COMPARATIVE DRAMA最新文献

{"title":"Under the Influence: Adaptation, Adultery, and Acceptance in Anton Chekhov's Uncle Vanya and Ryusuke Hamaguchi's Drive My Car","authors":"Paul D. Reich","doi":"10.1353/cdr.2024.a920791","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/cdr.2024.a920791","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> Under the Influence:<span>Adaptation, Adultery, and Acceptance in Anton Chekhov's <em>Uncle Vanya</em> and Ryusuke Hamaguchi's <em>Drive My Car</em></span> <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Paul D. Reich (bio) </li> </ul> <p>In <em>A Theory of Adaptation</em>, Linda Hutcheon defines adaptation in three ways: \"an acknowledged transposition of a recognizable other work or works; a creative <em>and</em> an interpretative act of appropriation/salvaging; [and] an extended intertextual engagement with the adapted work.\"<sup>1</sup> Ryusuke Hamaguchi's 2021 film <em>Drive My Car</em> embraces all three of Hutcheon's definitions, often in surprising and compelling ways. Those familiar with the works of Haruki Murakami can not only trace the influences of the titular story, but two additional stories from the author's 2017 collection <em>Men Without Women</em>. However, it is arguable whether Hamaguchi explicitly \"acknowledges\" the \"transposition\" of Murakami's \"Scheherazade\" or \"Kino\" in his film. Hamaguchi expands what is merely a referent text in Murakami's \"Drive My Car\"—Anton Chekhov's 1897 play <em>Uncle Vanya</em>—into an additional, shaping textual influence.<sup>2</sup> This brings the total count of adapted texts in his <em>one</em> film to <em>four</em>. Viewers should not be surprised then at its nearly three-hour running time.</p> <p>While each of the adapted texts have their own relationship with the film, <em>Uncle Vanya</em> has the most thorough and sustained one. It also works to satisfy most completely the second and third parts of Hutcheon's definition. With Chekhov's play, Hamaguchi is engaging in a \"creative <em>and</em> an interpretative act of appropriation/salvaging\" as he's performing \"an extended intertextual engagement with the adapted work.\"<sup>3</sup> The film can be divided into four acts, a nod to the traditional structure of Chekhovian dramas, including <em>Uncle Vanya</em>. Hamaguchi employs the play's dialogue <strong>[End Page 183]</strong> as background in the developing relationship between the film's protagonist—Yusuke Kafuku (played by Hidetoshi Nishijima)—and his driver—Misaki Watari (played by Toko Miura)—selecting key moments in Chekhov's work to act as critical commentary on the film's events. Most of the film's action also revolves around the rehearsal, staging, and first performance of the play. These moments work to address and resolve Kafuku's relationship with his deceased (and unfaithful) spouse, Oto, and join the work done in Murakami's short fiction. However, Hamaguchi pushes beyond Murakami's simple (and often dull) examinations of men in marital crisis to include, instead, women such as Lee Yoon-a (played by Park Yu-rim) who act to recover from her child's death. The director employs <em>Uncle Vanya</em> as a therapeutic device, one which the performers and audience can engage as the","PeriodicalId":39600,"journal":{"name":"COMPARATIVE DRAMA","volume":"269 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140043632","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Contributors","authors":"","doi":"10.1353/cdr.2024.a920797","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/cdr.2024.a920797","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> Contributors <!-- /html_title --></li> </ul> <p><strong>Jeffrey M. Brown</strong> is Associate Professor of English at Saint Joseph's University, where he teaches courses in modern literature, theatre, and the medical humanities. His current research considers the ways in which the theatre both models and elicits modes of affective engagement that are central to medical education, narrative medicine, and bioethics. His work has recently appeared in the journals <em>Modern Drama, Text & Presentation</em>, and <em>Life Writing</em>, as well as in the essay collection <em>Cli-Fi and Class: Socioeconomic Justice in Contemporary American Climate Fiction</em> (University of Virginia Press, 2023).</p> <p><strong>Araceli González Crespán</strong> is Associate Professor at the University of Vigo in Spain and a member of the NETEC research group (http://netec.webs.uvigo.es./en). Her current research deals mainly with female playwrights in contemporary American theatre and addresses notions of sexuality, gender, ethnicity, and difference. Her book <em>Desafío y Convención. Imágenes de la mujer sureña en Lillian Hellman</em> (2005) analyzes the representation of female characters in Hellman's southern plays. Her most recent publications are \"The Cuban Rafter Crisis on Stage: Humanizing the Experience of Refugees in María Irene Fornés' Manual for a Desperate Crossing\" in <em>American, British and Canadian Studies</em> (2022); and \"Wonder, Refuge, Promise: Explorations and Discoveries of America in Maria Irene Fornes' Final Plays\" in <em>Latin American Theatre Review</em> (2022).