Postmodernism, culture and feminism: the aesthetics of space and performance in Rock Follies and Rock Follies of '77

This article discusses the aesthetic and spatial representational strategies of the popular studio-based musical television drama serials Rock Follies and Rock Follies of ’77. It analyses how the texts’ themes relating to women and the entertainment industry are mediated through their postmodern ironic mode and representation of fantastic spaces. Rock Follies’ distinctive stylised aesthetic and mode of caricature are analysed with reference to the visual intentions and ‘voice’ of the writer, Howard Schuman. Through considering the programmes’ various spatial strategies, the article draws attention to the importance of visual and performance style in their postmodern discourse on culture, fantasy, gender and subjectivity. Analysis of the spaces of musical performance, characters’ domestic environments and simulated entertainment spaces reveals how a dialectic is established between the escapist imaginative pleasures of fantasy and the manipulative and exploitative practices of the culture industry. The shift from the optimism of the first series, when the LittleLadies first form, to the darker mood of the second series, in which they are increasingly divided by industry pressures, is traced through changes in the aesthetics of space and characterisation. As a space of artifice, performance and electronic visual manipulation that facilitates the texts’ reflexive representation of culture and feminised fantasy, the studio’s unique aesthetic strengths emerge through this case study.

Collabowrighting the hyper(play)text: a postdramatic digital poetics

The aim of this research is to exhibit how literary playtexts can evoke multisensory trends prevalent in 21st century theatre. In order to do so, it explores a range of practical forms and theoretical contexts for creating participatory, site-specific and immersive theatre. With reference to literary theory, specifically to semiotics, reader-response theory, postmodernism and deconstruction, it attempts to revise dramatic theory established by Aristotle’s Poetics. Considering Gertrude Stein’s essay, Plays (1935), and relevant trends in theatre and performance, shaped by space, technology and the everchanging role of the audience member, a postdramatic poetics emerges from which to analyze the plays of Mac Wellman and Suzan-Lori Parks. Distinguishing the two textual lives of a play as the performance playtext and the literary playtext, it examines the conventions of the printed literary playtext, with reference to models of practice that radicalize the play form, including works by Mabou Mines, The Living Theatre and Fiona Templeton. The arguments of this practice-led Ph.D. developed out of direct engagement with the practice project, which explores the multisensory potential of written language when combined with hypermedia. The written thesis traces the development process of a new play, Rumi High, which is presented digitally as a ‘hyper(play)text,’ accessible through the Internet at www.RumiHigh.org. Here, ‘playwrighting’ practice is expanded spatially, collaboratively and textually. Plays are built, designed and crafted with many layers of meaning that explore both linguistic and graphic modes of poetic expression. The hyper(play)text of Rumi High establishes playwrighting practice as curatorial, where performance and literary playtexts are in a reciprocal relationship. This thesis argues that digital writing and reading spaces enable new approaches to expressing the many languages of performance, while expanding the collaborative network that produces the work. It questions how participatory forms of immersive and site-specific theatre can be presented as interactive literary playtexts, which enable the reader to have a multisensory experience. Through a reflection on process and an evaluation of the practice project, this thesis problematizes notions of authorship and text.