Search Results (17)

When it comes to acting in modern productions of Shakespeare’s plays, size is more than all talk. That is, though how much a character speaks often serves as the measure of a role’s size, “small parts” may have a lot to say—and, as it turns out, the actors playing them may have a lot (or too little) to do. Some modern approaches to dramaturgy and practice may mean that the performers playing roles not qualified as large are susceptible to isolation throughout the artistic process, possibly having reduced rehearsal time. If the number of spoken lines influences the number of rehearsal hours, an actor playing a “small part” may be at a disadvantage when it comes to opportunities for character development and the benefits of creative collaboration. (In a rehearsal process for A Midsummer Night’s Dream, for example, how active might Hippolyta’s participation be if she is not doubling as Titania?) Additionally, having fewer lines on the stage can mean inheriting more labor behind the scenes, since an available body is a valuable commodity in the economy of production (what tasks might Ursula undertake during Much Ado About Nothing?). The tension between “playing conditions” and “working conditions” in the theater is thus especially heightened for Shakespeare’s women, whose onstage existence can throw an uncanny shadow upon the offstage experiences of those who play them. Full article

Shostakovich’s direct quotation from the Odessan street song “Bagels, Buy My Bagels!” (Bubliki, kupite bubliki!) in his Second Cello Concerto Op. 126 (1966) featured an unusual style, even in relation to some of his other compositions referencing popular and Jewish music. The song is widely known as one of the icons of the Odessa underworld. Shostakovich’s use of this melody as one of the main leit-themes of the Concerto can be compared to the use by the non-Jewish Andrei Sinyavsky of the Jewish pseudonym Abram Tertz, a bandit from the Odessa underworld—the only locus of freedom to tell the truth in a totalitarian society. The time of Shostakovich’s address to this song remarkably coincided with the famous Soviet trial of Andrei Sinyavsky and Yuly Daniel in the fall of 1965 and their final sentencing (February 1966) to years in a Gulag camp. The dramaturgy of Shostakovich’s Concerto, written in the same spring of 1966, demonstrates the transformation of the theme of “Bagels” into a tragic image. The totality of circumstantial evidence suggests that this opus could be the composer’s hidden tribute to the feats of Russian heroic writers. Full article

Data now plays a central role in civic life and community practices. This has created a pressing need for new forms of translation and sense-making that can engage diverse publics. Research-based Theatre (RbT) has proven to be an effective approach to delivering qualitative data to community stakeholders. We extend this tradition by proposing “community-engaged data theatre”. This approach translates quantitative data into theatrical language to engage communities in deliberative conversations on relevant issues. Community-engaged data theatre requires bridging multiple disciplines and involves creating new definitions and shared vocabularies in discourses that formerly have had little overlap in meaning. In this article, we share key insights from our initial experiments in which we adapted quantitative and qualitative data to devise a pilot piece in collaboration with a local community partner. In this essay, we communicate our collaborative process in polyvocal, artistic form. We edit and adapt materials from our conversations and creative practices into scenes illustrating how we taught and learned from each other about data science, participatory modeling, material deliberation and Composition to pilot our lab’s first community-engaged data theatre prototype. Full article

This essay offers a critical introduction to the circulation of racial materialities, and especially whiteness, in North American and European academic contexts. It proposes that we can escape from the dominant epistemology of identity as a fixed attribute of individuals without losing the urgent and much-needed analytics of identity as social and material force. In the gap between “identity politics” and a richer critical politics of identity lies the difference between a discursive public sphere of agonistic conflict and one of potentially transformative relationality. Drawing on critical race theory and especially black radical thought, my analysis rejects the reduction of identity to discrete census categories and attempts to situate contemporary scholarly practices in the context of a planetary decolonial movement. If “identity” today is all too frequently dismissed by a methodological whiteness that strictly separates it from materiality, politics, and knowledge, then a dramaturgical or choreographic analytics of race might better address how racial materialities operate both above and below the level of individual bodies, subjects, and citizens. Synthesizing practical insights from artistic research and performing arts with critical theories of race and identity, this essay refers to some of the author’s recent personal experiences at academic events in order to describe and analyze whiteness as a form of social choreography. Full article

How is war and its consequences reflected in the theatre? How, in particular, has the Georgian theatre reacted to war, and to what degree does its presence impact Georgian theatre directors and audiences? When and under what circumstances do theatre companies stage plays on the theme of war? Since war never loses its relevance for Georgians, new texts are written continually on this topic and subsequently turned into plays, primarily by young directors. These productions grapple with the experience of war and its impact on the nation and its people, who are radically transformed by their individual histories. In addition, sometimes, they help to reveal hidden passions. Full article

