Jane Montgomery Griffiths’ Theatrical Poetics

An interview with Jane Montgomery Griffiths regarding her theatrical adaptation of Dorothy Porter’s verse novel Wild Surmise (2002).

The migrants' daughter's study

The migrants’ daughter’s study is a space within the house of immigrants in which the daughter fulfils her tertiary education. Referring to the study, long inscribed and imagined as the place of a masculine individual subject, the article extends theoretical investigations of a discourse on gender and sexuality in architecture. It examines the relations between body, space, and language through the daughter’s struggle to make and inhabit an individual space, a study. It signals the lack of private space within the migrant house and the lack of public place in terms of subject positions accessible to migrants’ daughters outside the house. The study is proposed as a space of exchange between otherwise disparate cultural fields and as a space for the theatrical staging of provisional identities and possible agencies for the migrants’ daughter. The article speculates on the study as a threshold for a female ethnic imaginary and subjectivity.

'Cum together' : spectatorship, presence and La Fura Baus' XXX

Based on the Marquis De Sade's novel, Philosophy in the Bedroom, XXX, a controversial work by the Spanish Performance group La Fura Dels, has divided critics and audiences in Europe and Australia. On the one hand, the performance has been chastised for its lack of intellectual coherence and tedium. On the other hand, it has been lauded as a piece of innovative theatre that addresses the audience's senses through a variety of theatrical and multi-media devices in order to challenge their preconceptions about the connections between sex and politics in contemporary culture. Writing in the Sydney Morning Herald, Stephen Dunne asks "Why is this so desperately-naughty show so dull to watch?"

This paper challenges Dunne's assessment of the performance by examining the relationship between the performers and spectators in terms of what Susan Melrose calls theatre's specular and somatic economies in order to analyse the specific ways in which XXX simultaneously challenges and confounds traditional notions of theatrical spectatorship.

Pedagogy of the flesh : artaud and pedagogical fault lines

In the form of an installation, this panel will question the problems of combining the fleshiness of our bodies and the technologies of (re-)presentation in the production of knowledge that is contemporary teaching in a material environment. Do the aesthetics and methods of the performing arts open up new, dynamic approaches towards teaching practices? Conversely, how do traditional approaches to classroom management and learning undermine the performativity of our disciplinary concerns? We wish to challenge in the strongest possible terms the appropriateness of the traditional format for academic conferences with their monologic presentation of research outcomes. We crave new and unimagined formats for conferences that rely upon the very theatrical devices that we study, master, enact, and live through. This installation will express each participant's response to these provocations and will provide an interactive environment with many dialogic elements. Participants will use video images, live performers, and other theatrical devices to create an installation that deconstructs the experience of teaching. Signalling though the flames, should our teaching be any less?

The installation will be available for perusal as five simultaneous events occur in over-lapping space. This will last approximately 45 minutes and will be followed by a round-table discussion for the remainder of our time.

Translating text into motion : performance analysis for singers and directors

The study proposes a method of interpretation, which gives the contemporary singer-actor and director a method of performance analysis considering both the visual and the auditory aspects of vocal performance. The analysis begins with an analysis of the structure, which maps out the key ideas and translates them into main states of mind. The text analysis is followed by an analysis of the musical treatment of the text, also scanning for extra dramatic meaning inherent in vocal line and musical accompaniment. The so isolated dramatic ideas in text and musical structure and content are finally discussed in terms of their physical aspects, using the system of gesture as practiced by actors and singers before, during and beyond the Baroque period. The method is exemplified by the obbligato recitative "In quali eccessi" from Donna Elvira’s scene in the second act of the opera "Don Giovanni" by L. Da Ponte and W. A. Mozart. The musical example includes gestural notation and a table gestural notation symbols.

Malay theatre in Singapore : issues of cultural identity

This thesis explores the impact of culturally hybrid practices on the Singapore Malay community through fully comprehensive analyses of significant productions by two prominent Singapore Malay theatre groups. It demonstrates the value of applying contemporary cultural/semiotic theory and analysis to issues of cultural hybridity and identity to theatrical performance discourse.

Teaching and live performances : applied theatre in universities and schools

This article compares the classroom process of school teachers and university lecturers to the activity of theatrical performance. In doing so, it probes the potential of live performance as an educational instrument. It concludes by tracing some of the history of applications of theatre to education, from the time of Brecht to the present day.

Carnivale of night-town

Bloomsday in Melbourne Inc. annually celebrates James Joyce's novels with a theatrical event, a seminar and a dinner. This year, the centrepiece is an outrageous burlesque, adapted from the Circe chapter, which will not only delight Joyce aficionados but will provide the 'ah-hah's' for those of us unable to penetrate the text. Carnivale of Nighttown is pure Joyce: an irreverent absurdist romp involving bizarre antics, gibberish, blasphemy, gritty humour and sexual hallucination. It is a celebration of the unsurpassed richness of language that made Ulysses the greatest novel of its time, which continues to intrigue and entertain 88 years after publication despite being branded pornographic and banned.

Dramatic stage lights ON/OFF

A sound effect of stage lights coming on with a sense of drama . . . a great stinger to accompany the imagery of lights being turned on and off.

Ambient slide guitar short

A short instrumental featuring slide guitar, drums, a synth pass and pad.

Attitude electronic short

A short electronic composition styled for energy, attitude and adrenalin.

Audience laughing

Audience Laughing is a sound effect of an audience laughing.