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This practice-based research investigates movement and gesture in relation to the theatre work of Robert Wilson. A group of performers was established to explore Wilson’s construction of a code of movement during a series of over fifty workshops and films including: a feature film Oedipus; a live performance Two Sides to an Envelope; and a theatre production The Mansion’s Third Unbridled View. The creation of an embodied experience for the spectator, perceived through the senses, is central to Wilson’s theatre. Integral to this are the relationships between drama and image, and time and space. Wilson’s images, in which the body is presented in attitudes of stillness and repetition, are created through these transitional structures. Taking these structures as a starting point for my own performative work, the research led to an abstracted form of natural behaviour, where the movements and arrangements of bodies defined specific movement forms. Subsequently, the relationship between movement and images in Wilson’s theatre was reconsidered through Deleuze’s analysis of the cinematic image. Deleuze identifies subjectivity with the ‘semi-subjective image’, in which traces of the camera’s movements are imprinted in the film. In films made to register these movements, images of moving bodies evincing a sense of time passing were also created. This led to my discovery of film as a direct embodiment of performance, rather than as a form of documentation. Critical to these films, the theatre production, performances, and workshops was the relationship between images and continuous motion predicated upon Wilson’s idea of space, the horizontal: and time, the vertical. This idea enabled me to consider Wilson’s theatre and video works in relation to Bergson’s philosophy concerning duration. The research discovered new ways of interpreting Wilson’s aesthetic through Bergson’s idea that motion is an indivisible process which can also be perceived in relation to the position of bodies in space. Through this understanding, an original performance language was created based on the relationship between stasis and motion, and the interplay between the immersive, semiotic and instrumental modes of gestural communication.

The primary contribution of this thesis is its survey of the history of South Korean Shakespeare performance combined with the specific critical perspective it elaborates. While there have been previous efforts to discuss the subject in the English language, these have not combined such a comprehensive synoptic historical and theoretical approach. This thesis, it is hoped, will therefore serve as an important step in allowing the Anglophone world to understand the varying socio-cultural contexts that have shaped Korea’s reception of Shakespeare. An Introduction explores a method of study (focusing on intraculturalism and ‘gap’) and offers a review of Korean Shakespeare study about performance. Part 1 provides an overview of the history of Korean Shakespeare performance, divided into three periods: the early years (1950-1970), the transitional years (1970-1990) and the contemporary period (1990-present). Part 2 discusses three Shakespeare adaptations, King Uru (The National Theatre of Korea, 2001, directed by Kim Myeong-kon), Romeo and Juliet (Mokwha, 2001, directed by Oh Tae-suk), and A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Yohangza, 2002, directed by Yang Jung-ung). These three productions have taken elements from Korean traditional performance arts (talchum, traditional dance, and pansori) in order to adapt Shakespeare’s plays. Part 3 discusses productions that focus on reflecting contemporary political and cultural concerns including Ki Koo-Seo’s Hamlet series (1981, 1982, 1985, and 1990, directed by Ki Kook-seo), Seoul Metropolitan Theatre’s Hamlet (2011, directed by Park Geun-hyeong) and Trans Sibiya (Twelfth Night, 2002, directed by Park Jae-wan). In conclusion, I argue that Shakespeare’s plays have provided a tool for examining and establishing selfhood.

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This thesis combines theoretical, computational and experimental techniques in the study of reanalysis in human sentence comprehension. We begin by surveying the main claims of existing theories of reanalysis, and identify representation preservation as a key concept. We show that the models which most obviously feature representation preservation are those which have been formulated with in the monotonicity framework, which assumes that there are aspects of representation which are updated monotonically (i.e.non-destructively) from state to state, and that any reanalysis which requires a non-monotonic update is predicted to cause processing disruption. Next, we present a computational implementation, based on the monotonic theory of Gorrell (1995b). We argue that in constructing such a model of reanalysis, it is essential to consider not only declarative constraints, but also the computational processes through which reanalysis routines explicit, leading to novel predictions in cases where there exist more than one alternative for structural revision. I show why preferences for such reanalysis ambiguities may differ between predominantly head initial languages such as English, and head final languages such as Japanese. After this, we consider the empirical consequences of the implemented model, in particular in relation to recent experimental data concerning modifier attachment. We shoe that the model is too restrictive, and we argue that the appropriate way to expand its coverage is to apply the monotonicity constraints not directly to phrase structure, but to thematics structure. We provide a general framework which allows such non-phrase structural models to be defined, maintaining the same notion of monotonicity that was employed in the previous model. We go on to provide solutions to some computational problems which accompany this change. Finally, we present two experimental studies. The first of these considers the issue of reanalysis ambiguity, and specifically the existence of a recency preference is confirmed in off-line tasks, such as comprehension accuracy and a questionnaire experiment, but is not confirmed in self-paced reading. We discuss some possible reasons for this dissociation between the on-line and off-line results. The second experimental study considers the effect of modifier attachment in Japanese relative clause ambiguities. In this study, we confirm the influence of thematic structure on the resolution of Japanese relative clause ambiguities, and we argue that this effect should be interpreted in terms of a constraint on reanalysis.

