Volume 2.1: Faith, Violence and Performance
Letter from the Editor
Editorial: Holy War Theatres
Mark Pizzato
Abstract:"Every since 9/11..." This notion has come to dominate or current consciousness. Perhaps future historians will call this period not to the postmodern or postmodern, but the "millennial period." This editorial considers the performative dimensions of war as well as theatre about war, and interrogates the place of faith in violent conflict. But why are ‘religious' villains so popular in our theatres of war and mass media? Historically, the Western idea of theatre emerged and reemerged through the melodramatic rites of good and evil forces, human and divine, demanding forces. Pizzato emphasizes the tendency of people to gravitate towards evil as an explanation and asks, particularly, what did the performances of 9/11 mean? Has the art of theatre been outmoded not only by cinema and television, but also by the reality show of live terrorist spectacles in the mass media or their threat to strike again, anywhere any time? Sacrifices are made, in all historical periods, to incarnate the others existence. In this way, theatre, from stage to screen, might change the melodramatic "war on terror" toward a tragic realization of American hubris. Conflict has been at the heart of theatre, religion, and human evolution for many millennia. If terrorism is theatre, then there is too much of it in the world today, especially religious, political, and mass-media melodrama.
Feature: Staging Terezfn: A Performance-Based Research Project
Lisa Peschel & Alan Sikes
Abstract: The article details the efforts of the authors to stage two productions that examined the history of Terezín, an eighteenth-century garrison town located in the present-day Czech Republic and used by the Nazis as a concentration camp during the Second World War. Terezín was employed to spread disinformation about the supposed relocation of Jews to new settlements within Eastern Europe. The Jewish prisoners of Terezin faced overcrowding, disease, and the constant threat of transport to the death camps. However, in order to facilitate the Nazi disinformation project, the inmates were forced to live a facsimile of a "normal" village life. This confluence of "reality" and "imitation" experienced by the inmates lends itself to exploration in theatrical performance, which also, and inevitable grapples with a similar confluence. Working together, the authors created two workshop performances-a first 2003 production in Minneapolis, MN, and a second 2004 production in Tallahassee, FL-that drew upon the doubled nature of theatre in order to examine life within the camp. Intent upon exploring the complexities of camp experience, the authors sought to produce not a transparent repersentation of life in Terezín, but instead an exploration of the difficulties involved in the act of representation itself.
Feature: "Great mowrning and mone": Modeled Spectatorship in the Towneley Scourging
David Eshelman
Abstract: In the Towneley Scourging, spectators are shown not only the horrific spectacle of Jesus's physical suffering, but also the spectacle of his mother's psychological suffering, signified by her weeping. The internal, dramatic structures of the Towneley play-most especially, plot and character-encourage audience identification, not with Christ, but with the Virgin Mary. In the play, characters can be divided into three groups: 1. those who perpetrate the violence (Pilate, the Consulti, the Torturers); 2. the victim of the violence (Jesus); 3. those who watch the violence (the Apostle John, the Virgin Mary, Mary Magdalene, etc). Like the medieval audience, the spectator-actors are neither physically causing Christ's suffering, nor are they experiencing it. In contrast to Jesus and his killers, the spectator-actors stand apart from the action, functioning as a kind of Greek Chorus. Of these spectators, the Virgin Mary is most freely able to express her sorrow, making her chief among the weepers and therefore positioned as the character ripest for audience identification. Through her, spectators learn how to view the play unfolding before them. The larger implication of Mary's role lie in the potential for spectators not only to use the Scourging model as a way to deal with the play, but also as a model for dealing with the injustices of the world at large. Mary's actions (or lack thereof) function as a potential didactic tool, providing a model for the viewing of public executions in general. By modeling a spiritual response to the physical suffering of Jesus, Mary teaches audience members to engage in devotional practices that fulfill the need to act yet in no way to help correct the injustice.
Highlight: Interview with Eve Ensler
Highlight: The Interminable War? Cycles of Violence in Helen Edmundson's The Clearing
K. Sarah-Jane Murray
Abstract: Reputed British playwright Helen Edmunson’s play The Clearing humanizes a concrete point in the Anglo-Irish conflict: the time is 1653, and the plot is the marriage between an Irish girl and a Cambridge educated English gentleman. Murray’s speech provides an exhaustive analysis of this 1993 John Whiting Award recipient. And the play, “a complex work”, is in its turn a review of the shattering effects of the persecution policy imposed on Ireland in the seventeenth century by Oliver Cromwell’s government. The article comments upon the failed love story between the two protagonists as a background for the clearing of Irishness in Ireland; the opposition between the two sides is initially embodied by the secondary characters. Eventually, the conflict overtakes the lovers, as well. Prof. Murray contextualizes the historical moment the characters are living in by discussing the main points of an almost eight hundred years old confrontation, and sheds light on the relevance that Helen Edmunson’s Clearing has for the present day audience.
Highlight: "The Troubles of Romeo and Juliet"
Crystal Brian
Abstract: The Troubles of Romeo and Juliet was produced by Quinnipiac University and staged at New Haven’s Long Wharf Theatre in April of 2004. Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet forms the basis for a collaboratively-conceived piece of theatre examining of the Troubles of Northern Ireland. Students conducted extensive research, focusing on first-hand accounts of those who have suffered during the violence which has torn the tiny country for generations. The result was this script, which seeks to “make strange” that story by emphasizing the violence of angry men and women focused on vengeance and retribution rather than the love story of Romeo and Juliet. The back-stories of Shakespeare’s characters have been revised to include many different perspectives. Mercutio speaks as a member of one of the most violent of the Protestant Loyalist paramilitary groups, the Shankill Butchers; Tybalt becomes a Catholic IRA officer; the Nurse’s fiancée was executed by Loyalists as she watched; Juliet’s friend, a Protestant, was beaten to death by Loyalists who mistook her for a Catholic.
