Pub Date : 2023-04-19DOI: 10.1017/S0040557423000042
Ruijiao Dong
{"title":"Postdramatic Dramaturgies: Resonances between Asia and Europe Edited by Kai Tuchmann. Theater. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag, 2022; pp. xii + 294, 12 illustrations. $45.00 cloth, free e-book.","authors":"Ruijiao Dong","doi":"10.1017/S0040557423000042","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0040557423000042","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42777,"journal":{"name":"THEATRE SURVEY","volume":"64 1","pages":"234 - 236"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-04-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42752587","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 : 2023-04-19DOI: 10.1017/S0040557423000078
Stephen Watkins
and Arabophobia in the current nativist political climate, Najjar designates persecution plays in Chapter 3 as works that explore these issues in relation to governmental and societal persecutions. Back of the Throat (2005) by the playwright Yussef El Guindi is one such play produced in the post-9/11 era. In Chapter 4, Najjar specifies that diaspora plays, “[l]ike the previous persecution plays . . . deal with many complicated issues, but they are more personal and less about the outside persecution they feel around them (though many have this aspect as well)” (95). From plays set in the homeland discussed in Chapter 5, which recreate and reimagine the lost country of origin and attend to troubles stemming from occupation and colonialism, to conflict plays analyzed in Chapter 6, filled with stories concerning refugee crises and civil wars, it is possible, as observed by Najjar, to notice a pattern gesturing toward the fact that Middle Eastern American theatre is living through a renaissance of sorts as more plays and companies turn their attention to Middle Eastern American communities. Through a shift of focus from the works of playwrights to the critical perspectives of influential directors in an interview format, Najjar concludes his book with a constructive dialogue shaped around the development of artistic creation and pivotal issues faced by the Middle Eastern theatre. Via its astute intervention in the aesthetic discourse of Middle Eastern communities in the Americas, Najjar’s text felicitously enriches the burgeoning scholarship of Middle Eastern American theatre.
在当前的本土主义政治气候下，Najjar将第三章中的迫害戏剧指定为探索这些与政府和社会迫害有关的问题的作品。剧作家Yussef El Guindi的《喉咙的背后》（2005）就是一部在后9/11时代制作的戏剧。在第4章中，Najjar指出，散居国外的戏剧，“就像以前的迫害戏剧一样……处理许多复杂的问题，但它们更个人化，而不太关心他们周围感受到的外部迫害（尽管许多人也有这方面）”（95）。从第五章讨论的以祖国为背景的戏剧，再现和重新想象失去的原籍国，处理由占领和殖民主义引起的麻烦，到第六章分析的冲突戏剧，充满了难民危机和内战的故事，正如纳贾尔所观察到的，注意到一种模式表明，随着越来越多的戏剧和公司将注意力转向中东裔美国人社区，中东裔美国人的戏剧正在经历某种复兴。纳贾尔以采访的形式将焦点从剧作家的作品转移到有影响力的导演的批评视角，以围绕艺术创作的发展和中东戏剧面临的关键问题展开的建设性对话结束了他的书。纳贾尔的文本巧妙地介入了美洲中东社区的美学话语，有力地丰富了中东美国戏剧蓬勃发展的学术成果。
{"title":"Speculative Enterprise: Public Theaters and Financial Markets in London, 1688–1763 By Mattie Burkert. Charlottesville and London: University of Virginia Press, 2021; pp. ix + 284, 7 illustrations. $95.00 cloth, $39.50 paper, $29.50 e-book.","authors":"Stephen Watkins","doi":"10.1017/S0040557423000078","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0040557423000078","url":null,"abstract":"and Arabophobia in the current nativist political climate, Najjar designates persecution plays in Chapter 3 as works that explore these issues in relation to governmental and societal persecutions. Back of the Throat (2005) by the playwright Yussef El Guindi is one such play produced in the post-9/11 era. In Chapter 4, Najjar specifies that diaspora plays, “[l]ike the previous persecution plays . . . deal with many complicated issues, but they are more personal and less about the outside persecution they feel around them (though many have this aspect as well)” (95). From plays set in the homeland discussed in Chapter 5, which recreate and reimagine the lost country of origin and attend to troubles stemming from occupation and colonialism, to conflict plays analyzed in Chapter 6, filled with stories concerning refugee crises and civil wars, it is possible, as observed by Najjar, to notice a pattern gesturing toward the fact that Middle Eastern American theatre is living through a renaissance of sorts as more plays and companies turn their attention to Middle Eastern American communities. Through a shift of focus from the works of playwrights to the critical perspectives of influential directors in an interview format, Najjar concludes his book with a constructive dialogue shaped around the development of artistic creation and pivotal issues faced by the Middle Eastern theatre. Via its astute intervention in the aesthetic discourse of Middle Eastern communities in the Americas, Najjar’s text felicitously enriches the burgeoning scholarship of Middle Eastern American theatre.","PeriodicalId":42777,"journal":{"name":"THEATRE SURVEY","volume":"64 1","pages":"240 - 242"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-04-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49087033","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 : 2023-04-19DOI: 10.1017/S0040557423000030
Darren Gobert
