of Oxford. Supported by a John Monash Scholarship, his research explores representations of suicide in Anglophone drama after the Second World War. His writing has appeared in <em>Antipodes: A Global Journal of Australian and New Zealand Literature, Cordite Poetry Review, Meniscus, TEXT: Journal for Writing and Writing Courses</em>, and <em>The Saltbush Review</em>, among others. In 2023, he was a dissertation fellow at the University of Texas at Austin's Harry Ransom Center.</p> <p><strong>Christine Froula</strong> is Professor of English, Comparative Literary Studies, and Gender Studies at Northwestern University. Her research on modernism includes "Orlando Lives: Virginia Woolf's <em>Orlando</em> in Global Adaptation and Performance" (2013), "Goldie's 'War and Peace': Marinetti Meets Aristophanes and Beethoven in Bloomsbury" (2020), <em>Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Avant-Garde</em> (2005), <em>Modernism's Body: Sex, Culture, and Joyce</em> (1996), <em>To Write Paradise: Style and Error in Ezra Pound's</em> Cantos (1984), and <em>Katherine Mansfield and Virginia Woolf</em> (coedited; 2018). Dramatic adaptations include "The Words" (2021), the librett
以下是内容的简要摘录，以代替摘要： 撰稿人杰弗里-布朗（Jeffrey M. Brown）是圣约瑟夫大学英语系副教授，教授现代文学、戏剧和医学人文课程。他目前的研究探讨了戏剧如何塑造和激发对医学教育、叙事医学和生物伦理学至关重要的情感参与模式。他的作品最近发表在《现代戏剧》、《文本与演示》和《生活写作》等期刊上，并收录在论文集《Cli-Fi 与阶级》中：美国当代气候小说中的社会经济正义》（弗吉尼亚大学出版社，2023 年）。Araceli González Crespán 是西班牙维哥大学副教授，也是 NETEC 研究小组成员 (http://netec.webs.uvigo.es./en)。她目前的研究主要涉及当代美国戏剧中的女性剧作家，并探讨性、性别、种族和差异等概念。她的著作《Desafío y Convención.Desafío y Convención. Imágenes de la mujer sureña en Lillian Hellman (2005) 一书分析了赫尔曼南部戏剧中女性角色的表现形式。她最近发表的论文有：《舞台上的古巴椽子危机：玛丽亚-伊雷娜-福内斯的《绝境穿越手册》中难民经历的人性化》，发表于《美国、英国和加拿大研究》（2022 年）；《奇迹、避难所、承诺：玛丽亚-伊雷娜-福内斯最后剧作中对美国的探索和发现》，发表于《拉丁美洲戏剧评论》（2022 年）。尼古拉斯-达迪（Nicholas Duddy）是牛津大学贝利奥尔学院英语专业的博士候选人。在约翰-莫纳什奖学金的资助下，他的研究探讨了第二次世界大战后英语戏剧中的自杀表现。他的文章发表在《Antipodes：A Global Journal of Australian and New Zealand Literature》、《Cordite Poetry Review》、《Meniscus》、《TEXT: Journal for Writing and Writing Courses》和《The Saltbush Review》等。2023 年，他在德克萨斯大学奥斯汀分校哈利-兰森中心担任论文研究员。克里斯蒂娜-弗劳拉是西北大学英语、比较文学研究和性别研究教授。她对现代主义的研究包括《奥兰多的生活》：弗吉尼亚-伍尔夫的《奥兰多》在全球的改编和表演"（2013 年）、"戈尔迪的《战争与和平》：Marinetti Meets Aristophanes and Beethoven in Bloomsbury"（2020 年）、Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Avant-Garde（2005 年）、Modernism's Body: Sex, Culture, and Joyce（1996 年）、To Write Paradise：1984 年），以及《凯瑟琳-曼斯菲尔德与弗吉尼亚-伍尔夫》（合编；2018 年）。戏剧改编作品包括《话语》（2021 年）、约翰-奥斯汀的歌剧《海洛伊丝和阿伯拉尔》的剧本（2012 年）和《解放的遗产》（2005 年）：降神会》（2005 年）。目前的项目包括 "旧貌换新颜：21 世纪艺术和美学中的现代主义经典"，以及与他人合编的布卢姆斯伯里戏剧集。理查德-吉尔伯特是芝加哥洛约拉大学戏剧和英语兼职教授。他的研究兴趣包括戏剧暴力、表现理论和改编。他还是一名暴力设计师，其作品曾在芝加哥和全国各地的数十家剧院上演。他目前正在编写一本戏剧暴力设计教科书，已与 Routledge 签订合同。Jay Malarcher 是西弗吉尼亚大学的副教授兼戏剧指导。作为一名喜剧学者，他发表了大量关于喜剧各个领域的文章，目前正在编写一本喜剧理论专著，书名暂定为《喜剧情境》（The Situation of Comedy）。他的第一本书《拉里-盖尔巴特的经典美式喜剧》是对这位传奇喜剧作家的权威解读。2009-10 学年，杰伊还作为富布赖特学者在克罗地亚萨格勒布教授美国喜剧。Carla J. McDonough 是田纳西州纳什维尔贝尔蒙特大学英语系助理教授，专攻现代和当代戏剧。她目前的学术研究融合了表演艺术、艺术理论、反种族主义和戏剧理论的观点，探索当代剧作家参与种族和性别叙事文化批判的方式。她著有《上演男性》一书：她曾在《现代戏剧》、《戏剧杂志》和《戏剧理论与批评杂志》上发表文章。最近，她的研究探讨了喜剧和讽刺作为社会正义行动主义的一种方法在不同的当代剧作家和表演者的作品中的应用。劳拉-米尔本是英国伯明翰大学的一名博士生。她的论文主要研究诺埃尔...
