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1
Zehra, Shamail, Kiran Karamat, and Niza Qureshi. "THEATRE IN THE DIGITAL AGE: CHALLENGES AND AUDIENCE VIEWING EXPERIENCES." Pakistan Journal of Social Research 05, no. 01 (March 4, 2023): 609–16. http://dx.doi.org/10.52567/pjsr.v5i01.1384.
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A digital native audience may find it more difficult to be captivated by a theatrical performance in the age of technology, yet theater has evolved and survived every technological advancement. The popularity of the plays in Shakespeare's day appears to have been largely dependent on audience behavior, much as it was in the times of Aristophanes and Plautus. In our local Pakistani context, the study investigates whether theater can survive in the present digital media landscape and addresses the key elements that can affect a viewer's decision to see theater in a live setting. A good play, production, and performance are evaluated by audiences who are highly "theatre-literate. Despite the latest developments in technology, there are audiences who are essentially motivated by human interaction and insight, who yearn for the live experience, who appreciate being live in the room with the entertainer and that audience is the reason for the survival of theatre in a digital age. A survey method is utilized to collect data from 200 theater-savvy audiences in order to glean the most pertinent information and enhance the analysis of the information gathered. The results will demonstrate that regular theatergoers choose to attend theater live rather than for free online in order to experience a sense of relationship with the performers and other audience members. The majority of theatergoers said that attending live theater in an era of digital technology was still very much worthwhile. Because theater is a global cultural phenomenon that exists in all societies, the study is important on both a national and international level. Keywords: Theatre, Digital culture, Technology, Audience, Liveness, Brecht Theatre.
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Pukelytė, Ina. "Front Theatre and Variety Theatre in Lithuania During World War II." Art History & Criticism 16, no. 1 (December 1, 2020): 95–104. http://dx.doi.org/10.2478/mik-2020-0006.
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SummaryThis article reveals how theatre on small stages functioned in Lithuania during World War II and what was its impact on different audiences. It discusses two topics: 1) specificities of the front theatre intended for German soldiers and their administration; 2) specificities of variety theatre intended to all kinds of audiences. Front theatres in the Third Reich were a well-structured and well-financed organisation that served not only German soldiers and army officials but was an attractive job place for artists. Shows were given in all the occupied territories and thus the morale of the German army was supposed to be maintained. Variety theatres, that is small stage performances, were dedicated to lower class audiences; these shows demanded no intellectual effort and were meant to entertain. Journalists, writing about this type of theatre, avoided to criticise it, because it nevertheless fulfilled its duty to stimulate citizens’ optimism and to make them more loyal to the Nazi government.
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Caldwell, Niall, and Kathryn Nicholson. "Star quality: celebrity casting in London West End theatres." Arts Marketing: An International Journal 4, no. 1/2 (September 30, 2014): 136–55. http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/am-10-2013-0022.
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Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the practice of casting celebrity performers in London West End theatres. The paper uses the literature on celebrity to explore the impact that casting a celebrity has on the London theatre audience. Design/methodology/approach – The pervasiveness of celebrity culture forms the background and starting point for this research. In the first phase, theatre managers, directors and producers were interviewed to explore their views on the practice of celebrity casting. In the second phase, an audience survey was conducted. The approach taken is exploratory and is intended to illuminate the conditions under which a successful celebrity-focused strategy can be constructed. Findings – A distinction between fame and celebrity was drawn by both theatre professionals and audiences, with celebrity status being seen as something that is created by media exposure and being in the public eye. This is in contrast to fame, which is earned by being famous for something, or some achievement. Theatre audiences are more likely to be attracted by celebrities who have theatrical expertise and not by someone known simply through film, television or the all-pervasive gossip columns. Celebrities with a background in theatre and film were seen to strongly draw audiences to the theatre, as opposed to those with a background in reality TV shows, search-for-a-star shows or for being half of a famous couple. Originality/value – The paper is focused on the theatre and makes an original contribution to the current discussion of the power wielded by celebrities. It is the first empirical research on this aspect of the theatre business. Its contribution lies in understanding audience members’ interpretation and understanding of celebrity to ascertain the extent to which they perceive celebrities as credible to perform theatre. This is based on a differentiation between their mediated fame and expertise. It is helpful and useful information for producers when deciding whether or not to cast a celebrity and to which audiences that the celebrity might appeal.
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Bennett, Susan. "Theatre Audiences, Redux." Theatre Survey 47, no. 2 (September 12, 2006): 225–30. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0040557406000196.
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In retrospect, that Roland Barthes's insistence on “the death of the author” should have provoked an emergent interest in theatre audiences is hardly surprising. As, in literary studies, this brought about a new privilege for and investment in the reader, so too, in theatre and performance studies, there was an explicit recognition that what went on in the theatre was qualitatively and quantitatively more complicated and more exciting than the study of the playtext in the classroom. At the same time, the move to challenge a universalized (and thus male) viewing subject created new readings of the audience and new understandings of both individual and collective spectatorship across a range of subjectivities. So, Jill Dolan could argue that the “feminist spectator viewing such a representation is necessarily in the outsider's critical position.” Dolan continued:She cannot find a comfortable way into the representation, since she finds herself, as a woman (and even more so, as a member of the working class, a lesbian, or a woman of color), excluded from its address. She sees in the performance frame representatives of her gender class with whom she might identify—if women are represented at all—acting passively before the specter of male authority.1
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Harvey, Dustin. "Theatre for Small Audiences." Canadian Theatre Review 126 (March 2006): 45–47. http://dx.doi.org/10.3138/ctr.126.008.
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I am standing inside a beat-up camping trailer from the 1950s. This morning, the unit was towed to a secret location on Gottingen Street in Halifax. The interior of the trailer has been modified at one end, with a seating rake, consisting of two short rows that will accommodate a total of eight people. The section takes up nearly half the space. It is where the audience will sit for the first and only performance of Cowboy Show — the second production in the Theatre for Small Audiences series. The floor is littered with peanut shells. I am outfitting the rear wall with an American fag, when a young actress pokes her head in and abruptly and asks, “Is this the secret play?”I tell her it is. “1 won’t be able to make it,”she says. “When will you be putting it on again?”She doesn’t believe me when 1 tell her that it is one night only. What do you mean, she insists. Only eight people will ever get to see it?”The reaction is a familiar one. Finally, she muses, sighs and concludes, “All that work, all for nothing.
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Bird, Kym, and Ed Nyman. "Quipping Against the Pricks: Comedy, Community and Popular Theatre." Canadian Theatre Review 77 (December 1993): 8–12. http://dx.doi.org/10.3138/ctr.77.002.
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The Company of Sirens and the Workman Theatre Project are only two of the many members of the Canadian Popular Theatre Alliance who are using theatre, as Brecht did, to change political and social consciousness while entertaining audiences. Liberal humanist notions of “art” (of greatness, genius, the masterpiece) have caused many to denigrate popular theatre for its political agenda, as though other theatres can be free from the political and ideological conditions under which they are produced. Most popular theatre workers, however, accept that all cultural labour is ideologically committed and yet must live with the threat of alienating sponsors and audiences and with the challenge of working out a vision with artistic integrity.
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Mahoney, Alison M. "Oily Cart's Space to Be: Exploring the Carer's Role in Sensory Theatre for Neurodiverse Audiences during COVID-19." Theatre Survey 62, no. 3 (August 23, 2021): 340–43. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0040557421000260.