</p> <p><strong>Nicholas Duddy</strong> is a doctoral candidate in English at Balliol College, University of Oxford. Supported by a John Monash Scholarship, his research explores representations of suicide in Anglophone drama after the Second World War. His writing has appeared in <em>Antipodes: A Global Journal of Australian and New Zealand Literature, Cordite Poetry Review, Meniscus, TEXT: Journal for Writing and Writing Courses</em>, and <em>The Saltbush Review</em>, among others. In 2023, he was a dissertation fellow at the University of Texas at Austin's Harry Ransom Center.</p> <p><strong>Christine Froula</strong> is Professor of English, Comparative Literary Studies, and Gender Studies at Northwestern University. Her research on modernism includes \"Orlando Lives: Virginia Woolf's <em>Orlando</em> in Global Adaptation and Performance\" (2013), \"Goldie's 'War and Peace': Marinetti Meets Aristophanes and Beethoven in Bloomsbury\" (2020), <em>Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Avant-Garde</em> (2005), <em>Modernism's Body: Sex, Culture, and Joyce</em> (1996), <em>To Write Paradise: Style and Error in Ezra Pound's</em> Cantos (1984), and <em>Katherine Mansfield and Virginia Woolf</em> (coedited; 2018). Dramatic adaptations include \"The Words\" (2021), the librett","PeriodicalId":39600,"journal":{"name":"COMPARATIVE DRAMA","volume":"22 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140043728","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Introduction: Text & Presentation","authors":"Amy Muse, Victoria Scrimer","doi":"10.1353/cdr.2024.a920783","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/cdr.2024.a920783","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> Introduction:<span>Text & Presentation</span> <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Amy Muse and Victoria Scrimer </li> </ul> <p>Often, especially of late, great changes seem to come upon us suddenly. We awake one day and the world is altered, for better or worse, demanding of us a new normal. But anyone who studies drama knows that long before any big reveal on stage, change is afoot just beneath the surface of every line and gesture. As astute observers, we look for the setup—a prophesy here, a conspicuous stage prop there—that will clue us in to what lies ahead, and we wait for the pay-off. Insofar as the history of the Comparative Drama Conference constitutes a dramatic narrative, 2023 put us squarely in the set-up, that anticipatory moment when the heretofore unnoticed mechanisms of change begin to make their work visible.</p> <p>This special issue of <em>Comparative Drama</em> announces a partnership between <em>Comparative Drama</em> and the Comparative Drama Conference—a journal and conference that share a name and a commitment to international, interdisciplinary scholarship on dramatic literature, but, until now, have had no formal connection. From 1980–2021, a selection <strong>[End Page 1]</strong> of the best papers from each year's Comparative Drama Conference were published in an annual book series, <em>Text & Presentation</em>. Going forward, one annual issue of <em>Comparative Drama</em> will be devoted to essays developed from the previous year's conference. The Comparative Drama Conference, founded in 1977 by Karelisa Hartigan at the University of Florida, has been a lively intellectual gathering space for scholars, playwrights, dramaturgs, critics, directors, designers, and performers for forty-five years. Over the years it has been hosted by Ohio State University (directed by Stratos Constantinidis), Loyola Marymount University (Kevin J. Wetmore, Jr.), Stevenson University (Laura Snyder), and, for a six-year run, by Rollins College under the direction of Bill Boles. Beginning in 2025, new leaders will take the reins: Mark O'Thomas and Nicholas Holden at the London Academy of Music and Drama (LAMDA) and Baron Kelly and Ann Shanahan at the University of Wisconsin-Madison will serve as co-directors. For the following six years (2025–2030), the Comparative Drama Conference's annual meeting will alternate between London, England and Madison, Wisconsin, making in-person participation a bit easier for many in our international community of scholars and encouraging us all to invest in warmer business casual attire.