Productions of plays by Shakespeare's contemporaries between 1960 and 2003. It focuses on the plays themselves; the ways they were presented by the RSC; the place of the productions in the RSC's development; and their critical reception. These four strands are variously balanced at different stages ofthe argument, which traces the shifting status ofthese playwrights within the RSC's Shakespeare-centred ethos. After Chapter l's introductory material, Chapter 2 uses the RSC's Webster productions to provide a series of snapshots ofthe company at different stages in its history. Chapter 3 examines more closely the period 1960-74, considering the RSC's aspiration towards small-scale work while still tied to the demands ofits larger theatres. Chapter 4 looks at the work ofThe Other Place from 1975-91, and the three main-house productions ofthe same period. The remainder ofthe thesis considers the repertoire ofthe Swan Theatre: its first two seasons, 1986-87, in Chapter 5; its subsequent work on Jonson's comedies in Chapter 6; its productions ofMarlowe and revenge tragedy in Chapter 7; and its rediscovery ofneglected plays in Chapter 8.

The thesis charts the development of Enrique Buenaventura and the theatre group Teatro Experimental de Cali (TEC) from their modest beginnings in 1955, operating out of a theatre department in a local arts college, to their rise during the 1960s and 1970s as one of Colombia's, and Latin America's, foremost independent theatre groups linked to the internationally renowned New Theatre Movement. Structured on a methodological approach founded in a semiotic theory that regards the generation of meaning in theatre as historically and culturally determined, this thesis provides a historical contextualisation of the TEC's New Theatre project, identifying the socio-political and cultural influences assimilated in over five decades of dramaturgy and performance. Selected texts and performances from the TEC's repertoire are included as a means of highlighting their developing notions of theatre, which come to revolve around an ever increasing confrontation between dramatic text and the dramaturgy of the actor, known as the theatre of collective creation. Whilst acknowledging the particular historical circumstances that saw collective creation promoted as a paradigm of the socialist revolution, I argue that the TEC's theatre should be viewed as originating from a profound investigation of the tensions between text, performance, and interpretation, rather than as a mere ideological response from the political left during the Cold War era. In doing so I propose a reading of collective creation where a notion of the collective exists not as a denial and homogenisation of the individual but, rather, as a space where the individual is made complete by assuming his or her responsibility in the creation of an authentic popular culture. I aim to portray how the essentially dialectical structure of this theatre - as a synthesis between stage and auditorium - stands as a cultural act of transformation, consciously drawing from its own unique sociocultural and political reality in order to create new cultural horizons.

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No description available.

This thesis looks at an aesthetics and politics of audience participation in immersive theatre. It asks what it means to be affected by immersive theatre as an audience member and what it means to perceive risk as a participating audience. Moreover, it considers how affect production and risk perception among participating audiences might be approached as aesthetic characteristics that are, at the same time, profoundly political. Inspired by, but departing from, the writing of political philosopher Jacques Ranciere, the argument considers whether a politics of audience participation in immersive theatre might be derived from an aesthetic core, a core that emerges from affect production and risk perception and that fundamentally impacts on how participation takes place and how participants are to take their place. Immersive theatre is initially identified as a theatre style that sUlTounds participating audiences in a coherent aesthetic world. I ask, on the one hand, what might constitute a productive participant and how such a productive participant might contribute to the coherence of an aesthetic world. On the other hand, I ask how these productive participants might also be implicated in its rupture. Drawing especially on the broad disciplinary spectrum of affect studies and risk perception research, new terminology is introduced to frame productive participation based on narcissism and entrcpreneurialism. Significantly, points of aesthetic and political alignment are charted between immersive theatre, the value system heralded under neoliberalism and the profitable production of experiences within a growmg 'experience economy'. Through analyses of work by Ray Lee, Lundahl & Seitl, Ptlllchdrunk, Shunt, Theatre Delicatessen and -Half Cut, this thesis suggests that immersive theatre's most valuable political work might be derived from an aesthetics of audience participation that frustrates such points of alignment, unearthing into an affective zone the political consequences and compromises of productive participation.

