This thesis examines and re-evaluates the contemporary performance of Shakespeare in Japan, taking the impact of social and political developments into account. The first part discusses the changing status of Shakespeare in Japan and corresponding representations of the theatrical past onstage. Two different responses to The Merchant of Venice are used to demonstrate this change, one from a British director and one from a Japanese one. The second chapter expands on this changing status to discuss the ways recent productions have responded to social issues and anxieties, particularly to perceived issues amongst the younger generations. The remainder of the thesis analyses the later stages of Ninagawa Yukio’s career and his Shakespeare productions with his two companies, Saitama Next Theatre and Saitama Gold Theatre. This thesis concludes that through the depiction of hybridity, contemporary performances of Shakespeare are part of an ongoing dialogue between Japanese and British theatre, and through the detailed study of never or rarely examined productions defamiliarises the existing narrative of intercultural Shakespeare in Japan.

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This dissertation investigates the nexus between theatre and colonialism in the German empire between 1884 and 1914. It introduces the concept of colonial theatricality, through which it explores to what extent theatre and colonialism have been productive of each other’s orders, knowledge formations, and truth claims. This dissertation thus looks at the empire through its cultural manifestations and its ‘representational machinery’, specifically the theatre. It provides an understanding of the German colonial empire that goes beyond its territorial, administrative and military strategies. In order to do so, the dissertation discusses a broad set of performances that the German empire brought forth at the turn of the century: popular theatre performances that mediated the colonial project to a domestic audience, amateur theatre societies that staged ‘German culture’ in the colonies, colonial ceremonies that included repertoires of the settler as well as of the indigenous population, court-hearings of African individuals residing in Germany claiming their rights, and a petition from the former German colony Kamerun charging the German government with crimes against humanity. Beyond the appearance of the colonial project as a topical issue on stage, this dissertation argues for a deeper-seated interdependence between theatre and colonialism, one that can be detected in the dynamics of ‘seeing’ and ‘showing’. Through the concept of colonial theatricality as a particular mode of perception and representation akin to both the theatre and the colonial enterprise, this dissertation suggests a new framework for looking at the entangled histories of metropole and colony in focusing on the empire’s ordering truth, its formations, effects, and ambivalences.

This thesis explores the notion that the emergent language of theatre, and more generally of modern culture, has links to much earlier forms of storytelling and an ancient worldview, and raises questions as to how theatre practitioners might best understand and utilise early modes of entertainment and ideologies in the creation of performance work today. It examines the emergence and history of theatrical performance in Britain, with particular focus on how medieval ideologies and theatrical forms were absorbed into the practices of the first professional theatres in the early modern age, using Shakespeare’s work as a core example. Further, it uncovers and interrogates, through practice, links between performance approaches today and the ritual roots of native theatrical tradition: links which have been largely lost in Britain and much of the Western world, but which still exist in certain other cultures. The thesis includes analysis of how Shakespeare’s medieval inheritance shaped the drama he created, and demonstrates (through practice-based research) how a practical, psychosomatic understanding of residual as well as emergent modes in the plays can not only benefit practitioners seeking to stage Shakespeare’s work for today’s audiences, but also provide inspiration for the creation of new work. This research has practice as its core: drawing directly on my own theatre work, and exploring an alternative kind of ‘knowing’ through the body. It relates current trends in modern theatre practice (the immersive, the psychosomatic, the multisensory, the site-specific and so on) to the ritual, amalgamative, communal and visceral modes of early performance, interrogating particular elements such as mankind’s position in the universe, time and space, language and the body, universality versus specificity, and ritual behaviour in performance. The work concludes that the ritual, embodied, hierophanic and communal mode of medieval performance is not only what practitioners today are searching for in their experimental practice and in the intercultural engagement with other (ritualised) cultures, but also presents a way of understanding and dealing with the traumas and anxieties of society that is efficacious and malleable to any period in human history, and is especially relevant to times of great change and upheaval, such as both the early modern age of Shakespeare and our own time.

This thesis analyses the development of amateur theatre in Britain in the long nineteenth century and has five main emphases. Firstly, it considers the multiple functions of private theatricals in the regions and the varied reactions to their increasing popularity. It argues that they were used as a form of soft power; that they disrupted the Victorian ideology of the separate spheres; and that they developed amateur and professional theatre in the regions. Secondly, the thesis will offer new perspectives on the West End by exposing its lost histories of amateur theatre. It will break down the binary of ‘London theatre’ as ‘West End theatre’ by uncovering amateur theatrical venues and communities beyond this district. The thesis then examines the birth of amateur dramatic clubs and societies and exposes a complex network of amateur theatrical activities taking place across Britain. It reveals the symbiosis of amateur dramatic enthusiasts with members of the theatre profession and foregrounds the existence of ‘professional amateurs’ – performers who were celebrated nationally for their theatrical abilities, but chose not to adopt a stage career. The focus of this thesis then turns to the repertoire of amateur theatre and argues that existing studies of the nineteenth century theatrical repertoire have been constructed based on data from professional performances alone. It makes the case for a distinct amateur repertoire and a reimaging of the theatrical canon through use of data from amateur theatrical events in the period. Finally, the thesis considers the ‘value’ of amateur theatricals. It highlights the significance of the amateur sector to the financial success of the theatre industry. It then considers the economic, social and cultural value of the relationship between amateur theatricals and local, national and dramatic charitable causes. It concludes by emphasising the role that amateur theatre had in building strong communities and constructing identities.

