The interval and indoor playmaking

Although early modern acting companies were adept at using different kinds of venue, performing indoors imposed a significant change in practice. Since indoor theatres required artificial lighting to augment the natural light admitted via windows, candles were employed; but the technology was such that candles could not last untended throughout an entire performance. Performing indoors thus introduced a new component into stage practice: the interval. This article explores what extant evidence (such as it is) might tell us about the introduction of act breaks, how they may have worked, and the implications for actors, audiences and dramatists. Ben Jonson's scripting of the interval in two late plays, The Staple of News and The Magnetic Lady, is examined for what it may suggest about actual practice, and the ways in which the interval may have been considered integral to composition and performance is explored through a reading of Middleton and Rowley's The Changeling. The interval offered playwrights a form of structural punctuation, drawing attention to how acts ended and began; actors could use the space to bring on props for use in the next act; spectators might use the pause between acts to reflect on what had happened and, perhaps, anticipate what was to come; and stage-sitters, the evidence indicates, often took advantage of the hiatus in the play to assert their presence in the space to which all eyes naturally were drawn.

Power plays : Australian theatre and the public agenda

Power Plays capitalises on this moment of renewed and heightened interest by investigating the why and the how of eight contemporary Australian playwrights: Andrew Bovell, Patricia Cornelius, Reg Cribb, Ben Ellis, Wesley Enoch, Hannie Rayson, Stephen Sewell and Katherine Thomson. These writers are passionate about the theatre as a forum for public discussion and they interrogate current issues in their work. Their plays reflect the passing show of cultural, political and economic life in Australia, telling audiences something critical about what is going on: this is the state of play, this is what we are.

The author has conducted extensive interviews with these writers and offers an extended analysis of some of their recent plays.

Intent and Method: A Study of Female Characters in Aeschylean and Euripidean Drama

Aeschylus and Euripides used tragic female characters to help fulfill the purpose of religious celebration and to achieve the motivation of public reaction. The playwrights, revising myths about tragic woman and redefining the Greek definition of appropriate femininity, supported or questioned the very customs which they changed. Originally composed as part of a religious festival for Dionysus, the god of wine, revelry and fertility, the tragedies of Aeschylus and Euripides were evaluated by Aristotle. He favored Aeschylus over Euripides, but it appears as if his stipulations for tragic characterization do not apply to Aeschylean and Euripidean women. Modem critics question both Aristotle's analysis in the Poetics as well as the tragedies which he evaluated. As part of the assessment of Aeschylus, the character of the Persian Queen, Atossa, appears as a conradiction the images that Greeks maintain of non-Greeks. The Persians is discussed in relation to modem criticisms and as on its function as a warning against radical changes in Athenian domestic life. The Oresteia, a trilogy, also charts the importance of an atypical woman in Aeschylean tragedy, and how this role, Clytaemnestra, represents an extreme example of the natural and necessary evolution of families, households and kingdoms. In contrast to Aeschylus' plea to retain nomoi (traditional custom and law), EUripides' tragedy, the Medea, demonstrates the importance of a family and a country to provide security, especially for women. Medea's abandonment by Jason and subsequent desperation drives her to commit murder in the hope of revenge. Ultimately, Euripides advocates changes in social convention away from the alienation of non-Greek, non-citizens, and females. Euripides is, unfortunately, tagged a misogynist by some in this tragedy and another example-the Hippolytus. Euripides' Phaedra becomes entangled in a scheme of divine vengeance and ultimately commits suicide in an attempt to avoid societal shame. Far from treatises of hate, Euripidean women take advantage of the little power they possess within a constrictive social system. While both Aeschylus and Euripides revise customary images and expectations of women in the context of religiously-motivated drama, one playwright intends to maintain civic order and the other intends to challenge the secular norm.

En-gendering the nation : gender-bending and nationalism in Miles Franklin's 'My brilliant career' and Emily Lawless's 'Grania: The story of an Island'

Writing in the lee of first-wave feminism and in an era of nation-invention, the Irish Ascendancy novelist, Emily Lawless, and the aggressively Australian Miles Franklin (of Irish, English and German extraction and coming from families who were pastoralists) wrote novels of adolescence, respectively, 'Grania: the Story of an Island' (1892) and 'My Brilliant Career' (1901). Similar and different in many ways, they both wrote as women and self-consciously inserted themselves into nation-inscribing projects with an eye to overseas readerships, and they played fast and loose with class. Curiously, both contributed to the process of transforming 'nowhere-places' into iconic nationalist places: Franklin put the Monaro on the map (a region that was a nationalist icon before the 'Red Centre' usurped its place); and Lawless wrote in ethnographic ways about the Aran Islands more than a decade before J.M. Synge tramped westward in search of the 'Peasant Quality', so beloved of the Abbey Theatre playwrights and audiences. Most compellingly, they wrote of the near-pathologies of masculinities within nationalist agendas, and of marriage and sexuality. This article examines the novels comparatively and contrastively and asks uncomfortable questions about why and how their interventions were untimely.