evolution from stage to screen. Multiple factors, including photorealism, black-and-white films’ inability to present skin color accurately, and the emphasis on technology in film makeup, led to the obsession with the epicanthic fold, also known as the “Oriental eye,” and the subsequent invention of “prosthetic yellowface” (150–2). Regardless of technological innovations, screen yellowface remained at its core a manifestation of nineteenth-century scientific racism: whereas non–Anglo-Saxon European makeup became white makeup, Asian makeup was relegated to special effects on par with those of deformed or nonhuman characters, which reflected the contemporary ideology of “yellow peril” (154). After unpacking yellowface performances from Hollywood stars such as Lon Chaney, Boris Karloff, and Katharine Hepburn, Lee proceeds to make clear in the Epilogue that yellowface goes hand in hand with casting effectively to push out Asian American performers. Made-Up Asians is a long-awaited work that fills a lacuna in theatre and performance studies, film studies, and American Studies. I especially appreciate Lee’s generosity. In addition to meticulous research and compelling analysis, the book provides valuable pictorial evidence (twenty-three figures) and an appendix that documents yellowface instructions in makeup manuals to spark further research. Lee’s lucid writing style also makes her work accessible to general readers. Made-Up Asians is truly a rare accomplishment that needs to be read, referenced, and taught.
{"title":"Performance and Modernity: Enacting Change on the Globalizing Stage By Julia A. Walker. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021; pp. xiii + 299, 20 illustrations. $99.99 cloth, $99.99 e-book.","authors":"Darren Gobert","doi":"10.1017/S0040557423000030","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0040557423000030","url":null,"abstract":"evolution from stage to screen. Multiple factors, including photorealism, black-and-white films’ inability to present skin color accurately, and the emphasis on technology in film makeup, led to the obsession with the epicanthic fold, also known as the “Oriental eye,” and the subsequent invention of “prosthetic yellowface” (150–2). Regardless of technological innovations, screen yellowface remained at its core a manifestation of nineteenth-century scientific racism: whereas non–Anglo-Saxon European makeup became white makeup, Asian makeup was relegated to special effects on par with those of deformed or nonhuman characters, which reflected the contemporary ideology of “yellow peril” (154). After unpacking yellowface performances from Hollywood stars such as Lon Chaney, Boris Karloff, and Katharine Hepburn, Lee proceeds to make clear in the Epilogue that yellowface goes hand in hand with casting effectively to push out Asian American performers. Made-Up Asians is a long-awaited work that fills a lacuna in theatre and performance studies, film studies, and American Studies. I especially appreciate Lee’s generosity. In addition to meticulous research and compelling analysis, the book provides valuable pictorial evidence (twenty-three figures) and an appendix that documents yellowface instructions in makeup manuals to spark further research. Lee’s lucid writing style also makes her work accessible to general readers. Made-Up Asians is truly a rare accomplishment that needs to be read, referenced, and taught.","PeriodicalId":42777,"journal":{"name":"THEATRE SURVEY","volume":"64 1","pages":"231 - 233"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-04-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49383495","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 : 2023-04-19DOI: 10.1017/S004055742300008X
Hong-lin Yang
for private interests at the expense of the public good. Part II comprises two chapters that investigate how the theatre–finance nexus responded to a financial crisis that has since come to define modern ideas of speculative enterprise: the South Sea Bubble (1720–2). Chapter 4 covers Richard Steele’s short-lived periodical The Theatre, which ran for three months in the wake of the bubble in 1720, as well as his play The Conscious Lovers (1722). In a fascinating excavation of Steele’s reflections on the bubble and its aftermath, Burkert shows how his work, like Centlivre’s, ultimately gives “voice to the concern that elites could use new market structures and dynamics to hijack what appeared to be middling-class sentiments” (123). The book concludes by returning to Cibber and a late comedy, The Refusal; or, The Ladies Philosophy (1721), to show how another writer with middling-class sympathies used his position within the theatre to “theoriz[e] the relationship between changing class structures, speculative investment, and public opinion” (156). Burkert ends with a brief coda that discusses the Half-Price Riots of the 1760s, showing how the theatre–finance nexus persisted into the second half of the century. Burkert’s thesis is highly compelling, and I cannot do justice here to the erudition and deftness of her argumentation and analysis. Through her careful contextualization of the plays and other works within the history of financial crises, she overturns long-held critical assumptions about, among other things, sentimental comedy and its relationship to the emergent middling class. This stimulating account shows how the early eighteenth-century theatre responded to the economic crises that so materially determined its own opportunities for success and failure. The book will prove an extremely valuable contribution to scholars working on the theatre history of the period, as well as on cultural representations of, and engagements with, finance and economics in the early eighteenth century.