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Because sensory theatre productions are designed with neurodiverse audiences in mind, practitioners are first and foremost concerned with accessibility at all levels for their audience members, incorporating multiple senses throughout a performance to allow a variety of entry points for audiences that may have wildly divergent—and often competing—access needs. One-to-one interaction between performers and audience members results in highly flexible performances that respond to physical and auditory input from individual audience members, through which performers curate customized multisensory experiences that communicate the production's theatrical world to its audience. Given this reliance on close-up interaction, the circumstances surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic have posed a particular challenge for sensory theatre makers. In in-person sensory theatre, performers focus on neurodivergent audience members, with parents and paid carers often taking a (literal) back seat, but remotely delivered sensory theatre during COVID-19 hinges on the carer's facilitation of sensory engagement curated by sensory theatre practitioners. Oily Cart, a pioneering London-based sensory theatre company, responded to COVID-19 restrictions with a season of work presented in various formats in audiences’ homes, and their production Space to Be marked a shift in the company's audience engagement to include an emphasis on the carer's experience.1 Using this production as a case study, I argue that the pivotal role adopted by carers during the pandemic has the potential to shape future in-person productions, moving practitioners toward a more holistic, neurodiverse audience experience that challenges a disabled–nondisabled binary by embracing carers’ experiences alongside those of neurodivergent audience members.2
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Bannerman, Marian White. "TYA in Canada: Navigating the Paradoxes." Canadian Theatre Review 133 (March 2008): 53–61. http://dx.doi.org/10.3138/ctr.133.008.
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In Donald Barthelme’s hilarious and provocative short story, “Me and Miss Mandible,” a thirty-five-year-old man who has “misread” important cultural signs as an adult finds himself back in grade six, for re-education. This time around, it is clear, he must learn to read the subtext, the messages implied, as opposed to those overtly stated, by his culture. Remembering a surreal but formative experience, the protagonist takes an important first step in this complex decoding: “I kept wondering why. Then something happened that proposed a new question…. I wondered: Who decides?” (60). In many ways, these two questions — Why? Who decides? — are key to understanding the unique culture of Theatre for Young Audiences (TYA) in Canada. Young theatre audiences, in turn, may be key to an accurate picture of the country itself. As Leslee Silverman, artistic director of Manitoba Theatre for Young People, points out, young audiences have replaced adult audiences as the true cross-section of Canada (Personal interview). Because it tours to all parts of the country, plays to young people and their caregivers and is primarily performed in and for schools whose students are drawn from a wide range of economic, social, geographic, linguistic, religious, ethnic, intellectual, physical and family backgrounds, TYA boasts not only one of the largest but also the most diverse and representative audience in the country. This audience is important. But why is theatre important for this audience?
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McClelland, Graeme. "When in Quarantine: Bringing Theatre Home with Boca del Lupo." Canadian Theatre Review 191 (August 1, 2022): 100–102. http://dx.doi.org/10.3138/ctr.191.016.
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Sherry J. Yoon and Jay Dodge of Vancouver’s Boca del Lupo Theatre sit down to discuss the process and creation of Plays2Perform@Home, an anthology of plays that won the 2021 Canadian Association for Theatre Research Patrick O’Neill Award. In a separate interview, one of the contributing playwrights, Santiago Guzmán, discusses his play Mona, Lisa and reflects on how his artistic practice has shifted and grown through the pandemic. All three artists meditate on what it has meant to create theatre during the pandemic and offer hopes and projections on the future of performance as audiences begin returning to theatres.
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DUTT, BISHNUPRIYA. "Introduction." Theatre Research International 42, no. 3 (October 2017): 323–26. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s030788331700061x.
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These three essays on distinct research areas and case studies cover a broad history of educational institutions in India, their focus on theatre and cultural education, and their role in creating citizens active in the public sphere and civic communities. The common point of reference for all the three essays is the historical transition from pre- to post-independence India, and they represent three dominant genres of Indian theatre practice: the amateur progressive theatre emerging out of sociopolitical movements; the State Drama School, which has remained at the core of the state's policy and vision of a national theatre; and college theatre, which comprises the field from which the National School of Drama sources its acting students, as well as new audiences for urban theatres.
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Furlong, Anne. "Shared communicative acts in theatre texts in performance." International Journal of Literary Linguistics 9, no. 3 (July 12, 2020): 1–23. http://dx.doi.org/10.15462/ijll.v9i3.121.
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This paper adopts a relevance theoretic approach to meaning making in theatrical texts and performances. Text-based theatrical performances are collaborative creative events, many of whose participants may never engage directly with an audience member, but all of whom are engaged in making and conveying meaning. Such texts communicate immediately to multiple audiences: readers, actors, directors, producers, and designers. They communicate less directly to the writer’s ultimate audience – the playgoer or spectator – through the medium of performance. But playgoers are not passive receptacles for interpretations distilled in rehearsal, enacted through performance, or developed in study and reflection. Rather, in the framework of communication postulated by relevance theory, the audience is an active participant in making meaning. I will briefly review a range of approaches to meaning making in theatre, and then outline my view of a relevance theoretic account of theatre texts and performances as related but distinct communicative acts. For Weimann (1992), discussing the German playwright, Heiner Müller, “language is first and foremost material with which the audience is expected to work so as to make and explore their own ‘experiences’” (p. 958). By contrast, T. S. Eliot characterised performances as ‘interruptions’ of the relationship between writer and audience; in ‘a true acting play’, he asserted, the actor added nothing (Eliot, 1924, p. 96). Campbell (1981) argues that “the theatre cannot gear its production to actual audiences”, as only the “finest and most appreciative of abstract audiences for that play” (p. 152) can properly grasp its meaning. For him, the disparate capacities, views, and expectations of a given audience present a profound challenge to theatre as communication. Connor (1999) addresses the same issue, pointing out that if readers can disagree about the meaning of a text, then spectators are even less likely to agree on what a given performance means (p. 417). Unlike Campbell, however, she regards this diversity as enriching, concluding that meanings “develop from co-production with spectators as subjects” (p. 426). Relevance theory provides a framework in which to begin to disentangle the overlapping and interacting, but equally vital, contributions of writer, company, and audience in making meanings.
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Furlong, Anne. "Shared communicative acts in theatre texts in performance." International Journal of Literary Linguistics 9, no. 3 (July 12, 2020): 1–23. http://dx.doi.org/10.15462/ijll.v9i3.121.
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This paper adopts a relevance theoretic approach to meaning making in theatrical texts and performances. Text-based theatrical performances are collaborative creative events, many of whose participants may never engage directly with an audience member, but all of whom are engaged in making and conveying meaning. Such texts communicate immediately to multiple audiences: readers, actors, directors, producers, and designers. They communicate less directly to the writer’s ultimate audience – the playgoer or spectator – through the medium of performance. But playgoers are not passive receptacles for interpretations distilled in rehearsal, enacted through performance, or developed in study and reflection. Rather, in the framework of communication postulated by relevance theory, the audience is an active participant in making meaning. I will briefly review a range of approaches to meaning making in theatre, and then outline my view of a relevance theoretic account of theatre texts and performances as related but distinct communicative acts. For Weimann (1992), discussing the German playwright, Heiner Müller, “language is first and foremost material with which the audience is expected to work so as to make and explore their own ‘experiences’” (p. 958). By contrast, T. S. Eliot characterised performances as ‘interruptions’ of the relationship between writer and audience; in ‘a true acting play’, he asserted, the actor added nothing (Eliot, 1924, p. 96). Campbell (1981) argues that “the theatre cannot gear its production to actual audiences”, as only the “finest and most appreciative of abstract audiences for that play” (p. 152) can properly grasp its meaning. For him, the disparate capacities, views, and expectations of a given audience present a profound challenge to theatre as communication. Connor (1999) addresses the same issue, pointing out that if readers can disagree about the meaning of a text, then spectators are even less likely to agree on what a given performance means (p. 417). Unlike Campbell, however, she regards this diversity as enriching, concluding that meanings “develop from co-production with spectators as subjects” (p. 426). Relevance theory provides a framework in which to begin to disentangle the overlapping and interacting, but equally vital, contributions of writer, company, and audience in making meanings.
