THEATRE SURVEYPub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.1017/S0040557422000552
Miguel Escobar Varela
{"title":"The People and Places of Experimental Theatre Scholarship: A Computational Overview","authors":"Miguel Escobar Varela","doi":"10.1017/S0040557422000552","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0040557422000552","url":null,"abstract":"The “experimental” playwrights of continental Europe have been experimental not because they have imitated modern literature or poetry, but because they have sought to express themselves in theatrical terms, and the great directors, like Jouvet, Barrault, Viertel, and Brecht have been there to make their plays “exist” on the stage.","PeriodicalId":42777,"journal":{"name":"THEATRE SURVEY","volume":"64 1","pages":"71 - 90"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48905633","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}
THEATRE SURVEYPub Date : 2022-12-22DOI: 10.1017/s0040557422000369
Kristina Straub
{"title":"Carrying All before Her: Celebrity Pregnancy and the London Stage, 1689–1800 By Chelsea Phillips. Newark, NJ: University of Delaware Press, 2022; pp. xiv + 287. $120.00 cloth, $34.95 paper, $38.95 e-book.","authors":"Kristina Straub","doi":"10.1017/s0040557422000369","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0040557422000369","url":null,"abstract":"ture and live theatre. Works interpreted include Douglas Turner Ward’s Day of Absence, a play inspired by 1950s bus boycott images that features a sci-fi plot about a white town amid the major emergency of Black disappearance. Fleming conceptualizes “white impatience” as central to the making of whiteness and Black patience and proposes that the ephemeral, multiperceptual form of theatre “disrupt [s] the racial conventions of visual modernity” (183). Fleming’s Black Patience is a magnificent, much-needed inquiry of civil-rights-era theatrical history. Engaging in depth with scripts, letters, maps, photographs, and newspapers, Fleming rigorously works across fields of theatre history (including African American theatre), performance studies, Black studies, and theatre for social change. Fleming reminds us to center Afro-presentism—onand offstage—to unearth forms that confront Black patience and champion freedom for Black people now.","PeriodicalId":42777,"journal":{"name":"THEATRE SURVEY","volume":"64 1","pages":"93 - 95"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-12-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42872125","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}
THEATRE SURVEYPub Date : 2022-12-21DOI: 10.1017/s0040557422000412
Ryan Helterbrand
{"title":"Mussolini's Theatre: Fascist Experiments in Art and Politics By Patricia Gaborik. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021; pp. xiii + 312, 20 illustrations, 13 tables. $39.99 cloth, $32 e-book.","authors":"Ryan Helterbrand","doi":"10.1017/s0040557422000412","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0040557422000412","url":null,"abstract":"With the dramatic global resurgence of far-Right politics, it behooves critics to come to terms with the legacies of Fascism and its relationship to cultural production. How did Mussolini attempt to guide or co-opt theatre for his own purposes? Many scholars have followed Walter Benjamin in arguing that Fascism aestheticized politics, that Mussolini himself used the actor’s art to become a character in his own political play, that ultimately “the fascist mode was inherently performative, irrational, and coercive” (7). But, as Patricia Gaborik argues in her carefully argued and impressively documented Mussolini’s Theatre: Fascist Experiments in Art and Politics, this focus on Fascism as an aestheticized political experiment neglects the actual situation of the theatre under Mussolini, acting “as if what was produced on stage doesn’t actually matter—as if, that is, when it comes to fascism, art is not an issue” (12). What if, instead of assuming that all theatrical productions under Mussolini were only—could only be—so many forms of propaganda, we look instead at what was actually produced during the ventennio? Gaborik shows that theatre under Mussolini was more complicated than we’ve imagined. Although some plays produced under Fascism toed the party line, most did not, nor were they punished for it. In fact, a kind of strategic aestheticism reigned: Mussolini consistently demonstrated a commitment to art “that went beyond the tactical” and elevated “spiritual valor over immediate propagandistic efficacy” (19). Why? Because, Gaborik argues, Mussolini approached the theatre in two complementary ways that highlighted his “faith in culture as a revolutionary tool” (45). First, he kept the theatre relatively free to demonstrate the alleged openness of his regime, to demonstrate that artists in Fascist Italy were free to follow their genius. Here he followed a strategy of diplomacy, recognizing that theatre","PeriodicalId":42777,"journal":{"name":"THEATRE SURVEY","volume":"64 1","pages":"104 - 106"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-12-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42886897","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}
THEATRE SURVEYPub Date : 2022-12-21DOI: 10.1017/s0040557422000370
Olga S. Partan
{"title":"Three Loves for Three Oranges: Gozzi, Meyerhold, Prokofiev Edited by Dassia N. Posner and Kevin Bartig with Maria De Simone. Russian Music Studies. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2021; pp. xxxi + 427, 61 illustrations. $50 cloth, $49.99 e-book.","authors":"Olga S. Partan","doi":"10.1017/s0040557422000370","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0040557422000370","url":null,"abstract":"actresses Phillips examines in previous chapters. A short Conclusion follows up with productive comparisons between past and present celebrity pregnancies. Phillips gives us more than the usual “learn from the past” history-teacher didactics, however; she reinforces the importance of taking seriously celebrity as a cultural indicator of what matters then and now. She also gives us a methodology for reading archival evidence of past celebrity performances alongside the ephemeral performances and archival data of the present. Anchoring our readings of both archive and performance in the functions and needs of the human body, Phillips claims that“[t]he essential needs of the reproducing body— space, access, rest—have not changed, and embodied experience today can inform our sense of its history” (216). This is not to say that Phillips essentializes the reproductive female body; rather, she reads it as a part of the complex workings we call culture. Phillips reveals an eighteenth-century theatre industry that assumed their female stars would be pregnant at times during their careers and adjusted to that fact, offering women paid time off, shorter hours, and generally what we might today call accommodations. These conditions make the present working conditions of women in theatre, as Phillips summarizes them, look pretty lousy. The body— including that troublesome body part, the uterus—is integral to what Tschida calls the “life or well-being” of women, not just as childbearers, but as workers. This book makes it clear that how we attend to the body and its needs is not just a matter of individual well-being. It is also integral to the health of the body politic.","PeriodicalId":42777,"journal":{"name":"THEATRE SURVEY","volume":"64 1","pages":"95 - 97"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-12-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46845472","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}
