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The Global ETD Search service is a free service for researchers
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Our metadata is collected from universities around the world. If you manage a university/consortium/country archive and want to be added, details can be found on the NDLTD website.
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Moving targets: Political theatre in a post-political ageReynolds, Ryan Michael January 2006 (has links)
This thesis gauges the contemporary landscape of political theatre at a time in which everything, and consequently nothing, is political. That is, almost all theatres today proclaim a politics, and yet there is widespread resignation regarding the inevitability of capitalism. This thesis proposes a theory of political action via the theatre: radical theatre today must employ a strategy of "moving targets". Theatrical actions must be adaptable and mobile to seek out the moving targets of capital and track down target audiences as they move through public space. In addition, political theatre must become a moving target to avoid amalgamation into the capitalist system of exchange. I approached this topic through four case studies. Two of the case studies, Reverend Billy's Church of Stop Shopping and the Critical Art Ensemble, are based in the United States. I studied their work via materials - books, essays, videos, websites, interviews, and more - but not in person. The other two case studies are lifted from my own experience with the Christchurch Free Theatre: an original production of Christmas Shopping and a devised production of Karl Kraus' play The Last Days of Mankind. These latter two case studies served as laboratory experiments through which I was able to test ideas and problematics of political theatre that arose through my research. These case studies led to the determination that creating aesthetic experiences and actions - as opposed to having explicitly political content - can be a strategy or foundation for a radical political theatre that resists, undermines, and at times transcends the seeming inevitability of consumer capitalism. In an age in which any political intervention is seen as senseless disruption, a form of pointless violence, this theatre has adopted the strategies of terrorist actions to have a disruptive effect without positing a specific alternative social structure.
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Women Murder Women: Case Studies in Theatre and FilmMcCurdy, Marian Lea January 2007 (has links)
This thesis looks at two cases of women who murdered women - the Papin sisters (Le Mans, 1933) and Parker-Hulme (Christchurch, 1954) - and considers their diverse representations in theatre and film, paying particular attention to Jean Genet’s play The Maids (1947), Peter Jackson’s film Heavenly Creatures (1994) and Peter Falkenberg’s film Remake (2007), in which I played a part. What happens when two women (sisters, girl friends) commit violent acts together - not against a man, or a child, but against another woman, a mother or (as in the case of the Papin sisters) against women symbolically standing in place of the mother? How are these two cases - the Papin sisters and Parker-Hulme - presented in historical documents, reinterpreted in political, psychoanalytic and feminist theories, and represented in theatre and film? How might these works of theatre and film, in particular, be seen to explain - or exploit - these cases for an audience? How is the relationship between prurience - the peeping at women doing something bad - and the use of these cases to produce social commentary and/or art, better understood by looking at these objects of fascination ourselves? My thesis explores how these cases continue to interest and inspire artists and intellectuals, as well as the general public - both because they can be seen to violate fundamental social taboos against mother-murder and incest, and because of the challenge they pose for representation in theatre or film.
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Healing maori through song and dance? Three case studies of recent New Zealand music theatre.Johnston, Emma Anne January 2007 (has links)
This thesis investigates the way "healing" may be seen to be represented and enacted by three recent New Zealand music theatre productions: Once Were Warriors, the Musical-Drama; The Whale Rider, On Stage; and Footprints/Tapuwae, a bicultural opera. This thesis addresses the ways each of these music theatre productions can be seen to dramatise ideologically informed notions of Maori cultural health through the encounter of Maori performance practices with American and European music theatre forms. Because the original colonial encounter between Maori and Pakeha was a wounding process, it may be possible that in order to construct a theatrical meeting between the "colonised" Maori and the "colonial" non-Maori, "healing" is an essential element by which to foster an idea of the post-colonial, bicultural togetherness of the nation. In all three productions, Maori song and dance forms are incorporated into a distinctive form of western music theatre: the American musical; the international spectacle; Wagnerian opera. Wagner's attempts to regenerate German culture through his music dramas can be compared to Maori renaissance idea(l)s of cultural "healing" through a "return" to Maori myths, traditions and song and dance.
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Acting and its refusal in theatre and film.McCurdy, Marian Lea January 2014 (has links)
This thesis examines works of theatre and film that explore a refusal of acting. Acting has traditionally been considered as something false or as pretending, in opposition to everyday life, which has been considered as something real and truthful. This has resulted in a desire to refuse acting, evident in the tradition of the anti-theatrical prejudice where acting is considered to be seductive and dangerous. All the works that I examine in this thesis are relatively recent and all of them explore the paradox that in our (postmodern) times a gradual reversal has occurred where everyday life is seen as more and more false or as pretending or simulating (ie. containing acting and theatricality) and conversely, acting in theatre and film has become the place where people have begun searching for reality and truth and where ‘acting’ and pretending in life can be revealed and refused. The result of this paradox - and what I also discuss as a confusion of acting and living - is that the place in which acting can be refused has shifted; the ethical desire to refuse acting (in theatre and in life) is turning up in the aesthetic domain of acting itself.
