THE CREATIVE LANDSCAPE OF THEATRE–RESEARCH COOPERATION: A CASE FROM TURKU,FINLAND

This article continues the discussion on creativity in human geographical research. Drawing on Alain Badiou's writing on “two theatres”, I argue that the theatre–research cooperation as a landscape in motion can bring about creative landscapes. In this article, I discuss a collaborative project of participatory research and theatre that tested drama as a tool for urban planning. In the beginning of the project, theatre appears as a tool of inclusive exclusive politics: the research aims to deal with inter‐cultural relations in a hypothetical planning situation and, further, on theatre's potential to motivate those who usually do not participate in planning. Thus, this initial setting is the first theatre in which the elements of a constellation are seen as static. However, during the process, there were moments of doubt, dealing with the representational politics of multiculturalism. Contrary to Badiou's first theatre, in the second theatre the elements are vivid and capable of breaking the state of a situation. This rupture occurs in the second theatre w hen the spectators feel uncomfortable in their seats, or here when the participatory researcher feel their aims generate an inconvenience. It is in the event that theatre changes from being of the state to saying something about the state. This change represents a rupture in thinking, and brings forth the creative landscape of the theatre–research cooperation.     

Searching for resonance: scientific patterns in Complicite's Mnemonic and A Disappearing Number

Abstract

After the international success of Mnemonic, Complicite have once again brought science and drama together in a new theatre piece, A Disappearing Number. Both plays place scientists in the limelight, though their 'scientific' content is very different: Mnemonic was based on the discovery of a Neolithic man in the Alps, and used neurology and archaeology to explore notions of memory and history; A Disappearing Number focuses on our fascination with infinity, and dramatises the 'mysterious and romantic mathematical collaboration' between G. H. Hardy and Srinivasa Ramanujan. The two pieces are, however, remarkably similar in plot and structure, and in their common exploration of the metaphorical and theatrical potential of scientific discourse. Moreover, they both use science as a narrative tool to explore our relation to time and mortality. This review presents them in parallel and examines the particular integration of ideas and aesthetics which characterises Complicite's work: a tireless search for connections, and a constant translation of ideas between different theatrical languages, be they verbal, visual or musical.     

Reviews

Abstract

Since the beginning of the 1970s the women's/feminist theatre has gained a dominant position on the European and the American stage. Women have stormed the postmodern stage either as solo dramatists and artists or as collaborative teams, forging a new female theatre language and training audiences to new ways of theatre reception. The publication of Lizbeth Goodman's Contemporary Feminist Theatres: To Each Her Own (Routledge, 1993), one in a long series of recent studies on women's theatre, already heralded an advanced epoch of a polyvocal feminist theatre embracing a multiplicity of female differences along the paradigms of gender, race, sexuality and ethnicity. Within the dynamic spectrum of development and intercultural exchange that ensued in the field of women's theatre the Greek women's contribution is faceless and anaemic. The situation is both distressing and calling for systematic research, especially since the scanty sociological studies concerning the position of women in contemporary Greece are inadequate in throwing full light on such a complicated problem. In 1992 Savas Patsalidis made the first serious attempt to analyse the foetal state of women's theatre in Greece in his article ‘Greek Female (Feminist?) Theatre: A Preliminary Approach', published in the Greek journal Utopia (4, Nov.-Dec. 1992, 105–38). My own interest in the issue in my capacity as a feminist and drama critic springs from my long-standing research in British women's theatre and my understandable comparative inquiry, as a Greek national, into the causes that might have led to the striking absence of an analogous phenomenon in my native country. I have deliberately used the word immaterial in the title of this paper in order to suggest, on the one hand, the relative lack of a distinct theatre discourse of women as speaking subjects and moving bodies on stage, inscribing female experience and female desire, and, on the other hand, the unimportance, in terms of power, of women theatre practitioners as still very few of them hold key positions in theatre institutions and the theatre industry.     