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Beauchamp, Hélène. "Theatre for Young Audiences in Japan – A Canadian Perspective." Canadian Theatre Review 85 (December 1995): 29–33. http://dx.doi.org/10.3138/ctr.85.007.
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It was hot and humid in Tokyo between the 20th of July and the 4th of August 1995 – usual weather, it seems, for that time of year – but this didn’t prevent 17,000 spectators from coming to see 70 Japanese companies perform 76 different productions during the Festival organized by jienkyo – the Japan Union of Theatre Companies for Children and Young People – on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of its foundation. Four companies were also invited from abroad – from Sweden, Germany, the US and Quebec/Canada. Dynamo Theatre from Quebec presented Mur Mur to appreciative and amused publics. I was given the opportunity to participate in this important event by Hijikata Yohei and his company Seinen Gekijo. Founded in 1964, it produces work for young and adult audiences. As the guest of Seinen Gekijo, I had the opportunity to meet with local representatives of the All Japan Association of Children’s Theatre Spectators in Sakura, one hour by train away from the centre of Tokyo. Founded in 1974, the association is active in all of the 47 urban and rural prefectures of Japan. Its membership, exceeding 500,000, is comprised of parents (mainly mothers) and children. It exists “to contribute to the sound growth of children through their appreciation of excellent live theatre arts and through the development of a children’s independent and creative cultural movement.” I was also welcomed by Enkyoren – the Japan Educational Drama Association – with some of whose members I discussed the state of the teaching of theatre and drama in primary and high schools.
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Schneider, Robert, and Nathan Schneider. "A Dive and a Dance with Kabuki Vaudeville: Taishū Engeki Comes Back!" New Theatre Quarterly 36, no. 3 (August 2020): 256–71. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0266464x20000470.
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Taishū engeki occupies a niche in Japanese popular theatre between the all-male troupes of state-subsidized Kabuki and the highly commercial, all-female troupes of the Takarazuka Revue. Its origins are disputed: while some scholars trace it back to the thirteenth century, others say it is mostly a post-war phenomenon. Family-based, itinerant troupes comprising both sexes book theatres for a month at a time. They live in the theatre, sleeping onstage or in the house. They perform twice daily for largely working-class audiences. Tickets are cheap, but troupes supplement their box office with merchandise sales and with generous tips which patrons deliver in mid-performance. The form draws heavily on onnagata performance in Kabuki, less heavily on the otokoyaku (women in men’s roles) of the Takarazuka Revue. In taishū engeki, however, actors of both sexes often cross-dress with star performers appearing en homme and en femme in quick succession. Like vaudeville, whose demise was repeatedly announced in the early decades of the last century, taishū engeki has often been pronounced dead. Yet despite its notorious geriatric core audience, there are signs that taishū engeki is coming back. Robert Schneider is an Associate Professor of Theatre and Dance at Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, Illinois. He is also a playwright and translator whose articles and reviews have appeared in the New York Times, American Theatre, and Plays International & Europe. Nathan Schneider is a writer and translator who lives in Tokyo.
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Samitov, Dmitry G. "THE FIRST REGIONAL THEATRES OF THE UNITED STATES AS AN ALTERNATIVE TO BROADWAY COMMERCIALISM." Vestnik Tomskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta. Kul'turologiya i iskusstvovedenie, no. 40 (2020): 190–96. http://dx.doi.org/10.17223/22220836/40/16.
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The article aims to draw attention to the problem of the emergence and development of creative troupes of a new type. Non-profit theatres became noticeable to the public after a ten-year dominance of Broadway productions played on stages of American the ater. Contrary to Broadway and its commercialism non-profit theatres turned to art, becoming its alternative. The venues mostly performed musicals, uncomplicated comedies, musical shows. Huge halls, high ticket prices led to the fact that the theatre turned to a major business. The desire of theatrical figures to realize their creative powers in the art theatre led many of them to the idea of creating their own companies in opposition to the Broadway theatre in many regions of the United States. It was the nascence of the movement of non-profit theatres that became an alternate to Broadway commercialism, attracted all the new creative forces of the American theatre. Analyzing the activities of number of non-profit theatres such as Cleveland Playhouse, Arena Stage, Alley Theater, the conclusion was made that they all played an important role in the development of the movement of the regional theatres of the United States. The famous “Arena Stage” Theatre, like other regional theaters, developed traditions of non-profit theatres of the USA, including the ideas of “little” and “arti” theatres. The study of non-commercial drama theatres in the United States is relevant for modern Russia. Exploring the process of evolution of noncommercial companies the author concluded that the theatre is primarily a creative, artistic institution, that is to be valued precisely for its contribution and influence on the spiritual life of the audience.
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Wartemann, Geesche. "“Not All Performing Is Acting”1: Models of Theatre as Research in Contemporary Theatre for Young Audiences." Youth Theatre Journal 27, no. 2 (July 2013): 121–29. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08929092.2013.837700.
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O’donnell, Darren. "The Talking Creature: Adventures with Audiences." Canadian Theatre Review 119 (June 2004): 13–15. http://dx.doi.org/10.3138/ctr.119.003.
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The Talking Creature was the inaugural event held by my theatre company, Mammalian Diving Reflex, in our new program, SocialCapital. SocialCapital is a wing of the company dedicated to stripped-down research, experimentation, discussion and artistic forms that, as yet, remain off the radar of traditional theatre and performance practices. The Talking Creature was an experiment in trying to isolate two core elements in the theatrical experience: talking and strangers. Standing in front of an audience of people you don’t know or, at least, don’t know very well and establishing an open channel for the transmission of ideas is, in my experience, nerve-wracking. There is a tendency to imagine the audience is thinking the worst, that they are aware of your every mistake and are there to judge you as harshly as you judge yourself. Or if, on the other hand, you happen to have an overabundance of confidence, you run the risk of trying to dazzle, and this also rules out an open conduit of communication. I confess to oscillating between these two tendencies. The Talking Creature required humility, confidence, talking and listening; arguably, the four cardinal points in almost all theatre.
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Makarova, A. "No, It’s All Wrong! Director’s Theatre in Opera: Fidelity to the Work, Fidelity to the Audience." Versus 2, no. 6 (September 18, 2023): 95–108. http://dx.doi.org/10.58186/2782-3660-2022-2-6-95-108.
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The article is dedicated to the emergence and development of the phenomenon of interpretive theatre direction in opera as an art form. The author investigates the historical roots of director’s theater in relation to opera, the inevitable interaction of theatre and society, and the audience’s experience in relation to comfort and discomfort. Various aspects of the relevance of interpretive opera direction are presented to the reader. Discussions of the ways in which direction and the theater and music industries have developed show the problems of opera as a theatrical form. The article analyzes the cultural differences in the existence of director’s theater based on the demands of the state, society, and existing theatrical traditions. It offers an overview of the fundamental trends and a gallery of the most important personalities in the history of director’s theater. In the final part of the article, the author provides a forecast for the future.
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Plowright, Poh Sim. "The Birdwoman and the Puppet King: a Study of Inversion in Chinese Theatre." New Theatre Quarterly 13, no. 50 (May 1997): 106–18. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0266464x0001099x.
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Poh Sim Plowright recently spent six weeks in Quanzhou, in the Fujian Province of China, watching the puppeteers, actors, and audiences of her native Fujian theatre tradition. Here she was able to observe at first hand the principle of inversion that, she believes, underlies all Chinese theatre: and in the following article she argues that this principle is clearly illustrated by the string puppet and human theatres of Quanzhou, whose origins can be traced to the official ‘Pear Garden Theatre’ set up in the eighth century by the Tang Emperor, Ming Huang. Theatre in this part of South China is, Plowright suggests, living testimony to the continuing basis of Chinese theatre in the practice of ancestor worship, through which most performances become sacrificial offerings – a connection she believes Brecht to have missed in his celebrated confrontation with Chinese acting techniques in Moscow in 1935. Poh Sim Plowright is Lecturer in Oriental Drama and Director of the Noh Centre in the Department of Drama, Theatre, and Media Arts at Royal Holloway, University of London. She is the author of a book on the Noh, and also of several plays and features on theatrical subjects for BBC Radio Three.