{"title":"The Theatre of Nuclear Science: Weapons, Power, and the Scientists behind it All By Jeanne Tiehen. Routledge Advances in Theatre & Performance Studies. London: Routledge, 2021; pp. 166. $170.00 cloth, $39.71 e-book.","authors":"Hong-lin Yang","doi":"10.1017/S004055742300008X","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S004055742300008X","url":null,"abstract":"for private interests at the expense of the public good. Part II comprises two chapters that investigate how the theatre–finance nexus responded to a financial crisis that has since come to define modern ideas of speculative enterprise: the South Sea Bubble (1720–2). Chapter 4 covers Richard Steele’s short-lived periodical The Theatre, which ran for three months in the wake of the bubble in 1720, as well as his play The Conscious Lovers (1722). In a fascinating excavation of Steele’s reflections on the bubble and its aftermath, Burkert shows how his work, like Centlivre’s, ultimately gives “voice to the concern that elites could use new market structures and dynamics to hijack what appeared to be middling-class sentiments” (123). The book concludes by returning to Cibber and a late comedy, The Refusal; or, The Ladies Philosophy (1721), to show how another writer with middling-class sympathies used his position within the theatre to “theoriz[e] the relationship between changing class structures, speculative investment, and public opinion” (156). Burkert ends with a brief coda that discusses the Half-Price Riots of the 1760s, showing how the theatre–finance nexus persisted into the second half of the century. Burkert’s thesis is highly compelling, and I cannot do justice here to the erudition and deftness of her argumentation and analysis. Through her careful contextualization of the plays and other works within the history of financial crises, she overturns long-held critical assumptions about, among other things, sentimental comedy and its relationship to the emergent middling class. This stimulating account shows how the early eighteenth-century theatre responded to the economic crises that so materially determined its own opportunities for success and failure. The book will prove an extremely valuable contribution to scholars working on the theatre history of the period, as well as on cultural representations of, and engagements with, finance and economics in the early eighteenth century.","PeriodicalId":42777,"journal":{"name":"THEATRE SURVEY","volume":"64 1","pages":"242 - 244"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-04-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43250188","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 : 2023-04-19DOI: 10.1017/S0040557423000054
Caridad Svich
{"title":"A Kiss across the Ocean: Transatlantic Intimacies of British Post-Punk & US Latinidad By Richard T. Rodríguez. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2022; pp. xv + 264, 28 illustrations. $99.95 cloth, $25.95 paper, $25.95 e-book.","authors":"Caridad Svich","doi":"10.1017/S0040557423000054","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0040557423000054","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42777,"journal":{"name":"THEATRE SURVEY","volume":"64 1","pages":"236 - 238"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-04-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43371724","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 : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.1017/S0040557422000527
Sunny Stalter-Pace
The New York Hippodrome theatre brought together many different types of performance on its massive stage. Its opening production in 1905, for instance, included circus acts, a ballet, and a fictionalized Civil War battle (Fig. 1). Many of the acts focused on a key feature in the theatrical environment, a water tank beneath the apron of the stage that could be filled to a fourteen-foot depth. High divers plunged into the tank; in shows with an “ice ballet,” its water was frozen into a skating rink; for a production of HMS Pinafore, a replica ship floated in its water with Brooklyn Navy Yard sailors in the rigging. Yet one tank act repeated and was recalled more than any of the others: a phalanx of women in martial costumes who marched solemnly, row after row, into the water and disappeared.
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Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.1017/S0040557422000539
M. McMahan, L. Senelick
Historically, clowns have always been trained “on the job”: one was born or adopted into a circus dynasty or else ran away to join the circus, serving an apprenticeship. Breaking with the long tradition that performers learn on the job, after World War II, national circuses in the Communist bloc created their own academies; they were followed in 1974 by the École nationale de cirque founded in Paris by Annie Fratellini and Pierre Étaix, now the Académie Fratellini, and in 1982 by the Escola Nacional de Circo in Brazil. These examples led to the teaching of circus skills in universities, enabling breaches in the gender barriers between types of circus acts. For example, six years after Ringling Brothers founded a clown college in 1968, Peggy Williams was the first woman to graduate with a contract. At first she felt out of place. In an interview series for the Ringling Museum of Art, she stated that early in her training she had presumed that clowns were gender neutral: “I didn't know there weren't girl clowns. I thought being a clown was being a clown. You could be a man or woman. I had no idea what was heading my way because of gender.” Although she learned under the auspices of great clowns such as Lou Jacobs, she was left to her own devices to craft a clown that reflected her allegedly female nature.
