Although performers have been rife for centuries, no legal regime was required for their protection owing to the fact that the nature of their performances was transitory. It was not until the invention of the phonogram in 1877, that the need to provide performers with the means to protect the unauthorised uses of their performances became an issue. The subsequent development of performers' rights has been fuelled by the rapid technological developments of the modern age which has prompted the international community to respond through various international instruments. Performers initially sought protection in terms of the Berne Convention in 1886, but it was not until the Rome Convention in 1961 that performers were first accorded international recognition. This was followed by the TRIPs Agreement in 1994 and the WPPT in 1996. This work involves an investigation into the historical development of performers' rights in the United Kingdom and South Africa. This is followed by a comparative analysis of the current state of performers' rights as between the United Kingdom and South Africa with a view to proposing recommendations for improving the level of protection accorded performers in South Africa. Arguments in favour of a regime of performers' rights as well as possible counter-arguments have been advanced. The general development of performers' rights as a related or neighbouring right to copyright is focussed on. The development of performers' rights in the United Kingdom is discussed with reference to the first English legislative form of protection, namely the Dramatic and Musical Performers' Protection Act, 1925. This Act only provided performers with criminal remedies, a view that prevailed through several subsequent enactments designed to protect performers as a result of ratification of the Rome Convention. It was not until 1988 when the decision in Rickless v United Artists Corp prompted the legislature to grant performers with enforceable civil remedies through the enactment of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988. Several European Union Council Directives aimed at harmonising the law relating to performers' rights throughout the Union were issued, mainly in response to the TRIPS Agreement. In order to comply with these Directives, the United Kingdom passed Regulations to bring about the necessary amendments to the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act. Performers in the United Kingdom were granted moral rights in 2006 as a result of the United Kingdom's ratification of the WPPT. The development of performers' rights in South Africa has been slow when compared to that of the United Kingdom. It was not until 1967 that performers were first legally recognised in South Africa. Although South Africa has yet to ratify the Rome Convention, it was stated in South African Broadcasting Corporation v Pollecutt that the Act was clearly passed with a view to complying with the Convention. South Africa's ratification of the TRIPs Agreement brought about amendments to the Act, particularly regarding the duration of protection which was increased from 20 to 50 years. Although South Africa played an active role in the conclusion of the WPPT, it has yet to ratify it. However, amendments were made to the Act in line with this Treaty, such as the incorporation of “expressions of folklore” within the ambit of protection, and the granting of a right to receive royalties whenever a performer's performances are broadcast. This is commonly known as needletime. South Africa's reluctance to grant performers with moral rights as provided for by the Treaty is noteworthy. The introduction of needletime into South African law has resulted in a fierce debate between collecting societies (who represent authors and performers) and the NAB (who represent users of performances). Mainly as a result of this dispute, performers in South Africa have, to date, not received any royalties due to them. The protection of traditional knowledge has also received attention of late with the Intellectual Property Laws Amendment Bill, 2010 which aims to bring traditional knowledge inter alia within the ambit of the Performers' Protection Act. The current state of performers' rights in the United Kingdom and South Africa are compared in order to identify ways in which the level of protection accorded performers in South Africa could be improved. The Copyright, Designs and Patents Act is compared with the Performers' Protection Act through emphasis being placed on the definition of a “performer”; the definition of a “performance”; the nature of performers' rights; exceptions to infringement; the term of protection; the retrospectivity of the legislation; and the enforcement measures in place. Upon analysis, it was found that the Performers' Protection Act can be amended in several ways in order to increase the level of protection accorded performers in South Africa.

published_or_final_version / Business Administration / Master / Master of Business Administration

No description available.