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Wolf, Stacy. "Talking About Pornography, Talking About Theatre: Ethnography, Critical Pedagogy, and the Production of ‘Educated’ Audiences ofEtta Jenksin Madison." Theatre Research International 19, no. 1 (1994): 29–36. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0307883300018794.
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Theatre studies and anthropology have much to say to each other. Both are disciplines which describe a culture's practices through its performances, whether on stage or in everday life. Both seek to explain the significance of performative choices in their reflection, refraction, and revision of cultural values. This essay participates in the conversations between theatre and anthropology through critical pedagogical theory. It looks at a theatrical performance—a production ofEtta Jenksat the University Theatre at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in February 1992—in anthropological terms, to consider the relationships between theatre, the university, and the production of politicized, educated, emancipated spectators.My first assumption is methodological—that theatre studies can greatly benefit from a consideration of anthropological tools like ethnography, and from anthropological habits like a vigilant articulation of the participant-observer stance which theatre criticism masks. My second assumption is theoretical—that theatre spectators are active producers of meaning, and that reception studies offers a significant and rich area for theatre studies. An anthropological perspective enables me to choose a local site—a university theatre—which theatre studies tends to relegate to a dismissable amateurism, and to work with the perceptions of introductory level students—which scholarly theatre studies all but ignores. My third assumption is pedagogical—that critical literacy must now move beyond print literacy.1James Clifford reminds us that all ethnographic accounts are created by ‘powerful “lies” of exclusion and rhetoric'.2In my attempt, here, to fashion a persuasive text which invites the reader in, I knowingly rewrite the students’ responses toEtta Jenksin my analysis of their reception.
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Ojoniyi, Bode. "Postdigital theatre: Beyond digital alienation of live theatre on the Nigerian performance space." Nigeria Theatre Journal: A Journal of the Society of Nigeria Theatre Artists 23, no. 2 (March 7, 2024): 161–75. http://dx.doi.org/10.4314/ntj.v23i2.5.
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The challenges of studies in humanities in the wake of the ongoing digital revolution in science and technology sum up the crisis of the place of live theatre in response to skit making on social media apart from the traditional film medium like cinemas and home videos. There are perhaps arguments around the presumed effectiveness of digital theatre in terms of its ability to reach wider audiences across the globe at once through the deployment of technology. Nevertheless, it is clear from my experience of live theatre as recent as May 15 and June 19 2022 by the House of Arimata Theatre Studio in Osogbo, that digital theatre cannot take the place of a live theatre. The communal ritual essence of live theatre, its liminal phases, the necessary separation, the shattering of the performers in the limen, their re-assemblage/merging with the audience, and the communal re-emergence with a new consciousness, all in the transitions and the festivity of a live theatre, cannot be captured in/by a digital theatre. Thus, the lacuna is clear even in the rate at which humanity is commoditised with its knowledge and cultural productions monetised in most digital theatre productions. It is on the basis of the argument of postdigitalism that this paper uses direct observation and historical-analytic methods to argue that while live theatre retains the power to humanise through communal participation, digital theatre can only continue to commoditise/zombiefy humanity with its focus on traffic generation and advert placements essentially for materialism.
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Moher, Frank, Connie Gault, Bruce McManus, and Anne Nothof. "The Third Ascent, Sky, The Chinese Man Said Goodbye." Canadian Theatre Review 63 (June 1990): 70–72. http://dx.doi.org/10.3138/ctr.63.010.
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Since its founding in September 1987, Blizzard Publishing of Winnipeg has published a dozen new Canadian plays, among which are The Third Ascent by Frank Moher, Sky by Connie Gault, and The Chinese Man Said Goodbye by Bruce McManus. All three are by Western Canadian playwrights, and all were first produced in the Prairie provinces: The Third Ascent at Theatre Network, Edmonton, in January, 1988; Sky at 25th Street Theatre, Saskatoon, in February, 1989, and then at Theatre Network in March, 1989 as part of the Carlton Theatre Trail exchange of plays; The Chinese Man Said Goodbye at Prairie Theatre Exchange, Winnipeg, in February, 1989. The Third Ascent was also produced by the Prairie Theatre Exchange in November 1989, and its publication by Blizzard coincided with its production, thus fulfilling Blizzard’s commitment to make available to students and teachers of drama the text of current theatre productions. This theatre and publishing network in the West benefits playwrights and audiences.
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Asst. Prof. Hadeel Aziz Mohammed Ridha, (Ph.D.) * and Prof Salih M. Hameed (Ph.D.). "Re-entering the Absurd in the Twenty First Century: A Study in Richard Nelson's Pandemic Trilogy The Apple Family." International Journal for Humanities & Social Sciences (IJHS), no. 1 (June 30, 2023): 6–13. http://dx.doi.org/10.69792/ijhs.23.1.2.
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Since the Middle Ages, drama has started as a simple wagon in the market-place with unprofessional actors who acted occasionally to serve religion\the Church. By later centuries, dramatic actions steadily developed; and their growing popularity encouraged the construction of theatre buildings to host the increasing numbers of the audiences. Hence the simple facts about drama have therefore been settled: no audience or drama student can ever imagine these facts would ever change, until Covid-19 has unexpectedly undermined the drama simple facts as well as radically changed that. Concerning theatre, the current situations, however, have forced drama to evolve without actors appearing physically onstage. As a communal act, the theatre can hardly stop: human communication is one haven of man to escape one's loneliness, but such need is not expected to be part of man's surroundings. Hence, when drama resumes work, it does so cautiously. Richard Nelson's postmodern play, The Apple Family: A Pandemic Trilogy, is a play that is acted through Zoom screens, utilizing the cyberspace instead ofم the theatre. The curtains are replaced by a "sign out" or the dimming of the screen of the character. Characters chat through those screens, no more "aside" or audience-actor interaction. Theatre has become cinema-like in that it lost the physical existence of both actors and audience. There is no action as the plays remind us of Becket, Ionesco and Pinter. The post-war depression and dehumanization that led to the emergence of the absurd is happening all over again with COVID-19.
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Iacobuţe, Ramona-Petronela. "Theater Festivals - a Collective Archive." Theatrical Colloquia 9, no. 2 (December 1, 2019): 216–23. http://dx.doi.org/10.2478/tco-2019-0028.
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Abstract Theatre can also be viewed as a collective archive that we go to when we need to better understand the world around us, artistic movements and trends, the state of mankind. Each participant in a theatrical act, whether spectator or creator, loads it with emotions and, therefore, with memories. Theatre, in all its forms, strengthens communities, and theatre festivals are a very good opportunity to popularize theatrical productions, from the level of some small communities, to the macro level. Diversity is an essential ingredient for stimulating imagination and a better understanding of an area of interest. This is why a theatre festival with international coverage, such as the International Theatre Festival for Young Audiences in Iasi (FITPTI), should make for its audience as many referrals as possible to the context and artistic life of a community as a whole. In order to achieve such an objective, in addition to the scenic representations, theatrical exhibitions, book launches, interactive installations, theatrical critique seminars, residences for young playwrights, reading shows are more than necessary. If we refer to the collective memory enriched by theatre, we could say that theatre shows have a short life. But, most of the times, those that really have a major impact and their creators are also found in books. And, it is known, books have a much longer life. FITPTI organizers understood this from the beginning and gave the theatre book an important place in the event.
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Kempe, Andrew J. "Widening Participation in Theatre through ‘Relaxed Performances’." New Theatre Quarterly 31, no. 1 (January 30, 2015): 59–69. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0266464x15000068.