{"title":"Contributors","authors":"","doi":"10.1353/cdr.2024.a920797","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/cdr.2024.a920797","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> Contributors <!-- /html_title --></li> </ul> <p><strong>Jeffrey M. Brown</strong> is Associate Professor of English at Saint Joseph's University, where he teaches courses in modern literature, theatre, and the medical humanities. His current research considers the ways in which the theatre both models and elicits modes of affective engagement that are central to medical education, narrative medicine, and bioethics. His work has recently appeared in the journals <em>Modern Drama, Text & Presentation</em>, and <em>Life Writing</em>, as well as in the essay collection <em>Cli-Fi and Class: Socioeconomic Justice in Contemporary American Climate Fiction</em> (University of Virginia Press, 2023).</p> <p><strong>Araceli González Crespán</strong> is Associate Professor at the University of Vigo in Spain and a member of the NETEC research group (http://netec.webs.uvigo.es./en). Her current research deals mainly with female playwrights in contemporary American theatre and addresses notions of sexuality, gender, ethnicity, and difference. Her book <em>Desafío y Convención. Imágenes de la mujer sureña en Lillian Hellman</em> (2005) analyzes the representation of female characters in Hellman's southern plays. Her most recent publications are \"The Cuban Rafter Crisis on Stage: Humanizing the Experience of Refugees in María Irene Fornés' Manual for a Desperate Crossing\" in <em>American, British and Canadian Studies</em> (2022); and \"Wonder, Refuge, Promise: Explorations and Discoveries of America in Maria Irene Fornes' Final Plays\" in <em>Latin American Theatre Review</em> (2022).</p> <p><strong>Nicholas Duddy</strong> is a doctoral candidate in English at Balliol College, University of Oxford. Supported by a John Monash Scholarship, his research explores representations of suicide in Anglophone drama after the Second World War. His writing has appeared in <em>Antipodes: A Global Journal of Australian and New Zealand Literature, Cordite Poetry Review, Meniscus, TEXT: Journal for Writing and Writing Courses</em>, and <em>The Saltbush Review</em>, among others. In 2023, he was a dissertation fellow at the University of Texas at Austin's Harry Ransom Center.</p> <p><strong>Christine Froula</strong> is Professor of English, Comparative Literary Studies, and Gender Studies at Northwestern University. Her research on modernism includes \"Orlando Lives: Virginia Woolf's <em>Orlando</em> in Global Adaptation and Performance\" (2013), \"Goldie's 'War and Peace': Marinetti Meets Aristophanes and Beethoven in Bloomsbury\" (2020), <em>Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Avant-Garde</em> (2005), <em>Modernism's Body: Sex, Culture, and Joyce</em> (1996), <em>To Write Paradise: Style and Error in Ezra Pound's</em> Cantos (1984), and <em>Katherine Mansfield and Virginia Woolf</em> (coedited; 2018). Dramatic adaptations include \"The Words\" (2021), the librett","PeriodicalId":39600,"journal":{"name":"COMPARATIVE DRAMA","volume":"22 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140043728","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-03-06DOI: 10.1353/cdr.2024.a920783
Amy Muse, Victoria Scrimer
<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span> <p> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> Introduction:<span>Text & Presentation</span> <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Amy Muse and Victoria Scrimer </li> </ul> <p>Often, especially of late, great changes seem to come upon us suddenly. We awake one day and the world is altered, for better or worse, demanding of us a new normal. But anyone who studies drama knows that long before any big reveal on stage, change is afoot just beneath the surface of every line and gesture. As astute observers, we look for the setup—a prophesy here, a conspicuous stage prop there—that will clue us in to what lies ahead, and we wait for the pay-off. Insofar as the history of the Comparative Drama Conference constitutes a dramatic narrative, 2023 put us squarely in the set-up, that anticipatory moment when the heretofore unnoticed mechanisms of change begin to make their work visible.</p> <p>This special issue of <em>Comparative Drama</em> announces a partnership between <em>Comparative Drama</em> and the Comparative Drama Conference—a journal and conference that share a name and a commitment to international, interdisciplinary scholarship on dramatic literature, but, until now, have had no formal connection. From 1980–2021, a selection <strong>[End Page 1]</strong> of the best papers from each year's Comparative Drama Conference were published in an annual book series, <em>Text & Presentation</em>. Going forward, one annual issue of <em>Comparative Drama</em> will be devoted to essays developed from the previous year's conference. The Comparative Drama Conference, founded in 1977 by Karelisa Hartigan at the University of Florida, has been a lively intellectual gathering space for scholars, playwrights, dramaturgs, critics, directors, designers, and performers for forty-five years. Over the years it has been hosted by Ohio State University (directed by Stratos Constantinidis), Loyola Marymount University (Kevin J. Wetmore, Jr.), Stevenson University (Laura Snyder), and, for a six-year run, by Rollins College under the direction of Bill Boles. Beginning in 2025, new leaders will take the reins: Mark O'Thomas and Nicholas Holden at the London Academy of Music and Drama (LAMDA) and Baron Kelly and Ann Shanahan at the University of Wisconsin-Madison will serve as co-directors. For the following six years (2025–2030), the Comparative Drama Conference's annual meeting will alternate between London, England and Madison, Wisconsin, making in-person participation a bit easier for many in our international community of scholars and encouraging us all to invest in warmer business casual attire.</p> <p>Change, as it turns out, is an appropriate thematic framework for bringing together the essays in this special issue of <em>Comparative Drama</em>. Change is the lifeblood of good theatre. In <em>The Empty Space</em>, Peter Brook famously quipped that "truth in theatre is always on the move." He
{"title":"Introduction: Text & Presentation","authors":"Amy Muse, Victoria Scrimer","doi":"10.1353/cdr.2024.a920783","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/cdr.2024.a920783","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> Introduction:<span>Text & Presentation</span> <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Amy Muse and Victoria Scrimer </li> </ul> <p>Often, especially of late, great changes seem to come upon us suddenly. We awake one day and the world is altered, for better or worse, demanding of us a new normal. But anyone who studies drama knows that long before any big reveal on stage, change is afoot just beneath the surface of every line and gesture. As astute observers, we look for the setup—a prophesy here, a conspicuous stage prop there—that will clue us in to what lies ahead, and we wait for the pay-off. Insofar as the history of the Comparative Drama Conference constitutes a dramatic narrative, 2023 put us squarely in the set-up, that anticipatory moment when the heretofore unnoticed mechanisms of change begin to make their work visible.</p> <p>This special issue of <em>Comparative Drama</em> announces a partnership between <em>Comparative Drama</em> and the Comparative Drama Conference—a journal and conference that share a name and a commitment to international, interdisciplinary scholarship on dramatic literature, but, until now, have had no formal connection. From 1980–2021, a selection <strong>[End Page 1]</strong> of the best papers from each year's Comparative Drama Conference were published in an annual book series, <em>Text & Presentation</em>. Going forward, one annual issue of <em>Comparative Drama</em> will be devoted to essays developed from the previous year's conference. The Comparative Drama Conference, founded in 1977 by Karelisa Hartigan at the University of Florida, has been a lively intellectual gathering space for scholars, playwrights, dramaturgs, critics, directors, designers, and performers for forty-five years. Over the years it has been hosted by Ohio State University (directed by Stratos Constantinidis), Loyola Marymount University (Kevin J. Wetmore, Jr.), Stevenson University (Laura Snyder), and, for a six-year run, by Rollins College under the direction of Bill Boles. Beginning in 2025, new leaders will take the reins: Mark O'Thomas and Nicholas Holden at the London Academy of Music and Drama (LAMDA) and Baron Kelly and Ann Shanahan at the University of Wisconsin-Madison will serve as co-directors. For the following six years (2025–2030), the Comparative Drama Conference's annual meeting will alternate between London, England and Madison, Wisconsin, making in-person participation a bit easier for many in our international community of scholars and encouraging us all to invest in warmer business casual attire.</p> <p>Change, as it turns out, is an appropriate thematic framework for bringing together the essays in this special issue of <em>Comparative Drama</em>. Change is the lifeblood of good theatre. In <em>The Empty Space</em>, Peter Brook famously quipped that \"truth in theatre is always on the move.\" He","PeriodicalId":39600,"journal":{"name":"COMPARATIVE DRAMA","volume":"12 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140043628","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-03-06DOI: 10.1353/cdr.2024.a920792
