The present article discusses Ravel’s Gaspard de la nuit (1908) and L’Enfant et les sortilèges (1925) by by allowing a section of each of these works – namely ‘Le gibet’ and ‘Préambule féerique’ – to enter into resonance with the notion of risk-taking and the dictates of the Surrealist movement. While Ravel carries out experiments of an unusual and perilous character with a consummate art, the result is far removed from the Neoclassical perspective from which his works are usually considered.
This essay explores the character of Cerulia in Frances Burney’s dramatic play, Hubert de Vere, composed and revised in the 1790s, yet never published or staged in Burney’s lifetime. Cerulia seems to eschew any easy dramatic categorization, as she cannot be identified with the heroine of the play. Undeniably, she is a victim, but of whom/what, we may wonder? Does attempting to define the nature of the hamartia of which Cerulia remains victim lead the “ideal” reader/viewer toward either fate/the gods or, rather, social apparatuses? And, finally, what about the eponymous protagonist Hubert de Vere? Is it correct to identify de Vere as the actant “hero”, or perhaps as per the sub-category “villain hero” so popular in late eighteenth-century dramas? Burney’s adroit exploitation of tropology and literary allusion in Hubert de Vere will be at the centre of this essay. In particular, I will examine the last act of the play, where the themes of confinement, imprisonment, and escape take on tragic hues. Though unpublished until 1995, these scenes are among the most vivid and, indeed, the most shocking Burney ever wrote. It is my contention that a long overdue appraisal of female characterisation in Hubert de Vere can shed novel light –at once both disturbing and liberating– on Frances Burney’s oeuvre at large.
This article explores the affinities between animation practice and experiments in perception by Gestalt psychologists. By drawing out a Gestalt style of seeing — a sensitivity to the visual forces that scaffold an image — we can better describe movements, figures, and spaces in animation. Although these affinities make Gestalt appropriate for discussing animation, they do not necessarily imply that animated films merely illustrate or independently verify Gestalt laws of perception. Rather, they suggest two branches of cultural practice sharing what philosopher of science Ian Hacking calls a ‘style of reasoning’: a regularized procedure whose consistent results form a basis for knowledge in a given culture. This article argues that Gestalt and animation are co-participants in the ‘culture of design’: a project of shaping sensory arrangements in order to shape populations, which began in the nineteenth century and has gained force through the present day. It is this culture of design, which includes the exploration of cinema as an art of graphic arrangement, that has become all-but-ubiquitous in the 21stcentury and has led to the ubiquity of animation.
Frances Babbage, Malaika Cunningham, Zelda Hannay
et al.
This co-authored article examines the ways in which The People’s Palace of Possibility, a live interactive installation by The Bare Project, was reinvented in the context of COVID-19 as a postal event engaging participants individually in their local areas. We show how the adapted dramaturgy sought to address the deep disruptions instilled by the pandemic, seeking to build a dynamic, reparative structure that could tend to a shattered and isolating present. Applying perspectives from adaptation, psychology, democratic theory and dramaturgy, we argue that home, neighbourhood and online environments afforded opportunities for individual and collective engagement with political ideas, generating multiple visions of utopia.
Il contributo di Roberto Alonge prende atto del fatto che la drammaturgia di Pirandello costituisce ormai un punto fisso dei cartelloni dei teatri italiani, ed esamina tre spettacoli pirandelliani: Il piacere dell’onestà, Così è (se vi pare) e Sei personaggi in cerca d’autore. Il primo è un buon prodotto, costruito sull’abilità consumata di un grandattore di vaglia, Geppy Gleijeses. Il secondo, diretto da Filippo Dini, ha l’ambizione di aprire nuove chiavi interpretative di un testo molto studiato. Per certi tratti Dini confessa il suo debito alla celebre messinscena di Massimo Castri che, per il momento, resta la più convincente testimonianza di una lettura originale del testo, fondata sull’ipotesi che l’incesto tra padre e figlia sia il segreto nascosto nello strato profondo della commedia. Per concludere, i Sei personaggi di Spiro Scimone e Francesco Sframeli, presentati con il titolo Sei, sono un esempio di adattamento drammaturgico molto interessante. La famosa commedia di Pirandello è sfoltita drasticamente, ridotta a una rappresentazione di poco più di un’ora, in molti punti sottoposta a un’operazione di riscrittura, spesso personale ma mai libera e gratuita, perché i due teatranti messinesi sono artisti di valore.