</p> <p>Change, as it turns out, is an appropriate thematic framework for bringing together the essays in this special issue of <em>Comparative Drama</em>. Change is the lifeblood of good theatre. In <em>The Empty Space</em>, Peter Brook famously quipped that \"truth in theatre is always on the move.\" He","PeriodicalId":39600,"journal":{"name":"COMPARATIVE DRAMA","volume":"12 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140043628","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Euphoria in Unhappiness: Technology and Revelation in Jennifer Haley's Neighborhood 3: Requisition of Doom and The Nether","authors":"M. Scott Phillips","doi":"10.1353/cdr.2024.a920792","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/cdr.2024.a920792","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> Euphoria in Unhappiness:<span>Technology and Revelation in Jennifer Haley's <em>Neighborhood 3: Requisition of Doom</em> and <em>The Nether</em></span> <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> M. Scott Phillips (bio) </li> </ul> <blockquote> <p>Everywhere we remain unfree and chained to technology, whether we passionately affirm or deny it. But we are delivered over to it in the worst possible way when we regard it as something neutral; for this conception of it, to which today we particularly like to pay homage, makes us utterly blind to the essence of technology.</p> Martin Heidegger, <em>The Question Concerning Technology</em> (1954) </blockquote> <p>In recent years, a number of American playwrights have been in conversation with issues surrounding our increasingly dystopic cultural landscape. Lisa D'Amour's <em>Detroit</em> (2010) and <em>Airline Highway</em> (2015), Dominique Morisseau's <em>Skeleton Crew</em> (2016), and Lynn Nottage's <em>Sweat</em> (2015) explore the dismal conditions workers face in our neoliberal economy, while Will Arbery's <em>Heroes of the Fourth Turning</em> (2019) interrogates theocratic tendencies in a rising cultural right. Jackie Sibblies Drury's <em>Fairview</em> (2018) and Jeremy O. Harris's <em>Slave Play</em> (2019) brutally attack the comforting mythology of our putative \"post-racial\" turn, challenging audiences at a moment when white supremacism attempts to legitimize itself in mainstream political discourse. A sense of doom permeates <em>The Humans</em> (2015), Steven Karam's eerie and atmospheric exploration of American anxiety. While warm and compassionate in tone, Karam's play traces the slow percolation of characters who are, as Samuel G. Freedman writes, \"teetering on the edge of an elevator shaft.\"<sup>1</sup> <strong>[End Page 205]</strong></p> <p>Also emergent in this troublesome milieu are concerns about technology, its disruptive power and disastrous potential. Ann Washburn's <em>Mr. Burns</em> (2012) and Brendan Pelsue's <em>Wellesley Girl</em> (2016) are post-apocalyptic; the former explores post-grid life after an accident at a nuclear power plant, and the latter, set centuries in the future after an ecological disaster (the result of toxic runoff from the production of robot AI), depicts a United States and a U.S. political structure that are confined to a small Massachusetts suburb surrounded by potentially hostile outsiders. In a sense, these tech-wary examples are merely newer iterations of where we have been many times before. The dystopic ramifications of hubristic technology are well-worn tropes of science fiction: Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's <em>Frankenstein</em> (1818), Fritz Lang's film <em>Metropolis</em> (1927), and the British television series <em>Black Mirror</em> (2011) have all reflected the collective angst concerning the unintended consequences of Promethean ov","PeriodicalId":39600,"journal":{"name":"COMPARATIVE DRAMA","volume":"22 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140043794","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Perfect Joke: Autopathography and Humor in Sarah Ruhl's The Clean House","authors":"Jeffrey M. Brown","doi":"10.1353/cdr.2024.a920790","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/cdr.2024.a920790","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p><ul> <li> <!-- html_title --> The Perfect Joke: <span>Autopathography and Humor in Sarah Ruhl's <em>The Clean House</em></span> <!-- /html_title --> </li> <li> Jeffrey M. Brown (bio) </li> </ul> <h2>An Aesthetics of Anesthetics: The Problem of Humor in Medicine</h2> <p>In spite of that old adage—\"laughter is the best medicine\"—it is hard to overcome the feeling that illness and humor are fundamentally incompatible. Indeed, this basic assumption is often used as the source of comedy itself: the incongruous intersection of laughter and suffering highlights the ways in which the former might somehow trump the latter by way of an ironic \"deadening\" or desensitization. In a literature review for the <em>Southern Medical Journal</em>in 2003, physician Howard J. Bennett finds little support in published studies for the idea that laughter meaningfully promotes health or healing, despite popular beliefs; the only direct medical benefits he substantiates concern pain management through a kind of comic anesthesia. \"In one well-controlled study,\" Bennett reports, \"humorous movies reduced the need for postoperative analgesia in orthopedic patients.