M. Scott Phillips
<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span> <p> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> Euphoria in Unhappiness:<span>Technology and Revelation in Jennifer Haley's <em>Neighborhood 3: Requisition of Doom</em> and <em>The Nether</em></span> <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> M. Scott Phillips (bio) </li> </ul> <blockquote> <p>Everywhere we remain unfree and chained to technology, whether we passionately affirm or deny it. But we are delivered over to it in the worst possible way when we regard it as something neutral; for this conception of it, to which today we particularly like to pay homage, makes us utterly blind to the essence of technology.</p> Martin Heidegger, <em>The Question Concerning Technology</em> (1954) </blockquote> <p>In recent years, a number of American playwrights have been in conversation with issues surrounding our increasingly dystopic cultural landscape. Lisa D'Amour's <em>Detroit</em> (2010) and <em>Airline Highway</em> (2015), Dominique Morisseau's <em>Skeleton Crew</em> (2016), and Lynn Nottage's <em>Sweat</em> (2015) explore the dismal conditions workers face in our neoliberal economy, while Will Arbery's <em>Heroes of the Fourth Turning</em> (2019) interrogates theocratic tendencies in a rising cultural right. Jackie Sibblies Drury's <em>Fairview</em> (2018) and Jeremy O. Harris's <em>Slave Play</em> (2019) brutally attack the comforting mythology of our putative "post-racial" turn, challenging audiences at a moment when white supremacism attempts to legitimize itself in mainstream political discourse. A sense of doom permeates <em>The Humans</em> (2015), Steven Karam's eerie and atmospheric exploration of American anxiety. While warm and compassionate in tone, Karam's play traces the slow percolation of characters who are, as Samuel G. Freedman writes, "teetering on the edge of an elevator shaft."<sup>1</sup> <strong>[End Page 205]</strong></p> <p>Also emergent in this troublesome milieu are concerns about technology, its disruptive power and disastrous potential. Ann Washburn's <em>Mr. Burns</em> (2012) and Brendan Pelsue's <em>Wellesley Girl</em> (2016) are post-apocalyptic; the former explores post-grid life after an accident at a nuclear power plant, and the latter, set centuries in the future after an ecological disaster (the result of toxic runoff from the production of robot AI), depicts a United States and a U.S. political structure that are confined to a small Massachusetts suburb surrounded by potentially hostile outsiders. In a sense, these tech-wary examples are merely newer iterations of where we have been many times before. The dystopic ramifications of hubristic technology are well-worn tropes of science fiction: Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's <em>Frankenstein</em> (1818), Fritz Lang's film <em>Metropolis</em> (1927), and the British television series <em>Black Mirror</em> (2011) have all reflected the collective angst concerning the unintended consequences of Promethean ov
{"title":"Euphoria in Unhappiness: Technology and Revelation in Jennifer Haley's Neighborhood 3: Requisition of Doom and The Nether","authors":"M. Scott Phillips","doi":"10.1353/cdr.2024.a920792","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/cdr.2024.a920792","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> Euphoria in Unhappiness:<span>Technology and Revelation in Jennifer Haley's <em>Neighborhood 3: Requisition of Doom</em> and <em>The Nether</em></span> <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> M. Scott Phillips (bio) </li> </ul> <blockquote> <p>Everywhere we remain unfree and chained to technology, whether we passionately affirm or deny it. But we are delivered over to it in the worst possible way when we regard it as something neutral; for this conception of it, to which today we particularly like to pay homage, makes us utterly blind to the essence of technology.</p> Martin Heidegger, <em>The Question Concerning Technology</em> (1954) </blockquote> <p>In recent years, a number of American playwrights have been in conversation with issues surrounding our increasingly dystopic cultural landscape. Lisa D'Amour's <em>Detroit</em> (2010) and <em>Airline Highway</em> (2015), Dominique Morisseau's <em>Skeleton Crew</em> (2016), and Lynn Nottage's <em>Sweat</em> (2015) explore the dismal conditions workers face in our neoliberal economy, while Will Arbery's <em>Heroes of the Fourth Turning</em> (2019) interrogates theocratic tendencies in a rising cultural right. Jackie Sibblies Drury's <em>Fairview</em> (2018) and Jeremy O. Harris's <em>Slave Play</em> (2019) brutally attack the comforting mythology of our putative \"post-racial\" turn, challenging audiences at a moment when white supremacism attempts to legitimize itself in mainstream political discourse. A sense of doom permeates <em>The Humans</em> (2015), Steven Karam's eerie and atmospheric exploration of American anxiety. While warm and compassionate in tone, Karam's play traces the slow percolation of characters who are, as Samuel G. Freedman writes, \"teetering on the edge of an elevator shaft.\"<sup>1</sup> <strong>[End Page 205]</strong></p> <p>Also emergent in this troublesome milieu are concerns about technology, its disruptive power and disastrous potential. Ann Washburn's <em>Mr. Burns</em> (2012) and Brendan Pelsue's <em>Wellesley Girl</em> (2016) are post-apocalyptic; the former explores post-grid life after an accident at a nuclear power plant, and the latter, set centuries in the future after an ecological disaster (the result of toxic runoff from the production of robot AI), depicts a United States and a U.S. political structure that are confined to a small Massachusetts suburb surrounded by potentially hostile outsiders. In a sense, these tech-wary examples are merely newer iterations of where we have been many times before. The dystopic ramifications of hubristic technology are well-worn tropes of science fiction: Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's <em>Frankenstein</em> (1818), Fritz Lang's film <em>Metropolis</em> (1927), and the British television series <em>Black Mirror</em> (2011) have all reflected the collective angst concerning the unintended consequences of Promethean ov","PeriodicalId":39600,"journal":{"name":"COMPARATIVE DRAMA","volume":"22 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140043794","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-03-06DOI: 10.1353/cdr.2024.a920790
Jeffrey M. Brown
<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span> <p><ul> <li> <!-- html_title --> The Perfect Joke: <span>Autopathography and Humor in Sarah Ruhl's <em>The Clean House</em></span> <!-- /html_title --> </li> <li> Jeffrey M. Brown (bio) </li> </ul> <h2>An Aesthetics of Anesthetics: The Problem of Humor in Medicine</h2> <p>In spite of that old adage—"laughter is the best medicine"—it is hard to overcome the feeling that illness and humor are fundamentally incompatible. Indeed, this basic assumption is often used as the source of comedy itself: the incongruous intersection of laughter and suffering highlights the ways in which the former might somehow trump the latter by way of an ironic "deadening" or desensitization. In a literature review for the <em>Southern Medical Journal</em>in 2003, physician Howard J. Bennett finds little support in published studies for the idea that laughter meaningfully promotes health or healing, despite popular beliefs; the only direct medical benefits he substantiates concern pain management through a kind of comic anesthesia. "In one well-controlled study," Bennett reports, "humorous movies reduced the need for postoperative analgesia in orthopedic patients." <sup>1</sup>If comedy does work upon the body, it seems to do so exclusively by placing pressure on one end of a kind of Cartesian lever, prying apart the humorous experience of pleasure from the physical reality of disease and illness.</p> <p>Such insights might come as no surprise for theories of humor— and, indeed, of aesthetic experience more broadly. But they also define a distinct tradition in modern and contemporary drama that often uses the incompatibility of laughter and illness as a vector for multivalent critique, registering both social conventions about what might define an <strong>[End Page 151]</strong>appropriate ethic of care as well as how those conventions substantiate ongoing cultural hypocrisies. For example: Halley Feiffer's <em>A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Gynecologic Oncology Unit at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center of New York City</em>(2016) opens on just such a display of torturous incongruence. Karla, a standup comedian in her early thirties, is sitting in a shared hospital room next to her unconscious mother, who is recovering from a hysterectomy after receiving a diagnosis of endometrial cancer. Because of the privacy curtain dividing the space, Karla is unaware that the other unconscious cancer patient in the room has also received a visitor: the middle-aged Don, who is silently watching over his own mother. When Karla begins to workshop a series of vulgar jokes aloud, Don makes his presence known—and the ensuing argument climaxes in a challenging inversion of comic wit. <speech> <speaker> <em>Don:</em> </speaker> <p> <em>(Pulling out all the stops in a vicious cross-fire)</em> </p> <p>NO, what the – F – is wrong with <em>YOU</em>and your self-obsessed hipster ME GENERATION?