THEATRE SURVEYPub Date : 2022-12-21DOI: 10.1017/s0040557422000400
Noe Montez
{"title":"Staging Lives in Latin American Theater: Bodies, Objects, Archives By Paola S. Hernández. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2022; pp. viii + 219, 13 illustrations. $99.95 cloth, $34.95 paper, $34.95 e-book.","authors":"Noe Montez","doi":"10.1017/s0040557422000400","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0040557422000400","url":null,"abstract":"Many contemporary Latin American theatre artists are drawing from documentary theatre traditions to make the effects of neoliberal economic policies, uneasy transitions from dictatorship, and other structural inequities legible to domestic and international audiences. Paola S. Hernández creates a compelling snapshot of this moment in her thoroughly researched book, Staging Lives in Latin American Theater: Bodies, Objects, Archives. Hernández centers her monograph around the practices of four of Latin America’s most notable and studied artists (Vivi Tellas, Lola Arias, El Teatro Línea de Sombra, and Guillermo Calderón) in order to consider the ways that they use “the affective hold of the real” to “transform private and public memories, modes of participation, and the kinds of truth claims theater can make” (2). Each of the artists featured use biographical narratives and archival materials to explore how the use of material objects and personal narratives can complicate an understanding of the past. Hernández situates herself as part of academic lineages that are attentive to Latin American theatre of the twenty-first century, memory studies, and the emergence of innovative documentary practices in theatres across the globe. The book nicely threads the needle between focusing on the local political and cultural contexts in which the artists make their work and the ways the performances are received when presented internationally. Moreover, Hernández has a keen eye for the details of production, describing the performances and the artists’ interactions with material objects onstage in a way that brings readers, who may not have seen these works staged, into a deeper understanding of those performances. The book begins with an analysis of playwright, director, and producer Vivi Tellas’s biodramas, particularly her Proyecto Archivos, which highlights Tellas’s","PeriodicalId":42777,"journal":{"name":"THEATRE SURVEY","volume":"64 1","pages":"102 - 104"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-12-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47956109","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}
THEATRE SURVEYPub Date : 2022-12-21DOI: 10.1017/S0040557422000436
Joseph R. D’Ambrosi
{"title":"Feeling the Future at Christian End-Time Performances By Jill Stevenson. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2022; pp. xii + 230, 7 illustrations. $75 cloth, $59.95 e-book.","authors":"Joseph R. D’Ambrosi","doi":"10.1017/S0040557422000436","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0040557422000436","url":null,"abstract":"In Feeling the Future, Stevenson studies modern Evangelical end-time productions linked to churches and other religious organizations throughout the United States to demonstrate how these immersive performances construct deeply felt anxiety about future time within its viewers for specific aims: to save one's own soul and that of another, and to remain vigilant and prepared for the inevitable end times. In her Introduction, \"Seeking an End,” Stevenson outlines Western Christian eschatological history before discussing modern Evangelical performances that foster future time. According to the creators of these experiences, producing anxiety about the future leads people to make better choices in their day-to-day lives as they prepare for the end.","PeriodicalId":42777,"journal":{"name":"THEATRE SURVEY","volume":"64 1","pages":"108 - 110"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-12-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47980585","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}
THEATRE SURVEYPub Date : 2022-12-20DOI: 10.1017/S0040557422000424
Karin Hallgren
{"title":"Performing Power: The Political Secrets of Gustav III (1771–1792) By Maria Berlova. Edited by Michael Kroetch. Abingdon: Routledge, 2021; pp. viii + 242. $136 cloth, $48.95 e-book.","authors":"Karin Hallgren","doi":"10.1017/S0040557422000424","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0040557422000424","url":null,"abstract":"at the time had some sort of censorship office—the difference here was “not in the matter but in the means” (156). Zurlo had to navigate not only the needs of the state but also Mussolini’s taste, which meant that censorship under Fascism was never as straightforward as it might seem from the outside. In a relatively liberal theatre-making environment, in which ideologically diverse plays were staged by myriad companies with divergent politics, only 9.4 percent of theatrical texts submitted to Zurlo were ultimately rejected. The picture that emerges is one of a censorship office engaged in a “relations-management task that went far beyond . . . ensuring orthodoxy in production” (162). While I would be curious about Mussolini’s attitude toward the historical avantgardes of futurism, dada, or surrealism—which all produced significant theatrical works during this period—I have nothing but praise for Gaborik’s work. It is carefully argued, engagingly written, exceptionally well documented, and full of surprising reversals of accepted wisdom. In letting the facts breathe and the history unfold before our eyes, Gaborik has produced an important work that will interest theatre scholars, art historians, and anyone curious about understanding not only how the interface between Fascism and art works, but also, perhaps, how to meet Fascism on this terrain in order to combat it.","PeriodicalId":42777,"journal":{"name":"THEATRE SURVEY","volume":"64 1","pages":"106 - 108"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-12-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48383204","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}