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This volume gathers contributions from a range of international
scholars and geopolitical contexts to explore why people organise
themselves into performance communities in sites of crisis and how
performance - social and aesthetic, sanctioned and underground - is
employed as a mechanism for survival. The chapters treat a wide
range of what can be considered 'survival', ranging from sheer
physical survival, to the survival of a social group with its own
unique culture and values, to the survival of the very possibility
of agency and dissent. Performance as a form of political
resistance and protest plays a large part in many of the essays,
but performance does more than that: it enables societies in crisis
to continue to define themselves. By maintaining identities that
are based on their own chosen affiliations and not defined solely
in opposition to their oppressors, individuals and groups prepare
themselves for a post-crisis future by keeping alive their own
notions of who they are and who they hope to be.
This volume brings together performance texts from nine productions
by the experimental theatre company Lightwork and one playtext from
Lightwork's precursor company Academy Productions, presented
between 1997 and 2011. Lightwork specialized in collaboratively
created and multimedia performance. The company also experimented
with several performance forms that emerged at the turn of the
twenty-first century, including verbatim and site-specific
approaches. Because of this, the texts cover a range of forms and
formats - scripted plays such as Here's What I Did With My Body One
Day by Dan Rebellato and Blavatsky by Clare Bayley; multimedia
adaptations of classical myths such as Back At You (based on the
story of Echo and Narcissus) and Once I was Dead (based on the
story of Daedalus and Icarus); site-specific experiments such as
The Good Actor, which took place in various spaces across Hoxton
Hall, a Victorian theatre in London's East End; and the use of
verbatim witness testimony from the Court of Bosnia and
Herzegovina, War Crimes section in Sarajevo Story. The defining
aspect of the Lightwork aesthetic is that multimedia and
scenographic experimentation does not come at the expense of the
mainstays of dramatic theatre: character, story and emotional
resonance. What lies at the heart of the Lightwork shows you will
encounter here are human-scale stories: relationships between
lovers or family members, confrontations with the past (both as
personal and as cultural history) and, in many cases, matters of
life or death that entail wrestling with causality, consequence and
fate. The twelve-year span covered by this work reflects a period
in British performance practice when the interrelation of page and
stage, process and production, text and 'non-text', were being
radically rethought. In the collaborative and processual theatre
making that Lightwork exemplifies, the text may be one element
among many and is more likely to be the outcome of the process than
its precursor. How do such playtexts (or performance texts) differ
from those that are conceived and scripted by a single desk-based
playwright in advance of the rehearsal? What gaps are left when the
work of many hands is channelled through the pen (or keyboard) of
one among them? The texts featured in this volume represent a
number of answers to these questions about the nature of writing
for the stage. The performance texts are each preceded (and
sometime followed) by short essays written by some of the many
people who have been involved in productions by Lightwork,
including established academics and theatre practitioners: David
Annen, Clare Bayley, Gregg Fisher, Sarah Gorman, Andy Lavender,
Aneta Mancewicz, Bella Merlin, Alex Mermikides, Jo Parker, Dan
Rebellato, and Ayse Tashkiran. Their contributions reflect the
collaborative nature of the company and the respect that it
accorded the various disciplinary perspectives that make up a
theatre company. There are sections on scenography, sound design
and technical operation, as well as on those crafts that might more
usually draw attention: directing, writing and acting. These
contributions offer an insight into the collaborative,
multi-layered and sometimes messy business of their creation from
an individual maker's or spectator's point of view. This book will
be invaluable for those who are making, studying or researching
performance in the twenty-first century, and an essential resource
for the rehearsal room. Primary readership will include
researchers, educators, students and practitioners interested in
creative practice, theatre-making, integrated design and
performance, and contemporary theatre. It will be an important
resource for those on theatre and performance courses at all
levels, as well as acting, theatre and performance design,
dramaturgy and direction courses, creative writing courses and
media arts programmes. It will have appeal for general readers
interested in new texts and processes in theatre and performance,
and individual texts are likely to be of interest to specialist
researchers working in related fields - for example performance and
the occult (Blavatsky), performance and conflict (Sarajevo Story).
What do dogs mean in America? How do Americans make meaning through
their dogs? The United States has long expressed its cultural
unconscious through canine iconography. Through our dogs, we figure
out what we're thinking and who we are, representing by proxy the
things that we don't quite want to recognize in ourselves. Often,
it's a specific breed or type of dog that serves as an informal
cultural mascot, embodying an era's needs, fears, desires,
longings, aspirations, repressions, and hopeless contradictions.
