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Performance | Process | Politics Studies in Theatre and Performance Pub Date : 2024-04-09 Stefanie Gabriele Sachsenmaier
Published in Studies in Theatre and Performance (Ahead of Print, 2024)
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Performance and race: teaching Shakespeare to Saudi students using current events and popular culture Studies in Theatre and Performance Pub Date : 2024-02-18 Naseem A. Alotaibi
This article considers the relevance of Shakespeare’s works to foreign students when taught in a non-native context, specifically, in Saudi Arabia. It argues that a student-centred approach could s...
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History plays in the twenty-first century: new tools for interpreting the contemporary performance of the past Studies in Theatre and Performance Pub Date : 2023-11-17 Rebecca Benzie, Benjamin Poore
New plays set in the past continue to make up a significant proportion of theatre productions in England. This article argues that there is much to gain by recognising such works as ‘history plays’...
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Editorial Studies in Theatre and Performance Pub Date : 2023-10-30 Harriet Curtis
Published in Studies in Theatre and Performance (Vol. 43, No. 3, 2023)
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Editorial, 43.2 Studies in Theatre and Performance Pub Date : 2023-10-11 Tom Six
This editorial reflects on an intervention at this year's International Federation of Theatre Research conference by Ghanaian trans artist and activist Va-Bene Elikem K. Fiatsi (aka crazinisT artis...
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Scenographic ‘stuff’: attending to everyday objects in performance (and beyond) Studies in Theatre and Performance Pub Date : 2023-09-19 Georgie Hook
In part responding to our increasingly material world, this article presents scenographic strategies as a highly appropriate and effective means for cultivating an attentiveness towards everyday ob...
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On being a body listening: vocal expression beyond words in Ant Hampton and Britt Hatzius’ this is not my voice speaking and nature theater of Oklahoma life and times - episodes 3 & 4 Studies in Theatre and Performance Pub Date : 2023-08-17 Rebecca Collins
ABSTRACT Vocal expression beyond words, such as the excess of speech production found in coughs, rhythm, intonation, humming, offer a mode of being that does not require the endorsement of the world through language, but rather favours the act of dwelling in sonority. I make use of creative and critical writing to evidence how my body listens in the auditorium. I consider Ant Hampton and Britt Hatzius’
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Performing memory and testimony after a national disaster: the Sewol mothers in Talking about Her (2016), VEGA (2016), and His and Her Closet (2016) Studies in Theatre and Performance Pub Date : 2023-07-05 Areum Jeong
ABSTRACT In response to the Sewol Ferry disaster and mishandling of the South Korean government, Korean activists and artists mobilized collaboration with the victims’ families to produce activist theatre productions that center not only the trauma of those most affected by the disaster but also their lived experiences and wishes, especially those of the mothers. Furthermore, the performance community
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Editorial 43.1 Studies in Theatre and Performance Pub Date : 2023-06-02 Bryony White
Published in Studies in Theatre and Performance (Vol. 43, No. 1, 2023)
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WRITING FROM THE _________________ Studies in Theatre and Performance Pub Date : 2023-03-22 Clareese Hill, Elly Clarke
ABSTRACT This is a collaborative trans-atlantic meandering around our respective research fields, interjected with archival traces of our performances. Alongside us are The GUIDE, and #Sergina. The GUIDE is a survival praxis of how the Black identity performs in anticipation of being trapped in the gaze of being processed as other; a pedagogical deployment of research and critical theory from Black
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Editorial: Grounds for Re-wor(l)ding Studies in Theatre and Performance Pub Date : 2023-03-22 melissandre varin, Carmen Wong, Harriet Curtis
ABSTRACT This editorial elaborates on the processes and practices of Open Call and its iteration as a print and online issue of Studies in Theatre and Performance. It offers a collaborative framing of the issue that includes the voices of its editors and peer reviewers, and suggests some possible pathways through the texts and artworks that comprise this special issue, which is titled open-call+response:
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The City (Revised) Studies in Theatre and Performance Pub Date : 2023-03-22 Fannie Sosa
ABSTRACT This text reflects in part on Sosa’s ongoing project (in collaboration with Navild Acosta) Black Power Naps (https://blackpowernaps.black/), as well as ecologies of pleasure, and bio-technologies of the body in green city spaces. Sosa was an Open Call working group member in 2021, and was invited to re-visit their practice for this STP special issue.