以下是内容的简要摘录，以代替摘要： 完美的笑话：杰弗里-M.-布朗（Jeffrey M. Brown）（简历）《麻醉学的美学》：尽管有 "笑是最好的良药 "这一古老的谚语，但还是很难克服疾病与幽默从根本上不相容的感觉。事实上，这一基本假设常常被用作喜剧本身的源泉：笑声与痛苦的不和谐交集凸显了前者可能通过讽刺性的 "消解 "或脱敏方式战胜后者的方式。在 2003 年为《南方医学杂志》（Southern Medical Journal）撰写的一篇文献综述中，医生霍华德-J-班尼特（Howard J. Bennett）发现，尽管人们普遍认为笑能有意义地促进健康或治愈疾病，但已发表的研究报告却很少支持这一观点；他证实的唯一直接医疗益处是通过一种喜剧麻醉来控制疼痛。"贝内特报告说，"在一项对照良好的研究中，幽默电影减少了骨科病人术后镇痛的需要"。1 如果说喜剧确实对身体产生了作用，那么它似乎完全是通过对一种笛卡尔杠杆的一端施加压力，将快乐的幽默体验与疾病的生理现实撬开。对于幽默理论，乃至更广泛的审美体验理论而言，这样的见解可能并不令人惊讶。但是，它们也定义了现当代戏剧中的一个独特传统，即经常将笑与疾病的不相容作为多义性批判的载体，既记录了社会习俗对适当的护理伦理的定义，也记录了这些习俗是如何证实持续的文化虚伪的。例如哈雷-费弗（Halley Feiffer）的《前往纽约纪念斯隆-凯特琳癌症中心妇科肿瘤科途中发生的趣事》（A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Gynecologic Oncology Unit at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center of New York City，2016）就是以这样一种折磨人的不一致性开篇的。卡拉（Karla）是一位三十出头的脱口秀喜剧演员，她与昏迷不醒的母亲同住一间病房，母亲被诊断出患有子宫内膜癌，正在接受子宫切除手术。由于隐私帘隔开了空间，卡拉并不知道病房里另一位昏迷不醒的癌症患者也迎来了一位访客：默默守护着自己母亲的中年男子唐。当卡拉开始大声研讨一系列低俗笑话时，唐的出现引起了人们的注意--随后的争论在一场具有挑战性的反转滑稽诙谐中达到了高潮。 唐：（使出浑身解数，恶狠狠地反唇相讥）不，你和你那自以为是的时髦 "我这一代 "到底怎么了？你妈妈得了癌症住进了医院。情况不容乐观。事实上，情况非常严峻。 (所以，请你暂时放弃滑稽。让它去。把它放在后面哦，还有一个激进的想法：别再开振动器玩笑了，把注意力集中到你妈妈身上吧 我在关注我妈妈。而且她还他妈的喜欢振动器笑话 唐：（暗讽）是啊。看来他们真的在那边大开杀戒。2 这段对话之所以如此有效，是因为费弗尔在尖刻的对话中使用了具有讽刺意味的幽默术语，表明了社会规范、个人主观性和人际关系之间的有力交集。唐反对卡拉的段子手表演，指出了共鸣中的假定差距：他断言，卡拉的笑话表明了她这一代人的 "自我陶醉"，对她母亲作为癌症患者的需求视而不见、麻木不仁。另一方面，卡拉的反驳挑战了唐的假设--即幽默表明了对疾病的否认，疾病本身是一种统一的体验（"你妈妈现在只剩下癌症了"，他稍后宣称 3）--她断言，人际关怀没有普遍 [完 第 152 页]的标准：振动器笑话适合他们的特殊关系。然而，唐再次反击，他引用了专业喜剧的术语--"杀死 "观众就是成功--来强调卡拉表演的失败（没有人笑），并指出幽默并不能减轻......
{"title":"The Perfect Joke: Autopathography and Humor in Sarah Ruhl's The Clean House","authors":"Jeffrey M. Brown","doi":"10.1353/cdr.2024.a920790","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/cdr.2024.a920790","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p><ul> <li> <!-- html_title --> The Perfect Joke: <span>Autopathography and Humor in Sarah Ruhl's <em>The Clean House</em></span> <!-- /html_title --> </li> <li> Jeffrey M. Brown (bio) </li> </ul> <h2>An Aesthetics of Anesthetics: The Problem of Humor in Medicine</h2> <p>In spite of that old adage—\"laughter is the best medicine\"—it is hard to overcome the feeling that illness and humor are fundamentally incompatible. Indeed, this basic assumption is often used as the source of comedy itself: the incongruous intersection of laughter and suffering highlights the ways in which the former might somehow trump the latter by way of an ironic \"deadening\" or desensitization. In a literature review for the <em>Southern Medical Journal</em>in 2003, physician Howard J. Bennett finds little support in published studies for the idea that laughter meaningfully promotes health or healing, despite popular beliefs; the only direct medical benefits he substantiates concern pain management through a kind of comic anesthesia. \"In one well-controlled study,\" Bennett reports, \"humorous movies reduced the need for postoperative analgesia in orthopedic patients.\" <sup>1</sup>If comedy does work upon the body, it seems to do so exclusively by placing pressure on one end of a kind of Cartesian lever, prying apart the humorous experience of pleasure from the physical reality of disease and illness.</p> <p>Such insights might come as no surprise for theories of humor— and, indeed, of aesthetic experience more broadly. But they also define a distinct tradition in modern and contemporary drama that often uses the incompatibility of laughter and illness as a vector for multivalent critique, registering both social conventions about what might define an <strong>[End Page 151]</strong>appropriate ethic of care as well as how those conventions substantiate ongoing cultural hypocrisies. For example: Halley Feiffer's <em>A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Gynecologic Oncology Unit at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center of New York City</em>(2016) opens on just such a display of torturous incongruence. Karla, a standup comedian in her early thirties, is sitting in a shared hospital room next to her unconscious mother, who is recovering from a hysterectomy after receiving a diagnosis of endometrial cancer. Because of the privacy curtain dividing the space, Karla is unaware that the other unconscious cancer patient in the room has also received a visitor: the middle-aged Don, who is silently watching over his own mother. When Karla begins to workshop a series of vulgar jokes aloud, Don makes his presence known—and the ensuing argument climaxes in a challenging inversion of comic wit. <speech> <speaker> <em>Don:</em> </speaker> <p> <em>(Pulling out all the stops in a vicious cross-fire)</em> </p> <p>NO, what the – F – is wrong with <em>YOU</em>and your self-obsessed hipster ME GENERATION?","PeriodicalId":39600,"journal":{"name":"COMPARATIVE DRAMA","volume":"57 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140043720","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-03-06DOI: 10.1353/cdr.2024.a920787
Carla J. McDonough
<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span> <p> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> Art Acts:<span>Reframing the White Gaze in Claudia Rankine's <em>The White Card</em></span> <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Carla J. McDonough (bio) </li> </ul> <blockquote> <p>"Until we are willing to look at the ways in which white Americans are culpable in the suffering of the people of color, and understand that culpability needs to be present in the representation of that, suffering will continue."</p> Claudia Rankine<sup>1</sup> </blockquote> <blockquote> <p>"Art has always been the tool of the powerful, and also the weapon of the dispossessed: official imagery controls narratives of identity and defines what is 'right', but these representations can be creatively subverted and destroyed. You have to know the rules of the space to sabotage it."</p> Alice Procter<sup>2</sup> </blockquote> <p>Protest arose at the Whitney Museum's 2017 Biennial exhibit in response to Dana Schutz's painting <em>Open Casket</em>, a somewhat abstract rendering of the famous photograph of Emmett Till in his casket. Artist Parker Bright's critique led him to stand in front of the painting wearing a tee-shirt that read "Black Death Spectacle." Bright's physical protest was followed by an open letter written by Hannah Black that demanded the Whitney remove the painting, in which she wrote:</p> <blockquote> <p>Although Schutz's intention may be to present white shame, this shame is not correctly represented as a painting of a dead Black boy by a white artist—those non-Black artists who sincerely wish to highlight the shameful nature of white violence should first of all stop treating Black pain as raw material. The subject matter is not Schutz's; white free speech and white creative freedom have been founded on the constraints of others, and are not natural rights. The painting must go.