THEATRE RESEARCH INTERNATIONAL最新文献

Mexican theatre company Teatro de Ciertos Habitantes are world-renowned for their intensive laboratory processes leading up to unique, interdisciplinary performances that defy expected theatrical conventions. Their piece El Gallo (2009) is a poignant example of this company's capacity for innovation and social action. Here, actors are transformed into opera singers in a piece that is sung – in an entirely invented language – while inciting audiences to consider the anxieties that fuel the act of exposing one's body onstage, as fears over our own perceived differences prevent us from feeling ‘normal’ in a society that constantly judges us as we recognize the discriminatory power of social normativity.

This article considers the Okinawan aesthetic of Kumiodori and the role of absence in making a performance. There are two case studies of Kumiodori performances selected for this article, both written by the maker of this theatre style – Tamagusuku Chōkun. I watched both performances of Kōkō no Maki and Nidō Tekiuchi in the National Theatre in Okinawa. I discuss the concept of absence, described as ma (間), through the theory and the interpretation of those performances. The article begins with a brief outline of Kumiodori and the cultural context of the Ryukyu Kingdom, followed by description of the concept of ma in literature, live performance and the culture in general. Finally, two case studies are introduced. The article aims to present an example of the Okinawan version of ma in theatre.

Censorship in Iranian theatre sometimes prevents artists from staging some of the scenes in their plays. Among these are scenes involving embracing, kissing, raping and so on, or scenes containing ideological or political themes. Occasionally, after omitting such scenes, theatre directors try to find suitable alternatives and create a similar effect. The present research, with an analytical–descriptive approach, seeks to focus on alternative solutions, as well as creative models, developed by Iranian directors to circumvent social-regulatory censorship and identify alternatives in performances. In this research, I conduct a comparative analysis of five selected theatre recordings. Using the available theatre recordings, this paper examines the original text of the plays, identifies the omissions resulting from censorship, and analyses directors’ alternative solutions. This research demonstrates that artists use their creativity to express themes, analyses and aesthetic points in the face of censorship and obstacles. The paper focuses on eight creative-performance models that are executed using symbols and auditory elements instead of visual elements, and the function of narrative, stage design, stage direction, costume design, props and cross-dressing as devices to circumvent censorship.

This essay seeks to lay out the process that went into the making of Dark Things, which I co-directed with Deepan Sivaraman based on Ari Sitas's oratorio on the Silk Road, by repurposing the production notes of the performance, which opened in Delhi on 18 April 2018 at the Ambedkar University Delhi and later played at the International Festival of Kerala in January 2019. Both the method and the form of Dark Things, I suggest, were a collaboration. Collaboration as a method intimates collective creation, usually by means of improvisation, where authorship is distributed between theatre-makers (actors, scenographers, musicians) and materials (objects, site, landscape). Collaboration as form intimates that the performance's explicit grammar has been shaped by a sensuous give-and-take between the practitioner and the material. In this essay, I ask, from my perspective as a theatre-maker, how handling actual objects and tools obviously leaves an imprint on the performance, scenography, dramaturgy and mise en scène. In writing this article, I have retained the stylistic features of production notes – their provisionality and incompleteness; their sliding timescale; their looking forward to work that is to be done and backwards at work already done, marking failures, solutions and openings.

The two related notions of honour and reputation are closely associated with the social status of individuals (male or female), particularly in a society governed by traditional, patriarchal moral values. However, writing about honour and reputation in Iraq (and in the Middle East in general) means talking about women's chastity and their sexual morality specifically. Eclipsing honour and societal reputation to women's bodies are deep-rooted patriarchal norms that stigmatize women's involvement in sexual relations (mainly outside marriage codes) and exclude men from this adultery framework. The current paper investigates the concepts of honour, chastity and reputation in relation to gender norms in Iraq through two contemporary Iraqi plays. First, the article introduces the two concepts through the social, traditional and religious context in the Middle East, focusing on Iraq. The discussion in the second section moves to tackle Ali Al Zaidi's play Rubbish (1995), while the third section deals with Amir Al-Azraki's The Widow (2014). In these two sections the study looks critically at how the two plays dramatize the concepts of honour and chastity through their characters. Being written respectively during and after wars, the two plays are seen as reactions to such issues. Hence they represent the new complex visions of two male perspectives challenging dramatically and shaking the settlement of such notions of morals and their impact on women as well as on society.

The Oberammergau Passion Play – arguably the largest and longest-running Passion Play tradition in the world – depicts Jesus’ arrest, conviction and crucifixion at a spellbinding scale. It has also been at the centre of a controversy regarding its historic antisemitism and its efforts to reform, having engaged a director with a zeal for radically changing it. However, this article, informed by a large ethnographic study, argues that the feud that engulfed the town for decades – with reformers and traditionalists at loggerheads – has now abated. The 2022 Passion Play was made almost entirely by pro-reform locals, with traditionalists now outnumbered and sidelined, due to both their own choices and intentional exclusion by those at the helm. What remains of the feud has now changed shape, focusing not on the changes to the play but on the leadership style of the director.

This article examines the COVID-era shift in the disability politics of sensory-theatre artists in the United Kingdom who create work for neurodiverse young audiences, arguing that the pandemic pushed them toward a more expansive and overtly political understanding of disability. I examine the work of three companies – Oily Cart (London), Frozen Light (Norwich) and Spectra (Birmingham) – who adjusted their practices to embrace their audiences’ shifting access needs, including those in caregiving roles. These changes move sensory theatre into a more politicized realm, echoing calls from crip studies scholars and disability justice activists to reimagine disability as a relational category from which solidarity can arise that does not hinge entirely on medical diagnosis. These artists’ renewed commitments to relational access provide lessons for performing artists and audiences navigating how to care for one another through the massive death and disablement of the ongoing pandemic.

The Naoshima Onna Bunraku, an all-female bunraku troupe on the island of Naoshima in Japan's Seto Inland Sea, has revitalized a puppetry tradition dating back to the Edo period (1603–1868). This article examines how the Naoshima Onna Bunraku negotiates the pull of its local, community-oriented past and its global present as a folk performing art on an island now known for art tourism as the site of the Setouchi Triennale. I trace Naoshima's puppetry networks from the Seto Inland Sea that nurtured their ancestors to new networks that extend globally to reveal the dynamic flows that animate and sustain puppetry on Naoshima.

An attendant exerts all his strength to squeeze in as many passengers as possible into a car at the 28th Street Station in New York. The most prominent passenger feature is the contorting face of a Black man. He is surrounded by white riders, one of whom is trying his best to read the newspaper, a little girl, who stands with her legs akimbo, and a white woman, obscured by the window. The hectic scene muddles the identity of body parts, more akin to a game of Twister than a fantasy of public mobility across an urban landscape. Reduced to limbs and faces, the diverse passengers portrayed in Bernard Brussel-Smith's 1940 lithograph demonstrate its title: Subway Crush.1

On 3 March 2021, almost a full year after South Africa's theatres were closed due to Covid-19 restrictions, renowned opera soprano Sibongile Mngoma walked into the Johannesburg offices of the South African National Arts Council (NAC) to meet with senior department officials. She was there to demand accountability over their non-payment of promised Covid-19 artist relief funds to the tune of R300 million (roughly USD 16.6 million). When it became apparent that no official would honour the meeting, Mngoma announced her intention to wait. She did not leave the building for another sixty days.