Theatre and performance have historically been thought of in terms of the temporal while visual arts have been consigned to the field of spatial representation. Performance’s temporality, the fact that it happens in time, is highlighted in many discourses as performance’s greatest asset. This thesis investigates what we can find out about performance’s temporality by examining the material conditions of production and reception. By placing the focus off the event of performance and exploring issues around labour, work and leisure time; the art historical and economic relationship of performance and visual art; and the material remains of performance, the thesis seeks to reveal how performance’s temporality functions within a capitalist society. The research sets performance’s duration against different economies of time. It does this within a framework of cultural materialism and the materiality of performance while also situating the work art historically. It investigates the sites of negotiation between performance and the capitalist economy’s temporal logic and interrogates how cultural understandings of time affect experiences of attending to performance’s temporality. In focusing on performance work of both extremely long and short duration, as well as more traditionally staged, theatrical performance, the thesis maps out a genealogy of performance interested in making its temporality visible and often tangible. Placing different art forms alongside performance allows for a symbiotic relationship and thus facilitates new and productive ways of thinking about temporality and duration. Such an approach also makes it possible to identify any blind spots in the theorisations of the temporal in performance studies. The thesis thus proposes a re-evaluation of the terms used in discussion on temporality in performance with a focus on the social, economic and material relations within the production and reception of performance.

This thesis contributes to discourses concerned with urban space and performance practice. It identifies ways in which built environments become performative; how the built environment performs meaning(s) within the urban context and how spatial practices of contemporary performance engage with city-spaces. The programming and order of urban space tends to fix meanings; increasingly regulated and singlepurpose city-spaces seem unable to react to informal or unplanned activities. However, this thesis suggests that urban space entails inherent opportunities for conceiving and practising space otherwise and looks at a spatial spectrum – from leftover spaces to London’s landmarks. It analyses incomplete presences in the built environment and their unexpected (re)uses, which make urban space an arena of ideas, interaction and creativity. It examines how spatial practices of performance, such as site-specific performance, audio-walks and installations, inform our (re)thinking of space, its meaning and its re-appropriation. It argues that through performative concepts and actions, space manifests a changeable and dynamic quality, rather than motionlessness and inertia. The thesis involves an interdisciplinary approach employing geography, urban, architectural and performance studies. It looks at four types of built spaces that have been used for performance purposes; a disused warehouse at 21 Wapping Lane, the converted power station housing the Tate Modern art gallery, the exterior of the National Theatre’s building and the London district of Wapping. All of these sites are awaiting, or are undergoing, major alterations in their design or planning, involving reconstruction and expansion, or total demolition. The uncertain future of these sites and buildings, the inevitable decay of their material, and the temporality of the built environment invite questions of architectural design and urban planning in terms of performance. The examination of these sites at this moment of change and the potential impact of the redevelopment plans on city life make this research timely, since the thesis emphasises the imperative of re-defining concepts of space, planning strategies, and design processes so as to imagine a less determinate, more creative urban space.

After the end of the Cold War had signalled for many the demise of political theatre, a re-emergence of British political plays since the turn of the century has become an acknowledged phenomenon. Customary definitions of this cultural practice, however, have become historically and theoretically obsolete. An alternative philosophical framework is needed which breaks with both the unrealistic expectations of the traditional Left and the defeatist limitations of postmodernist positions. This thesis aims to provide a revised definition of political theatre based on the ideas of Jürgen Habermas. The development of his philosophical project is described together with its refinement as the result of interjections by other thinkers from within the neo-Marxist tradition of Critical Theory, in particular feminist contributors. In addition to exploring key concepts such as the reconstruction of historical materialism, the paradigm of discourse ethics and the model of post avant-garde political art, greater focus is placed on the notion of the public sphere, which has special relevance when examining the contemporary dynamics of political theatre.

This thesis looks at the ways in which performance can integrate participants and local context into the development of new devised work. This practice-led research is based on a methodology that grew out of three performance case studies completed in diverse international settings with a varied range of participants. The case studies are: Napoli Scorticata completed in 2007 in Naples, Italy; Youth Visions, completed in 2008 in Northeastern Ghana, West Africa; Triangulated City, completed in 2009 in Beirut, Lebanon. Within these diverse contexts the research questions the role of authorship when working in socially engaged practice, focusing on how practitioners can shift the focus from the artist to the body politic. Merging social engagement with a site-responsive approach, the research proposes that the artistic medium is the social system and as such argues that the modes of employment require a focus of appreciation on the generative process, context and product combined. The research is presented in two parts. Part I is an interactive DVD with images of the development process and final presentations as well as a video of each performance work. Part II is a written thesis that explores the modes of engagement, outlines the methods of development and structures a general working methodology that can be referenced by other performance practitioners. The thesis proposes Applied Live Art as a term to describe practices that include a hybrid of time-based media options, which include a social component as their primary focus. The research outcomes conclude with an analysis of place making and its importance when working with both site and society.

