THEATRE JOURNAL最新文献

{"title":"Passing Theatre","authors":"W. B. Worthen","doi":"10.1353/tj.2023.a922215","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/tj.2023.a922215","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Abstract:</p><p>As a technology, theatre both absorbs and represents the technologies it deploys, and so is defined by the multiple temporalities of its instruments. The signifying embodiments, signifying materialities, and signifying narratives constitutive of theatre as rhetoric and practice articulate, depend on, and are altered by the changing emergence of a conceptual “human” (or the dispersion of a conceptual “posthuman”) inseparable from the technological inscription of its definition and representation. So, too, consensually licensing terms like “the discipline” and “the field” share with their object—particularly with that slippery congeries, the formal study of drama, theatre, and performance—a vivifying multiplicity and mobility, as well as a notable temporal instability. Like theatre, like any technology, the condition of theory, of critique, and of scholarship is a consistent struggle with passing into pastness as the inseparable trailing edge of innovation. On the occasion of the 75th volume of <i>Theatre Journal,</i> this brief essay reflects on the intertwined fortunes of theatre and the fashioning of the “disciplines” of its formal study, their passing implication in mutually-sustaining technologies of cultural representation.</p></p>","PeriodicalId":46247,"journal":{"name":"THEATRE JOURNAL","volume":"96 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-03-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140130099","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 Porch on Windy Hill (review)","authors":"Heather Grimm","doi":"10.1353/tj.2023.a922228","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/tj.2023.a922228","url":null,"abstract":"&lt;span&gt;&lt;span&gt;In lieu of&lt;/span&gt; an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:&lt;/span&gt;\u0000&lt;p&gt; &lt;span&gt;Reviewed by:&lt;/span&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;!-- html_title --&gt; &lt;em&gt;The Porch on Windy Hill&lt;/em&gt; &lt;!-- /html_title --&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt; Heather Grimm &lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt; &lt;em&gt;THE PORCH ON WINDY HILL&lt;/em&gt;. Written and directed by Sherry Lutken. Northlight Theatre, Skokie, Illinois. May 5, 2023. &lt;p&gt;In spring 2023, Northlight Theatre in Skokie, Illinois produced &lt;em&gt;The Porch On Windy Hill: a new play with old music&lt;/em&gt;, written by director Sherry Lutken in collaboration with Lisa Helmi Johanson, David M. Lutken, and Morgan Morse, who comprised the cast. &lt;em&gt;Windy Hill&lt;/em&gt; is a family drama following white graduate student Beckett (Morse) and his biracial Korean Appalachian girlfriend Mira (Johanson). They travel from New York to North Carolina for Beckett’s research; in North Carolina, they encounter Mira’s estranged white grandfather Gar (Lutken). The evening they spend reconnecting on the titular porch (a trope so stereotypical it is mocked in the dialogue) is punctuated by performances of the string band music that Mira remembers from her childhood and that Beckett now studies. As the play progresses, the reasons for Mira’s estrangement become clear: Gar never approved of the Korean man his daughter married, and, although he loved his granddaughter, he refused to intervene when her cousin lobbed a racial slur at her. By the end of the play, Gar’s racism is revealed to be born of cowardice, an initial discomfort he was unable to express and took too long to overcome. We are left believing that Gar understands his mistakes and will try to communicate more openly. But the liberal politics the play wears on its sleeve conceal a conservative message regarding the dramaturgical engine driving the story: its music.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;br/&gt; Click for larger view&lt;br/&gt; View full resolution &lt;p&gt;Lisa Helmi Johanson (Mira), David M. Lutken (Gar), and Morgan Morse (Beckett) in &lt;em&gt;The Porch on Windy Hill&lt;/em&gt;. Photo: Michael Brosilow.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Beckett’s interest in the music featured in the play—ranging from fiddle tunes like “Bill Cheatham” to ballads like “Birmingham Jail” and popular songs like “Columbus Stockade Blues”—often served as comic relief. He stammered out jargony questions about music changing over time, oblivious &lt;strong&gt;[End Page 562]&lt;/strong&gt; to Mira and Gar’s tense reunion. When Beckett asked where Gar learned a song, Gar confesses that he doesn’t remember; he’d known it all his life. Beck-ett lamented, “Wish I had that direct connection,” celebrating Gar’s “real” connection to this music and the fact that he learned it through interactions with family, as opposed to through recordings. Although Beckett was often the clown, the production