<sup>3</sup></p> </blockquote> <p><strong>[End Page 87]</strong></p> <p>Some artists and patrons responded to this protest by arguing the dangers of censorship, while many others supported removal of the painting. The controversy led to hot debates in the art-world and culminated in the Whitney's decision to stage a public discussion about race and representation within the traditionally "white" spaces of museums. The museum asked Claudia Rankine to moderate this discussion due to her work in founding the Racial Imaginary Institute, an inter-disciplinary "cultural laboratory" that explores, counters, contextualizes and demystifies cultural ideas about race.<sup>4</sup> The Whitney billed the evening as a discussion about "questions around race, violence, the ethics of representation, and the limits of empathy."<sup>5</sup> Although the curators of the museum did not alter the exhibit in response to the protests, the debates about representation in visual, literary, filmic and theatrical arts continues as American culture grapples with legacies of colonialism, appropr
{"title":"Art Acts: Reframing the White Gaze in Claudia Rankine's The White Card","authors":"Carla J. McDonough","doi":"10.1353/cdr.2024.a920787","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/cdr.2024.a920787","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> Art Acts:<span>Reframing the White Gaze in Claudia Rankine's <em>The White Card</em></span> <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Carla J. McDonough (bio) </li> </ul> <blockquote> <p>\"Until we are willing to look at the ways in which white Americans are culpable in the suffering of the people of color, and understand that culpability needs to be present in the representation of that, suffering will continue.\"</p> Claudia Rankine<sup>1</sup> </blockquote> <blockquote> <p>\"Art has always been the tool of the powerful, and also the weapon of the dispossessed: official imagery controls narratives of identity and defines what is 'right', but these representations can be creatively subverted and destroyed. You have to know the rules of the space to sabotage it.\"</p> Alice Procter<sup>2</sup> </blockquote> <p>Protest arose at the Whitney Museum's 2017 Biennial exhibit in response to Dana Schutz's painting <em>Open Casket</em>, a somewhat abstract rendering of the famous photograph of Emmett Till in his casket. Artist Parker Bright's critique led him to stand in front of the painting wearing a tee-shirt that read \"Black Death Spectacle.\" Bright's physical protest was followed by an open letter written by Hannah Black that demanded the Whitney remove the painting, in which she wrote:</p> <blockquote> <p>Although Schutz's intention may be to present white shame, this shame is not correctly represented as a painting of a dead Black boy by a white artist—those non-Black artists who sincerely wish to highlight the shameful nature of white violence should first of all stop treating Black pain as raw material. The subject matter is not Schutz's; white free speech and white creative freedom have been founded on the constraints of others, and are not natural rights. The painting must go.<sup>3</sup></p> </blockquote> <p><strong>[End Page 87]</strong></p> <p>Some artists and patrons responded to this protest by arguing the dangers of censorship, while many others supported removal of the painting. The controversy led to hot debates in the art-world and culminated in the Whitney's decision to stage a public discussion about race and representation within the traditionally \"white\" spaces of museums. The museum asked Claudia Rankine to moderate this discussion due to her work in founding the Racial Imaginary Institute, an inter-disciplinary \"cultural laboratory\" that explores, counters, contextualizes and demystifies cultural ideas about race.<sup>4</sup> The Whitney billed the evening as a discussion about \"questions around race, violence, the ethics of representation, and the limits of empathy.\"<sup>5</sup> Although the curators of the museum did not alter the exhibit in response to the protests, the debates about representation in visual, literary, filmic and theatrical arts continues as American culture grapples with legacies of colonialism, appropr","PeriodicalId":39600,"journal":{"name":"COMPARATIVE DRAMA","volume":"12 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140043727","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-03-06DOI: 10.1353/cdr.2024.a920793
Christine Froula
<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span> <p> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> Torvald's Question:<span>Italo Svevo and James Joyce Stage Modern Masculinity</span> <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Christine Froula (bio) </li> </ul> <blockquote> <p>Nora! Nora! … Empty. She's gone. <em>(A sudden hope leaps in him.)</em> The greatest miracle—?!</p> Torvald in Henrik Ibsen, <em>A Doll House</em> (1879) </blockquote> <blockquote> <p>I have peeped into a great many doll's houses; and I have found that the dolls are not all female.</p> Nora in George Bernard Shaw, "Still After the Doll's House" (1890) </blockquote> <blockquote> <p><em>The Doll's House</em> … has caused the greatest revolution in our time in the most important relationship there is—that between men and women. … Ibsen has been the greatest influence on the present generation. … His ideas have become part of our lives.</p> James Joyce to Arthur Power, <em>Conversations with Joyce</em> (1920s) </blockquote> <p>When Nora Helmer departs Torvald's doll house to educate herself as an adult human being, she leaves behind a paragon of nineteenth-century masculine "honor" whose questions as to what he must do, how he must change, she cannot answer.<sup>1</sup> Whereas most commentary on <em>A Doll House</em> assumes that Ibsen leaves Torvald no escape,<sup>2</sup> this essay highlights Torvald's echo of Nora's word "miracle" in his hopeful question at the play's open end and argues that two of Ibsen's heirs— the Triestine writer Italo Svevo (1861–1928) and his English tutor and literary soulmate the Irish James Joyce (1882–1941)—pursue Torvald's question in plays that stage crises of modern masculinity in parallel with Nora's awakening. Read comparatively, Ibsen's <em>A Doll House</em> (1879), <strong>[End Page 229]</strong> Svevo's <em>A Husband</em> (1895/1903), and Joyce's <em>Exiles</em> (1913–1915) embody a dramatic dialogue on freeing all the characters—Torvalds and Noras alike—from an antiquated socio-economic sex/gender system. Taking Ibsen's critical-realist dramaturgy into daring new territory, Svevo and Joyce stage avant-garde psychodramas in social worlds that put traditional masculinity—formed by man-made laws, rights, values, freedom, conscious and unconscious assumptions, prerogatives, and motives—in tension with Ibsen's revolutionary modernity. Their diagnostic dramas of toxic-masculinity-with-a-good-prognosis distill from Torvald's question a Shavian quintessence of post-Ibsenism that illuminates Ibsen's subsumption of feminism within the dialectical vision of human possibility that Nora's departure opens.</p> <h2>Ibsen's Pharmakon: "the greatest miracle—?!"</h2> <p>The shock waves sent through Europe and the world by the 1879 Copenhagen premiere of Ibsen's <em>A Doll House</em> (<em>Et Dukkehjem</em>) reverberate in innumerable debates and interpretations, from the play's first reviews to its 2023 Broadway adaptation.<sup>3</sup> In "Ibse