\" <sup>1</sup>If comedy does work upon the body, it seems to do so exclusively by placing pressure on one end of a kind of Cartesian lever, prying apart the humorous experience of pleasure from the physical reality of disease and illness.</p> <p>Such insights might come as no surprise for theories of humor— and, indeed, of aesthetic experience more broadly. But they also define a distinct tradition in modern and contemporary drama that often uses the incompatibility of laughter and illness as a vector for multivalent critique, registering both social conventions about what might define an <strong>[End Page 151]</strong>appropriate ethic of care as well as how those conventions substantiate ongoing cultural hypocrisies. For example: Halley Feiffer's <em>A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Gynecologic Oncology Unit at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center of New York City</em>(2016) opens on just such a display of torturous incongruence. Karla, a standup comedian in her early thirties, is sitting in a shared hospital room next to her unconscious mother, who is recovering from a hysterectomy after receiving a diagnosis of endometrial cancer. Because of the privacy curtain dividing the space, Karla is unaware that the other unconscious cancer patient in the room has also received a visitor: the middle-aged Don, who is silently watching over his own mother. When Karla begins to workshop a series of vulgar jokes aloud, Don makes his presence known—and the ensuing argument climaxes in a challenging inversion of comic wit. <speech> <speaker> <em>Don:</em> </speaker> <p> <em>(Pulling out all the stops in a vicious cross-fire)</em> </p> <p>NO, what the – F – is wrong with <em>YOU</em>and your self-obsessed hipster ME GENERATION?","PeriodicalId":39600,"journal":{"name":"COMPARATIVE DRAMA","volume":"57 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140043720","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Art Acts: Reframing the White Gaze in Claudia Rankine's The White Card","authors":"Carla J. McDonough","doi":"10.1353/cdr.2024.a920787","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/cdr.2024.a920787","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> Art Acts:<span>Reframing the White Gaze in Claudia Rankine's <em>The White Card</em></span> <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Carla J. McDonough (bio) </li> </ul> <blockquote> <p>\"Until we are willing to look at the ways in which white Americans are culpable in the suffering of the people of color, and understand that culpability needs to be present in the representation of that, suffering will continue.\"</p> Claudia Rankine<sup>1</sup> </blockquote> <blockquote> <p>\"Art has always been the tool of the powerful, and also the weapon of the dispossessed: official imagery controls narratives of identity and defines what is 'right', but these representations can be creatively subverted and destroyed. You have to know the rules of the space to sabotage it.\"</p> Alice Procter<sup>2</sup> </blockquote> <p>Protest arose at the Whitney Museum's 2017 Biennial exhibit in response to Dana Schutz's painting <em>Open Casket</em>, a somewhat abstract rendering of the famous photograph of Emmett Till in his casket. Artist Parker Bright's critique led him to stand in front of the painting wearing a tee-shirt that read \"Black Death Spectacle.\" Bright's physical protest was followed by an open letter written by Hannah Black that demanded the Whitney remove the painting, in which she wrote:</p> <blockquote> <p>Although Schutz's intention may be to present white shame, this shame is not correctly represented as a painting of a dead Black boy by a white artist—those non-Black artists who sincerely wish to highlight the shameful nature of white violence should first of all stop treating Black pain as raw material. The subject matter is not Schutz's; white free speech and white creative freedom have been founded on the constraints of others, and are not natural rights. The painting must go.<sup>3</sup></p> </blockquote> <p><strong>[End Page 87]</strong></p> <p>Some artists and patrons responded to this protest by arguing the dangers of censorship, while many others supported removal of the painting. The controversy led to hot debates in the art-world and culminated in the Whitney's decision to stage a public discussion about race and representation within the traditionally \"white\" spaces of museums. The museum asked Claudia Rankine to moderate this discussion due to her work in founding the Racial Imaginary Institute, an inter-disciplinary \"cultural laboratory\" that explores, counters, contextualizes and demystifies cultural ideas about race.