asked us to take the sentiment behind this line seriously. Though Mira responded by postulating that perhaps people in the past thought they weren’t getting the “real thing” either, the structure of the play reinforced a different message. Mira’s p","PeriodicalId":46247,"journal":{"name":"THEATRE JOURNAL","volume":"95 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-03-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140130119","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":"To Be Nsala's Daughter: Decomposing the Colonial Gaze by Chérie N. Rivers (review)","authors":"Rachel Kabukala","doi":"10.1353/tj.2023.a922236","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/tj.2023.a922236","url":null,"abstract":"&lt;span&gt;&lt;span&gt;In lieu of&lt;/span&gt; an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:&lt;/span&gt;\u0000&lt;p&gt; &lt;span&gt;Reviewed by:&lt;/span&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;!-- html_title --&gt; &lt;em&gt;To Be Nsala’s Daughter: Decomposing the Colonial Gaze&lt;/em&gt; by Chérie N. Rivers &lt;!-- /html_title --&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt; Rachel Kabukala &lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt; &lt;em&gt;TO BE NSALA’S DAUGHTER: DECOMPOSING THE COLONIAL GAZE&lt;/em&gt;. Chérie N. Rivers. Durham: Duke University Press, 2023; pp. 128. &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;To Be Nsala’s Daughter: Decomposing the Colonial Gaze&lt;/em&gt; is the second book from interdisciplinary scholar Chérie N. Rivers and builds upon ideas found in her first, &lt;em&gt;Necessary Noise: Music, Film, and Charitable Imperialism in the East of Congo&lt;/em&gt; (published under the name Chérie Rivers Ndaliko). Her most recent monograph centers on a colonial-era image of a Congolese man identified as Nsala made by English missionary and documentary photographer Alice Seeley Harris. The photograph in question features Nsala, who sits looking at the severed hand and foot of his five-year-old daughter, who was murdered by ABIR militia (Anglo-Belgian India Rubber company). The haunting image circulated widely as part of the Congo Reform Association’s campaign to alert the world to the atrocities taking place in King Leopold II’s Congo Free State (present-day Democratic Republic of the Congo, or DRC).&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;As a response to Harris’s photographic archive, Rivers collaboratively developed and co-taught a workshop titled “Decomposing the Colonial Gaze” as part of her work as executive director of Yole!Africa, a Congolese-led educational and cultural center in Goma, DRC. The workshop involved “recalibrating one’s imagination” to produce art that makes visible systems of power, enacting conscious and creative change (xii). Participants activated the Harris archive through their contemporary interpretations of the historical images. Some engaged in photographic reenactments. Some produced collages or manipulated reprints of the original images. All “interrupted established ways of representing and intervening in Congolese life” (xii). By highlighting the archival interventions offered by the Congolese artists, Rivers reveals a potential path forward for those seeking to decompose colonial systems and the normalized violence that is their undercurrent through critical creativity informed by Rivers’s methods of decomposing, disremembering, and re-remembering, which I return to later in greater detail.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;The book is divided into seven chapters. The first serves as a brief, two-page elegy for Nsala, in which Rivers writes about how she came to work with Nsala’s image. She explains how the photograph haunted her and dedicates the book to Nsala and his daughter, sharing her hope that others might also be haunted as an antidote to inaction. The remaining chapter titles employ action verbs: to see, to decompose, to replicate, to contradict, to create, and to love. This play with language and subsequent explanation of each term’s role in decomposing ","PeriodicalId":46247,"journal":{"name":"THEATRE JOURNAL","volume":"379 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-03-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140130121","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":"New-Illusion (review)","authors":"Kyueun Kim","doi":"10.1353/tj.2023.a922229","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/tj.2023.a922229","url":null,"abstract":"&lt;span&gt;&lt;span&gt;In lieu of&lt;/span&gt; an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:&lt;/span&gt;\u0000&lt;p&gt; &lt;span&gt;Reviewed by:&lt;/span&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;!-- html_title --&gt; &lt;em&gt;New-Illusion&lt;/em&gt; &lt;!