{"title":"Torvald's Question: Italo Svevo and James Joyce Stage Modern Masculinity","authors":"Christine Froula","doi":"10.1353/cdr.2024.a920793","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/cdr.2024.a920793","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> Torvald's Question:<span>Italo Svevo and James Joyce Stage Modern Masculinity</span> <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Christine Froula (bio) </li> </ul> <blockquote> <p>Nora! Nora! … Empty. She's gone. <em>(A sudden hope leaps in him.)</em> The greatest miracle—?!</p> Torvald in Henrik Ibsen, <em>A Doll House</em> (1879) </blockquote> <blockquote> <p>I have peeped into a great many doll's houses; and I have found that the dolls are not all female.</p> Nora in George Bernard Shaw, \"Still After the Doll's House\" (1890) </blockquote> <blockquote> <p><em>The Doll's House</em> … has caused the greatest revolution in our time in the most important relationship there is—that between men and women. … Ibsen has been the greatest influence on the present generation. … His ideas have become part of our lives.</p> James Joyce to Arthur Power, <em>Conversations with Joyce</em> (1920s) </blockquote> <p>When Nora Helmer departs Torvald's doll house to educate herself as an adult human being, she leaves behind a paragon of nineteenth-century masculine \"honor\" whose questions as to what he must do, how he must change, she cannot answer.<sup>1</sup> Whereas most commentary on <em>A Doll House</em> assumes that Ibsen leaves Torvald no escape,<sup>2</sup> this essay highlights Torvald's echo of Nora's word \"miracle\" in his hopeful question at the play's open end and argues that two of Ibsen's heirs— the Triestine writer Italo Svevo (1861–1928) and his English tutor and literary soulmate the Irish James Joyce (1882–1941)—pursue Torvald's question in plays that stage crises of modern masculinity in parallel with Nora's awakening. Read comparatively, Ibsen's <em>A Doll House</em> (1879), <strong>[End Page 229]</strong> Svevo's <em>A Husband</em> (1895/1903), and Joyce's <em>Exiles</em> (1913–1915) embody a dramatic dialogue on freeing all the characters—Torvalds and Noras alike—from an antiquated socio-economic sex/gender system. Taking Ibsen's critical-realist dramaturgy into daring new territory, Svevo and Joyce stage avant-garde psychodramas in social worlds that put traditional masculinity—formed by man-made laws, rights, values, freedom, conscious and unconscious assumptions, prerogatives, and motives—in tension with Ibsen's revolutionary modernity. Their diagnostic dramas of toxic-masculinity-with-a-good-prognosis distill from Torvald's question a Shavian quintessence of post-Ibsenism that illuminates Ibsen's subsumption of feminism within the dialectical vision of human possibility that Nora's departure opens.</p> <h2>Ibsen's Pharmakon: \"the greatest miracle—?!\"</h2> <p>The shock waves sent through Europe and the world by the 1879 Copenhagen premiere of Ibsen's <em>A Doll House</em> (<em>Et Dukkehjem</em>) reverberate in innumerable debates and interpretations, from the play's first reviews to its 2023 Broadway adaptation.<sup>3</sup> In \"Ibse","PeriodicalId":39600,"journal":{"name":"COMPARATIVE DRAMA","volume":"2 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140043795","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-03-06DOI: 10.1353/cdr.2024.a920795
Laura Milburn
<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span> <p> <span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> <em>Noël Coward: The Playwright's Craft in a Changing Theatre</em> by Russell Jackson, and: <em>Masquerade: The Lives of Noël Coward</em> by Oliver Soden <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Laura Milburn (bio) </li> </ul> Russell Jackson, <em>Noël Coward: The Playwright's Craft in a Changing Theatre</em>. London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2022. Pp 232. Hardcover $115.00 and Oliver Soden, <em>Masquerade: The Lives of Noël Coward</em>. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2023. Pp 656. Hardcover £30 <p>There is already a large canon of literature (of varying quality and accuracy) regarding Noël Coward's life and work, including volumes written by Coward himself. Therefore, in order to justify penning yet another volume about "The Master," an author needs to find a new angle. Reading Russell Jackson's <em>Noël Coward: The Playwright's Craft in a Changing Theatre</em> and Oliver Soden's latest biography <em>Masquerade: The Lives of Noël Coward</em>, it is clear that they have both succeeded in doing so.</p> <p>Jackson's and Soden's respective books differ in their approach and target demographic, but what they both have in common is their extensive use of archival research. Both have thoroughly researched the main Coward archives, which are currently divided between London (where they are administered by the Noël Coward Archive Trust) and the Noël Coward Collection at the University of Birmingham's Cadbury Research Library. It is the usage of the vast archival material that makes both books stand out and will ensure they are considered the primers for any scholar or theatre enthusiast going forward, and both gentlemen are very clear from the outset on the importance of the archival materials and what we can learn from them. At the start of his book, Jackson notes "the archive's script material, especially in the earliest manuscript drafts, conveys the impression of a playwright who is also an actor and director, seeing characters decisively from the outset, hearing the lines as he writes them and already directing the play in the theatre of his mind" (2).</p> <p>Nevertheless, it is somewhat disappointing to see that the American archives have not been considered or consulted, with the Billy Rose Theatre Division of the New York Public Library in particular holding a substantial collection on Coward's theatrical career. For <em>Noël Coward: The Playwright's Craft in a Changing Theatre</em>, it is of less importance because Jackson's objective is to chart the development of Coward's writing methods, so the manuscripts, unpublished letters and diaries which are stored in the UK archives are of greater relevance and on which Jackson has based his study. It would have been interesting to read Soden's interpretation and discussion of the American theatrical reviews (specifically those found in the 'Collection of newspaper