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In this article Andy Kempe discusses how a nationwide project has marked a significant step forward in improving access to the theatre for UK audiences who have hitherto felt largely excluded from theatre by mounting a number of ‘relaxed performances’. He makes particular reference to autistic spectrum disorders to illustrate how, in order to widen participation, theatres need to cater for a diverse range of individual needs. The article explores the challenges of catering for children and young people who may be, variously, under- or over-sensitive to sensory stimuli, in both the way performances are adapted and how the front-of-house is organized. A case study is offered of how one small regional theatre sought to address these challenges by giving a ‘relaxed performance’ of its annual pantomime. The impact of the production is considered as well as insights that have emerged from the enterprise. Andy Kempe is Professor of Drama Education and a Teaching Fellow of the University of Reading. His work with students of all ages and abilities has informed his numerous publications on a variety of issues in drama and arts education, including Drama, Disability, and Education (Routledge, 2012).
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Fanyam, Joel Avaungwa, and Bem Alfred Abugh. "Making theatre in digital spaces: The imperative of Ijov Mbakuv on social media platforms." Nigeria Theatre Journal: A Journal of the Society of Nigeria Theatre Artists 23, no. 2 (March 7, 2024): 137–46. http://dx.doi.org/10.4314/ntj.v23i2.3.
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The evolution of digital technology has affected traditional theatre practice in Tiv society just like it has done in many other African societies. Contemporary developments in theatre have marked differences from the theatre of the past due to massive revolution being witnessed in theatre practice. This is based on the changing phases of human development orchestrated by the advancement in digital and information technology around the globe. Notwithstanding is the hybridization of cultures which has brought about far reaching changing norms and forms in traditional performances of all kinds. The introduction of social media and its various platforms to society has transported traditional theatre from the local mode into a digital media which closes the barrier of distance and increases its visibility to a larger audience. Despite some limitations, the prospects are extensive. This paper considers the Tiv Ijov Mbakuv performance from its conduct in the local mode and its transmission to digital platforms on social media. The finding is that, Tiv Ijov Mbakuv performance in the digital media is not a counter-theatre but a theatre that has taken advantage of technological advancement and yet, maintaining the elements of its origin and opening the culture of a people for wider access and appreciation by varied audiences. Therefore, the paper notes that, theatre is part of society, the ever-changing nature of society also demands for changes in theatre forms so as to meet up with the yearnings and privileges of a new society. Ijov Mbakuv performance in the digital media is a response to new social demands.
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Filewod, Alan. "Celebrating Twenty Years." Canadian Theatre Review 79-80 (June 1994): 3. http://dx.doi.org/10.3138/ctr.79-80.fm.
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With these words, Don Rubin launched CTR in 1974, and twenty years later we’re still trouping on. Twenty years is a long run for a theatre magazine in Canada. In fact it’s a record. Hence this celebration issue. These past twenty years have seen vast changes in Canadian theatre; many names have come and gone, careers have started and ended, literally thousands of new plays have played to ever more demanding audiences. The topography of the theatre as a public institution has undergone radical changes since 1974. Through all these years, CTR’s successive editors have worked to be at the wavefront of change.
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Beauchamp, Hélène. "Forms and Functions of Scenography: Theatre productions for young audiences in Quebec." Canadian Theatre Review 70 (March 1992): 15–19. http://dx.doi.org/10.3138/ctr.70.003.
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Senography, the art of designing for the stage,1 has progressively acquired significance in Quebec since the 1950s, that is, since the founding of the major theatre companies in Montreal and the opening of Radio-Canada’s television studios. The growing attention paid to artistic achievements in set and costume design, the recognition of lighting design per se have had repercussions on all of the theatre productions, regardless of their genre or of their preferred audiences. Differences between the productions, then, have stemmed from the artistic choices and the ideological orientations of the companies themselves, from the specific constraints met by the scenographers (mainly touring), from financial considerations, and from the talent of the artists themselves. The history of the development of scenography in Quebec is presently being researched.2
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Sidnell, Michael J. "Where We Are Now: Festival de théâtre des Amériques, 2003." Canadian Theatre Review 117 (January 2004): 66–71. http://dx.doi.org/10.3138/ctr.117.016.
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Making its début in 1985 and continuing in alternate years, the Festival de théâtre des Amériques (FTA) was held for the tenth time in 2003. Under the direction of Marie-Hélène Falcon from the beginning, its achievements have been remarkably consistent: It has regularly brought to Montreal outstanding avant-garde directors and productions; it has included openings of some of the most renowned theatre from Quebec, including FTA co-productions and important new plays; and it has deployed not only established theatres and new ones but all manner of playing spaces, indoors and out. Falcon’s canny choices have amounted to an acute sense both of trajectories in the theatre and of the historic moments that its performers and audiences have found themselves in, socially and politically. For twenty years, the FTA has been a strategic seeing-place from which to survey our certitudes, expectations, apprehensions and ideas of community and commonality, our alliances and oppositions
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Rewa, Natalie. "Le Festival international du théâtre de jeune publics: Growing Up." Canadian Theatre Review 45 (December 1985): 44–49. http://dx.doi.org/10.3138/ctr.45.006.
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From 16 to 25 August, Parc Lafontaine, in east-end Montreal, was once again the site of the annual festival of theatre for young audiences (TYA). Outdoors, “Le Festival international du théâtre de jeunes publics du Québec” was a real celebration of entertainment for children: the open-air festival featured over 100 performances by 12 companies of tap dancers, jugglers, clowns and acrobats on two stages. Indoors, more formally, 65 full-scale performances of 13 plays by 11 companies entertained audiences in seven temporary theatres in the buildings near the park: participating were six Québécois companies and five guest troupes from Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, Edmonton, and Ottawa, all, except Small Change from Edmonton, devoted to the development of TYA. But according to festival organizers the two performance festivals are not as important as the nine-day conference for Québécois practitioners of TYA which uses the indoor festival as a point of departure for a discussion of the current state and future of TYA in Quebec.
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SEDGMAN, KIRSTY. "Audience Experience in an Anti-expert Age: A Survey of Theatre Audience Research." Theatre Research International 42, no. 3 (October 2017): 307–22. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0307883317000608.
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Researchers who seek to capture and analyse audiences’ responses are facing a dilemma. In a political climate beleaguered by efforts to delegitimize expertise, what are the implications for a research tradition that seeks to understand cultural value from a range of diverse perspectives? In light of visibility generated by the 2009 publication of Helen Freshwater's Theatre & Audience and the subsequent launch in January 2017 of the international Network for Audience Research in the Performing Arts (iNARPA), the time seems ripe for a detailed critical overview of the audience studies discipline as it has been applied to theatre. In providing that survey, this article contends that the early decades of the new millennium have seen research into arts participation becoming trapped between two colliding agendas. Whereas on the one hand there is a growing pressure to celebrate cultural engagement in all its contradictory forms, there has on the other hand been a simultaneous imperative within the arts to push back against the encroaching de-hierarchization of cultural value beyond critical and scholarly perspectives. By revealing the potentials for and limitations of the field, this article queries how future audience research projects might productively investigate audience experience without diminishing the legitimacy of expert knowledge.
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Ayres, Peter. "Shakespeare in St John’s." Canadian Theatre Review 54 (March 1988): 34–38. http://dx.doi.org/10.3138/ctr.54.007.
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Shakespeare, like everything else, is different in Newfoundland. Most notably Shakespeare is important in a way that he seldom seems to be elsewhere. People like Shakespeare, produce Shakespeare, and go to Shakespeare, not because plays are presented under the sanctified auspices of a mass-audience Shakespearean festival in a place inevitably called Stratford, or because they are being done in fringe productions by terribly exciting experimental directors, but because they are good entertainment, good theatre, and good box-office. Within the last twelve months in St John’s, there have been four significant Shakespearean productions, all of them reasonably successful in attracting the audiences, and sustaining the enthusiasm, that support and have supported a number of different traditions of Shakespearean production in St John’s over a considerable period of time. Interesting as productions in their own right, and as approaches to the larger issues of Shakespearean production, they also provide a microcosm of the larger world of theatre in St John’s.
