The exegesis and accompanying playscript 3606202 is concerned with how the structural framework of a play might be manipulated to help deliver a writer's response to global events. The exegesis looks at examples of writers who have responded to global events over the last several decades and examines as a case study the structure of Caryl Churchill's play Far Away. The writer then applies a similar structural blueprint to the writing of his play 3606202 and reflects on the outcomes such a structure achieved. As part of this reflection, the exegesis explores how the writer's desire to respond to global events led him to consider the impacts of structure on the sub-textual articulation of themes within a playscript. The exegesis concludes by detailing the findings of an experiment conducted at the reading of his play and its professional presentation within the Wharf2Loud season at the Sydney Theatre Company.

This thesis examines the development of Italian political theatre between 1968 and 2010. It analyses the relationship between political theatre during the 1970s and politically engaged practice in the following decades in terms of continuity rather than rupture, thereby challenging recent theatre historiography and criticism which interpreted the two periods as diametrically opposite: one characterised by profound political engagement and the other by a widespread retreat from the political (riflusso). The analysis of the case studies is grounded on a rigorous contextual approach which places theatre practice in relation to its social and cultural context. Chapter One reviews the current debate on theatre and politics, reassessing the terms of its discourse and evaluating their potential and shortcomings. Chapter Two introduces two examples of engagement before 1968, namely the birth of teatri stabili and the linguistic research of the theatrical neo-avant-garde. Chapters Three, Four, and Five are dedicated to the analysis of the case studies. They are structured as a comparative analysis of significant examples of politically engaged theatre practice between 1968 and 2010 and include the work of Dario Fo, Marco Baliani, Marco Paolini, Giuliano Scabia, Franca Rame, Laura Curino, and Compagnia della Fortezza. The analysis highlights how Italian practitioners moved beyond modernist forms of political performance and restructured their political and aesthetic strategies in response to changing political, economic, and cultural contexts. The findings point to an original approach to political engagement on stage which articulates itself around two main elements: on the one hand the interconnectedness of the ethical and the political, and on the other an understanding of political resistance no longer as the fight for a working-class cultural hegemony but rather at the creation of a post-hegemonic cultural landscape open to multiplicity and difference.

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This thesis investigates the relationship between the social movement and theatre art in Turkey between 1960 and 1971 and investigates how the development of a dependent capitalism influenced the development of the classes and the political theatre. It tries to reveal the convergences between the political ideology of the classes, their organizations and the aesthetic ideology of the field of cultural production. While doing so it investigates the ties between the ideological and practical aspects of the class struggle, the artists&rsquo / aesthetic views and their relations of production.

This work looks at the 2009 Iranian show-trials through modern discourses of biopolitics, sovereignty, and history. I argue that, understood as a theatrical phenomenon, the show trials are situated within the Foucauldian mode of biopower. The latter entails a shift from a politics of death to the preservation of the bios. The show-trials also perform a particularly modern narrative of state sovereignty and teleological history. To consider them in this way requires a rethinking of Michel Foucault’s theory so as to include juridico-philosophical discourse within a biopolitical framework. I propose that, as a performative act, the confessions transform the very thing they are confessing. Through the work of Jean Baudrillard and Jacque Derrida, I argue that the confessions make possible a reconceptualization of the political space of sovereignty as simulacrum and that of the political time of history as hauntology. / Graduate

The key focus of this research project is the marginalisation of radical and alternative politics in modern democratic societies, how they have been presented in a mainstream theatrical context and what strategies a political playwright can employ to present the issues of those politics while overcoming such marginalisation. Referencing cultural theorists including Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein and Howard Zinn, this study argues that contemporary cultures operate within the boundaries of an internalised conservative value set propagated through systems of coercion utilised by the media, governments and corporations. With a specific interest in contemporary theatre, this study proposes that this internalisation functions as an efficient and nearly invisible censor, rendering more complex the task of the political playwright in communicating with a wider and more inclusive audience and that by examining the methods used in the manufacture of consent and then returning to the strategies utilized by political playwrights in the past and at present, we can better identify how to bypass that internal censor and do something more than " preach to the converted." This project comprises two interrelated components; one is an original full length play script, Pornography: The True Confessions of Mandy Lightspeed; the other is an exegesis which compliments and augments the play. The play script represents %60 and the exegesis the remaining %40 of the examinable output of this project, although both are considered integral (and integrate) parts of the whole. Central to both these texts is the question; " How has political theatre been presented in the past and what strategies can the playwright employ to make issues of radical or alternative politics more accessible to a mainstream theatre audience?"