-- /html_title --&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt; Kyueun Kim &lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt; &lt;em&gt;NEW-ILLUSION&lt;/em&gt;. Written and directed by Okada Toshiki (chelfitsch). Video directed by Yamada Shimpei. Singapore International Festival of Arts, SOTA Studio Theatre, Singapore. June 3–4, 2023. &lt;p&gt;The lonely stage had an electric bass and an amplifier to one side, but otherwise, it was empty. Woman (Shiibashi Ayana) and Man (Adachi Tomomitsu) entered, followed by Musician (Jeong Jung-yeop), who began playing the bass softly. Woman and Man began chatting about a play that had been previously performed in the theatre; it was set in an apartment they once shared, and they performed as their past selves. Their conversation about an armchair, the only theatrical prop that remained after the previous show, subtly transitioned to a sofa in the apartment of their past. The meaning behind their words became blurred, leaving the audience to wonder whether they were discussing a play, their relationship, or both. Their conversation evoked feelings of emptiness that stemmed from endings: the closing night of a theatrical run, a break-up, the fading of youthful aspirations to “change the world.”&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;The premise might seem familiar from elsewhere in theatre history, but in Okada Toshiki’s &lt;em&gt;New-Illusion&lt;/em&gt;, performers and theatrical props were conspicuously absent from the physical stage. At SOTA Studio Theatre in Singapore, the audience witnessed a life-sized, prerecorded performance projected onto two large vertical screens at center stage. The mini-malistic set was defined by these screens, set apart by a noticeable gap, and an overhead display for English supertitles, all dimmed in tune with the venue’s ambient lighting. Hidden speakers and microphones, strategically placed behind the screens, added depth to the sound. Even when the projected performers disappeared into the gaps between the screens or stepped outside the screens’ edges, the audience could still hear their footsteps and locate their movements in space. Using this careful visual and auditory dramaturgy allowed Okada to blur the boundaries between the video space and the physical venue, evoking the atmospheric illusion that performers and theatrical props were physically present on stage even though they weren’t.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;New-Illusion&lt;/em&gt;, which premiered at Tokyo’s Oji Theater in 2022, is the most recent iteration of Okada Toshiki’s EIZO-Theater, which he has developed in close collaboration with video designer Yamada Shimpei. Deriving its name from the Japanese term &lt;em&gt;eizō&lt;/em&gt;—an image that has been reproduced—EIZO-Theater emphasizes using video to project prere-corded performances in theatrical space. The concept of EIZO-Theater debuted with the exhibition &lt;em&gt;Beach, Eyelids, and Curtains&lt;/em&gt; (2018), where six theatrical &lt;strong&gt;[End Page 564]&lt;/stron","PeriodicalId":46247,"journal":{"name":"THEATRE JOURNAL","volume":"36 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-03-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140130138","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":"Some Like It Hot (review)","authors":"Emily G. Furlich","doi":"10.1353/tj.2023.a922227","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/tj.2023.a922227","url":null,"abstract":"&lt;span&gt;&lt;span&gt;In lieu of&lt;/span&gt; an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:&lt;/span&gt;\u0000&lt;p&gt; &lt;span&gt;Reviewed by:&lt;/span&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;!-- html_title --&gt; &lt;em&gt;Some Like It Hot&lt;/em&gt; &lt;!-- /html_title --&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt; Emily G. Furlich &lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt; &lt;em&gt;SOME LIKE IT HOT&lt;/em&gt;. Book by Matthew López and Amber Ruffin. Music by Marc Shaiman. Lyrics by Scott Wittman and Marc Shaiman. Directed by Casey Nicholaw. Shubert Theatre, New York. January 19, 2023. &lt;p&gt;Following &lt;em&gt;Tootsie&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Mrs. Doubtfire&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Some Like It Hot&lt;/em&gt; is the third musical adapted from a man-in-a-dress film comedy to come to Broadway since 2019. Both &lt;em&gt;Tootsie&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Doubtfire&lt;/em&gt; faced criticism for using transphobic bodily humor and punchlines about drag that reinforced regressive ideas about binarized gender. However, &lt;em&gt;Some Like It Hot&lt;/em&gt; seemed more promising to me than &lt;em&gt;Tootsie&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Doubtfire&lt;/em&gt; because book writers Matthew López (&lt;em&gt;The Whipping Man&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;The Inheritance&lt;/em&gt;) and Amber Ruffin (&lt;em&gt;Late Night with Seth Meyers&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;The Amber Ruffin Show&lt;/em&gt;) used the cross-dressing conceit from the original 1959 film directed by Billy Wilder to send one of the show’s characters on a journey exploring their gender identity. While the musical marks a step forward in representing queer characters in commercial musical theatre, I wasn’t entirely convinced that &lt;em&gt;Some Like It Hot&lt;/em&gt; escaped the transphobic baggage associated with the man-in-a-dress trope.