The aim of the Hungarian state socialist regime to renew the operetta art manifested in the transformation of operetta-playing via the setting of its main cultural objectives. Once private theatre organizations were disbanded in 1949, newly written and composed operetta pieces had to be adjusted to meet the expectations cultivated by those responsible for the drawing up of the contemporary cultural policies, not only in terms of theme, subject, and dramaturgy but also, as productions designed for stage performance. At that time, questions regarding the realm of operetta dance and choreography arose as significant professional issues. The remarkable case of operetta dance was brought to the notice of the larger professional community by an article written by choreographer Ágnes Roboz, which was published in 1952 in the Táncművészet magazine (1951). Due to its professional nature, this magazine served as a suitable platform for the discussion of the operetta dance genre. The present study reflects upon its publications from the period between 1952 and 1956. Throughout these years, 16 articles discussing the categorization of operettas were published. I aimed to analyze these primary sources according to their genre before presenting, juxtaposing, and contextualizing them. Thus, my objective is to gain a thorough understanding and comprehensive overview of professional discussions and arguments over 1950s operetta dances and choreographies. Full article

Europe has just established the first regulation for artificial intelligences. Large technology corporations and private educational institutions are already imagining neural networks educating us. Has anyone stopped to think about who, how and for what purpose we humans are going to educate machines? The Spanish critical pedagogy research team (PEDACRI), after participating in international conferences on digital education, robotics, ethics in the metaverse and cartography of hyperreality and participating in various publications on the challenges of pedagogy and ethics in the technologisation of educational processes, reflects in this essay on the challenges and questions we need to ask ourselves to imagine the post-human or trans-human community to come. Reviewing works coming from philosophy and those plays, series and films that address the future and the relationship between humans and machines, we analyse the opportunities and threats that can humanise machines or programme them as soulless weapons, which can civilise us or return us to a state of barbarism. The word robot, let us not forget, is derived from the Polish word roboca, which means “slave”. Will we be able, as the replicant in Blade Runner wonders, to programme silence? What can philosophy and pedagogy contribute to the ethical programming of algorithms? Full article

The sustainable development of traditional diets in the tourist industry is an important issue. This article analyses the historical evolution and the opportunities for a traditional Chinese dish in tourism. Taking mandarin fish in Anhui cuisine as the research object and the world heritage site Hongcun as the case, this paper investigates the evolution process of the local traditional die driven by tourism and its influence on the construction of gourmet tourism destinations. Primary data were obtained via interview. It was found that, to cater to the mass tourists, the destination created the diet frontstage. Traditional food changed through menu simplification, taste changes, the standardization and scale of production, and the immobilization of presentation. The dieter’s frontstage and backstage are not entirely separated; the “middle stage”—Homestay diet is a fusion of them; it is the product of functional differentiation of the frontstage and active integration of the backstage. By expressing the actual state behind the scenes, the middle stage transforms the tourist system from a “supportive experience” to a “peak experience”. Full article

Intervention by First Responders (FRs) is essential in disaster response, and their preparation greatly benefits from continuous updates. However, the design of effective training experiences targeted to FRs can be very demanding from the viewpoint of a Training Provisioner (TP). Virtual Reality (VR) may have a key role to play in enhancing and facilitating this task. In fact, VR technology has already proven to be very helpful in the field of emergency training, as well as its use as a powerful design and mock-up tool in many other contexts. In this work, the application of VR as a mock-up tool supporting TPs in the arrangement and validation of a training experience, either real or virtual, is explored. In particular, a case study is considered concerning the training of an FR for hydro-geological risks. Within this context, the proposed approach is compared against dramaturgy prototyping, a method commonly used for the design of experiential courses. Results indicate that the adoption of a VR-based mock-up tool (VRMT) can provide TPs with good insights on the arrangement of the training and precious indications on how to actually map this information onto real-world exercises. Full article

The fact that an already damaged retail industry is being challenged by a pandemic makes the industry’s survival a matter of urban resilience. Sustainable and adaptive strategies are needed to reverse the negative development of the retail sector, and in this conceptual paper, a new perspective is suggested based on episodic retail settings. Such a perspective can increase a physical store’s attraction and may serve as a flexible operation strategy for urban retailers and give added value to urban consumers as they shape an ongoing dramatological discourse and facilitate social interaction in a way that traditional fixed-store formats are unable to compete with. By applying the scientific circle of enquiry (SCE), the authors develop an interdisciplinary perspective cutting across the sustainability, service science, and urban studies fields. On this ground, they present a set of conceptual premises and a tripartite conceptual framework delineating how to effectively design episodic retail settings that are adaptive and sustainable. The paper concludes with suggestions for research questions to further advance this field of study. Full article

This article considers how André De Shields performance in Hadestown (2019), and the musicals Fun Home (2015) and A Strange Loop (2019) can be seen to respond to the present moment and argues that they disrupt heteronormative temporality through queer dramaturgy. It explores musicals that present queer performativity and/or queer dramaturgies, and addresses how they enact queer strategies of resistance through historical materialist critiques of personal biographies. It suggests that to do this, they disrupt the heteronormative dramaturgical time of the musical, and considers how they may enact structural change to the form of the musical. The article carries out a close reading of De Shields’ performance practice, and analyses the dramaturgy of Fun Home and A Strange Loop through drawing on the methodologies of José Muñoz and Elizabeth Freeman. It considers how they make queer labour visible by drawing on post-dramatic strategies, ultimately suggesting that to varying extents, these musicals offer resistance to the heteronormative musical form. Full article