Quel rôle le critique peut-il avoir vis-à-vis des nouveaux langages de la scène théâtrale contemporaine? Comment le critique peut-il aborder, par l’écriture, des spectacles comme ceux de Romeo Castellucci où le langage scénique proposé échappe à la technè théâtrale traditionnelle? Cet article propose d’analyser la figure et le rôle du critique-spectateur face à l’un des artistes les plus controversés. Pour ce faire, nous nous sommes intéressée en particulier à la façon dont la critique des quotidiens et des hebdomadaires français dans les années 2011-2013 a pris en charge les trois spectacles qui constituent la trilogie Le voile noir du pasteur : Sur le concept du visage du fils de Dieu (2010), Le voile noir du pasteur (2011) et The Four Seasons Restaurant (2012). Dans notre cas d’étude, le critique s’est avéré être un témoin de l’événement théâtral sans outils d’analyse aptes à traduire le langage scénique de Castellucci.
The contemporary dynamics of performing arts has determined us to plead for the re/evaluation of the statute of the puppet as actor, as well as the puppeteer‟s. The present study might also be seen as a journey from and towards the theatre principles established by Kleist, Craig or Obraztov; a lesson about the poetry of technique and poeticized technique. The analysis of the double dimension of characters in animation theatre - the plastic and the interpretative sides - but also of the role of the relation between puppet and puppeteer has determined us to prove the necessity of using methods that are centered on interdisciplinary and comparative studies.
Witkacy’s play The Mother (1924), widely praised for its brilliant inventiveness and shocking avant-gardism, is sometimes considered to be a family drama, or a family tragedy or grotesque. Witkacy himself confirms the adequacy of classifying The Mother as a family drama by openly using other family dramas in his play: Ibsen’s Ghosts and Strindberg’s The Ghost Sonata. What sets these family dramas apart is their eeriness; they feature vampiric motifs; they expose putrid decay hidden behind the façade of a happy bourgeois home that has lost all flavor of tragedy and thus belongs to the category of grotesque. The analysis of the Eely family in Witkacy goes further than to show a crisis, or downfall, of the bourgeois world; it aims at showing the gradual downfall of man, and of humanity in a human being. When all that has been stable and solid is disintegrating, a rejection of the values and principles of the world as we know it becomes something done easily and unabashedly. To put it in Witkacy’s own terms, religion, art, and philosophy will die away one by one, and what comes next could be called dehumanization. The Mother brings a concrete vision of the downfall. People who are de facto human, i.e. Individual Beings sensitive to metaphysics, will perish forever, replaced by people only nominally human whose whole existence is reduced to the processes of production, consumption and reproduction, people who hate metaphysics of any kind and are just post-human, “mechanised” individuals.
Dramatic representation. The theater, The performing arts. Show business
Marcondes Cabral de Abreu, Carlos Antônio Magalhães Guedelha
Este artigo propõe uma leitura do romance A Selva, de Ferreira de Castro, explorando a transfiguração do drama humano nos seringais amazônicos a partir das cenas mais expressivas da obra. Busca-se também entender a importância do romance para a formação da literatura no Amazonas e o retrato das condições a que muitos seringueiros tiveram que se submeter em prol de uma condição de vida diferente da que tinham no sertão. Além disso, relacionar a condição desse homem com a decadência do ciclo da borracha no qual o romance se passa.