Combining cultural studies with personal narrative, this book
creates a playful, speculative reading of American culture through
its canine self-representations. Looking at seven different breeds
or types over the last seven decades, readers will go on an
intellectual dog walk through some of the mazes of American
cultural mythology.
For many of us, the only way we meet "dangerous" dogs is through
news reports about vicious attacks, and films and TV shows that
feature out-of-control versions of man's best friend. But there's
more to the Bad Dog's story than sensational headlines and movie
beasts. A deeper look at these representations reveals a villain
much closer to home. This book takes the reader on a rich journey
through depictions of violent dogs in popular media. It explores
how press accounts and screen stories transform canines into
bloodthirsty hunters, rabies-infested strays, ferocious fighters,
rogue law enforcement partners and diabolical pets, all adding up
to a frightening picture of our usually beloved companions. But,
when media tell the dangerous dog's story, it is often with a deep
connection to the person on the other end of the leash.
At age 60, Susan Hartzler has learned to accept, even love, the
single life, provided she has good friends and a dog or two by her
side. Always attracted to the quintessential bad boy with his good
looks and charming ways, she was sure she could change "the one"
into a devoted partner and loving father, but her compulsive giving
and fixing behaviors went hand in hand with her disappointing and
disastrous romantic relationships. On a purposeful trip to the
pound, she hoped to find a dog to care for, one that would sniff
out the bad guys, give her a sense of purpose, and help her find
meaning in her crazy world. Thoughtful and funny, this memoir
follows Susan's life through the many ups and downs on her way to
finding unconditional love. Her journey is a personal one, full of
the hard decisions it took to learn to put herself first and stop
entering and staying in unhealthy relationships. By saving a dog,
she rescues herself, learning to love herself as much as her dog
loves her.
Trauma-tragedy investigates the extent to which performance can
represent the 'unrepresentable' of trauma. Throughout, there is a
focus on how such representations might be achieved and if they
could help us to understand trauma on personal and social levels.
In a world increasingly preoccupied with and exposed to traumas,
this volume considers what performance offers as a means of
commentary that other cultural products do not. The book's clear
and coherent navigation of complex relations between performance
and trauma and its analysis of key practitioners and performances
(from Sarah Kane to Societas Raffaello Sanzio, Harold Pinter to
Forced Entertainment, and Phillip Pullman to Franco B) make it
accessible and useful to students of performance and trauma
studies, yet rigorous and incisive for scholars and specialists.
Duggan explores ideas around the phenomenological and
socio-political efficacy and impact of performance in relation to
trauma. Ultimately, the book advances a new performance theory or
mode, 'trauma-tragedy', that suggests much contemporary performance
can generate the sensation of being present in trauma through its
structural embodiment in performance, or 'presence-in-trauma
effects'. -- .
The Custers and Their Dogs is the first book to seriously explore
the little known history of General George Armstrong and Libbie
Custer as wholehearted dog lovers. At the time of Custer's death at
Little Bighorn, they owned a rollicking pack of forty hunting
hounds-including Scottish Deerhounds, Russian Wolfhounds,
Greyhounds, and Foxhounds. Told engagingly through a dog owner's
lens, this biography of the Custers' life covers their first dogs
in the Civil War and Texas, hunting on the Kansas and Dakota
frontiers, entertaining tourist buffalo hunters such as a Russian
Archduke, English aristocracy, and The Great Showman, P. T. Barnum
(all whom presented the general with hounds), Custer's attack on
the Washita village (when he was accused of strangling his own
dogs), and the 7th Cavalry's march to Little Bighorn with an
analysis of the many rumors about a Last Stand dog. Duggan also
reveals how the Custers' pack was re-homed after Armstrong's death
in the first national dog rescue effort-and the strange fate of
Libbie's favorite staghound. Included is an appendix discussing
depictions of General Custer's dogs in art, literature, and film.
One of the oldest known breeds of domesticated dogs, the Saluki
traveled throughout the Middle East with a number of nomadic desert
tribes, who favored the dogs for their unparalleled ability to hunt
desert gazelles. Famously carved into the walls of the Pharaohs'
tombs, the Saluki have an exotic history that piqued the interests
of dog enthusiasts and breeders during the early 20th century,
including notable Edwardian men and women who played significant
roles in popularizing the breed and importing the Saluki to Europe
and the United States.This book tells the unique, true story of the
characters who brought the Saluki to the West, most notably the
Honorable Florence Amherst, who became smitten with the breed
during a family tour of Egypt and went on to breed a staggering
number of 50 litters and 199 registered puppies. The author also
brings into the story a range of other prominent world travelers
who fell under the Salukis' spell, including Lady Jane Digby, Lady
Anne Blunt, Austen Layard and Gertrude Bell. Also covered in this
book are a number of lesser-known but just as dedicated Saluki
aficionados, mainly military officers who became addicted to
hunting with their hounds in the deserts of Iraq, Syria, Palestine,
and Egypt and who sought to replicate that addiction upon their
return home.