<p>A live nude female performer can occupy a powerful identity equal to a man because she willingly places herself in front of an audience. She commits to this state of profound vulnerability as a means of gaining ownership of her body that men by virtue of their power in society take for granted. The female body occupies physical space, unlike how a body image seen on a television or in a magazine does. The actuality of the live female nude creates a transformation from the purely sexualized body to an authentic female nude body. This authentic female nude body, via her control of her physicality, is a &ldquo;loud&rdquo; and often rejected body. The acknowledgement of her authenticity is an acknowledgement of her power and this is common ground on which the female audience member and performer can relate intersubjectively. On the surface, it seems the most effective solution to eliminating objectification and this obstruction of the female body would be to take focus away from her body. Yet paradoxically, female subjects have altered these culturally shaped identity norms of objectification through nude performance, liberating the hyper-sexualized projections attached to the female body and replacing them with symbols of innocence, creativity and power. </p>

<p> This dissertation looks at critical interventions made by select San Francisco bay area choreographers and dance programmers interested in altering spectatorial norms for contemporary dance. Those selected have strategically employed food themes and materials in and as performance, simultaneously tapping into existing foodie ideology and redressing concerns about dwindling audiences for live dance performance in the twenty-first century. I argue that such efforts 1) bring to light subsumed race, class, and gender politics embedded in the trend towards "audience engagement," espoused by arts funders and dance makers alike as a necessary intervention for the survival of contemporary dance; and 2) open up discursive and experiential realms of possibility by favoring material, associative exchange, (re)awakening synesthetic sensory-perceptive capacities, inviting spectators to refigure themselves as co-creators in performance, and providing opportunities to reckon with exoticizing desires to enrich one's own culture by consuming another's. </p><p> In theoretically grouping these choreographies together I illustrate a spectrum of responses that clarify how food-oriented performance gatherings can operate not only as strategies for altering audience relations, but as sites for alternative knowledge production and fruitful commensal exchange. Such research draws from and intervenes in the overlapping fields of food studies, American studies, and performance and dance studies. This analysis is uniquely positioned amongst other work addressing the interstices between food and performance in its emphasis explicitly on Western concert dance. It also contributes significantly to the archives of an often overlooked San Francisco bay area dance community. </p><p> Methodologically I take a dance studies approach, generating choreographic analyses enabled through interviews with choreographers and dance programmers, my own work as witness/participant in the selected events, and archival research into feminist theories of performativity, anthropologies of the senses, contemporary theories of embodiment and select dance and theatre scholarship from the 1800s to the present. Throughout I prioritize the embodied experience of spectatorship, highlighting how contemporary corporeality is shaped by shifting inclusions and exclusions of various peoples and practices, capitalist economic models, the pervasive reach of readily-available digitized media, and both dominant and alternative systems of knowledge production. </p>