Cartografía emocional entre la China y la Gloria: Agustín de Foxá, Víctor Ruiz Iriarte y la Modernidad

Both Agustín de Foxá and Víctor Ruiz Iriarte premiered their first plays very near the end of the Spanish Civil War in 1939. The two playwrights appear to belong to the same imaginative and poetical vein, but in fact Foxá yearns for an impossible return to an idealized past, in a pessimistic lamentation against Modernity—that is, precisely, his exotic drama Cui-Ping-Sing. The poetical theatre Ruiz Iriarte endorses in Un día en la Gloria, and thinks apt to Modern times, is based in a radical optimism—the idea that fantasy can always transform and improve a disappointing reality.     

Cold War Conflicts and Cheap Cabaret: Sexual Politics at the 1975 United Nations International Women's Year Conference

In a widely read memoir, a Bolivian union militant signals the moment of her alienation from the nongovernmental organisation tribune of the United Nations’ 1975 International Women's Year (IWY) conference in Mexico City by describing her dismay when she encountered a group of women clamouring for sexual rights, reiterating a persistent narrative about a trade‐off between sexual rights and other forms of social justice.
Drawing on feminist performance theory, this article examines the political performances of three central figures at IWY – Domitila Barrios de Chungara, Betty Friedan and Mexican theatre director Nancy Cárdenas – to explore the ways that political performances rooted in distinct scenarios, or historical contexts, generated a confusion of meanings around campaigns for sexual rights.     

Social memory and ethnic identity: Ancient Greek drama performances as commemorative ceremonies

This paper is an ethnographic account of ancient Greek drama performances that take place in contemporary Greece. The material presented here is part of the data that were collected, mainly through participant observation, interviews and newspapers, during 1997 and 1998 in Athens. The paper illuminates an aspect of modern ancient drama performances that has not been taken into account until today: it treats them as commemorative ceremonies that produce, reproduce, and transmit social memory. The interrelation and interdependence between social memory and ethnic identity construction processes are analyzed and is shown that ancient drama performances, due to specific characteristics, constitute something more than mere theatrical events (as they are defined within the Western tradition). These performances, which convey, sustain, and transmit perceptions of a glorious culture of the past, become, for their creators and spectators, as members of an ethnic group, occasions for consciously remembering their ethnic past, and coming, in a way, to a "mythical identification" with it.     

Simon McBurney’s Ambitious Pursuit of the Pure Maths Play

Abstract

When Simon McBurney set out to create a play about the fabled relationship between Cambridge mathematician G. H. Hardy and the self-taught Indian genius Srinivasa Ramanujan, he was immediately confronted by the question of how to engage the mathematics authentically. Undaunted by his own uneasiness with the subject, McBurney incorporated a host of experts into the rehearsal process, calling on mathematical educators, expositors, and Fields medalists to come work with the company. While on the surface maths and drama make an incongruous pair, the result was a vibrant collaboration. The final product — the award-winning play A Disappearing Number — shines an interesting light on the surprising similarity between the creative process in mathematics and the creative process in theatre, especially as manifested by the company at Complicite.     

Applied theatre and political change in Bhutan

This essay reflects on an applied theatre project which took place in the Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan in 2010. It investigates how far this project enabled Bhutanese young people to both critique their experiences of Bhutan's integration into the global market economy and experiment with their own alternatives to ‘modernisation’ as it is currently conceived. The essay has two intertwined aims: to investigate the utility of applied theatre for young people in Bhutan to help determine their future; and to assess how the Bhutanese case stories can reflect back on applied theatre as a means of furthering political change. The field of applied theatre is in need of such a provocation, as presently its radical edge has been dulled by its cooption into, and advocacy of, Western development discourse. During the performance process the young participants demonstrated a postcolonial subjectivity which could provide methods for challenging this state of affairs.     