<sup>4</sup> The Whitney billed the evening as a discussion about \"questions around race, violence, the ethics of representation, and the limits of empathy.\"<sup>5</sup> Although the curators of the museum did not alter the exhibit in response to the protests, the debates about representation in visual, literary, filmic and theatrical arts continues as American culture grapples with legacies of colonialism, appropr","PeriodicalId":39600,"journal":{"name":"COMPARATIVE DRAMA","volume":"12 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140043727","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Torvald's Question: Italo Svevo and James Joyce Stage Modern Masculinity","authors":"Christine Froula","doi":"10.1353/cdr.2024.a920793","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/cdr.2024.a920793","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> Torvald's Question:<span>Italo Svevo and James Joyce Stage Modern Masculinity</span> <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Christine Froula (bio) </li> </ul> <blockquote> <p>Nora! Nora! … Empty. She's gone. <em>(A sudden hope leaps in him.)</em> The greatest miracle—?!</p> Torvald in Henrik Ibsen, <em>A Doll House</em> (1879) </blockquote> <blockquote> <p>I have peeped into a great many doll's houses; and I have found that the dolls are not all female.</p> Nora in George Bernard Shaw, \"Still After the Doll's House\" (1890) </blockquote> <blockquote> <p><em>The Doll's House</em> … has caused the greatest revolution in our time in the most important relationship there is—that between men and women. … Ibsen has been the greatest influence on the present generation. … His ideas have become part of our lives.</p> James Joyce to Arthur Power, <em>Conversations with Joyce</em> (1920s) </blockquote> <p>When Nora Helmer departs Torvald's doll house to educate herself as an adult human being, she leaves behind a paragon of nineteenth-century masculine \"honor\" whose questions as to what he must do, how he must change, she cannot answer.<sup>1</sup> Whereas most commentary on <em>A Doll House</em> assumes that Ibsen leaves Torvald no escape,<sup>2</sup> this essay highlights Torvald's echo of Nora's word \"miracle\" in his hopeful question at the play's open end and argues that two of Ibsen's heirs— the Triestine writer Italo Svevo (1861–1928) and his English tutor and literary soulmate the Irish James Joyce (1882–1941)—pursue Torvald's question in plays that stage crises of modern masculinity in parallel with Nora's awakening. Read comparatively, Ibsen's <em>A Doll House</em> (1879), <strong>[End Page 229]</strong> Svevo's <em>A Husband</em> (1895/1903), and Joyce's <em>Exiles</em> (1913–1915) embody a dramatic dialogue on freeing all the characters—Torvalds and Noras alike—from an antiquated socio-economic sex/gender system. Taking Ibsen's critical-realist dramaturgy into daring new territory, Svevo and Joyce stage avant-garde psychodramas in social worlds that put traditional masculinity—formed by man-made laws, rights, values, freedom, conscious and unconscious assumptions, prerogatives, and motives—in tension with Ibsen's revolutionary modernity. Their diagnostic dramas of toxic-masculinity-with-a-good-prognosis distill from Torvald's question a Shavian quintessence of post-Ibsenism that illuminates Ibsen's subsumption of feminism within the dialectical vision of human possibility that Nora's departure opens.</p> <h2>Ibsen's Pharmakon: \"the greatest miracle—?!\"</h2> <p>The shock waves sent through Europe and the world by the 1879 Copenhagen premiere of Ibsen's <em>A Doll House</em> (<em>Et Dukkehjem</em>) reverberate in innumerable debates and interpretations, from the play's first reviews to its 2023 Broadway adaptation.<sup>3</sup> In \"Ibse","PeriodicalId":39600,"journal":{"name":"COMPARATIVE DRAMA","volume":"2 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140043795","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Noël Coward: The Playwright's Craft in a Changing Theatre by Russell Jackson, and: Masquerade: The Lives of Noël Coward by Oliver Soden (review)","authors":"Laura Milburn","doi":"10.1353/cdr.2024.a920795","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/cdr.2024.a920795","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p> <span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> <em>Noël Coward: The Playwright's Craft in a Changing Theatre</em> by Russell Jackson, and: <em>Masquerade: The Lives of Noël Coward</em> by Oliver Soden <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Laura Milburn (bio) </li> </ul> Russell Jackson, <em>Noël Coward: The Playwright's Craft in a Changing Theatre</em>. London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2022. Pp 232. Hardcover $115.00 and Oliver Soden, <em>Masquerade: The Lives of Noël Coward</em>. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2023. Pp 656. Hardcover £30 <p>There is already a large canon of literature (of varying quality and accuracy) regarding Noël Coward's life and work, including volumes written by Coward himself. Therefore, in order to justify penning yet another volume about \"The Master,\" an author needs to find a new angle. Reading Russell Jackson's <em>Noël Coward: The Playwright's Craft in a Changing Theatre</em> and Oliver Soden's latest biography <em>Masquerade: The Lives of Noël Coward</em>, it is clear that they have both succeeded in doing so.</p> <p>Jackson's and Soden's respective books differ in their approach and target demographic, but what they both have in common is their extensive use of archival research. Both have thoroughly researched the main Coward archives, which are currently divided between London (where they are administered by the Noël Coward Archive Trust) and the Noël Coward Collection at the University of Birmingham's Cadbury Research Library. It is the usage of the vast archival material that makes both books stand out and will ensure they are considered the primers for any scholar or theatre enthusiast going forward, and both gentlemen are very clear from the outset on the importance of the archival materials and what we can learn from them. At the start of his book, Jackson notes \"the archive's script material, especially in the earliest manuscript drafts, conveys the impression of a playwright who is also an actor and director, seeing characters decisively from the outset, hearing the lines as he writes them and already directing the play in the theatre of his mind\" (2).</p> <p>Nevertheless, it is somewhat disappointing to see that the American archives have not been considered or consulted, with the Billy Rose Theatre Division of the New York Public Library in particular holding a substantial collection on Coward's theatrical career. For <em>Noël Coward: The Playwright's Craft in a Changing Theatre</em>, it is of less importance because Jackson's objective is to chart the development of Coward's writing methods, so the manuscripts, unpublished letters and diaries which are stored in the UK archives are of greater relevance and on which Jackson has based his study. It would have been interesting to read Soden's interpretation and discussion of the American theatrical reviews (specifically those found in the 'Collection of newspaper","PeriodicalId":39600,"journal":{"name":"COMPARATIVE DRAMA","volume":"10 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140043722","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Let the Right One In by Jack Thorne (review)","authors":"Judith Saunders","doi":"10.1353/cdr.2024.a920796","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/cdr.2024.a920796","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p><span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li> <!-- html_title --> <em>Let the Right One In</em>by Jack Thorne <!-- /html_title --> </li> <li> Judith Saunders (bio) </li> </ul> <em>Let the Right One In</em>, by Jack Thorne, directed by John Tiffany Berkeley Repertory Theatre (05 <day>20</day>– 06 <day>25</day>, 2023) <p>The West Coast premiere of <em>Let The Right One In</em>opened May 20, 2023 at Berkeley Repertory Theatre. This production was headed by the original British creative team with American actors. The story is based on the Swedish vampire novel <em>Lat den Ratte Komma in</em>by John Ajvide Lindqvist, which was subsequently adapted for a movie, popular with Generation Z. Stage director John Tiffany, choreographer Steven Hoggett and playwright Jack Thorne collaborated to theatrically capture both the magic and horror of a love story between a troubled adolescent boy, Oskar, and an ageless vampire in the guise of an androgynous pre-pubescent, Eli. Each finds solace in the other and they finally venture together into an unknown future. According to the program notes, it was the Swedish movie that inspired Tiffany to launch this stage production for Scotland's National Theatre, which then transferred to London's West End. Such story-filching from other sources is not an unusual theatre practice. Playwrights have traditionally been magpies in their search for material. It was this production team that based their highly successful <em>Harry Potter and the Cursed Child</em>on the book by J. K. Rowling.