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Making Sense: Part I Studies in Theatre and Performance Pub Date : 2023-03-22 Lou Sarabadzic
ABSTRACT This offering is part 1 of 3 in Lou Sarabadzic’s series Making Sense, which re-visits the exploration of the physicality and materiality of language in her video work Traces (2021).
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Composting Grief: Part I Studies in Theatre and Performance Pub Date : 2023-03-22 melissandre varin, Carmen Wong
ABSTRACT This is part 1 of 3 of a conversation and a practice of listening about and speaking of composting grief. The exchange, between melissandre varin and Carmen Wong, was initiated via voice notes, voicemails, and WhatsApp recordings and was transcribed and composed/composted visually with illustrations by N. Drofiak.
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Free Bitch - Ongoing … .. Studies in Theatre and Performance Pub Date : 2023-03-22 Stelly G
ABSTRACT This contribution is a photo-essay comprising ten images of author’s actions (and ongoing project, Free Bitch / Fr33 b1tch) during lockdown in 2021 on Gadigal Land, Warrang.
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Scenes from Preceding Years Studies in Theatre and Performance Pub Date : 2023-03-22 Seán Elder
ABSTRACT Elder reflects - in three parts - on family and friendship, noting references and past/present connections to art, music, Mardi Gras, and sites of cultural heritage.
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Fragments of Encounters Studies in Theatre and Performance Pub Date : 2023-03-22 nomi blum
ABSTRACT Fragments of Encounters is a performance-installation based research project that was first performed at the Infecting the City public art festival in 2019 in Cape Town. The project was build around a personal archive (over 150 hours of audio recorded material), comprised of fragments of everyday encounters and conversations with South Africans, Zimbabweans, Congolese, Nigerians, Pakistanis
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Making Sense: Part II Studies in Theatre and Performance Pub Date : 2023-03-22 Lou Sarabadzic
ABSTRACT This offering is part 2 of 3 in Lou Sarabadzic’s series Making Sense, which re-visits the exploration of the physicality and materiality of language in her video work Traces (2021).
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Summer Cannibals Studies in Theatre and Performance Pub Date : 2023-03-22 Izdihar Afyouni
ABSTRACT ‘Summer Cannibals’ is a work of fiction, interspersed and illustrated with Izdihar Afyouni‘s paintings. It narrates an account of grief, rage, and violence.
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Special Interests Studies in Theatre and Performance Pub Date : 2023-03-22 Ash Williams
ABSTRACT This article reflects on the special interests, friendships, tastes, and pleasures of those who are perceived as deviating from the norm, are labelled “activists”, and are expected to educate others on topics surrounding their own communities or marginalisations. This article creates a space of honesty in which one can exist beyond marginalisations.
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Composting Grief: Part II & III Studies in Theatre and Performance Pub Date : 2023-03-22 melissandre varin, Carmen Wong
ABSTRACT These are parts 2 and 3 of a conversation and a practice of listening about and speaking of composting grief. The exchange, between melissandre varin and Carmen Wong, was initiated via voice notes, voicemails, and WhatsApp recordings and was transcribed and composed/composted visually with illustrations by N. Drofiak.