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Miles, Patrick. "Cheshire Cats in the Theatre: a Translator and the Fringe Experience." New Theatre Quarterly 16, no. 4 (November 2000): 359–63. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0266464x0001410x.
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In February 1999 Patrick Miles's adaptation of Chekhov's Ivanov as Sara opened at a prestigious London fringe theatre, the Bridewell – to a review from The Times largely devoted to the omission of Chekhov's name from the programme. Here, Miles, relates the circumstances (not all accidental) which led to that omission, the consequences that flowed from it in terms of poor audiences and company disharmony – and how such an apparently random happening is also representative of a typology of the fringe which warrants more sustained investigation. Patrick Miles was Russian literary consultant at the National Theatre from 1977 to 1980, and has translated Turgenev, Chekhov, Gorky, Bulgakov, and Vampilov for various theatre companies. He is editor of Chekhov on the British Stage (Cambridge, 1993) and translator of Anatoly Smeliansky's The Russian Theatre after Stalin (Cambridge, 1999).
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Page, Malcolm. "The Growth of Professional Theatre in Vancouver, 1963-1999." Canadian Theatre Review 101 (January 2000): 15–18. http://dx.doi.org/10.3138/ctr.101.003.
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The Canada Council congratulated itself on a decade of growth in its 1961/62 annual report. In ten years, Mark Czarnecki summarized, “huge strides . . . had been taken, among them the founding of Stratford Festival in 1953 and the establishment of Winnipeg’s Manitoba Theatre Centre in 1958” (35). Similarly, Tom Henighan, in Ideas of North, asserts, “after the Massey-Levesque Report, the creation of the Canada Council, and the founding of the Stratford Festival, all in the 1950’s, Canadian professional theatre began to come of age” (42). Vancouver saw neither strides nor a coming of age. The fifties in the city saw the death of Everyman, the birth and death of Totem, the forming of Floliday (theatre for young audiences) and, a little later, the death of Theatre under the Stars.
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Hatley, Barbara. "Contemporary Indonesian Theatre in the Regions: Stage Idiom and Social Referentiality." Theatre Research International 19, no. 1 (1994): 17–28. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0307883300018782.
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In 1973, the poet and essayist Goenawan Mohamad wrote a lengthy and incisive defence of contemporary Indonesian theatre (that is to say, modern, Indonesian language plays of roughly the mid-60s onwards) against the complaints of its critics.1 The lack of dramatic and psychological development noted in many plays, the sketchy scripts, bizarre dramatic happenings, showy settings and inappropriate mixture of comic and serious elements—all of these purported ‘faults’, in Goenawan's view, were associated with the great strength of contemporary Indonesian theatre, its concern with the process of performance, and with intimate communication with its audiences. Previous playwrights had written worthy, wordy ‘schoolroom’ dramas, and members of a small European-educated élite performed them, for an amorphous, universal ‘general public’. Their view that the current minority position of modern theatre would strengthen as Indonesian society became better educated, at the same time revealed a sense of distance between plays and their public. But for the new breed of playwrights, people like Rendra, Arifin Noer and Putu Wijaya, who directed and performed in their own plays and were fully involved in the totality of production,2 there was no such gap. Spectacle and humour, colloquial, everyday language, and the improvisatory possibilities of sketchy scripts, served to entertain, engage and involve audiences drawn from a particular sector of society. Theatre audiences were identified by Goenawan as overwhelmingly young, educated but not used to reading. They had been brought up in a ‘post-literate’ culture of radio, television and film, influenced in some ways, certainly in its group-oriented entertainment habits, by the ‘pre-literate’ aural-oral regional cultures of their parents.
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Skjoldager-Nielsen, Daria. "Theatre Talks." Nordic Theatre Studies 33, no. 2 (June 17, 2022): 58–71. http://dx.doi.org/10.7146/nts.v33i2.132872.
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Almost each year, the pop-cultural world is buzzing with a “new” Nordic word that can bring a piece of Nordic life to every home. Lagom, fika, fredagsmys or hygge - they all refer to slowness, break, taking a moment to feel good and happy, being considerate. Those concepts are believed to be a Nordic approach to life - and a very desirable one.When I think of theatre in this context, one Nordic invention comes to my mind: theatre talks, which emerged as an audience reception research method in Sweden. They proved to be an effective audience development practice (even for non-theatregoers) in Australia (Scollen), Denmark (Hansen; Lindelof), and Poland (Rapior) because (among other things) they bring the element of pleasure, community building, and feeling safe into the theatre experience especially for non-attenders.In this article I will focus on looking at theatre as a possible “oasis of deceleration” in the constantly accelerating world, using Hartmut Rosa’s theory of social acceleration. By going through the development of theatre talks, I will demonstrate what theatres can gain from using this method - both in attendance and image. I will deliberate on how theatre can become a metaphorically “hyggelig” place for anybody during times when everybody ought to live faster and faster.
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Md Khir, Roselina Johari. "Developing Theatre for the Young in Malaysia: Benefits and Challenges." Jurai Sembah 1, no. 1 (June 16, 2020): 1–7. http://dx.doi.org/10.37134/juraisembah.vol1.1.1.2020.
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This study investigates how young people in Malaysia enjoy theatre or find it relevant at all in the era of television, films and technology. The research was done using three approaches: A Naturalistic Inquiry methodology where the research was done at site which is in Kinabatangan, in East Malaysia with 25 young people to develop a script; a creative arts methodology was done in the studio where the script was explored and developed into a performance; the last phase of the research used a primary qualitative methodology to explore how young audiences watch theatre in which the research instruments used were questionnaires and open-ended interviews. There were 9 respondents from a Primary School and 23 respondents from a secondary School. This research that came out of the practice, enabled the researcher to investigate children’s life experiences and listen to themThe knowledge gathered is that the young in Malaysia are definitely excited about theatre which communicates to them and which has aesthetic, entertaining, imaginative and educational merits. The research connected the young in East Malaysia as participants who contributed to the script with the young in West Malaysia who performed it and young audiences who watched it.
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Avram, Cristi. "Theatre for Young Audiences – 3 Texts Mihai Ignat – Selma Dragoş – Andrei Ursu." Theatrical Colloquia 8, no. 2 (December 1, 2018): 401–9. http://dx.doi.org/10.2478/tco-2018-0030.
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Abstract This article surprises some thoughts and ideas about the volume Teatru pentru publicul tânăr – 3 texte (Theatre for Young Audiences – 3 Texts), published by Editura Timpul, in October 2018. This book contains texts signed by three young playwrights, Mihai Ignat, Selma Dragoş and Andrei Ursu, who wrote plays for youths “of all ages”, as Oltiţa Cîntec warns us in the Preface. The plays are part of a residence program, a partnership between three institutions in Iaşi, and are extremely different as genre and yet contemporary. My review follows exactly these aspects and a personal interpretation of the messages, situations and characters.
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Cornici, Antonella. "3. National Theatre Live. The Beginning of a Revolution." Review of Artistic Education 25, no. 1 (March 1, 2023): 120–25. http://dx.doi.org/10.2478/rae-2023-0017.