Disability studies have long been the domain of medical and
pedagogical academics. However, in recent years, the subject has
outgrown its clinical origins. In Freaks of History, James
MacDonald presents two dramatic explorations of disability within
the wider themes of sexuality, gender, foreignness and the Other.
Originally directed by Martin Harvey and performed by undergraduate
students at the University of Exeter, Wellclose Square and Unsex Me
Here analyse cultural marginalization against the backdrop of
infamous historical events. MacDonald, who is cerebral palsied,
recognizes that disability narratives are rarely written by and for
disabled people. Therefore, his plays, accompanied by critical
essays and director's notes, are a welcome addition to the emerging
discourse of Crip theory and essential reading for disability
students and academics alike.
Between 1960 and 2010, a new generation of British avant-garde
theater companies, directors, designers, and performers emerged.
Some of these companies and individuals have endured to become part
of theater history while others have disappeared from the scene,
mutated into new forms, or become part of the establishment.
"Reverberations across Small-Scale British Theatre "at long last
puts these small-scale British theater companies and personalities
in the scholarly spotlight. By questioning what "Britishness" meant
in relation to the small-scale work of these practitioners,
contributors articulate how it is reflected in the goals,
manifestos, and aesthetics of these companies.
This volume gathers contributions from a range of international
scholars and geopolitical contexts to explore why people organise
themselves into performance communities in sites of crisis and how
performance - social and aesthetic, sanctioned and underground - is
employed as a mechanism for survival. The chapters treat a wide
range of what can be considered 'survival', ranging from sheer
physical survival, to the survival of a social group with its own
unique culture and values, to the survival of the very possibility
of agency and dissent. Performance as a form of political
resistance and protest plays a large part in many of the essays,
but performance does more than that: it enables societies in crisis
to continue to define themselves. By maintaining identities that
are based on their own chosen affiliations and not defined solely
in opposition to their oppressors, individuals and groups prepare
themselves for a post-crisis future by keeping alive their own
notions of who they are and who they hope to be.
Dogs have a storied history in health care, and the human-animal
relationship has been used in the field for decades. Over the
years, certain dogs have improved and advanced the field of health
care in myriad ways. In this book, the author presents the stories
of these pioneer dogs, from the mercy dogs of World War I, to the
medicine-toting sled dogs Togo and Balto, to contemporary therapy
dogs. More than the dogs themselves, this book is about the
human-animal relationship, and moments in history where that
relationship propelled health care forward.
Plays in Time collects four plays by Karen Malpede set during
influential events from the late twentieth century to the present:
the Bosnian war and rape camps; the invasion and occupation of Iraq
and Israel's 2006 bombardment of Lebanon; 9/11 and the US torture
programme; and the heroism of climate scientists facing attack from
well-funded climate change deniers. In each play in this anthology,
nature, poetry, ritual and empathy are presented in contrast to the
abuse of persons and world. Despite their serious topics, the plays
are full of humour and distinctively entertaining personalities.
Each play was developed by Theater Three Collaborative for
production in New York and internationally in Italy, Australia,
London, Berlin and Paris.
Widely considered one of the most innovative voices in Hungarian
theatre, Andras Visky has enjoyed growing audiences and increased
critical acclaim over the last fifteen years. Nonetheless, his
plays have yet to reach a wider English-language audience. This
volume, edited by Jozefina Komporaly, begins to correct this by
bringing together a translated collection of Visky's work. The book
includes the first English-language anthology of Visky's best known
plays - Juliet, I Killed My Mother, and Porn - as well as critical
analysis and an exploration of Visky's 'Barrack Dramaturgy', a
dramaturgical theory in which he considers the theatre as a space
for exploring feelings of cultural and personal captivity. Inspired
by personal experience of the oppressive communist regime in
Romania, Visky's work explores the themes of gender, justice and
trauma, encouraging shared moments of remembrance and collective
memory. This collection makes use of scripts and director's notes,
as well as interviews with creative teams behind the productions,
to reveal a holistic, insider's view of Visky's artistic vision.