<p> Between 1958 and 2002, Italian composer Luciano Berio wrote fourteen compositions that have since become integral to the solo repertoire of the twentieth-century: the Sequenzas. A well-received body of works, the Sequenzas are most obviously defined by their virtuosity and timbral, technical experimentation. They are also marked by another feature, however&mdash;an analytically refractory nature. Indeed, the music of these pieces tends to resist applications of traditional analytic methods (especially those reliant on crisp category constructions), prompting a question&mdash;the question to which this dissertation responds: given the Sequenzas' resistance to mainstream tools, how might meaningful interpretations be generated for them? Or more specifically, how can form be supplied to the Sequenzas?</p><p> In this dissertation, I answer this question by proposing that formal sense can be generated for the Sequenzas by way of a traditional type of analysis referred to here as <i>associative formal analysis</i>. In this style of analysis, small-scale recurring units within the music&mdash;<i> patterns</i>&mdash;are appealed to in order to determine local-level form, each pattern's instantiation signaling a segment. The interaction and development of the patterns over time&mdash;both of which define the patterns' collective <i>temporal associative design</i>&mdash;are then consulted in order to supply shape to the music along more global lines. </p><p> I propose more than this, however, for were the proposition simply that associative formal analysis is useful in the Sequenzas' consideration, 1) this dissertation would be rehearsing an old argument and 2) such an assertion could not explain why set-class analysis (one type of associative formal analysis) is less effective. I thus specify that it is not merely associative formal analysis that is productive but a certain type of associative formal analysis. </p><p> Crucial to recognize about associative formal analysis, and what accounts for its various types, is the existence of two variables within the analytic strategy. The first variable concerns the patterns recognized: obviously, associative formal analysis involves the location of patterns, but what do (legitimate) patterns look like? The second variable concerns the evaluation of temporal associative design: which relationships, processes, etc. ought to be considered in assessments of pattern behavior? </p><p> Relative to the variable of pattern recognition, I propose that meaningful analytic results emerge in the Sequenzas' analysis when an orientation is adopted that incorporates both 1) a multiple-domain perspective (beyond pitch and pitch-related domains) and 2) a <i>flexible approach</i>&mdash;an approach to pattern recognition that allows for the variable use of multiple pattern-recognition strategies, many of which permit the recognition of less crisply defined patterns. This promotion of flexible-pattern recognition is central to this dissertation's methodology and, in some respects, is not new; but this dissertation renders the flexibility of its method in an uncommonly explicit fashion. Thereby, a direct answer is supplied to a question often neglected: if flexibility is beneficial, what does this flexibility look like? </p><p> Then, relative to the variable concerning temporal associative design, I propose that meaningful results emerge through a method that attends to both the development of patterns and the nature of their interaction, particularly as it concerns what is referred to here as <i>relative duration</i> and <i>relative position</i>. </p><p> So as to wage and substantiate both of these propositions, the dissertation proceeds in two parts. Part I outlines the dissertation's methodology, thereby introducing tools and discursive means that are apt to be of broad appeal. Notable among Part I's contributions are a set of terms and bases for the general evaluation and comparison of pattern types. Another prominent contribution is a newly formalized pattern type that consolidates previously marginalized work and a basic logic that permeates informal discourse: the <i>Mode of Activity</i>. Part II then features two extended, piece-long analyses of <i>Sequenza VIIa</i> and <i>Sequenza XI</i>. Through them, the dissertation demonstrates the power and potential of this dissertation's methodology, both of which are alluded to but not developed through Part I's small-scale analyses of music from <i>Sequenzas I, III, IV, V</i>, and <i>IXa</i>. Through the analyses, a message central to this project is also substantiated: patterns defined by low levels of associative specificity can be powerful objects of analytic inquiry, especially when they are responsibly defined and rigorously pursued. It is this author's hope that the communication of this message&mdash;combined with the general, pattern-based resources of this dissertation&mdash;will embolden others to be similarly adventurous in their association-making, helping to open up and expand analytic discourse on the Sequenzas and beyond.</p>

Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree Master of Arts by Research in Drama and Film in the Theatre and Performance Department Wits School of Arts University of the Witwatersrand Johannesburg, March 2017 / A theory of performance-making is presented through this study that contributes to the body of performance studies research. The consideration of looking “beyond” the “linoleum colon”, as the research title suggests, positions this study to respond to the research question: To what extent can a constructed performance narrative provide the potential for audience transformation in reading, knowing, and understanding the public health site as an ally to health care practice? The “performance-making process” is forwarded as a possible model for creative research. The collaborative process leading to the performance Beyond the linoleum colon is an experiment in performance-making. I frame this experiment as a “collision course” (Pollock, 2010: 203) that presents a convergence between performance studies, urban spatial praxis, and narrative theory. The performance-making process as a model presents a formula for a theory of performance-making. A performance-making theory can be derived from the ways in which a citing of site took place and will be presented as part of this study. I have connoted the action of ‘digestion’ from the metaphorical element of the ‘colon’, an incorporation of supportive theoretical ideas that develop into a model for a theory of performance-making. The research to follow is informed by writers in performance studies including Schechner (2002), Conquergood (1995, 2002a, 2002b), Pollock (2010), and Warren (2010), urban spatial praxis from the perspective of Lefebvre (1991), and narrative theory with reference to Braid (1996), Bruner (1986), and McArthy (2007). The implications of performance-making on the field of performance studies will be addressed, underscoring the importance of a performance-lens to the creative endeavour of the current study. Urban spatial praxis will be stressed, as a consideration of space within the performance was twofold: the citing of site in a theatrical space emerged, as well as a foregrounding of hospital site as a space for the culmination of experiential accounts that developed the Expressionist theatre work. A framing theory on space and the circumstances for its production will be emphasised, leading to an imperative to what I reinforce as narrative construction and narrative performance. The way in which the research has developed in response to these key theoretical perspectives informs the process, progress, and concluding findings of the performance experiment: Beyond the linoleum colon. / XL2018