</p> <p>I attended the performance on Saturday, May 27, not having read the book or seen the movie, and with only a smattering of vampiric knowledge from reading Bram Stoker's <em>Dracula</em>. I pondered our society's fascination with this non-human, blood-sucking creature that has so persistently been reprised in the media. What relevance does this myth have for us today? Having seen Tiffany and Hoggett's stunning 2007 production of <em>Black Watch</em>at St. Ann's Warehouse in Brooklyn, I was eager to see what they would do with <em>Let the Right One In</em>. I was not disappointed. They succeeded once more in creating a memorable experience, exemplifying the genre \"physical theatre\"—employing mime, dance and all the tools theatre has at its disposal to tell a story.</p> <p>As the play began, the open stage revealed Christine Jones's minimalist set of snow-covered birch trees lit by an icy cool light casting an eerie atmosphere. Lone figures silently crossed and re-crossed the stage to the haunting music of Ólafur Arnalds \"Now I am Winter.\" Finally, a passerby asks an old man if he is in need of anything. \"The time,\" says the old man, before grabbing him, rendering him unconscious, awkwardly hoisting him up by his feet with a rope strung over a tree branch, and slashing his throat to drain his blood. Hearing voices approach, the old man panics, and runs off le","PeriodicalId":39600,"journal":{"name":"COMPARATIVE DRAMA","volume":"269 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140043634","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"\"In this show let me an actor be\": Joining in with Doctor Faustus","authors":"Mark Scott","doi":"10.1353/cdr.2024.a920786","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/cdr.2024.a920786","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> \"In this show let me an actor be\":<span>Joining in with <em>Doctor Faustus</em></span> <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Mark Scott (bio) </li> </ul> <p>Theatre is a fundamentally collaborative artform. Any successful live performance depends upon the participation of—and cooperation between—actors and spectators. On the Elizabethan stage, this axiom was most famously pronounced by the Chorus in William Shakespeare's <em>Henry V</em>. The Chorus begins the play by making an apology that doubles as an appeal for help. Because the company doesn't have a <em>real</em> \"kingdom for a stage, princes to act,/And monarchs to behold the swelling scene,\" the Chorus begs spectators not only to forgive \"The flat unraised spirits that hath dared/On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth/So great an object\" as the triumph at Agincourt, but also to assist the performers by imaginatively bridging the gap between illusion and reality: \"Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts.\"<sup>1</sup> While it is the job of the actors to \"work\" <em>on</em> the \"imaginary forces\" of spectators by staging the play, spectators in turn must work <em>with</em> the actors: \"For 'tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings\" (Prologue.18–28). Yet as much as the Chorus unites actors and spectators in a collaborative endeavour, he also draws clear boundaries between their respective contributions (\"<em>your</em> thoughts\"; \"<em>our</em> kings\"). Where the actors' job is to physically create the theatrical illusion, the spectators' labor is mental: \"Work, work your thoughts, and therein see a siege\" (3.0.25). Where the actors play their parts onstage, the role of the spectator is confined to the mind—\"the quick forge and working-house of thought\" (5.0.23). Actors pretend; spectators believe.</p> <p>Such a model of theatrical exchange obviously appealed to early modern playgoers: <em>Henry V</em> was one of the most popular plays of the period. At the same time, however, another blockbuster of the Elizabethan stage offered theatregeors a very different kind of experience, one that <strong>[End Page 61]</strong> thoroughly destabilized the distinctions—between actor and spectator, illusion and reality—upon which Shakespeare's Chorus relies. On several different occasions (that we know of), performances of Christopher Marlowe's <em>Doctor Faustus</em> were interrupted—and even cut short—by the intervention of apparently supernatural forces. In one account, the \"visible apparition of the Devill\" appeared \"on the stage at the Belsavage Playhouse, in Queene Elizabeths days, (to the great amazement <em>both of Actors and Spectators</em>) whiles they were there prophanely playing the History of Faustus.\"<sup>2</sup> Another contemporary report recalls the same phenomenon occurring in a different theatre:</p> <blockquote> <p>Certaine Players at Exeter, acting upon the","PeriodicalId":39600,"journal":{"name":"COMPARATIVE DRAMA","volume":"51 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140043725","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}