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Abstract In June 2009 at the initiative of Royal National Theatre in London, National Theatre Live appeared – a revolutionary project through which theatre performances are live streamed. The first one was Phedra69 by Racine. The show was live streamed in 73 movie theatres from Great Britain and in 200 others all over the world. The broadcasting was a great success about which The Guardian wrote: “The main lesson is that a theatre production can be made democratically available to a mass audience without any loss of quality. For generations we have been told that the theatre is elitist. Last night it was shown that a supposedly difficult classical tragedy can speak simultaneously to people across the globe… this is only the beginning of a revolution in making theatre available in ways of which we had never dreamed.”70 For more than 13 years, The National Theatre of London has been live streaming its shows, at the moment having over 5.5 million spectators and being present in over 5000 locations all around the world.
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Brewster, Yvonne. "Drawing the Black and White Line: Defining Black Women's Theatre." New Theatre Quarterly 7, no. 28 (November 1991): 361–68. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0266464x00006060.
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Yvonne Brewster is best known in Britain as artistic director of Talawa Theatre, but she has also been active in the theatres of Jamaica, Africa, and America, having worked as a drama teacher, television production assistant and presenter, and film director in Jamaica before beginning her international theatre directing career. Talawa was founded in 1985 by four women, with Yvonne Brewster as director, and with the aim of using ‘the ancient African ritual and black political experience of our forebears to inform, enrich, and enlighten British theatre’. Although Talawa has as yet been unable to give the work of black women writers the attention it deserves, the company is itself primarily female: the artistic director and the majority of employees are women, all the designers to date have been women, and so predominantly are the technical and stage management staff. A medium- to large-scale touring company, Talawa worked without a building base until 1991, when the Jeanetta Cochrane Theatre became its home. Yvonne Brewster has directed all Talawa's work to date, focusing primarily on productions of the classics with black performers and on introducing the work of black playwrights to British audiences. Her productions have included The Black Jacobins by C. L. R. James (1985–86), An Echo in the Bone by Dennis Scott (1986–87), O Babylon! by Derek Walcott (1987–88), Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest (1988–89), The Gods Are Not to Blame by Ola Rotimi (1989–90), The Dragon Can't Dance by Earl Lovelace (1990–91), and Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra (1991–92). Yvonne Brewster is also the editor of Methuen's two volumes of Black Plays (1987 and 1989). Here she is interviewed by Lizbeth Goodman, who has just completed her doctoral dissertation on women's theatre in Britain at Cambridge, and is currently working with the Open University.
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Vandenbroucke, Russell. "Making Theatre during COVID-19." Harold Pinter Review 5, no. 1 (May 1, 2021): 17–27. http://dx.doi.org/10.5325/haropintrevi.5.2021.0017.
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ABSTRACT Social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic prevents audiences and actors from interacting in what used to be the normal way of making and sharing productions. Actors, directors, and designers faced numerous challenges throughout rehearsals while creating “something-that-isn't-exactly-theatre” to livestream Athol Fugard's Statements after an Arrest under the Immorality Act. Focused on an interracial affair obliterated by South Africa's apartheid laws, Fugard's drama eerily evokes dynamics in today's America: structural racism; government regulation of private behavior; the chasms of understanding—even those we love—across lines of race; all of which occurred against the backdrop of Breonna Taylor's killing in Louisville, the city where the actors and directors had first met and worked together. While most of these dynamics were familiar to us, the novel challenges of virtual work were not. However, by the end of rehearsals, tech, and two virtual performances we had learned to appreciate intrinsic attributes of this new form.
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Krstić, Nataša. "А New Theatre Experience: Page Experience Signals." AM Journal of Art and Media Studies, no. 26 (October 15, 2021): 129–41. http://dx.doi.org/10.25038/am.v0i26.476.
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In the digital age struggling with the pandemic, theatres strive to gain new and retain old audiences by providing user experiences online. Information about events, electronic ticket purchasing, and live streaming require improved website functionality, where Page Experience Signals, the latest practice recommended by Google, have been gaining importance. As part of this research, five experiential signals were analyzed on a sample consisting of 18 Belgrade theatres’ homepages: Core Web Vitals, Mobile-friendliness, Safe browsing, Secure connection, and the absence of intrusive interstitials. All analyzed websites were found to provide safe internet search and generally did not contain disruptive content on their homepages. Given that an increasing number of visitors are using mobile devices to search for and purchase tickets, several theatres should pay attention to the need to optimize their website for mobile visits, and to secure the data transfer protocol. In addition, common weaknesses in the theatres’ Page Experience Signals were highlighted – the slow homepage loading performance and achieving their visual stability; the webmasters were also given proposals on overcoming them during the transition period after the algorithm change. The recommendation for future research is to assess at the end of 2021 whether the Page Experience Signals of the Belgrade theatres have contributed positively or negatively to their organic search performance on Google.
Article received: June 3, 2021; Article accepted: June 23, 2021; Published online: October 15; Original scholarly article
How to cite this article: Krstić, Nataša. "А New Theatre Experience: Page Experience Signals." AM Journal of Art and Media Studies 26 (October 2021): 129-141. doi: 10.25038/am.v0i26.476
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Saddlemyer, Ann, and John Ripley. "Early Stages: Theatre in Ontario 1800-1914." Canadian Theatre Review 72 (September 1992): 82–83. http://dx.doi.org/10.3138/ctr.72.018.
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Early Stages, the eighth theme study in The Ontario Historical Studies Series, explores in six thoughtful essays the evolution of Ontario theatre from 1800 to 1914. Historian J.M.S. Careless sets the stage with a background study titled “The Cultural Setting: Ontario Society to 1914”, in which he analyses the role played by “the growth of settlement, the rise of towns and cities, constant improvements in communications by land and water, and the sweep of technological advance”, all of which created the conditions which made theatrical activity viable. Leslie O’Dell chronicles the activities of the regimental theatrical troupes which, between 1815 and 1870, provided the garrison towns of Kingston, London, and Toronto with a major source of entertainment. Robertson Davies surveys the theatrical menu offered audiences, reminding us that “the hopes and the fears and the unfocused terrors of our forebears show through the lace curtains of their plays as they do not always show through their novels or their poetry”. In upholstered productions of Shakespeare, costume dramas, melodramas, comedies old and new, farces, and operas grand, light, and bouffe, Ontario entertainment proclaimed at once its bourgeois prejudices and its kinship with the age. The bulk of theatrical performances were provided by touring companies, and Mary M. Brown casts a knowledgeable eye over the circuits, proprietors of local theatres, itinerant actor-managers, and the stars, native and foreign, who were at the heart of the system. Gerald Lenton-Young, in a remarkably well-researched and informative piece, ventures into the neglected field of variety, which, in the early decades of this century, serviced in Toronto an audience five times larger than that of the legitimate theatre (183,000 weekly capacity as compared with the legitimate theatre’s 35,000). His account of the puppet shows, panoramas, menageries and circuses, minstrel acts, dime museums, burlesque and, latterly, vaudeville extravaganzas offers a welcome antidote to the pervasive overemphasis by historians on Canada’s legitimate theatre. The volume’s final study, Robert Fairfield’s record of Ontario’s major theatres and performance halls over a 140-year period, is statistically satisfying, yet wonderfully readable. We come away with a solid sense of construction costs, architectural styles, the size and seating arrangements of auditoria, the depth, breadth, and height of stage areas. Even sanitary facilities (or, more often, the lack of them) are not overlooked.
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COX, EMMA. "Victimhood, Hope and the Refugee Narrative: Affective Dialectics in Magnet Theatre'sEvery Year, Every Day, I Am Walking." Theatre Research International 37, no. 2 (May 3, 2012): 118–33. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s030788331200003x.
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Contemporary theatricalized refugee narratives are often understood to communicate the profound trauma associated with forced displacement, even as this trauma is made ‘meaningful’ or ‘recognizable’ to audiences by the identification, however nebulous, of hope. This article examines some of the ways in which an affective dialectic of victimhood and hope functions inEvery Year, Every Day, I Am Walking(2006–), a small-scale international touring work directed by Mark Fleishman and produced by Cape Town-based Magnet Theatre. Paying attention to questions of narrative and performative form, I investigate how, and for whom, victimhood and hope function in and through the work, constructing its emotional and political tensions. I trace some of the conditions of its circulation, with particular emphasis on its transnational work with respect to a metropolitan audience at London's Oval House Theatre in 2010. In this, my purpose is to probe the question of who is served (as well as who is implicated and mobilized) by refugee narratives that may occupy all too easily a generalized geopolitical imaginary: ‘far from here’.