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ANTI – PERFORMANCE AS PRAXIS Studies in Theatre and Performance Pub Date : 2023-03-22 rAJU rAGE
ABSTRACT Anti-performance is a term that I use to describe my body of performances, which in actuality are also ephemeral moments in time-space. The ‘anti’ is derived and borrowed from anti-colonial, the radical (root) of ‘decolonial’ and ‘post’ colonial, in this case a direct opposition to what is expected of gendered, racialised bodies, by audiences but also that which is usually invited by institutions
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Making Sense: Part III Studies in Theatre and Performance Pub Date : 2023-03-22 Lou Sarabadzic
ABSTRACT This offering is part 3 of 3 in Lou Sarabadzic’s series Making Sense, which re-visits the exploration of the physicality and materiality of language in her video work Traces (2021).
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Audience behavior in immersive theatre: an environment-behavior studies analysis of Punchdrunk’s Sleep No More Studies in Theatre and Performance Pub Date : 2023-03-08 Özlem Gezgin, Çağrı Imamoğlu
ABSTRACT Place can shape and influence audience behavior during a performance. This is especially noticeable in the site-specific immersive theatre model, where the performance occurs in a non-theatre setting and audiences have an active role. In this article, we argue that ‘place schema’ – a term from the interdisciplinary field of environment-behavior studies – provides a conceptual framework for
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Martyr plot and the national founding myth: staging Croatian national identity through amateur performances of a medieval genre Studies in Theatre and Performance Pub Date : 2023-02-20 Marija Krnić
ABSTRACT A windy day in May in a small village Velo Grabje on top of the hill of the island of Hvar. A small, centuries old, chapel and a dry, dusty island’s landscape is the only mise en scene for the performance of the medieval saint play which is just about to take place in front of around 40 visitors. As the wind carries their entrance song and waves their costumes, long black and white black tunics
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A conversation about new directions in studies of modernity and theatre Studies in Theatre and Performance Pub Date : 2022-12-13 Esther Kim Lee, Glenn Odom, Aparna Bhargava Dharwadker
Published in Studies in Theatre and Performance (Vol. 43, No. 1, 2023)
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Directorial strategies for enhancing stage presence: When practice- based research meets phenomenology Studies in Theatre and Performance Pub Date : 2022-10-11 Linan Xian
ABSTRACT Combining phenomenological methods with practice-based research, this article explores what and how directorial strategies influence stage presence. Drawing on Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology and Joseph Chaikin’s idea of heightened awareness, in particular, it describes directorial strategies that can heighten awareness in the interdependent actor–audience relationship. Adopting the
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Building theatre, making policy: materiality and cultural democracy at Liverpool’s PurpleDoor Studies in Theatre and Performance Pub Date : 2022-09-17 Karl Falconer, Steven Hadley, Jon Moorhouse
ABSTRACT This article approaches the idea of architecture, theatre and cultural democracy as relational concepts, and considers the theatre building as a cultural artefact which both manifests and embodies power relations. We use the case study of Liverpool’s PurpleDoor to explore this idea. We consider theatre buildings as cultural artefacts to focus attention on the impact of material or physical
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Exhibition curation as practice-as-research performance historiography: an incomplete story of audience experience Studies in Theatre and Performance Pub Date : 2022-07-26 Kate Holmes
ABSTRACT Taking an interdisciplinary approach to information-led exhibitions focused on performance can be considered practice-as-research historiography if curation is engaged with as praxis. Approaching exhibition curation as research praxis is a knowledge-making process, reconfiguring exhibitions as far more than a ‘pathway to impact’ designed at securing a grant. In the curation of two linked exhibitions
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Dancers as interpreters: the aesthetics and social commentary of Hausa Koroso Dance Studies in Theatre and Performance Pub Date : 2022-07-26 Olumuyiwa A. Akande
Dance, commonly seen as the art of rhythmical movements of the body, is actually a vehicle to project ideas, be it social, cultural, or even political, particularly among the Hausas in Northern Nig...