The design of a virtual reality (VR) cultural application is aimed at supporting the steps of the learning process-like concrete experimentation, reflection and abstraction—which are generally difficult to induce when looking at ruins and artifacts that bring back to the past. With the use of virtual technologies (e.g., holographic surfaces, head-mounted displays, motion—cation sensors) those steps are surely supported thanks to the immersiveness and natural interaction granted by such devices. VR can indeed help to symbolically recreate the context of life of cultural objects, presenting them in their original place of belonging, while they were used for example, increasing awareness and understanding of history. The ArkaeVision VR application takes advantages of storytelling and user experience design to tell the story of artifacts and sites of an important cultural heritage site of Italy, Paestum, creating a dramaturgy around them and relying upon historical and artistic content revised by experts. Visitors will virtually travel into the temple dedicated to Hera II of Paestum, in the first half of the fifth century BC, wearing an immersive viewer–HTC Vive; here, they will interact with the priestess Ariadne, a digital actor, who will guide them on a virtual tour presenting the beliefs, the values and habits of an ancient population of the Magna Graecia city. In the immersive VR application, the memory is indeed influenced by the visitors’ ability to proceed with the exploratory activity. Two evaluation sessions were planned and conducted to understand the effectiveness of the immersive experience, usability of the virtual device and the learnability of the digital storytelling. Results revealed that certainly the realism of the virtual reconstructions, the atmosphere and the “sense of the past” that pervades the whole VR cultural experience, characterize the positive feedback of visitors, their emotional engagement and their interest to proceed with the exploration. Full article

When American metaphysical religion appears onstage, it most often manifests in the subject matter and dramaturgies of experimental theater. In the artistic ferment of the 1960s and 1970s counterculture, theater-makers looked both to alternative dramaturgies and alternative religions to create radical works of political, social, and spiritual transformation. While the ritual experiments of European avant-garde artists like Artaud and Grotowski informed their work, American theater-makers also found inspiration in the dramas of Gertrude Stein, and many of these companies (the Living Theatre and the Wooster Group, most notably) either staged her work or claimed a direct influence (like Richard Foreman). Stein herself, though not a practitioner of metaphysical religion, spent formative years in Cambridge, Massachusetts, at Radcliffe under the tutelage of William James. Cambridge, at the turn of the twentieth century, was a hotbed of spiritualism, theosophy, alternative healing modalities, and James, in addition to running the psychology lab in which Stein studied, ran a multitude of investigations on extrasensory and paranormal phenomena. This article traces a web of associations connecting Ralph Waldo Emerson, Transcendentalism, and liberal Protestantism to Gertrude Stein and landscape dramaturgy to the midcentury avant-garde, the countercultural religious seeking of the 1960s and 1970s, and the Off-Off-Broadway movement. Full article

The basic idea of a hologram is an apparition of something that does not exist but appears as if it was just in front of our eyes. These illusion techniques were invented a long time ago. The philosopher and alchemist Giovanni Battista della Porta invented an effect that was later developed and brought to fame by Prof. J. H. Pepper (1821–1900) and applied in theatrical performances. The innovation nowadays consists in the adopted technology to produce them. Taking advantage of the available digital technologies, the challenge we are going to discuss is using holograms in the museum context, inside showcases, to realize a new form of scenography and dramaturgy around the exhibited objects. Case studies will be presented, with a detailed analysis of the EU project CEMEC (Connecting Early Medieval European Collections), where holographic showcases have been designed, built and experimented in EU museums. In this case, the coexistence in the same space of the real artifact and the virtual contents, and interior setup of the showcase, its dynamic lighting system, the script and the sound, converge to create an expressive unity. The reconstruction of sensory and symbolic dimensions that are ‘beyond’ any museum object can take the visitor in the middle of a lively and powerful experience with such technology, and represents an advancement in the museological sector. User experience results and a list of best practices will be presented in the second part of the paper, out of the tests and research activities conducted in these three years of the project. Full article

For most sighted people, looking into a mirror helps to consolidate a visual and spatial concept of the self. This concept connects both theoretically and substantively to other elements of identity. Similarly, observing the bodies of others plays a key role in social interaction between sighted individuals. These visual inputs offer cues to identity as perceived by other people as well as cues for responding to these attributes. Both the ability to observe bodies visually and the ability to respond psychosocially necessarily involve a variety of structures in the brain. Responses to these images were historically framed as lying outside the realm of neuroscientific inquiry. However, neurosociological inquiry has since evolved as a distinct field—one acknowledging that recognizing and acting upon visual cues is equally a sociological one and a neurological one. We apply a broader neurosociological model of embodiment to the specific context of limb transplantation. We do so using anecdotes and writings from practicing clinicians that illustrate ongoing debates about how people experience and adapt to life with transplanted hands. In the process, we call for more detailed exploration of the synergistic connections between sociological and neurological processes using concepts from dramaturgy. Full article