Profile: Elfriede Jelinek
Jennifer L. Good
Book & Performance Reviews:
- Peter Novak- Mary Magdalene and the Drama of Saints, Theresa Coletti
- Heather Beasley-Drama Education in the Lives of Girls: Imagining Possibilities, Kathleen Gallagher
- Christine Boyko-Head-This is My Body: Representational Practices in the Early Middle Ages, Michal Kobialka
- Debra Charlton- "Tamar's Revenge" at the Royal Shakespeare Company, London, UK
- Steven Pounders-"Marisol" at Risk Theatre Initiative, Dallas, Tx
Volume 2.2: Comedy and the Spirit
Letter from Editor
Editorial: The Spirit of Comedy
Gary Maciag
Abstract: It might seem odd at first to consider the comic and the spirit having any relationship at all in an era when religion and its practices have become deadly serious. Still, luckily, laughter has not been banished from our world. People laugh in the face of danger, even if that simply means not changing one's behavior in the vague, ghostly presence of dire threats – perhaps not a particularly moving expression of heroism but maybe at least a small triumph of the will. Can religion and the life of the spirit be the bases of comic relief – in the sense of liberation – as much as, if not more so, than terror and suspicion?
Feature: The Power of the Carnival Satirist: Taking Laughter Seriously
David Charles
Abstract: Utilizing theories of satire and laughter, in particular Mikhail Bakhtin's understanding of the carnivalesque, David Charles investigates methods of spontaneous theatre practice used to pursue serious work. Analyzing mission statements, performance history, and audience reception of performances by Second City, ComedySportz, Pittsburgh’s Church Ladies, and others, the author demonstrates how the theatrical carnival spirit can expose artificial hierarchical, racial, and gender barriers yet also reinforce existing negative stereotypes. This essay considers how many spontaneous improvisational troupes seek to move beyond the temporary space of carnival to pursue active social-political agendas that empower performers and audience.
Feature: Wickedly Devotional Comedy in the York Temptation of Christ
Christopher Crane
Abstract: Satan opens the York Temptation of Christ pageant by employing a complex and subtle rhetorical comedy aimed at moving fifteenth-century spectators toward lives of greater devotion. Although this pageant employs carnivalesque comedy that violates the boundary between stage and spectator and appears subversive of orthodox teaching, the comedy ultimately invites audience members to recognize evil in themselves, a necessary step to repentance and obedience. This rhetorical tactic serves the York cycles broader religious aims of reinforcing orthodox doctrine and encouraging devotion in the audience. The effect of this identification is not as clear, however, when a character appears attractive to the audience through his comically transgressive words and actions. Characters in the cycle plays, like the York Satan, appear to threaten the orthodox message by entertaining the audience, yet the spirit of misrule they cultivate becomes itself part of that message when the characters-and the spectators identifying with them-are set in opposition to God and Christ. The orthodox aim of what may at first appear to be subversive comedy depends on the common faith of the medieval audience. Such drama points to a faith that not only gave freedom to laugh, but a faith strengthened through the comedy, which reminded spectators of their own fallibility and made the forgiveness and grace at the center of that faith more inviting.
Highlight: Questioning Caste: Performance, Parody and the Political Economy of a Hindu State. An Interview with Sunil Pohkarel
Mark West
Abstract: Mark West speaks with Sunil Pokharel, Artistic Director of the Aarohan Theatre Group, about the importance of humor in Nepalese kachahari forum theatre. Inspired by Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed, kachahari forum theatre confronts social issues such as governmental corruption, gender discrimination, and the marginalization and dehumanization of Dalits (“Untouchables”) through interactive performances emphasizing conflict resolution. Many of the injustices addressed in the kachahari performances stem from the Hindu caste system and its inextricable connection with Nepal’s bureaucracy, which maintains the power imbalance between the upper and lower castes. In this interview, Pokharel expands on the creative process of crafting subversive theatre in a nation silenced by state censorship, and explores the use of humor as a means of entertainment, a method of therapy, and an essential tool for social change.
Profile: Rising Image Productions & Target Practice
W. Barrett Huddleston
Abstract: The article describes the project of Rising Image Productions, the largest theatre company exclusively devoted to staging C.S. Lewis theatre adaptations in the United States. The writing provides specific insight into the company's adaptation of the Screwtape Letters, Target Practice, and attempts to critically analyze the process of translating Lewis's work into a humorous musical performance. Further analysis compares Rising Image's adaptation choices to Commedia Del Arte' tropes, with special emphasis on the resemblance between the play's central characters and Arlecchino and Pantalone.
Book & Performance Reviews:
- Victor Emeljanow-Theatre and Social Change, Alisa Solomon (Ed.)
- James M. Brandon-Staging the Savage God, Ralf Remshardt
- Peter Senkbeil-Performance Theory, Richard Schechner
- Jill Stevenson-"Altar Boyz" at Dodger Stages, Brooklyn, NY
- Jamie Gianoutsos-"The Magic Flute" at Baylor University, Waco, Tx
- Daniel Inouye-"Spamalot" at the Schubert Theatre, New York, NY
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