网络结构对长沙电视剧产业发展的影响研究

本文以2004年-2013年长沙影视企业为制作单位的106部电视剧为样本,运用空间分析、社会网络分析法,揭示长沙电视剧产业网络的空间结构和拓扑结构特征:1空间结构上,长沙电视剧产业网络高度开放;网络节点空间分布显著不平衡,长沙本地企业只占节点总数的9.49%,本地配套并不完备;2拓扑结构上,长沙电视剧产业网络呈现"轮辐状",核心-边缘特征明显;核心企业多为占据"出品"和"前期拍摄"环节的长沙本地企业,其中拥有"事业单位"、"企业"双重身份的湖南广播电视台中心度最高,权力最大。此外还探讨了网络空间、拓扑结构对长沙电视剧产业发展的影响。并对得出结论与国际已有研究对比展开讨论。     

Performing Trans in Post-Revolutionary Iran: Gender Transitions in Islamic Law,Theatre, and Film

In the wake of a string of sensationalist documentaries about transsexuality in Iran, Iranian theatre and film artists began crafting groundbreaking trans performances to educate audiences and depict characters living non-heteronormative lives without the translating influence of queer theory or identity politics. Investigating transsexual bodies as assembled by jurists in Iranian Shi?a jurisprudence and by artists on stage and screen reveals the ways in which the transsexual body is constructed in Islamic legal discourse and represented in narrative and bodily form in the public imaginary in Iran. Representations of transsexuality in theatre and film highlight the role of the arts as a vehicle for social change, communal recognition, and self-cognition. In particular, performances of female-to-male gender transitions in theatre and film have expanded the boundaries of how gender presentation is translated onto Iranian stages, into Tehran coffeehouses, and onto global screens. These trans performances usher Iranian spectators into new forms of viewership and artistic consumption in their attempt to creatively represent transsexual bodies and narratives to increase tolerance towards transsexuals; further, they have ignited a conversation among artists and activists about the assemblage of transsexual bodies in artistic productions and the most effective narrative and emotional forms of catharsis to inspire change.     

Ohio Hopewell Depictions of Composite Creatures: Part II–Archaeological Context and a Journey to an Afterlife

Abstract

Archaeological contextual analyses of four artifacts that depicted composite creatures and that were recovered from the Turner earthwork in southwestern Ohio are integrated here with a biological identification of the creatures' component animals and a survey of historic Woodland–Plains Indian knowledge about their roles in Woodland–Plains life (previously reported in this journal). Together, the three studies reveal that the creatures were likely employed in a ritual drama concerned with the welfare of recently deceased persons on their journey to an afterlife through underwater–underground realm(s), where they encountered the creatures. The location of the journey to an afterlife through Below realm(s) differs from that of nearly all historic Woodland–Plains Indians, who knew the journey to take place on the earth-disk or to occur by ascension. Implications of the ritual drama at Turner for some recent interpretive trends in Woodland archaeology are explored, including an overemphasis on “world renewal” as the primary motivation behind Ohio Hopewell ceremonialism, the scarce attention given to eschatological matters, and the misleading notion that all agentive behaviors, including mortuary rites, are political.     

Rosa e Ballo and German literature in Italy: the genesis of an intellectual network and the production of a new repertoire in the field of theatre

Between 1944 and 1950 the publishing house Rosa e Ballo renewed the Italian repertoire of German dramatic literature by collecting translations from Büchner, Wedekind, Toller, Kaiser and Brecht in the book series ‘Teatro/Teatro moderno’. The series was designed by Paolo Grassi, who was then struggling to legitimize the teatro di regia (director’s theatre) against the dominant teatro del grande attore (lead actor’s theatre), a revolution he would accomplish after WWII by establishing the Piccolo teatro in Milan. The company and the network of collaborators set up in Turin and Milan by the editor-in-chief Ferdinando Ballo provided Grassi with an ideal instrument for his subversion in the field of theatre. In turn, Grassi’s networking in Rome, where the most recognized men of theatre were based, brought to Rosa e Ballo its most successful book series and finally a position within the field of publishing. By joining forces, newcomers in two different fields mutually contributed to their primary accumulation of symbolic capital.     