The relationship between theatrical performance and religion in Western culture has always been complex and often troubled; and yet at points of encounter each provides fertile ground for exploring questions about how our religious and spiritual identity is constructed through society. This is particularly true of England today. The arrival of the 21st century seems to have heralded a renewed interest in questions surrounding religious practice and spiritual seeking. When debates about the nature and implications of religious belief are so high on the cultural agenda, performance inevitably becomes a public site of these debates. This is reflected in the academy, and while sociologists of religion have become increasingly aware of the 'performative' aspects of religious practices, contemporary performance practitioners and theorists have become more concerned with questions of religion, spirituality and the sacred. This thesis acknowledges both aspects of this nexus. It contextualises these manifestations in popular culture through recent scholarship from the sociology of religion, and uses frameworks and discourse from performance scholarship to consider the implications of psychophysical practice on performative identity construction. To do this it critiques performance culture’s use of religion and spirituality to describe both positive and negative aspects of performance and its genealogies, which at its most extreme, asserts the 'failure' of mainstream religion and moves to assume the mantle of religion itself. This thesis, through textual and performance analysis, literature reviews, archival research and fieldwork argues that performance optics offer significant mechanisms for examining the efficacy of embodied practices that construct the infinite variety of religious, spiritual and cultural beliefs. It includes a series of case studies which explore how notions of ‘Englishness’ as civic-identity are interwoven with concepts of religiosity and responsibility. They are informed by my fieldwork as a participant and observer in acts of Christian and Spiritualist worship, in addition to my pilgrimage to Lourdes and Glastonbury with Goddess worshippers and Catholics. This thesis asks how is contemporary English religious and spiritual identity constructed and reconstructed by performance?

In order to foster social reconciliation in the aftermath of the 1994 genocide, the Rwandan government has implemented a judiciary system and established a national commemoration period. More importantly, in order to eradicate the ideological foundation of the genocide, the government has outlawed ethnicity as a cornerstone of genocidal propaganda. Ethnography shows that these efforts have been only partially successful and that ethnicity occupies a central, silent space at the centre of Rwandan national politics and social interaction. In this work, I shed light over the entanglement between the memory of the genocide and social identities in Rwanda. I explore the ways in which ordinary Rwandans re-situate their ethnic background through moral categories that surface from the government’s historical narrative of the genocide and of the events that led to it. I analyse the means through which this narrative is established, the judicial enforcement and the memorialisation of the genocide, to illustrate the patterns of blame and legitimacy that saturate these historical constructions. Within these contexts, I explore the ways in which individuals exercise tactical agency in order to re-place their ethnic past in relation to these narratives. Drawing on in-depth ethnographic fieldwork, I argue that the government’s narrative of the genocide constitutes a moral landscape in relation to which actors acquire — or are denied — instances of victimhood. Negotiation over these instances take the form of accusatory practices which, more or less explicitly, are used in everyday life to define selfhood and otherness with respect to the genocide. My research shows how, cutting across former ethnic boundaries, the category of victimhood represents a form of empowerment, which dialectically depends on the identification of perpetratorship.