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Editorial (42.2) Studies in Theatre and Performance Pub Date : 2022-07-06 Tom Cornford
Abstract This editorial explores synergies between the articles gathered in this issue, which take a range of approaches to developing ecological analyses of both the creation and reception of performances and theatre history more widely. The editorial concludes with a reflection on the current UK government’s deliberate dereliction of the higher education sector, and its consequnces for the arts and
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Preliminary thoughts on the death of the editor Studies in Theatre and Performance Pub Date : 2022-03-09 Glenn Odom
(2022). Preliminary thoughts on the death of the editor. Studies in Theatre and Performance: Vol. 42, No. 1, pp. 1-2.
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Testing scores for performing placestories Studies in Theatre and Performance Pub Date : 2022-03-09 Phil Smith
ABSTRACT This paper describes an experimental project conducted by artists/researchers Crab & Bee (Helen Billinghurst and Phil Smith). The project was put together in response to the Covid Lockdown restrictions during 2020 in the UK and drew upon an art and performance practice that had been unfolding since 2018. ‘Testing Scores for Performing Placestories’ describes the testing of a group of scores
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Negotiating cultural exchange. Federico García Lorca on the British stage from the Spanish civil war until the mid-fifties Studies in Theatre and Performance Pub Date : 2022-03-08 María Bastianes
This article seeks to reconstruct and explore the initial theatrical reception of Lorca in the UK, focusing on why and how his texts entered the British theatrical ecosystem, and how they created c...
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Establishing an ecology of practice: a ‘Do It Yourself’ approach to performer training Studies in Theatre and Performance Pub Date : 2022-03-03 Rea Dennis, Kate Hunter
This article investigates how deeply engaging embodied perception can be nurtured and refined over a lifetime. In this article, we propose the ways in which an industry-based, self-styled performan...
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‘Walking the boundaries’: Lynne Parker’s unpublished version of Federico García Lorca’s La Casa de Bernarda Alba Studies in Theatre and Performance Pub Date : 2022-03-01 María Del Mar González Chacón
Crossing the frontiers looking for inspiration has been part of the Irish literary tradition, and translation and adaptation of continental writers such as Federico García Lorca have played an impo...
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Correction Studies in Theatre and Performance Pub Date : 2022-02-25
(2022). Correction. Studies in Theatre and Performance: Vol. 42, No. 1, pp. 98-98.
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National cultural history and transnational political concerns in Rasha Fadhil’s Ishtar in Baghdad (2003) Studies in Theatre and Performance Pub Date : 2021-12-16 Majeed Mohammed Midhin, David Clare
ABSTRACT In Rasha Fadhil’s 2003 play Ishtar in Baghdad, she has Ishtar and Tammuz, mythological figures from Iraq’s ancient past, appear in Baghdad during the Iraq War, and has them experience many of the horrors associated with the American occupation, including being tortured at Abu Ghraib prison. This article demonstrates that, in writing the play, Fadhil attempted to engage audiences both in Iraq
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Theatrical performance as a transnational vehicle: David Bergelson’s I Shall Not Die but Live in Mandatory Palestine Studies in Theatre and Performance Pub Date : 2021-12-07 Shelly Zer-Zion
David Bergelson’s “I Shall Not Die but Live” takes place during the Nazi invasion of the USSR, in a collective settlement adjacent to an agricultural experimentation farm in the Ukraine. The world ...
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In pursuit of a new theatre: the case of the Malvern festival Studies in Theatre and Performance Pub Date : 2021-11-22 Soudabeh Ananisarab
This article considers the impact of the not-for-profit motive promoted by radical campaigners of the New Theatre movement on accounts of British theatre history. Using the Malvern Festival (1929–1...
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The felt sense of performance: affective meaning at the edge of words Studies in Theatre and Performance Pub Date : 2021-10-25 Ana Cristina Nunes Pais
Created by Eugene Gendlin and Mary Hendricks, Thinking at the Edge (TAE) enables the articulation of meaning implicit in embodied experience, which in turn discloses the affective meaning of words ...
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Performance and the Right Studies in Theatre and Performance Pub Date : 2021-09-27 Pedro de Senna, James Hudson
(2021). Performance and the Right. Studies in Theatre and Performance: Vol. 41, Performance and the Right: Strategies and Subterfuges, pp. 231-235.