The (Ir)relevance of the Aside in Golden Age Drama

The professionalization of public theatre in late sixteenth-century Spain transformed the public street drama of playwrights and actors such as Lope de Rueda into an activity whose survival and success depended on ticket sales and attendance. It is within this context that the aside became one of the most popular dramatic techniques of Spain's Golden Age theater. This article seeks to answer two questions about the aside: (1) Do Golden Age playwrights utilize the aside in the same manner? and (2) Does the subgenre of a comedia dictate the use of a particular category of aside? I propose to answer these questions, focusing in particular on the different ways that the following comedias utilize the aside to transform the audience from mere spectators to active accomplices of what they witness on stage: Calderón de la Barca's El alcalde de Zalamea (comedia de honor), Antonio Mira de Amescua's El esclavo del demonio (comedia hagiográfica), and Tirso de Molina's El burlador de Sevilla (comedia moral).     

The Role of Theatre in Society: A Comparative Analysis of the Socio-Cultural Theories of Brecht,Benjamin, and Adorno

Abstract

This article analyzes the socio-cultural theories of Adorno, Benjamin, and Brecht through the lens of the theatre, most especially as it pertains to the work of actors. It explores the forces of capitalism that determine how art is produced, distributed, and consumed. Following Adorno’s reading of Marx, actors are here posited as commodities whose labor is separated from the product they create for public consumption. This commodification raises various questions: How does a market economy shape the production and consumption of art? What is technology’s function in the commodification of art? What is art’s sociopolitical role and how does it apply to theatre? To address these questions I juxtapose the cultural theory of Adorno and Benjamin with Brecht’s epic theatre. This comparison exposes the ritualistic potential of the theatre to bring an audience together as a community through sharing a socially enriching event.     

中国10个五年计划完成情况的定量评估

对新中国成立以来10个五年计划及其320个计划指标完成程度的定量计算结果显示,转轨和市场经济时期的五年计划,目标完成情况显著好于计划时期,其计划制定也普遍比计划经济时期保守,但是计划目标的预期准确性和完成的同步性下降。在市场经济条件下,五年计划无论是制定还是实施,均面临更大的挑战。同时,五年计划目标构成的嬗变,也反映出政府职能从经济建设型向公共服务型转变的过程。     

自然环境与文化——以僰人悬棺葬等文化现象为案例

僰人是曾经活跃于川南宜宾地区和凉山彝族自治州的部落组织,以渔猎为主,兼作农业和林业。
僰人悬棺是一组悬挂在陡峭涧崖上的木棺。在悬棺的悬崖峭壁上还发现大量岩画,多描绘先民生产、生活情景。
凡此峡谷地貌地区,北至中国长江流域,南至印尼群岛,西达青藏高原,东括太平洋岛屿,均有悬棺存在,形成一条广阔的悬棺葬地带。
明万历年间,僰人在官兵的血腥镇压下,全军覆没,从此销声匿迹。     

《杂剧三集》编纂问题考论

<杂剧三集>是清初邹式金、邹漪父子共同编选.身为遗民的邹式金在编选思想方面制定了宏观上的编选规划;而编辑出版经验丰富的邹漪,在具体的编刊事务上可能付出了更多的努力.编选者重杂剧轻传奇的美学观念,既规制了该书编选的基本原则,又寄寓了以剧存史、接续"盛明"的良苦用心.     

The United States and the Question of the Greco-Turkish War, 1919–1922

Abstract

In the post World War II era, the strain in the trilateral relation between the United States, Greece and Turkey is one of the most disquieting and vexatious elements to emerge from American foreign policy. The so-called southeastern flank of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is currently beset with tensions that threaten to impede its contributory role in NATO's overall defense strategy for southeastern Europe (if they have not already done so). In this political drama, the principal antagonists, Greece and Turkey, have a number of outstanding differences which on occasion have brought them to the precipice of war. As a result, the United States has intervened as the protagonist and consequently has become the recipient of the enmity of these two NATO allies for not recognizing their ‘special’ claims or interests. As in the characteristic classical Greek drama, the chorus of NATO partners offer a common chant: they are united in proclaiming that the current state of affairs seems to portend failure to the concerted effort to defend Western Europe.