以下是内容的简要摘录，以代替摘要：评论者： 诺埃尔-科沃德：罗素-杰克逊（Russell Jackson）所著的《剧作家在不断变化的剧院中的创作技巧》和《化妆舞会：诺埃尔-科沃德的生平》：奥利弗-索登著《化妆舞会：诺埃尔-考沃德的生活》 劳拉-米尔本（简历） 罗素-杰克逊著《诺埃尔-考沃德：剧作家在不断变化的剧院中的创作技巧》。伦敦：布鲁姆斯伯里出版社，2022 年。第 232 页。Hardcover $115.00 and Oliver Soden, Masquerade: The Lives of Noël Coward.伦敦：Weidenfeld and Nicolson，2023 年。第 656 页。精装 30 英镑 关于诺埃尔-考沃德的生平和作品，已经有大量的文献（质量和准确性参差不齐），包括考沃德本人撰写的作品集。因此，为了证明有理由再写一本关于 "大师 "的书，作者需要找到一个新的角度。阅读罗素-杰克逊（Russell Jackson）的《诺埃尔-考沃德》（Noël Coward：The Playwright's Craft in a Changing Theatre》和奥利弗-索登（Oliver Soden）的最新传记《化妆舞会：诺埃尔-科沃德的一生》，显然他们都成功地做到了这一点。杰克逊和索登各自的著作在方法和目标读者群上有所不同，但它们的共同点是都广泛使用了档案研究。两人都对考沃德的主要档案进行了深入研究，这些档案目前分布在伦敦（由诺埃尔-考沃德档案信托基金管理）和伯明翰大学卡德伯里研究图书馆的诺埃尔-考沃德收藏馆。正是对大量档案资料的利用使这两本书脱颖而出，并将确保它们被任何学者或戏剧爱好者视为未来的入门读物，而两位先生从一开始就非常清楚档案资料的重要性以及我们能从中学到什么。杰克逊在书的开头就指出，"档案中的剧本资料，尤其是最早的手稿草稿，给人的印象是，剧作家同时也是演员和导演，从一开始就能果断地看到角色，在写台词时就能听到台词，并且已经在他心中的剧场里导演了戏剧"(2)。然而，令人失望的是，美国的档案资料并未被考虑或参考，尤其是纽约公共图书馆比利-罗斯剧院部收藏了大量有关考沃德戏剧生涯的资料。诺埃尔-科沃德对于《诺埃尔-考沃德：剧场变迁中的剧作家技艺》一书而言，这一点并不那么重要，因为杰克逊的目标是描绘考沃德写作方法的发展历程，因此，存放在英国档案馆中的手稿、未发表的信件和日记更有意义，杰克逊的研究也以此为基础。如果能在《化妆舞会：诺埃尔-考沃德的生活》一书中读到索登对美国戏剧评论（特别是纽约公共图书馆收藏的 "戏剧评论剪报集"[*ZAN-*T282]中的评论）的解读和讨论，那将会非常有趣，但这部新传记在很大程度上是科维德-19的封锁项目。当然，这意味着在 12 个月的时间里，所有档案的 [End Page 266] 调用都受到严格限制，而且在更长的时间里，禁止前往美国，因此必须考虑实际情况，并在截止日期前完成出版，以纪念考沃德逝世 50 周年（以及诺埃尔-考沃德遗产命名为 #Coward125 的为期两年的庆祝活动的开始，以纪念这一周年以及 2024 年考沃德的 125 岁生日）。杰克逊认为考沃德是一个 "注重细节"（185）和 "不知疲倦、锐意进取的工作者"（185），考沃德的手稿是这一论点的核心。事实上，这项研究确实让人 "生动地感受到，尽管在创作之前或创作过程中遇到了挫折，但作为一名剧作家，他还是乐于发挥自己的手艺"（186）。杰克逊的研究可以说是第一部提供戏剧分析的著作，当然也是第一部广泛利用未出版档案材料的著作。他的研究方法细致入微--首先概述了考沃德的职业生涯及其剧本的接受情况，然后讨论了部分文本，并按时间顺序回顾了考沃德从 20 世纪 20 年代到 60 年代的职业生涯。不出所料，《漩涡》、《干草热》、《私人生活》、《设计》、《...
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Pub Date : 2024-03-06DOI: 10.1353/cdr.2024.a920796
Judith Saunders
<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span> <p><span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li> <!-- html_title --> <em>Let the Right One In</em>by Jack Thorne <!-- /html_title --> </li> <li> Judith Saunders (bio) </li> </ul> <em>Let the Right One In</em>, by Jack Thorne, directed by John Tiffany Berkeley Repertory Theatre (05 <day>20</day>– 06 <day>25</day>, 2023) <p>The West Coast premiere of <em>Let The Right One In</em>opened May 20, 2023 at Berkeley Repertory Theatre. This production was headed by the original British creative team with American actors. The story is based on the Swedish vampire novel <em>Lat den Ratte Komma in</em>by John Ajvide Lindqvist, which was subsequently adapted for a movie, popular with Generation Z. Stage director John Tiffany, choreographer Steven Hoggett and playwright Jack Thorne collaborated to theatrically capture both the magic and horror of a love story between a troubled adolescent boy, Oskar, and an ageless vampire in the guise of an androgynous pre-pubescent, Eli. Each finds solace in the other and they finally venture together into an unknown future. According to the program notes, it was the Swedish movie that inspired Tiffany to launch this stage production for Scotland's National Theatre, which then transferred to London's West End. Such story-filching from other sources is not an unusual theatre practice. Playwrights have traditionally been magpies in their search for material. It was this production team that based their highly successful <em>Harry Potter and the Cursed Child</em>on the book by J. K. Rowling.</p> <p>I attended the performance on Saturday, May 27, not having read the book or seen the movie, and with only a smattering of vampiric knowledge from reading Bram Stoker's <em>Dracula</em>. I pondered our society's fascination with this non-human, blood-sucking creature that has so persistently been reprised in the media. What relevance does this myth have for us today? Having seen Tiffany and Hoggett's stunning 2007 production of <em>Black Watch</em>at St. Ann's Warehouse in Brooklyn, I was eager to see what they would do with <em>Let the Right One In</em>. I was not disappointed. They succeeded once more in creating a memorable experience, exemplifying the genre "physical theatre"—employing mime, dance and all the tools theatre has at its disposal to tell a story.</p> <p>As the play began, the open stage revealed Christine Jones's minimalist set of snow-covered birch trees lit by an icy cool light casting an eerie atmosphere. Lone figures silently crossed and re-crossed the stage to the haunting music of Ólafur Arnalds "Now I am Winter." Finally, a passerby asks an old man if he is in need of anything. "The time," says the old man, before grabbing him, rendering him unconscious, awkwardly hoisting him up by his feet with a rope strung over a tree branch, and slashing his throat to drain his blood. Hearing voices approach, the old man panics, and runs off le
以下是内容的简要摘录，以代替摘要：评论者：Judith Saunders (简历)： Let the Right One Inby Jack Thorne Judith Saunders (bio) Let the Right One In, by Jack Thorne, directed by John Tiffany Berkeley Repertory Theatre (05 20- 06 25, 2023) 西海岸首演的《Let The Right One In》于 2023 年 5 月 20 日在伯克利剧院首演。该剧由英国原创作团队与美国演员共同完成。故事改编自约翰-阿吉维德-林德奎斯特（John Ajvide Lindqvist）的瑞典吸血鬼小说《让对的人进来》（Lat den Ratte Komma in），该小说随后被改编成电影，深受 Z 世代的喜爱。舞台导演约翰-蒂凡尼（John Tiffany）、舞美设计史蒂文-霍格特（Steven Hoggett）和剧作家杰克-索恩（Jack Thorne）通力合作，以戏剧的形式展现了问题少年奥斯卡（Oskar）与雌雄同体的青春期前吸血鬼伊莱（Eli）之间的爱情故事的神奇与恐怖。每个人都在对方身上找到了慰藉，他们最终一起踏上了未知的未来。根据剧目说明，正是这部瑞典电影激发了蒂芙尼的灵感，她在苏格兰国家剧院推出了这部舞台剧，随后又转到伦敦西区演出。这种从其他来源挖掘故事的做法在戏剧界并不罕见。剧作家们在寻找素材时历来都是 "喜鹊"。正是这个制作团队根据 J. K. 罗琳的著作改编的《哈利-波特与被诅咒的孩子》大获成功。我参加了 5 月 27 日星期六的演出，既没有读过这本书，也没有看过这部电影，只是通过阅读布拉姆-斯托克（Bram Stoker）的《德古拉》（Dracula）了解了一些吸血鬼的知识。我在思考，我们的社会对这种非人类的吸血生物如此着迷，而媒体又如此持续地再现这一神话。这个神话对今天的我们有什么意义呢？在看过蒂芙尼和霍格特 2007 年在布鲁克林圣安仓库制作的《黑哨》之后，我迫不及待地想知道他们会如何制作《让合适的人进来》。我没有失望。他们再一次成功地创造了令人难忘的体验，体现了 "肢体戏剧 "这一流派--运用哑剧、舞蹈和戏剧所拥有的所有工具来讲述一个故事。演出开始后，开放式舞台上出现了克里斯蒂娜-琼斯（Christine Jones）设计的简约布景，冰冷的灯光照亮了白雪覆盖的桦树，营造出阴森恐怖的气氛。伴随着 Ólafur Arnalds "Now I am Winter"（《现在我是冬天》）的缠绵音乐，孤独的身影默默地穿过舞台，又重新穿过舞台。最后，一位路人问一位老人是否需要什么。老人说："时间到了"，然后一把抓住他，使他失去知觉，笨拙地用树枝上的绳子将他的双脚吊起，割破他的喉咙，放干他的血。听到有人靠近，老人惊慌失措地跑开了，留下一壶鲜血在被吊死的人脚下。突然间，我们进入了吸血鬼的世界。故事以插叙的方式展开，随着场景的变化，演员扮演的舞台工作人员将家具和道具搬上舞台或移出舞台。其中有一组体育馆的储物柜，奥斯卡经常在这里受到同学的欺负；操场上的丛林健身器，奥斯卡和伊莱在这里相遇并成为朋友；厨房里的桌子和 [End Page 272]床代表了奥斯卡的家庭生活；还有一个令人印象深刻的水箱，作为高潮场景的游泳池，奥斯卡在同学的折磨下面临溺水的威胁，他的复仇天使伊莱救了他。这种抽象的布景变化迅速，保持了戏剧动作的流畅性，并将这个超自然故事中无法用舞台表现的元素搬上了舞台。整部剧的演技水平很高，但饰演奥斯卡的迭戈-卢卡诺（Diego Lucano）最为出众，他饰演的瘦弱少年表现出的脆弱和笨拙使他成为同学们欺负的对象。让人想起威廉-戈尔丁（William Golding）的《蝇王》（Lord of the Flies）中那个受尽折磨的小学生，奥斯卡就是他们的 "小猪"，每天都是他们玩弄、羞辱和折磨的机会。奥斯卡与酗酒的母亲、不在身边的父亲，甚至是同情他的体育老师的尴尬场面，都显示出他对稳定和安全的需求。诺亚-拉曼娜...