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White supremacist performance and its refusal: a reflection on the mosque shootings in Christchurch, Aotearoa New Zealand Studies in Theatre and Performance Pub Date : 2021-09-27 Emma Willis
ABSTRACT The terror attack carried out at two mosques in Aotearoa New Zealand by a white supremacist in 2019 was intended as a spectacle for mass public consumption. Its live-stream on Facebook invited hyper-identification (akin to a first-person shooter game), exploiting the disembodied nature of digital connection. In this essay, I draw from Judith Butler’s concept of ‘hallucinatory merging’ to characterize
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The counter-theatricality of right-wing populist performance Studies in Theatre and Performance Pub Date : 2021-08-12 Julia Peetz
ABSTRACT This article investigates Donald Trump’s performances of right-wing populism, contrasting these with the professional theatrical practice of US political speechwriting. The public performances of US presidents are theatrical constructions in a broad conceptual interpretation of the term: as speechwriters work to construct the presidential persona and the national audience, they abstract and
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‘Truth’, technology and transmedial theatre in Europe Studies in Theatre and Performance Pub Date : 2021-09-27 Anna Scheer, Siobhán O’Gorman
(2021). ‘Truth’, technology and transmedial theatre in Europe. Studies in Theatre and Performance: Vol. 41, Performance and the Right: Strategies and Subterfuges, pp. 263-280.
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The Garden of Dystopian Pleasures Studies in Theatre and Performance Pub Date : 2021-09-27 Pedro de Senna, Foivos Dousos, Fil Ieropoulos, Richard Pfützenreuter
ABSTRACT This article offers a reflection on the authors’ curation of (Dousos and Ieropoulos) and participation in (de Senna and Pfützenreuter) The Garden of Dystopian Pleasures, a performance festival that took place at the Athens School of Fine Arts in 2018. Dousos and Ieropoulos present their thoughts around the need to curate such an event in the first place, discussing the context within which
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Right wing and Street-theatre: from censure to co-option Studies in Theatre and Performance Pub Date : 2021-09-27 Aparna Mahiyaria
ABSTRACT This paper examines the modes of cultural organisation that facilitate the Right-wing’s appropriation of historically Left-wing theatre practices such as the Street-theatre in New Delhi in the service of percolating Hindu-nationalism. The paper suggests that a thorough understanding of the organisation behind the creative methods for mobilisation employed by the Right-wing is indispensable
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Right from the centre: The dramaturgy of right-wing politics in Chris Hannan’s What Shadows, Chris Bush’s The Assassination of Katie Hopkins, and Rob Drummond’s The Majority Studies in Theatre and Performance Pub Date : 2021-08-16 James Hudson
ABSTRACT Reactionary retrenchment in UK society, including the resurgence of national chauvinism and anti-immigration sentiment, has recently stimulated explorations of right-wing politics in theatre. This article offers a reading of three recent productions that illuminate the way that reactionary politics is currently framed, explored and interrogated in UK theatre: What Shadows (2016) by Chris Hannan
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Networked audience participation: the futurity of post-Brexit democracy in One Day, Maybe and Operation Black Antler Studies in Theatre and Performance Pub Date : 2021-08-10 Joseph Dunne-Howrie
ABSTRACT Where are we in the story of British democracy? Was the 2016 EU Referendum a rehearsal for a new political system of direct democracy that ultimately benefits the far right? Or will the Internet replace the conventional machinery of government with a radical new form of network power where people discursively experiment with new political realities through aesthetic modes of social relations
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Post-anthropocentric Rehearsal Studies. A conceptual framework to account for the social and material mediations in performance-making Studies in Theatre and Performance Pub Date : 2021-09-15 Carmen Pellegrinelli, Laura Lucia Parolin
This article uses the concept of ‘mediation’ to account for the sociomateriality involved in the rehearsal of a new play. Drawing on ideas from the ‘New Sociology of Art’ that has its origins in Sc...