This thesis is a culmination of an AHRC funded collaborative doctoral award between the Centre for Research in Opera and Music Theatre at Sussex University and Glyndebourne Festival Opera. The research took the form of a Composer in Residence scheme in 2006-9 and the submission consists of three new operatic projects, Followers, The Yellow Sofa and Knight Crew. The thesis takes the form of a series of four case studies which explore the creative and aesthetic resonances of the above works in addition to a study of Péter Eötvös's new opera Love and Other Demons, commissioned by Glyndebourne for the 2008 Festival. The exploration of all four case studies is intended to offer a range of possible models for the future development of the operatic art form. The central creative research questions of this project relate broadly to questions of context and the reanimation of tradition. In terms of context, each of these four operatic case studies considers the perspective of the commissioning opera company, of the creative team, of singers and instrumentalists and of audiences. In terms of the reanimation of tradition, this research considers ideas around narrativity in opera and the centrality of the operatic voice and operatic lyricism. The polystylistic nature of opera is just one of several other themes that emerge as a consequence of this research. The thesis lays out each case study in chronological order beginning with an introductory chapter that describes the terms of the residency. Chapter Two considers the site-specific promenade opera Followers, Chapter Three examines the gestation of Péter Eötvös's new opera Love and Other Demons, Chapter Four details the chamber opera The Yellow Sofa developed as part of Glyndebourne's Jerwood Chorus Development Scheme, while Chapter Five projects the central themes of this research onto a larger-scale, grand operatic canvas in a community-specific context. A final Chapter Six concludes with a sketch for a new operatic aesthetic, which attempts to synthesise the creative and research experience of this composer residency.

This thesis forms the complementary writing for my practice-as-research project “Affective Intentionalities: Practising Performance with Roland Barthes’s Camera Lucida”. Working with Barthes’s 1980 book about photography, the project goes beyond an application of Barthes’s ideas to creatively respond to Camera Lucida through performance. The project approaches this through the following research questions: What strategies might be useful for responding to Camera Lucida through performance? What new insights does this contribute to theatre and performance studies? What methodological contributions does this project make to the ways that writing and performance can be thought together in a practice-as-research context? This thesis, provides a critical context for the project by reviewing writing on Barthes from media theory, comparative literature, art history and theatre studies; it critically reflects on three performances made over the course of the PhD project: Involuntary Memory (2015), Kairos (2016), and After Camera Lucida (2017); and it re-presents photographic documentation and audience comments in a way that self-reflexively stages them in relation to the practical work. This complementary writing gestures towards the ways that the performances explored different inflections of performance time, the ways that the live body captured a tension between semiotic meaning and materiality and the relationships between the form of the performances and their ability to produce affect. These findings contribute to the overarching argument that a process of iterative creative response to Camera Lucida has allowed an exploration of dramaturgies of the body, time, affect and theatricality that open up the possibility of critically affective and radically compassionate relations between performance works and their audiences. As such, this project will be of interest to theatre and performance researchers, scholars of Barthes, and performance practitioners who are interested in the relationships between affect and meaning, temporality, performance and photography, practice and theory.

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Inaug.-Diss.--Cologne. / Vita. Bibliography: p. 355-366.

Stravinsky’s opera-oratorio Oedipus Rex was based on Sophocles’ classic tragedy Oedipus Tyrannus. Jean Cocteau wrote the libretto for Stravinsky in French, the text was then translated into Latin. Le speaker speaking in the audience’s native language with a detached voice is added to the opera-oratorio to narrate the events of the story throughout. With its mixed genres, the juxtaposition of the dead language and the vernacular, the contrast of the spoken word and the music performance, and the intertexual references in the music, a strong dialectical tension is created. This study is a critical review of the narrative mode of Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex. For a very long time, literature on Oedipus Rex has mainly focused on the presentation of its music. However, as an opera-oratorio, Oedipus Rex is composed to stage. This study aims at investigating the theatrical significance of the work, for its theatrical presentation is influential and profound in 20th century music theatre. Of particular note is the use of le speaker. The narration inserted in between each musical episode creates a sense of ambivalence in the storytelling. The work is therefore a bold challenge to the way stories have been told in theatre over the past centuries. The discussion concludes with the analysis of Julie Taymor and Seiji Ozawa’s film version of Oedipus Rex in 1992. With Japanese elements infused in the work, the dramatic tension between the spoken word and the music performance is further polarised. This production is an example of how a combination of the spoken word and the music performance pushes the Oedipus story further away from Sophocles’ original. / published_or_final_version / Music / Master / Master of Philosophy