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Pub Date : 2024-03-06DOI: 10.1353/cdr.2024.a920786
Mark Scott
<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span> <p> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> "In this show let me an actor be":<span>Joining in with <em>Doctor Faustus</em></span> <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Mark Scott (bio) </li> </ul> <p>Theatre is a fundamentally collaborative artform. Any successful live performance depends upon the participation of—and cooperation between—actors and spectators. On the Elizabethan stage, this axiom was most famously pronounced by the Chorus in William Shakespeare's <em>Henry V</em>. The Chorus begins the play by making an apology that doubles as an appeal for help. Because the company doesn't have a <em>real</em> "kingdom for a stage, princes to act,/And monarchs to behold the swelling scene," the Chorus begs spectators not only to forgive "The flat unraised spirits that hath dared/On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth/So great an object" as the triumph at Agincourt, but also to assist the performers by imaginatively bridging the gap between illusion and reality: "Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts."<sup>1</sup> While it is the job of the actors to "work" <em>on</em> the "imaginary forces" of spectators by staging the play, spectators in turn must work <em>with</em> the actors: "For 'tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings" (Prologue.18–28). Yet as much as the Chorus unites actors and spectators in a collaborative endeavour, he also draws clear boundaries between their respective contributions ("<em>your</em> thoughts"; "<em>our</em> kings"). Where the actors' job is to physically create the theatrical illusion, the spectators' labor is mental: "Work, work your thoughts, and therein see a siege" (3.0.25). Where the actors play their parts onstage, the role of the spectator is confined to the mind—"the quick forge and working-house of thought" (5.0.23). Actors pretend; spectators believe.</p> <p>Such a model of theatrical exchange obviously appealed to early modern playgoers: <em>Henry V</em> was one of the most popular plays of the period. At the same time, however, another blockbuster of the Elizabethan stage offered theatregeors a very different kind of experience, one that <strong>[End Page 61]</strong> thoroughly destabilized the distinctions—between actor and spectator, illusion and reality—upon which Shakespeare's Chorus relies. On several different occasions (that we know of), performances of Christopher Marlowe's <em>Doctor Faustus</em> were interrupted—and even cut short—by the intervention of apparently supernatural forces. In one account, the "visible apparition of the Devill" appeared "on the stage at the Belsavage Playhouse, in Queene Elizabeths days, (to the great amazement <em>both of Actors and Spectators</em>) whiles they were there prophanely playing the History of Faustus."<sup>2</sup> Another contemporary report recalls the same phenomenon occurring in a different theatre:</p> <blockquote> <p>Certaine Players at Exeter, acting upon the
{"title":"\"In this show let me an actor be\": Joining in with Doctor Faustus","authors":"Mark Scott","doi":"10.1353/cdr.2024.a920786","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/cdr.2024.a920786","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> \"In this show let me an actor be\":<span>Joining in with <em>Doctor Faustus</em></span> <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Mark Scott (bio) </li> </ul> <p>Theatre is a fundamentally collaborative artform. Any successful live performance depends upon the participation of—and cooperation between—actors and spectators. On the Elizabethan stage, this axiom was most famously pronounced by the Chorus in William Shakespeare's <em>Henry V</em>. The Chorus begins the play by making an apology that doubles as an appeal for help. Because the company doesn't have a <em>real</em> \"kingdom for a stage, princes to act,/And monarchs to behold the swelling scene,\" the Chorus begs spectators not only to forgive \"The flat unraised spirits that hath dared/On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth/So great an object\" as the triumph at Agincourt, but also to assist the performers by imaginatively bridging the gap between illusion and reality: \"Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts.\"<sup>1</sup> While it is the job of the actors to \"work\" <em>on</em> the \"imaginary forces\" of spectators by staging the play, spectators in turn must work <em>with</em> the actors: \"For 'tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings\" (Prologue.18–28). Yet as much as the Chorus unites actors and spectators in a collaborative endeavour, he also draws clear boundaries between their respective contributions (\"<em>your</em> thoughts\"; \"<em>our</em> kings\"). Where the actors' job is to physically create the theatrical illusion, the spectators' labor is mental: \"Work, work your thoughts, and therein see a siege\" (3.0.25). Where the actors play their parts onstage, the role of the spectator is confined to the mind—\"the quick forge and working-house of thought\" (5.0.23). Actors pretend; spectators believe.</p> <p>Such a model of theatrical exchange obviously appealed to early modern playgoers: <em>Henry V</em> was one of the most popular plays of the period. At the same time, however, another blockbuster of the Elizabethan stage offered theatregeors a very different kind of experience, one that <strong>[End Page 61]</strong> thoroughly destabilized the distinctions—between actor and spectator, illusion and reality—upon which Shakespeare's Chorus relies. On several different occasions (that we know of), performances of Christopher Marlowe's <em>Doctor Faustus</em> were interrupted—and even cut short—by the intervention of apparently supernatural forces. In one account, the \"visible apparition of the Devill\" appeared \"on the stage at the Belsavage Playhouse, in Queene Elizabeths days, (to the great amazement <em>both of Actors and Spectators</em>) whiles they were there prophanely playing the History of Faustus.\"<sup>2</sup> Another contemporary report recalls the same phenomenon occurring in a different theatre:</p> <blockquote> <p>Certaine Players at Exeter, acting upon the","PeriodicalId":39600,"journal":{"name":"COMPARATIVE DRAMA","volume":"51 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140043725","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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