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Theatre practitioners as unionists: art workers in post-independence Zimbabwe’s theatre sector (1980 – 1999) Studies in Theatre and Performance Pub Date : 2021-09-14 Nkululeko Sibanda
This article attempts to frame and examine the structuring of labour struggles from the precarious subject position of theatre workers, without isolating these struggles into the occupational secto...
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A history of robot camp: performing beyond the uncanny valley, from early twentieth-century automata to contemporary science fiction theatre Studies in Theatre and Performance Pub Date : 2021-07-29 Cole Remmen
In this work, I intervene in discussions of robot performance, pointing to a history of a performance mode I classify as ‘robot camp’ that, in offering techniques that overcome potential affective ...
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41.2 Editorial Studies in Theatre and Performance Pub Date : 2021-05-28 Harriet Curtis
(2021). 41.2 Editorial. Studies in Theatre and Performance: Vol. 41, No. 2, pp. 133-135.
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Myth and popular culture: Brough’s Victorian Burlesque Medea as a heterotopic cultural space Studies in Theatre and Performance Pub Date : 2021-05-26 Marta Villalba-Lázaro
While Victorian classical burlesque has been traditionally dismissed as low culture for both, its insouciant treatment of classical mythology and its inability to raise serious social issues, this ...
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(Skin)Aesthetics (First Manifesto) Studies in Theatre and Performance Pub Date : 2021-05-03 Freya Verlander
ABSTRACT '(Skin)Aesthetics (First Manifesto)' offers an introduction to my new performance theory and method of performance analysis: ‘(skin)aesthetics’. In the spirit of a manifesto, I outline the theoretical development of (skin)aesthetics as an approach and its objectives. (Skin)aesthetics focusses on the spectator’s skin as an active and reciprocal site of engagement in the performance environment
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‘He did not go back to the army’: war, patriotism and desertion in Pavel Pryazhko’s The Soldier Studies in Theatre and Performance Pub Date : 2021-04-23 James Rowson
Over the past twenty years, a collection of theatre makers in Russia have staged suppressed and marginalised voices to engage with the political and social realities of contemporary Russia. The wor...
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Performativity and fragmentation in Samuel Beckettʼs That Time Studies in Theatre and Performance Pub Date : 2021-04-19 Atėnė Mendelytė
Samuel Beckett’s stage play That Time offers an aesthetic exploration of the paradoxical and deconstructive nature of identity and selfhood where the ability of narrative acts to express and captur...
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The pleasure in moving: drawing the space through flamenco bodies Studies in Theatre and Performance Pub Date : 2021-04-09 Miriana Lausic
This article develops an analysis of flamenco performance and religious processions in Andalusia by deploying and extending Jean-Luc Nancy’s concept of drawing, using the results of extensive ethno...
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Horses and Cowboys on the Contemporary American Stage: The Horse as Prop in Sam Shepard’s Kicking a Dead Horse and Sarah Ruhl’s Late: a cowboy song Studies in Theatre and Performance Pub Date : 2021-03-26 Ana Fernández-Caparrós
ABSTRACT This comparative essay analyses the dramatic representation of horses in two early twenty-first-century American plays by Sam Shepard and Sarah Ruhl. Both plays bring a horse figure onto the stage as a prop and couple it to human characters fashioned by the iconography of the American cowboy. While both plays rely heavily on the symbolic power of horses and trope the animal, thus failing to
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Field works: wild experiments for performance research Studies in Theatre and Performance Pub Date : 2021-03-07 David Overend
ABSTRACT This article reflects on a series of wild experiments in literal field sites. It develops a practice-based methodology that aims to identify, perform and assert wild presences and unruly processes, playfully engaging with vibrant and dynamic ecologies. To explore these concerns ‘in the field’, a series of research trips were undertaken in the United Kingdom between 2017 and 2020, including