Scholars and practitioners alike will benefit from this rare,
English-language collection of Visky's work and dramaturgy.
JARMAN (all this maddening beauty) and Other Plays is a collection
of three radically poetic works for live performance by OBIE
award-winning playwright Caridad Svich. The playtexts include a
lyrical meditation on the legacy of iconic queer artist Derek
Jarman, a meditation on displacement and human suffering
(Carthage/Cartagena) and an intimately operatic reflection on
Penelope and Odysseus (The Orphan Sea). Accompanied by scholarly
essays placing the plays in context, this book showcases the
beautiful strangeness and profound resistance in Svich's work.
In a room in the middle of nowhere, a man and a woman dream up
spectacular worlds: a decaying city, a lush and crumbling garden, a
train journey across a drowned landscape. Darkly humorous, absurd
and surreal, these are plays for a theatre in which time and space,
character and setting are as uncertain as the maps this man and
this woman draw. A co-founder of the legendary 1980s performance
theatre company Impact Theatre Co-op, Claire MacDonald composed
Utopia, a sequence of commissioned playtexts, between 1987 and
2008. This edition brings together both the plays and the story of
how the plays came to be made and written. With a compelling
introduction by the author, and including additional material by
Tim Etchells, Deirdre Heddon, and Lenora Champagne, this book
provides a range of historical and critical materials that put the
plays in the context of MacDonald's career as writer and
collaborator, and show how visual practices and poetics, theories
of real and imagined space, and new approaches to language itself
have profoundly shaped the development of performance writing in
the UK.
The book provides an investigation grounded in performance practice
and practice-as-research methodology on the issues of authorship
and collaborative labour. This investigation is set in the context
of a world more and more characterized by fragmentation,
displacement and virtual communication and relationships. It
addresses and playfully engages with the following questions: what
is a collaborative body? How can one sole performer enact and
convey a collaborative practice? How can one body on stage carry
out several voices at once? Can we stand in for others? How do we
maintain a sense of 'being-together' while being alone in a room?
The book contains the full-length definitive version of the
performance score from A Duet Without You, an original performance
piece created between 2013 and 2015 by Chloe Dechery in
collaboration with a range of high-profile artistic collaborators
working inter- and cross-disciplinary, including Karen Christopher
(Goat Island), Michael Pinchbeck, Deborah Pearson (Forest Fringe),
Simone Kenyon and Pedro Ins. In addition to the main performance
score, another original text has been produced and is included as a
'template' version of the script to be adapted and enacted by
existing or potential future collaborators - the idea being that
any reader could appropriate and reinterpret a version of the
performance score and create their own personalised rendition of
the show. Besides these two new and original performance scores,
there is a complementary collection of essays, ranging from
performative responses and co-authored articles to in-depth
theoretical essays, written by a selection of pre-eminent writers,
artists and academics. Primary readership will be those teaching,
researching or studying in theatre and performance studies, visual
arts, fine arts, art history, creative writing, poetry, philosophy
or French literature. Will also be of interest to art school
students and those with an interest in theatre.
This book presents four plays by Caridad Svich that explore the
rough waters of citizenship under the pressure of globalization and
the threads of human connection - often tested, but never wholly
severed - across multiple geographic landscapes. Featuring an
introduction by Welsh playwright and director Ian Rowlands and
essays by practitioners Zac Kline, Blair Baker, Neil Scharnick,
Carla Melo and Sherrine Azab, this wide-ranging, daring collection
of plays refuses to pretend that the complex and thorny questions
of existence are easily settled.
Trauma-tragedy investigates the extent to which performance can
represent the 'unrepresentable' of trauma. Throughout, there is a
focus on how such representations might be achieved and if they
could help us to understand trauma on personal and social levels.
In a world increasingly preoccupied with and exposed to traumas,
this volume considers what performance offers as a means of
commentary that other cultural products do not. The book's clear
and coherent navigation of complex relation between performance and
trauma and its analysis of key practitioners and performances (from
Sarah Kane to Societas Raffaello Sanzio, Harold Pinter to Forced
Entertainment, and Phillip Pullman to Franco B) make it accessible
and useful to students of performance and trauma studies, yet
rigorous and incisive for scholars and specialists. Duggan explores
ideas around the phenomenological and socio-political efficacy and
impact of performance in relation to trauma. Ultimately, the book
advances a new performance theory or mode, 'trauma-tragedy', that
suggests much contemporary performance can generate the sensation
of being present in trauma through its structural embodiment in
performance, or 'presence-in-trauma effects'. -- .
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