Submitted by Glauber Assunção Moreira (glauber.a.moreira@gmail.com) on 2018-08-23T17:21:33Z No. of bitstreams: 1 DISSERTAÇÃO [David Farias].pdf: 4738631 bytes, checksum: 0ebe93ffdcb711334f0e56ab7dc95353 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Elane Valverde Madureira (elaneval@yahoo.com.br) on 2018-08-24T15:08:43Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 DISSERTAÇÃO [David Farias].pdf: 4738631 bytes, checksum: 0ebe93ffdcb711334f0e56ab7dc95353 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-24T15:08:43Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 DISSERTAÇÃO [David Farias].pdf: 4738631 bytes, checksum: 0ebe93ffdcb711334f0e56ab7dc95353 (MD5) / RESUMO Esta pesquisa relata o desenvolvimento de um processo criativo, ocorrido, em 2012, durante a montagem do texto dramatúrgico Dorotéia, de Nelson Rodrigues, junto a uma turma de alunos do Curso de Formação do Ator/Atriz, da Escola Técnica de Artes da Universidade Federal de Alagoas. Esta experiência cênico-teatral teve como base a apropriação das fontes primárias, teóricas e práticas, da arte da performance e suas respectivas características constitutivas. O olhar sobre o material caleidoscópico de referência, que engloba a cultura da performance em suas manifestações variadas, consubstanciou a atuação do professor/encenador e validou a escritura do professor/investigador. Os experimentos cênicos ganharam sentido a partir da construção de exercícios somático-performativos, matrizes geradoras para a composição de partituras psicofísicas, tanto para o treinamento do ator/performer (somático) quanto para a cena (performatividade). O autor descreve todo o percurso criativo como ferramenta metodológica, creditando ao drama-performance a mediação potencializadora de alteridades dos sujeitos envolvidos, além de resultados estéticos significativos, obtidos pela ampliação da capacidade interpretativa e expansão da consciência colaborativa. / ABSTRACT This research describes the development of a creative process, which occurred in 2012, during the dramaturgical setting of the text Dorotéia, from Nelson Rodrigues, along with a group of students of the Training Actor/Actress, Course of the Technical Art School from the Federal University of Alagoas. This scenic-theatrical experience was based on the appropriation of the primary theoretical and practical sources of arte da performance and their constituent features. The look on the kaleidoscopic reference material, that includes the culture of performance in its various manifestations that embrace the role of the teacher/director and validated the value of a teacher/researcher. The scenic experiments gained direction from the construction of somatic-performative exercises, generating patterns for the psychophysical composition of scores for both trainings, the actor/performer (somatic) and the scene (performative). The author describes the entire creative process as a methodological tool, crediting the drama-performance as a potentiality intercession from otherness of the subject involved, besides significant results of esthetics, obtained by the extension of interpretative capacity and expansion of the collaborative sense.

Thesis (M.A.)--Catholic Theological Union at Chicago, 2003. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 192-200).

Seneca’s contribution to the development of Western European theatre and conceptions of theatricality has been underestimated in comparison to that of Greek tragedy. This thesis argues for the continuous importance of Senecan drama in theatrical theory and practice from the sixteenth century until the present day. It examines significant instances of Seneca in performance, and shows how these draw on particular aspects of Seneca’s style and dramaturgical technique to coalesce into a sub-genre of tragedy termed here ‘hypertragedy’ or the ‘senecan aesthetic’. The underlying premise of this representational mode is that verbal (vocal) performance is a physical act and induces physical responses. This entails the consequential inference that Senecan theatre is not mimetic – that is, based on an isomorphic identification of character with performer – but rather affective; like oratory, it functions through direct, quasi-musical manipulation of the auditor’s senses. The goal of this theatrical form is to articulate extreme states of mind or experiences which cannot be conveyed via conventional mimetic means: pain, frenzy, dissolution of the self. In tracing the theories of tragedy which comprise a narrative contrapuntal to the reception of Seneca onstage, it is possible to identify the factors which have successively constructed, promoted, suppressed, reviled and finally reinstated the senecan aesthetic as philhellenism’s other.

This thesis aims to further our understanding of the emergent phenomenon of Theatre for Early Years (TEY) in Scotland. It interrogates a series of artistic practices – traditional, postdramatic, participatory – with the aim of proposing a possible dramaturgy of arts for the very young. Practice typically precedes theory in new fields of performance. TEY currently lacks a coherent theoretical framework or dramaturgy, instead drawing on interdisciplinary strands of psychology, pedagogy and existing dramaturgical practices from older forms of theatre for children. This study explores artists' embodied knowledge as a repository of skill, while also recognising external factors that impact on creative production, from belief systems to training, the search for funding and the struggle for recognition. Using Grounded Theory as a method to analyse interviews with 26 leading Scottish practitioners, this project undertakes a qualitative investigation of current practice in the devising and production of performing arts for very young audiences. The thesis also considers debates around legitimation and human rights for the very young, as well as cognitive models of infant development from psychology. The process points towards a Grounded Theory which proposes that Scottish Early Years artists undergo an attitudinal shift towards a belief that children should access high-quality cultural experiences on the same basis as adults. Secondly, it suggests that these artists believe they possess a unique skill-set worthy of recognition. The theory points towards an associated dramaturgy centring on equality, and the generalisability of both is then assessed via an innovatory Practice-as-Research case study converting a TEY production into a digital app. While the project is geographically limited to Scotland, its findings may have international applicability. This study could contribute to a wider praxis of arts for the very young beyond theatre, giving practitioners across the cultural sphere the opportunity to engage with the proposed dramaturgy.