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Strindberg and the Quest for Sacred Theatre brings a fresh perspective to the study of Sweden’s great playwright. August Strindberg (1849-1912) anticipated most of the major developments in European theatre over the last century. As such he is well-placed to provide perspectives on the current burgeoning interest in sacred theatre. The religious crises of the 19th Century provoked in Strindberg both sharp scepticism about claims to religious authority and a visionary search for truth. Against the backdrop of a major change in European culture this book traces the emergence in some of Strindberg’s late plays of a proto-sacred-theatre. It argues that Strindberg faced the alternatives of a contentless transcendent abyss, threatening the extinction of his ego, or a retreat into conservative theism, reducing him to slavish submission to the commandments and rule of an external father-God. Weaving together theatrical, aesthetic, and theological voices, this book investigates the relationship of the sacred to subjectivity and its implications for Strindberg’s dramaturgy. In doing so it always keeps in view the sense both of loss and opportunity engendered by a turning point in the western experience of the sacred.
A work of intellectual weaving and braiding. A series of reflections on ritual, drama, profane, culture, theory and practice and their connections to Haitian Vodou.
Newly adapted for the Anglophone reader, this is an excellent translation of Hans-Thies Lehmann’s groundbreaking study of the new theatre forms that have developed since the late 1960s, which has become a key reference point in international discussions of contemporary theatre. In looking at the developments since the late 1960s, Lehmann considers them in relation to dramatic theory and theatre history, as an inventive response to the emergence of new technologies, and as an historical shift from a text-based culture to a new media age of image and sound. Engaging with theoreticians of 'drama' from Aristotle and Brecht, to Barthes and Schechner, the book analyzes the work of recent experimental theatre practitioners such as Robert Wilson, Tadeusz Kantor, Heiner Müller, the Wooster Group, Needcompany and Societas Raffaello Sanzio. Illustrated by a wealth of practical examples, and with an introduction by Karen Jürs-Munby providing useful theoretical and artistic contexts for the book, Postdramatic Theatre is an historical survey expertly combined with a unique theoretical approach which guides the reader through this new theatre landscape.
While the body appears in almost all cultural discourses, it is nowhere as visible as in dance. This book captures the resurgence of the dancing body in the second half of the twentieth century by introducing students to the key phenomenological, kinaesthetic and psychological concepts relevant to both theatre and dance studies.
Applied Theatre: Aesthetics re-examines how the idea of 'the aesthetic' is relevant to performance in social settings. The disinterestedness that traditional aesthetics claims as a key characteristic of art makes little sense when making performances with ordinary people, rooted in their lives and communities, and with personal and social change as its aim. Yet practitioners of applied arts know that their work is not reducible to social work, therapy or education. Reconciling the simultaneous autonomy and heteronomy of art is the problem of aesthetics in applied arts. Gareth White's introductory essay reviews the field, and proposes an interdisciplinary approach that builds on new developments in evolutionary, cognitive and neuro-aesthetics alongside the politics of art. It addresses the complexities of art and the aesthetic as everyday behaviours and responses. The second part of the book is made up of essays from leading experts and new voices in the practice and theory of applied performance, reflecting on the key problematics of applying performance with non-performers. New and innovative practice is described and interrogated, and fresh thinking is introduced in response to perennial problems.
The essays collected in this volume were initially presented at the Fifth International Conference on Consciousness, Theatre, Literature and the Arts, held at the University of Lincoln, June 15–17, 2013. The conference was organised on the basis of the success of its predecessors in 2005, 2007, 2009 and 2011, and on the basis of the success of the Rodopi book series Consciousness, Literature and the Arts, which has to date seen 34 volumes in print, with another 12 in press or in the process of being written. The 2013 conference and the book series highlight the continuing growth of interest within the interdisciplinary field of consciousness studies, and in the distinct disciplines of theatre studies, literary studies, film studies, fine arts and music in the relationship between the object of these disciplines and human consciousness. 35 delegates from 12 countries across the world attended the June 2013 conference in Lincoln; their range of disciplines and approaches is reflected well in this book.
An encyclopedic dictionary of technical and theoretical terms, the book covers all aspects of a semiotic approach to the theatre, with cross-referenced alphabetical entries ranging from absurd to word scenery.
This book opens a new interdisciplinary frontier between religion and theatre studies to illuminate what has been seen as the religious, or spiritual, nature of Polish theatre director Jerzy Grotowski’s work. It corrects the lacunae in both theatre studies and religious studies by examining the interaction between the two fields in his artistic output. The central argument of the text is that through an embodied and materialist approach to religion, developed in the work of Michel Foucault and religious studies scholar Manuel Vasquez, as well as a critical reading of the concepts of the New Age, a new understanding of Grotowski and religion can be developed. It is possible to show how Grotowski’s work articulated spiritual experience within the body; achieving a removal of spirituality from ecclesial authorities and relocating spiritual experience within the body of the performer. This is a unique analysis of one of the 20th Century’s most famous theatrical figures. As such, it is a vital reference for academics in both Religion and Theatre Studies that have an interest in the spiritual aspects of Grotowski’s work.