Cette étude se propose de réfléchir la ou les formes prises par un théâtre politique sur les territoires français et allemand des années 1995 à 2015. L'enjeu est d'évaluer les stratégies esthétiques développées par les artistes afin de renouveler les modalités du politique au théâtre, alors que l'édifice idéologique et théorique qui soutenait jusqu'alors une telle dimension semble révolu. La reprise dans notre titre de l'assertion paradoxale du théoricien allemand Hans-Thies Lehmann – une « "interruption" du politique dans le champ du théâtre politique contemporain » – permet d'introduire et de circonscrire les grands axes de cette problématique. Est-ce que l'interruption apparente et rhétorique du politique dans le discours des artistes est à lire comme une fin du politique ou au contraire comme une suspension momentanée de ses catégories, constituant une stratégie destinée à contourner la situation postmoderne d'aporie critique ? Cette question se propose d'être appréhendée par le biais de l'analyse transversale des différents discours artistiques. Le terme de discours comprend aussi bien les représentations que les propos méta-artistiques et les entretiens. La méthode permet de dépasser les oppositions apparentes au profit d'une approche prenant en compte toute la complexité et les contradictions du problème. Ces oppositions prennent bien souvent la forme, dans les propos des artistes, d'un refus de se voir affilier à un théâtre politique historique alors que les spectacles en prolongent et en renouvellent paradoxalement les modalités esthétiques. / The present study aims at observing the form or forms taken by a political theatre in France and Germany in the period between 1995 and 2015. At stake is an evaluation of the aesthetic strategies developed by artists so as to renew the ways of representing politics in the theatre when the ideological and theoretical structures which, until then, underpinned this dimension seem to have collapsed. The title’s quote of the German academic Hans-Thies Lehmann’s paradoxical assertion: an “interruption of politics in the contemporary political theatre” introduces and defines the limits of the domain under scrutiny. Is the illusory and rhetorical interruption of politics in the artists’ discourse to be understood as the end for the theme or, on the contrary, as a momentary suspension of its categories aiming at working around the post-modern situation of political aporia ? We propose to address the question by means of a transversal analysis of different artistic discourses. In the notion of discourse we intend to include the plays as well as meta-artistic declarations and interviews. This method aims at overcoming the apparent oppositions in order to find a way to take into account the complexities and contradictions of the problem. These oppositions often take the form, in the artists’ words, of a refusal to be affiliated to a historical political theatre whereas, paradoxically, the plays prolong and rejuvenate the aesthetic conventions of this theatre.

This thesis project explores the evolving relationship between Applied Theatre and youth-led environmental activism in Canada. It uses Ottawa-based 100 Watt Productions as its primary case-study, locating the company's performance history, creation methodologies, and pedagogy within English Canada's recent Applied Theatre and Theatre for Young Audiences (TYA) landscapes. This analysis is accomplished through a mixture of textual analysis, performance analysis, and interviews with the company's founder, Kristina Watt Villegas. Particular focus is placed on Watt's approach to collaborating with young people on 12, the company's most recent theatrical production and most urgent call for climate action to date, having toured theatres, schools, board rooms, and government offices across Canada’s capital region. 12 is composed of a mixture of brief vignettes, poetic compositions, and verbatim excerpts regarding climate crises, described as a "cross-generation love story - a playful theatrical invitation [...] to stop, listen, and to consider what it actually means to take action at this point" (Watt, "Creations: 12"). This thesis project proposes that productions such as these demand a new subcategorization of Applied Theatre, formulated here as Youth Theatre for Adult Audiences (YTAA). This YTAA terminology describes Applied Theatre that has been specifically created by young people for adults, a performance dynamic that has proven to be particularly well suited to the unprecedented political challenges faced by our youngest generations, not only in its compatibility with the platforming of climate appeals, but also in its unique capacity to elevate those young voices through a reframing of the aesthetic experience, often incorporating the participants' own creation process into the audience's overall consideration of aesthetic experience. In this sense, 12 acts as a microcosm for YTAA's escalating significance as an Applied Theatre subcategory, pointing towards an urgent need for increased attention, both in Canadian theatre criticism and scholarship more broadly.

Esta dissertação tem por objetivo analisar a peça do dramaturgo britânico John Arden Serjeant Musgraves Dance (1959). Para tanto, empreende inicialmente uma contextualização da Grã-Bretanha do período pós-Segunda Guerra Mundial e, em seguida, acerca do teatro do período que ganhou novo fôlego, sobretudo a partir de 1956. Aborda também o teatro épico, que se consolidou em solo britânico na década de 1950. Por fim, situa brevemente a biografia do dramaturgo, destacando suas principais peças. Em um segundo momento, procede-se à análise da peça de John Arden, na qual são considerados seus principais aspectos e temáticas, como a questão da guerra, do messianismo e da possibilidade de ação política dos indivíduos. No terceiro capítulo, esta dissertação contrasta a peça de Arden com a obra de Bertolt Brecht Mãe Coragem e Seus Filhos (1939). A partir de um prisma comparativo, os temas e elementos formais das peças são analisados com vistas a apontar a potencialidade de reflexão política que o teatro épico brechtiano constituiu na cena teatral da Grã-Bretanha do pós-Guerra, no teatro de John Arden. / This work aims to analyse the play Serjeant Musgraves Dance (1959) by John Arden. To accomplish this, a contextualization of the post-Second World war period is made and subsequently a summary of the theatre in this period which established a new moment especially after 1956. The study also covers how the Epic Theatre was consolidated in Britain in the 1950s. Finally, a brief biography of the playwright is stated, highlighting his most important plays. In a second moment, an analysis of the play by John Arden considering its main formal and thematic aspects such as the war, messianism and the possibility of political agency by the individuals is presented. In the third chapter, the dissertation draws a contrast between Ardens play and the play Mother Courage and Her Children (1939) by Bertolt Brecht. From a comparative perspective, the political potential of Brechtian Epic Theatre as it was constituted in Ardens work and in Post-War Britain Theatre is pointed out.