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;López and Ruffin changed the musical’s setting to 1933, just before Prohibition ended, and refigured some of the characters from the film as Black or Latinx. Joe, played by Christian Borle, and Jerry, played by Black non-binary actor J. Harrison Ghee, escape the gangsters tracking them down in Chicago by disguising themselves as women and joining an integrated, all-women band heading to California. Their destination is California instead of Florida, like in the film version, because López and Ruffin wanted to be realistic about the limitations that racism and segregation created for Black performers at the time. The musical begins with Sweet Sue (NaTasha Yvette Williams), the band’s Black manager, singing in a speakeasy. The police raid the joint and arrest Sweet Sue, sending her off in a paddy wagon. After her right-hand woman, Minnie (Angie Schworer), bails her out, Sweet Sue complains that she always lands in jail while the gangsters running the speakeasies she performs in get a pass, a remark that underlines the disproportionate criminalization she faces as a Black woman.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;br/&gt; Click for larger view&lt;br/&gt; View full resolution &lt;p&gt;The cast of &lt;em&gt;Some Like It Hot&lt;/em&gt;. Photo: Matthew Murphy.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Jerry, now going by Daphne, a name they pointedly chose over the feminine version of Jerry (Geraldine) that Joe suggested, makes fast friends with the women in the band and admires their new look in a mirror. Daphne’s gender exploration continues when the band arrives in Ca","PeriodicalId":46247,"journal":{"name":"THEATRE JOURNAL","volume":"74 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-03-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140130150","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":"Rising Up, Living On: Re-Existences, Sowings, and Decolonial Cracks by Catherine E. Walsh (review)","authors":"Maryam Ivette Parhizkar","doi":"10.1353/tj.2023.a922238","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/tj.2023.a922238","url":null,"abstract":"&lt;span&gt;&lt;span&gt;In lieu of&lt;/span&gt; an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:&lt;/span&gt;\u0000&lt;p&gt; &lt;span&gt;Reviewed by:&lt;/span&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;!-- html_title --&gt; &lt;em&gt;Rising Up, Living On: Re-Existences, Sowings, and Decolonial Cracks&lt;/em&gt; by Catherine E. Walsh &lt;!-- /html_title --&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt; Maryam Ivette Parhizkar &lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt; &lt;em&gt;RISING UP, LIVING ON: RE-EXISTENCES, SOWINGS, AND DECOLONIAL CRACKS&lt;/em&gt;. By Catherine E. Walsh. On Decoloniality series. Durham: Duke University Press, 2023; pp. 334. &lt;p&gt;Catherine Walsh’s richly braided contribution to decolonial thought and praxis tells the stories of human struggle that fracture the matrix of power constituting coloniality. Completed in Ecuador in 2022 during the Indigenous-led national strike and the globally ravaging effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, Walsh reflects on the lessons learned from bearing witness to decolonial struggles over the course of her five-decade career. She does so by foregrounding these struggles as &lt;em&gt;re-existence&lt;/em&gt;: a word that Afro-Colombian thinker Adolfo Albán Achinte used to describe the dignifying mechanisms within Black social life that not only resist, but assert and transform life against colonial threat of systemic violence, dispossession, and de-existence at large. In doing so, &lt;em&gt;Rising Up and Living On&lt;/em&gt; asks its readers to take part in the work of unsettling coloniality by walking with the present-day colonial struggles in Abya Yala and throughout the globe and to reflect, in turn, on where their own stories reside within this task.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;This book’s methodology extends the importance of relationality in Walsh’s life-long commitment to decolonial pedagogy, spanning her years as a feminist anti-racist early childhood educator in Massachusetts to her present-day directorship of Latin American Cultural Studies at the Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar in Ecuador. If coloniality is “embodied, situated, and lived” (4), as Walsh reiterates throughout her introduction, then part of the work of cracking coloniality is to write one’s own story while thinking alongside the embodied and situated stories of others who persist in struggle. Walsh is explicit about her roots as a white working-class woman raised on dispossessed Nipmuc land, as well as her humbling transformation in walking with those who have risen up and persisted in life against the colonial intertwinement of “violence-dispossession-war-death” (7). She also emphasizes the relationality at the heart of the book, comprised of a compendium of autobiography, letters, notes, and empirical reflections, while also thinking with a wide plurality of Indigenous, Afro-descendent, and other anti-colonial and decolonial thinkers: “authors, artists, students present and past, ancestor-guides, intellectual militants and activists, and political-epistemic, collective, communal, and community-based subjects, processes, practices, actions, and movements” (10).