从历史上看，小丑总是在“工作中”接受训练:一个人出生或被一个马戏团王朝收养，或者逃到马戏团去当学徒。第二次世界大战后，共产主义集团的国家马戏团打破了表演者在工作中学习的悠久传统，建立了自己的学院;1974年，安妮·弗拉泰利尼和皮埃尔·Étaix(现为弗拉泰利尼学院)在巴黎成立了École国家马戏团，1982年，巴西国家马戏团也成立了。这些例子促使大学教授马戏技巧，打破了马戏表演类型之间的性别障碍。例如，1968年，林林兄弟(Ringling Brothers)创办了一所小丑学院，六年后，佩吉·威廉姆斯(Peggy Williams)成为第一位获得合同毕业的女性。起初她感到格格不入。在林林艺术博物馆(Ringling Museum of Art)的一系列采访中，她表示，在接受培训的早期，她曾认为小丑是中性的:“我不知道没有女小丑。我以为做小丑就是做小丑。你可以是男人也可以是女人。因为性别的原因，我不知道前方会有什么。”虽然她是在卢·雅各布斯(Lou Jacobs)等伟大小丑的指导下学习的，但她只能靠自己的手段来塑造一个反映她所谓的女性本性的小丑。
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Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.1017/s0040557422000497
Mermaids. Clowns. Sign-mime. Experimental theatre. Although the authors within this issue explore a variety of topics within theatre history, each engages with the process of reclaiming the past. Collectively, they ask us to consider fundamental historiographical questions: Where are the gaps and silences within theatre history? Why do these glaring omissions exist and continue to persist? How might computational tools help reveal biases within theatre history scholarship? In answering these questions, the authors invite readers to consider how reclamation of the past can help us better understand our current conditions. In contrast to previous studies that focus on the relationship between femininity and visibility in women’s aquatic performances, Sunny Stalter-Pace’s “Disappearing Mermaids: Staging Women’s Mobility through Aquatic Performance at the New York Hippodrome” takes a deep dive into the Progressive Era—a period marked by political upheaval, technological innovation, and increased immigration and internal migration. Here, Stalter-Pace asks readers to reconsider how the political landscape impacted both aquatic women performers (the titular ‘disappearing mermaids’) and spectators of this important cultural institution of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. In retracing the legacies of these performers, Stalter-Pace ultimately finds that, “the audience’s ambivalent fascination with the disappearing mermaids stood in for a broader cultural interest in and anxiety over modern [young] white women’s mobility.” In so doing, Stalter-Pace not only “reveal[s] the previously concealed” anxieties of white women’s growing social status of the past but also provides greater understanding of the contested terrain of Black girls’ twenty-first-century mermaid performances. Matthew McMahan and Laurence Senelick’s “Send in the Clowness: The Problematic Origins of Female Circus Clowns” utilizes a variety of sources—from advertisements, to interviews, to human-interest pieces in trade publications—to recover the history of early women clown performers of the late nineteenth to the late twentieth centuries. By unearthing the past, McMahan and Senelick reveal that, “until the latter half of the twentieth century, to be both a woman and a clown was a paradox, one that reveals a host of attitudes related to the very nature of the clown archetype within the circus.” Through detailed firsthand accounts, coupled with exhaustive archival research and a nuanced narrative voice, McMahan and Senelick introduce readers to a rich tradition of women circus clowns that has heretofore been a marginalized chapter within theatre history. In “The Race for Rehabilitation: Sign-Mime, the National Theatre of the Deaf, and Cold War Internationalism” Patrick McKelvey places the National Theatre of the Deaf’s (NTD) development of “sign-mime” and cultural exchange alongside Moscow’s Theatre of Mime and Gesture within the context of the “the cultural Cold War” and the “
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Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.1017/S0040557422000552
Miguel Escobar Varela
The “experimental” playwrights of continental Europe have been experimental not because they have imitated modern literature or poetry, but because they have sought to express themselves in theatrical terms, and the great directors, like Jouvet, Barrault, Viertel, and Brecht have been there to make their plays “exist” on the stage.
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