In my first chapter I study works by filmmaker István Szabó and playwright Werner Fritsch, who represent the desire to refuse acting in the context of fascism where theatrical and filmic spectacle was used by the Nazis to seduce the population and where actors during this period also experienced an inability to separate their political and artistic lives. In my second chapter I look at the way Genet’s The Balcony and Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution explore the desire to refuse acting as a result of a confusion of acting and living in the context of sexual (sadomasochistic) role-play. And in my third chapter I examine the way Warhol’s The Chelsea Girls, von Trier’s The Idiots and Affleck’s I’m Still Here represent a refusal of acting and theatricality altogether, responding to the way that ‘acting’ in life may have become an all-pervasive substitute (a simulation) for living. Foundational to the development of this thesis and a major source of material is my analysis of three theatrical productions with Free Theatre Christchurch, directed by Peter Falkenberg, in which I was involved as an actor and in which a refusal of acting was explored.
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Between Liminality and Transgression: Experimental Voice in Avant-Garde PerformanceJohnston, Emma Anne January 2014 (has links)
This thesis explores the notion of ‘experimental voice’ in avant-garde performance, in the way it transgresses conventional forms of vocal expression as a means of both extending and enhancing the expressive capabilities of the voice, and reframing the social and political contexts in which these voices are heard. I examine these avant-garde voices in relation to three different liminal contexts in which the voice plays a central role: in ritual vocal expressions, such as Greek lament and Māori karanga, where the voice forms a bridge between the living and the dead; in electroacoustic music and film, where the voice is dissociated from its source body and can be heard to resound somewhere between human and machine; and from a psychoanalytic perspective, where the voice may bring to consciousness the repressed fears and desires of the unconscious.
The liminal phase of ritual performance is a time of inherent possibility, where the usual social structures are inverted or subverted, but the liminal is ultimately temporary and conservative. Victor Turner suggests the concept of the ‘liminoid’ as a more transgressive alternative to the liminal, allowing for permanent and lasting social change. It may be in the liminoid realm of avant-garde performance that voices can be reimagined inside the frame of performance, as a means of exploring new forms of expression in life.
This thesis comes out of my own experience as a performer and is informed both by theoretical discourse and practical experimentation in the theatre. Exploring the voice as a liminal, transgressive force requires analysis from an experiential perspective.
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Actor Alone: Solo Performance in New ZealandParker, George January 2008 (has links)
This thesis explores solo performance in New Zealand. That solo performance has been widely used in New Zealand's relatively brief theatre history is usually ascribed to the economy, manoeuvrability and adaptability of the form - common reasons for the popularity of solo performance elsewhere as well. But this thesis considers solo performance as a kind of theatre that has been suited to New Zealand in a distinctive way. In particular, I argue that solo performance has emerged on the margins of mainstream theatre in New Zealand as a means of actively engaging with a sense of isolation that typifies the post-colonial New Zealand experience. The ability of the solo performance to move between remote rural settlements and urban centres has connected these New Zealand communities in a way that is unusual for theatre in New Zealand. Furthermore, a solo performer speaking directly to an audience about the experience of living in New Zealand allows for an intimate interaction with a traditionally stoic and laconic masculine society. In this thesis, I make a case for three solo performances where it is possible to see, in the representation of a search for what it means to be a New Zealander, a theatrical contribution to nation-building: The End of the Golden Weather (1959), Coaltown Blues (1984) and Michael James Manaia (1991). However, in a subsequent chapter, I look at solo performances in New Zealand that might better be understood within global movements such as feminism and multiculturalism. I argue that this shift has depleted the power that the form once held to comment upon New Zealand identity and to assist in the search for national identity. I conclude the thesis by considering how ongoing theatre practice may be informed by the experience of solo performance in New Zealand.
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The Rebellious Mirror,Before and after 1984:Community-based theatre in AotearoaMaunder, Paul Allan January 2010 (has links)
In this thesis I outline the contribution Community-based theatre has made to New Zealand theatre. This involves a defining of theatre production as a material practice. Community-based theatre was a tendency from the 1930s, a promise of the left theatre movement and, I argue, was being searched for as a form of practice by the avant-garde, experimental practitioners of the 1970s. At the same time, early Māori theatre began as a Community-based practice before moving into the mainstream.
With the arrival of neo-liberalism to Aotearoa in 1984, community groups and Community-based theatre could become official providers within the political system. This led to a flowering of practices, which I describe, together with the tensions that arise from being a part of that system. However, neo-liberalism introduced managerial practices into state contracting and patronage policy, which effectively denied this flowering the sustenance deserved. At the same time, these policies commodified mainstream theatre production.
In conclusion, I argue that in the current situation of global crisis, Community-based theatre practice has a continuing role to play in giving voice to the multitude and by being a practice of the Common.
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