&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;In weaving these multiplicities together, Walsh takes part in the ","PeriodicalId":46247,"journal":{"name":"THEATRE JOURNAL","volume":"363 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-03-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140130151","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":"Catastrophe Practices and the Ontological Gambit: Nicholas Mosley's Plays for Not Acting","authors":"Andrew Sofer","doi":"10.1353/tj.2023.a922216","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/tj.2023.a922216","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Abstract:</p><p>This article explores three experimental closet dramas by British writer Nicholas Mosley, part of the novel <i>Catastrophe Practice</i> (1979), which deserve wider recognition in the context of theatre studies’ current focus on catastrophe and futurity. Mosley’s enigmatic “Plays for Not Acting” promote a leap in consciousness, fostering fresh mental patterns to invigorate humanity. This evolutionary leap, which can be practiced for, is akin to a catastrophe as defined by catastrophe theory: a sudden rupture in a seemingly steady state system. Departing from assigned roles, Mosley’s neo-Brechtian actors exhibit self-awareness of their unconvincing performances and moments of deliberate non-action. By abstaining from conventional acting, they create space for a transformational event beyond linguistic expression. The reader/spectator’s comprehension of the irrelevance of dramatic action, dialogue, and plot to the true “catastrophe” taking place offstage is crucial. Mosley’s concept of productive catastrophe offers a compelling dramaturgical innovation, anticipating performance theory’s insights on self-aware performance’s potential to disrupt rote performativity constructively. Mosley presciently links performance and performativity to human survival.</p></p>","PeriodicalId":46247,"journal":{"name":"THEATRE JOURNAL","volume":"379 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-03-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140130102","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 Digital Turn: Research and Publishing in Theatre Journal","authors":"Joanne Tompkins","doi":"10.1353/tj.2023.a922213","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/tj.2023.a922213","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Abstract:</p><p>For the seventy-fifth anniversary special issue of <i>Theatre Journal</i>, it is appropriate to look back to a transition moment in the journal’s history, even if that moment is not very far in the journal’s past. This essay outlines the history behind the establishment of <i>Theatre Journal</i>’s online platform which was launched in 2016. It explores the ways in which <i>Theatre Journal</i> is prepared for a turn towards research that deals with theatre grappling with digital technologies as well as research that deploys digital theatre methodologies, even if such a turn has been a little slower in coming than some researchers may have anticipated. The essay argues the case for the place of such a platform to supplement, reinforce, and showcase research that may not be readily able to be accommodated within the covers of the conventional print essay format of the journal. Likewise it outlines the importance of accommodating materials that may not otherwise be accessible. It also remarks on the multiple ways in which accessibility has come to assist in the shaping of this section of the journal.</p></p>","PeriodicalId":46247,"journal":{"name":"THEATRE JOURNAL","volume":"113 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-03-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140130107","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":"Revisiting (and Revising) West Side Story's Parahistories","authors":"Brian Eugenio Herrera","doi":"10.1353/tj.2023.a922217","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/tj.2023.a922217","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Abstract:</p><p>This essay returns to the author’s 2012 <i>Theatre Journal</i> article, “Compiling <i>West Side Story</i>’s Parahistories, 1949–2009,” to reassess the utility of “parahistory” as a critical or historiographic device to evince how “revisals” of canonical theatrical works might chart, illuminate, and document changes