En-Gendering the Nation: Gender-bending and Nationalism in Miles Franklin’s My Brilliant Career and Emily Lawless’ Grania: the Story of an Island

Writing in the lee of first-wave feminism and in an era of nation-invention, the Irish ascendancy novelist, Emily Lawless, and the aggressively Australian Miles Franklin (of Irish, English and German extraction and coming from families who were pastoralists) wrote novels of adolescence, Grania: The Story of an Island (1892) and My Brilliant Career (1901) respectively. Similar and different in many ways, they both write as women, and self-consciously insert themselves into nation-inscribing projects with an eye to overseas readerships, and they play fast and loose with class. Curiously, both contributed to the process of transforming ‘nowhere-places’ into iconic nationalist places: Franklin put the Monaro on the map (a region that was a nationalist icon before the ‘Red Centre’ usurped its place); and Lawless wrote in ethnographic ways about the Aran Islanders more than a decade before Synge tramped westward in search of the ‘Peasant Quality’ so beloved of the Abbey playwrights and audiences. Most compellingly, they write of the near-pathologies of masculinities within nationalist agendas, and of marriage and sexuality. This paper examines the novels comparatively and contrastively and asks uncomfortable questions about why and how their interventions were untimely.

O zoológico existencialista de Edward Albee

Pós-graduação em Estudos Literários - FCLAR

O casamento, uma instituição útil e necessária

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

L'Amour dácadent em dramas de Villiers de L'Isle-Adam e Maurice Maeterlinck

Pós-graduação em Estudos Literários - FCLAR

A música em As Báquides, de Plauto: tradução e análise dos cantica

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

Absurdo e censura na cena portuguesa: estudo do teatro de Prista Monteiro

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Imaginary irishness: the feminine in dramatisations of the Paster Rising in Sean O’Casey’s the plough and the stars and Tom Murphy’s The Patriot Game

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

SEARCHING FOR HOPE IN SAMUEL BECKETT, EDWARD ALBEE, AND SAM SHEPARD

Reading absurdist plays as hopeful is rare because they are filled with portrayals of horror and despair. However, the tragedy of these plays can allow the audience to experience an atypical kind of hope, often during the final moments of the play. Though the conclusions of the plays are usually ambiguous, this ambiguity and lack of resolutiondoes not preclude hope. The characters persist through their suffering and react in ways that can allow a hopeful affect on the audience. The three absurdist playwrights, Samuel Beckett, Edward Albee, and Sam Shepard, express differing views of the tragic nature of the human condition. However, persistent through all of their work is the ability to view tragedy as having a hopeful affect on the audience. Though the plays do not necessitate a reading of hopefulness, their plays do not preclude this. These absurdist plays do not force the audience into despair, but instead leave open the option of experiencing an expectation and determination for life.

Hamlet's Mobility: The Reception of Shakespeare's Tragedy in US-American and Canadian Narrative Fiction

This essay presents a comprehensive study of how Hamlet figures in North American fiction. Gabriele Rippl takes her cue from Stephen Greenblatt’s notion of Shakespeare’s ‘theatrical mobility’ (Greenblatt, Cultural Mobility. Cambridge University Press, 2010). This initial mobility, based on the playwright’s own borrowings, appears to facilitate, or even instigate further migrations. Rippl proceeds to give an overview of adaptations of Shakespeare’s Hamlet in the USA and Canada, thus providing an insight into the historical and cultural uses to which the play has been put by authors such as John Updike or Margaret Atwood. Phenomena such as the ‘republicanization’ of Shakespeare (James Fenimore Cooper), or his appropriation for a feminist counter-discourse in Canada circumscribe a space for the negotiation of cultural and political identities.

La guerre au théâtre: stratégie et dramaturgie

El presente estudio se interroga sobre la paradoja que plantea la representación de la guerra en el espacio escénico. Espacio bélico y espacio escénico son difícilmente reconciliables dadas sus características intrínsecas (entre otras, la tendencia centrífuga del primero y la centrípeta del segundo). Para salvar esta paradoja, los dramaturgos han desarrollado estrategias poético -retóricas como el uso de la metáfora, la metonimia y el fuera de escena. Por otra parte, el escenario a la vez que se instituye como espacio de una representación, se comunica con un espacio exterior que está más allá, pero que no se manifiesta siempre necesariamente. En virtud de esta vinculación, la representación de la guerra es atravesada por una serie de mediaciones. En primer lugar, la circulación de aquello que "flota" entre el escenario y el afuera del escenario, que los tropos (metáfora, metonimia) permiten recuperar al menos virtualmente. En segundo, el vestigio del episodio guerrero, inscrito en la Historia, que, en tanto vestigio, oscila entre la presencia y la ausencia. Finalmente, las restricciones del teatro mismo y sus principios éticos y estéticos, que trasforman la guerra en sus modos de manifestación espontáneos. El presente trabajo analiza la articulación de estas instancias en obras de Esquilo, Shakespeare y Genêt.

La poética teatral de Sacha Barrera Oro

Un balance del desarrollo del teatro durante el siglo XX arroja como dato fundamental, quizás como punto decisivo, la consabida dialéctica entre texto y escena. En la actualidad, sin embargo, al menos en la Argentina, parecen advertirse los signos de una síntesis y se propagan los escritores que ponen en escena sus textos, los actores que colaboran en la escritura, los directores que deciden asumirse dramaturgos al publicar su texto luego de la representación. El propósito de este trabajo es estudiar la producción de Sacha Barrera Oro, la cual, de reciente aparición en el campo teatral mendocino, aúna la labor dramatúrgica y la directorial. Tras una breve reseña biográfica, se deslindan los principios fundamentales de su poética teatral.