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Na-pombejra, Dangkamon. "Confronting Otherness through Theatre: On Directing The Merchant of Venice for Thai Audiences." Manusya: Journal of Humanities 23, no. 3 (December 23, 2020): 335–51. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/26659077-02303004.
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Abstract This article analyzes on a new directorial approach to Venice Vanija (เวนิสวาณิช), a Thai version of William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice (written 1596–99) and translated by King Rama vi (r. 1910–1925). It aimed to create a new space and new rules that would encourage Thai audiences to embrace new perspectives by watching the performance. The production was directed by the author in 2018 in the Department of Dramatic Arts in the Faculty of Arts at Chulalongkorn University. The directing approach focused on the play’s famous line “all that glitters is not gold;” (Act ii, scene vii, line 65), and stressed how struggles between majorities and “the Other” are connected to identity conflicts that contrast with tensions with other people and conflicts within the whole community. The above focus was elaborated by using alienation effects, including a grotesque modern fairytale-like look, a nearly all-female cast, a distinctive traverse stage and set design, effeminate costumes for male characters portrayed by actresses, and mixed acting techniques. The director achieved his goals by concentrating on the message and the main conflicts in the play, transforming “aliens into the allies” through using good surprises and friendly attacks, and respecting every party.
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Green, Reina. "The Challenges of Park Performance: Pericles in Halifax’s Point Pleasant." Canadian Theatre Review 128 (September 2006): 47–52. http://dx.doi.org/10.3138/ctr.128.010.
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As Peter Brook notes, any space can be a theatre. He writes, “I can take any empty space and call it a bare stage. A man walks across this empty space while someone else is watching him, and this is all that is needed for an act of theatre to be engaged” (9). While theatre can happen anywhere, the space in which theatre occurs is one of the most crucial defining aspects of theatre production. As Ric Knowles argues, a theatre space may appear empty before a performance, but it is never empty of meaning (63). The physical characteristics of that space and the macro- and micro-cultures within which it is situated inform the understanding of that space for both audience and theatre company. Despite the growing awareness of the importance of theatre space, there has been little scholarly examination of the influence of space on theatre production and audience perception (Knowles 67), and there has been virtual silence on the influence of open-air staging. However, more people will see a performance of one of Shakespeare’s plays in an open-air theatre than in any other venue (Heatley 65).1 One of the most popular outdoor theatres in Canada is Halifax’s Shakespeare by the Sea (SBTS), which uses the Cambridge Battery in Halifax’s Point Pleasant Park as its main playing space, and the influence of that space on the company and on its 2005 production of Pericles is what I wish to consider here.
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Bickis, Heidi. "Expanding the Margins of Our Narrative: A Review." Canadian Theatre Review 125 (January 2006): 124–28. http://dx.doi.org/10.3138/ctr.125.022.
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The anthologies and plays reviewed here offer some exciting possibilities as to how theatre can deal with tragic historical events, interrogate fixed identities, open up new narratives and challenge audiences to look at Canadian theatre and Canada in a different way. Although the plays vary in subject and style, all, in one way or another, are indicative of how Canadian theatre is being influenced by what Northrop Frye refers to as “a post-national consciousness,” a notion Damiano Pietropaolo uses in his preface to Where Is Here? The Drama of Immigration. In this new collection, Pietropaolo has anthologized twelve original radio dramas commissioned by CBC’s national radio drama program, Sunday Showcase. The plays featured tell a wealth of different stories on the theme of immigration, all of which draw attention to the way place informs the immigrant experience and identity. A Terrible Truth, a two-volume anthology of Holocaust drama compiled by Irene Watts, which includes a significant Canadian representation, raises questions about how, and even if, theatre should respond to a tragedy as incomprehensible as the Holocaust. Contextualized in Kertzer’s thorough introduction, the varying plays featured in these two volumes touch on many different aspects of the Holocaust and challenge the audience with questions that seem unanswerable. In The Plum Tree, Mitch Miyagawa confronts the past in this play about the effects of the forced internment on several generations of a Japanese-Canadian family. Lastly, in China Doll, Marjorie Chan uses the tradition of foot-binding to bring to life the story of a young girl caught in the social and political changes taking place in early-twentieth-century China.
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Qamaniq, David, and Cindy Cowan. "On Independence and Survival." Canadian Theatre Review 73 (December 1992): 18–21. http://dx.doi.org/10.3138/ctr.73.006.
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In 1986 a group of eight people formed Tunooniq Theatre in Pond Inlet. They performed their first play, Changes to international audiences at Expo ‘86 in Vancouver. Since then they have become northern Canada’s most famous theatre company. David Qamaniq, one of those eight founding members, is currently writing a new play for Tunooniq. By phone in Pond Inlet to Cindy Cowan in Pangnirtung, he talked with CTR about his work. The interview was recorded with a microphone taped to the extension phone. Transportation and communication – the themes of Expo ‘86 where it all began for Tunooniq – take on a whole new meaning in the north!!
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Goldhill, Simon. "Reading Performance Criticism." Greece and Rome 36, no. 2 (October 1989): 172–82. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0017383500029740.
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Fred Astaire once remarked of performing in London that he knew when the end of a play's run was approaching when he saw the first black tie in the audience. Perhaps this is an American's ironic representation of the snobbishness of pre-War London (though he was the American who sang the top-hat, white tie and tails into a part of his personal image). Perhaps it is merely an accurate (or nostalgic) picture of the dress code of the audiences of the period. The very appeal to such a dress code, however – in whatever way we choose to read the anecdote – inevitably relies on a whole network of cultural ideas and norms to make its point. It implies tacitly what is easily recoverable from other sources about the theatre of the period: the expected class of the audience; the sense of ‘an evening's entertainment’ – attending the fashionable play of the season, with all the implications of the theatre as a place not merely for seeing but also for being seen; the range of subjects and characters portrayed on the London stage of the period; the role of London as a European capital of a world empire (with a particular self-awareness of itself as a capital); the expected types of narrative, events, and language, that for many modern readers could be evoked with the phrase ‘a Fred Astaire story’. If we want to understand the impact of the plays of Ibsen or Brecht or Osborne or Beckett, it cannot be merely through ‘dramatic techniques’, but must also take into account the social performance that is theatre. Ibsen's commitment to a realist aesthetic is no doubt instrumental to the impact of his plays, but it is because his (socially committed) dramas challenged the proprieties of the social event of theatre that his first reviewers were so hostile.
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Dan, Marcela Livia. "Cum a transformat pandemia artele?" Symbolon 23, SI (2022): 57–64. http://dx.doi.org/10.46522/s.2022.s1.6.
Full textAbstract:
2020 was a difficult year for all the artists as well as for the audience. The artists were forced to bring masks on stage that they would never have wanted. Many art creators have moved their shows online. The public was also affected by all this madness. The people stayed at home and paid tickets online for shows broadcasted online. For many theater makers, preserving a palpable sense of liveness was paramount in adapting a theatri-cal project for a digital medium. Plays and monologues on Zoom about lockdown life had most appreciated on the virtual space. Online plays had a lot of success in most of the countries. Some digital productions had shown impresive formal originality – such as Belarus Free Theatre’s experimental Zoom show “A School of Fools”. The conversation and subject matter has focused on the pandemic lifestyle. Many creators, however, got most excited by projects that brought theater to the digital space in unprecedented ways. Theatre has of-fered us comfort, provocation and entertainment