in the historical conditions of creative possibility. The essay then considers three notable productions of the musical that have appeared since the essay’s publication: the 2021 cinematic adaptation by Stephen Spielberg and Tony Kushner; the 2019 Broadway revival directed by Ivo van Hove; and Carnegie Hall’s 2016 <i>The Somewhere Project</i>. Teasing out how each of these productions underscore both the limits and possibility of “parahistory,” the essay concludes with a consideration of how artists and scholars have used <i>West Side Story</i> as a point of critical and creative departure and ponders how a more expansive notion of parahistories might orient a generative path toward understanding the theatrical canon amidst the contemporary cultural trend toward “the multiverse.”</p></p>","PeriodicalId":46247,"journal":{"name":"THEATRE JOURNAL","volume":"49 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-03-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140130154","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":"Dream Projects in Theatre, Novels and Films: The Works of Paul Claudel, Jean Genet, and Federico Fellini by Yehuda Moraly (review)","authors":"Clare Finburgh Delijani","doi":"10.1353/tj.2023.a922234","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/tj.2023.a922234","url":null,"abstract":"&lt;span&gt;&lt;span&gt;In lieu of&lt;/span&gt; an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:&lt;/span&gt;\u0000&lt;p&gt; &lt;span&gt;Reviewed by:&lt;/span&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;!-- html_title --&gt; &lt;em&gt;Dream Projects in Theatre, Novels and Films: The Works of Paul Claudel, Jean Genet, and Federico Fellini&lt;/em&gt; by Yehuda Moraly &lt;!-- /html_title --&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt; Clare Finburgh Delijani &lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt; &lt;em&gt;DREAM PROJECTS IN THEATRE, NOVELS AND FILMS: THE WORKS OF PAUL CLAUDEL, JEAN GENET, AND FEDERICO FELLINI&lt;/em&gt;. By Yehuda Moraly, translated by Melanie Florence. Brighton, Chicago, Toronto: Sussex Academic Press, 2021; pp. 171. &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Dream Projects&lt;/em&gt; is about works of which artists can only dream. Works that remain forever unrealized. Works that are abandoned or destroyed. Yehuda Moraly’s premise, rooted in the work of three of the great artists of the twentieth century—Paul Claudel, Jean Genet, and Federico Fellini—is that while these dream works in and of themselves remain eternally inexpressible, they make possible the remainder of the artist’s oeuvre, for which they become the key.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;By consulting authors’ notes, drafts, and letters, and examining the testimonies of those with whom they collaborated, Moraly painstakingly reconstructs the abandoned projects “from the birth of the idea through its ripening to the different versions of the project and then to its abandonment, or sometimes its abandonments since the author may come back to the project from a different angle before leaving it once more” (6). Significantly, Moraly deploys the uncompleted works as a prism through which to reevaluate each artist’s entire oeuvre, meaning that his study is of interest to specialists and non-specialists engaging with any aspect of the three artists’ works.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Chapter 1 examines the fourth part that Claudel intended to add to his Coûfontaine trilogy, which was to be a dialogue between a Jewish mother Pensée, her daughter Sarah, and the Pope’s nephew, Orian. Perhaps the fact that Claudel never resolved &lt;strong&gt;[End Page 580]&lt;/strong&gt; this dialogue between Judaism and Christianity, between the Old and New Testaments central to his larger oeuvre, reflects his inability to transcend their contrasts, suggests Moraly.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;In chapter 2, Moraly seeks to piece together the work, which was to be entitled &lt;em&gt;La Mort&lt;/em&gt; (&lt;em&gt;Death&lt;/em&gt;), that occupied almost two decades of Genet’s life and which he abandoned several times. The ultimate work of art which, according to his correspondences with interlocutors including Jean Cocteau and his American translator Bernard Frechtman, was to mirror the world, encapsulating all possible images. Genet imagined that &lt;em&gt;La Mort&lt;/em&gt; would found a new aesthetic and morality by taking difference and alterity to extremes. The cycle would feature seven plays, each of which would be independent, but would gain true value in relation to the overall group. Only Genet’s posthumously published and fittingly entitled &lt;em&gt;Fragments&lt;/em&gt; survive from what was to be his greatest p","PeriodicalId":46247,"journal":{"name":"THEATRE JOURNAL","volume":"38 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-03-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140130127","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}