This research presents a diachronic and synchronic analysis of European plays produced at the National from 1963 to 1997 and seeks to situate their selection, production and reception within the socio-cultural context of Britain's changing relationship with the representation of Europe during that time, Building on the theoretical understanding of the selection, production and reception process suggested by Stanley Fish, Jauss, Susan Bennett and Maria Shevtsova, this thesis evaluates the relationship between the 'interpretive community' of the producers, critics and audiences of the National Theatre, This analysis has been undertaken through three main activities. Firstly I have examined the selection process of the three Artistic Directors between 1963 and 1997 through interviewing the main participants, Sir Peter Hall and Sir Richard Eyre, as well as research into published letters, diaries and autobiographies, Through access to the Tynan and Olivier Archives in the British Library, it has been possible to closely examine the selection process between 1963 and 1973. The process of production has been examined through the analysis of Prompt Books, programmes and photographs that are held by the National Theatre Archive, as well as biographies and autobiographies. The reception process has been examined through two interpretive communities, that of the critics and the audience: firstly by comparing the reception of the interpretive community of critics who received the productions for British newspapers and periodicals between 1963 and 1997, and then by contrasting that reception with the actual number of people who attended each production. I have accessed the Box Office returns, Annual Reports, Board Minutes and Director's reports at the National Theatre Archive in order to complete this analysis. This research explores Britain's relationship with Europe through qualitative and quantitative analysis, and proves the effectiveness of reception analysis as a methodology for understanding historical and contemporary culture.

The main aim of this research is to offer a reconceptualisation of the efficacy of live performance for instigating social and political change. In order to do so, it explores a range of practical forms and theoretical contexts for creating political performance in Britain. It also formulates new perspectives and methodologies to encourage and add to the production of political performance for the twenty first century. The perceived failure of the organised Left after the end of the Cold War, and the relativism of postmodern theoretical perspectives, has signalled for many the demise of political theatre. In 2013, the concept of live performance as having efficacy to instigate political change remains contested. Yet in fact, some politically motivated performance has demonstrably facilitated change, and critical frameworks have been developed that account for contemporary performances that hold definitive political stances. Meanwhile, political activism has continued to fluctuate and transform rather than simply to dissipate since 1989. As part of this transformation, activist movements have arguably incorporated and generated philosophies and forms associated with postmodernism, rather than having been straight forwardly defeated by them. Today, Capitalism is once again being resisted with renewed urgency. Meanwhile, theatre practitioners in Britain and elsewhere are harnessing theatre as a tool to fulfil the agitprop mantra: 'educate, agitate, organise'. As the written component of a practice based Ph.D., the arguments contained in this thesis developed out of direct engagement with my research-practice. This was a site-specific performance devised in Reading in 2011 , which considered the impact of current economic policies and political systems on the lives of local people. As well as finding agency in a 'deconstructive' aesthetics associated with postmodern art, the performance also looked back to theatrical forms and methodologies developed by practitioners working in Britain in the 1970s. In light of the successful deployment of such forms and methodologies, and the popular conception that much 1970s practice is outmoded today, this thesis argues for the enduring relevance of agitprop forms specifically. It questions how 'political theatre' has been discursively constructed from the late 1960s-present, and demonstrates how, in combination with other theatrical models, agitprop forms can operate effectively in contemporary contexts. This research theoretically and practically (re)constructs political theatre with a view to the agency of old forms for strengthening new forms of resistance, whilst locating possibilities for politically progressive art in diversity and definitiveness.

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No description available.

The labyrinthine levels through which Othello moves, as Shakespeare draws on myriad theatrical forms in adapting a bald little tale, gives his characters a scintillating energy, a refusal to be domesticated in language. They remain as Derridian monsters, evading any enclosures, with the tragedy teetering perilously close to farce. Because of this fragility of identity, and Shakespeare’s radical decision to have a black tragic protagonist, Othello has attracted subsequent dramatists caught in their own identity struggles. Nineteenth-century white burlesquers, anxious to bolster their sense of themselves as superior human beings in the face of abolitionist movements that insist on the inhumanity of enslaving Africans, forced the play into the shape of an unambiguous farce, where Othello is an absurd and foolish minstrel, denied the gravitas of death. Since the 1960s, writers throughout Britain’s former empire have, in contrast, retrieved the play’s tragic energy, as part of instating themselves into a history from which they have been excluded. In these later rewritings, a fault-line emerges between ‘race’ and gender, since in Othello a zero sum game operates, where increasing the empathy for Desdemona as a woman cruelly treated undermines the focus on Othello as a tragic black hero. Tragedy distances its characters from what makes us animal, and comedy delights in it, with those who are marginalised traditionally thrust into a comedic identity, while white, male abstract thought is seen as providing transcendence from our bestial state. Hence, the desire for post-colonial writers to adopt the masculine form of tragedy. However, as the value of this form of thinking has been progressively questioned, so this is changing how Othello is approached, which I reflect in my own practice: I explore, in The Turn, how tragedy gives a protagonist pathos through its aesthetic structure, but I then write a form of what I would call tragi-burlesque, Ponte Dell Tette, where I let go a little of the hegemony of the word, push against the borders of logic and linearity, try to keep the characters as untamed monsters. It is my goal to use my research and practice to help me further to walk this tightrope between the power of tragedy and the animal freedom of absurdist comedy.