This research report examines the role of the projected image in the creation of meaning in theatre-based live performance, through the interaction and integration of the projection, the live performer and the staged environment, termed as intermedia performance. The report is based on findings gleaned from my own creative practice and documents a process of practice-led research. It begins by establishing a historical context for this type of creative practice by tracing the development of intermedia performance in the twentieth century. It then takes five of my performance works as case studies, reflecting on the successes and shortcomings of each work in relationship to the stated goal of integrating the projected and live elements of each performance, with major emphasis placed on the analysis of my staged work Heaven and Hell :The Life of Aldous Huxley. In the analysis, a theoretical framework is introduced in the form of Steve Dixon’s digital double, Phaedra Bell’s Dialogic Media Productions and Inter-media Exchange, as well as Philip Auslander’s notion of liveness. The report concludes that the major shortcoming of Heaven and Hell was the tendency of the projected image to overwhelm the live performer both aesthetically and – through mostly temporal constraints – to stifle the potential of the live performance medium in providing a more inclusive and visceral experience for its audience than that offered by exclusively screen-based media. My findings focus on the need to make use of physical computing technologies such as motion sensors in intermedia performance in order to empower live performers and to create more scope for spontaneity and true interaction between the live and the projected.

This thesis investigates Stanislavski’s unnamed invisible form of communication described within the chapter ‘Communion’ in An actor prepares (1936). The description Stanislavski includes in the chapter is especially difficult to access leading to much neglect in critical studies of Stanislavski’s approach. This thesis explores the concept as it permeated across Stanislavski’s writings and practical work. It then establishes a comprehensive, concise and contained description of the experience Stanislavski sought to achieve through his proposed ‘invisible communication’. Most current literature investigating aspects of this ‘invisible communication’ relate it to Stanislavski’s interest in yoga philosophy and practice. Although Stanislavski did indeed appropriate terms and technique from his readings and interest in yoga practice, this thesis proposes that the concept existed from Stanislavski’s earliest theatrical explorations and helped shape his understanding of acting as art. With the compiled description amassed from Stanislavski’s work, this thesis locates correlations of the experience Stanislavski described within the current paradigm of cognitive studies. These correlations help form a theoretically plausible account of the concept to aid further discussion and evaluation. In addition, this thesis uses abductive reasoning to postulate a working hypothesis accounting for the perception within a framework of current understandings of cognitive function. This thesis is the first stage of a much-needed re-evaluation of Stanislavski’s ‘invisible communication’. With a framework to investigate and discuss ‘invisible communication’ in theoretically plausible manner, this thesis is helpful in future development of performer training and practice.

This practice-based thesis explores, through the creation of three new full-length plays, the ways in which a contemporary playwright might engage with classic mythology, specifically ancient Greek mythology in the development of new work. The plays form a triptych, each inspired by a single, yet interconnected Greek myth: their mythic inspirations are as follows, Sodium (2010-11) Theseus and the Minotaur, Sulphur (2011-12) Ariadne at Naxos, and Silver (2010) Icarus and Daedalus. Non-dramatically extant ancient Greek myths were selected in order to seek to explore dramatic possibilities beyond Greek tragedy. The diverse ways in which this body of work was approached is framed by the influence of contemporary theatre practice. Alongside this creative enquiry, the thesis explores the impetus which prompted practitioners to turn to classical mythology for inspiration over two millennia since the myths were created. Reflection on the processes which led to the creation of these plays in relation to the author’s own highlights potential conflicts between ancient and contemporary theatre practice, and seeks to explore ways in which the juxtaposition between traditional and contemporary approaches to theatre making can spark creative engagements. The fission between tradition and subversion was a key factor in the creation of the plays now presented, offering possible insights into the ways in which contemporary practitioners can benefit from a playful engagement with traditional practice in order to generate new work.