This thesis is an investigation into the relationship between ‘queerness’, profundity and the politics of performance. In what ways might moments of performance be both ‘queer’ and ‘profound’? What are the conditions most likely to produce such moments, and what are the political repercussions of such ephemeral performance events? It challenges the notion that live theatrical performance is non-reproductive, arguing that ‘queer moments’ produce resistant and transformative ‘excess of truths’, generated through paradoxes. In analysing ‘queer moments’, this thesis engages in detail with a series of live performances viewed primarily through the recent work of Judith Butler, though it also draws on writings in deconstruction, psychoanalysis, phenomenology and queer studies. The chapters work towards a final performative experiment: an attempt to communicate in writing a sense of a ‘queer moment’ beyond/beside language and representation, which I believe I experienced whilst watching Lia Rodriguez’s production Such Stuff As We Are Made Of in 2002. To prepare the reader for this final chapter, the thesis presents a series of case studies. Analysing a work by transgendered performance artist Lazlo Pearlman, it argues that a deconstructive approach to the body in performance is limited. Although the body is primarily recognised through language and representation, there is a ‘materiality’ (the ‘feeling body’) that exists beside/beyond those modes of recognition. Investigating three of performance artist Franko B’s works, the thesis next demonstrates how performance might produce a ‘ghost of the queer subject’; that is to say, a sense of the feeling body in moments akin to Roland Barthes’s ‘punctum’. This potentially challenges the subject/other hierarchy between performer/spectator through ‘visceral imaging’, which I characterise as imaging a sense of the other through one’s own viscera. La Fura dels Baus’ XXX is analysed to assess how the group’s apparent inability to deconstruct its representations and circuits of desire severely compromised its potential for causing audiences to ‘see feelingly’. Martin Crimp’s playscript Attempts on her Life and its performance in a Welshjlanguage adaptation are analysed to explore how acts of translation can reflexively and ethically mediate performance to reveal common human vulnerabilities as part of an embodied ethicojpolitical practice. Queer moments are identified as utopian instances within such processes: paradoxical truths produced by live performance, which survive the ephemeral event.

This thesis studies the relationship between human bodies and theatrical events through selected European examples of the emergence of transformative ‘inbetween’ experimental performance in the early 21th century. It aims to explore the nature of participatory practices and their attributes. How does the theatrical event interact with the everyday and its theatricality creating ‘embodied’ experiences? What are the attributes and the implications of the relationships that emerge through this bodily engagement? The study questions emergent relational parameters of the theatrical experience in order to explicate its affects and effects in the bodies of participants, whether professional artists, skilled amateur practitioners, theatre/performance researchers, and accidental or intentional audiences and spectators. Its investigation challenges the (im)possibilities of performance knowledge through an experimental method based on a practice-as-research approach. The introductory chapter aims to facilitate understandings of the operational conditions through which the ‘embodied’ is materialized in theatrical performance. The conditions, are named as ‘nomadism’, ‘net-gaming’ and ‘transductions’, and are drawn respectively from the theories and method of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Bruno Latour and John McKenzie. In unfolding these operational conditions significant ‘ecological’, social, political, geographical concerns are identified as critical to how the thesis accounts for key elements of current experimental theatrical performance. The rest of its chapters examine three productions of the international touring companies Roger Bernat (Barcelona), Stan’s Cafe (Birmingham) and Rimini Protokoll (Berlin). Each chapter examines different specific yet comparable aspects of their participatory theatre/performance methods – namely: expectations, time, atmosphere, labour, and transformation – a thorough writing that is metaphorical, analytical and performative. Metaphors evoke the ‘common’, they interlace bodily expectations and they trigger the sense of the fleeting experience, establishing a shared sphere between the shows, the audiences and the researcher, immersing the reader in the theatrical events. Thus the thesis aims to present the significance of the ungraspable in participatory experimental performance, paradoxically because only in its evanescent in-betweeness might the ‘embodied’ be envisioned.

Operating from the premise that society is always already in a constant "struggle over meaning", I seek in this theatre studies research project to engage with the fluid yet conflictual landscape that became Egypt since the aftermath of the 9/11 events and up to the existing "Post-Revolutionary" order at the time of this writing. To this end, I apply a historically-informed and bi-focal deconstructive mode of reading to a number of theatre-based case studies. Considered in terms of their interrelation, these case studies should offer a more holistic picture in which diverse dramatic, theatrical, and/or cultural practices had set out to negotiate the ur-narrative of contemporary Egypt, that which grew out of a long-brewing state of affairs, but which gradually built to breaking point due to post-9/11 domestic and global changes and the challenges they inevitably posed to the botched post-colonial national project and its concomitant social contract. According to this narrative, the modern Egyptian Nation has "long" been diverted from its "right" course and, as a result, is anxiously anticipating an overdue yet perilous "dramatic" change (which, as some argue further, should help restore the nation to a certain, rather nebulous past glory). While this narrative of "impending change" is hardly unique to Egypt (but rather a regular feature of almost every national trajectory, particularly during similar times of unrest and upheaval), much of the import of the Egyptian situation at hand resides in the uniquely complicated ways in which each contestant group re-imagines the "nation" according to its specific interests. This said, it is not my aim in this thesis is to present an exhaustive view of the existing Egyptian theatrical practice or to do justice to all its voices and narratives at play. Instead, this study focuses on how the conflictual realities in question collide with one another on stage, at the audience area, and in the larger "outside" world. Engagement with this process allows us to gain fresh insights into both theatre and its surrounding moment and confirms how the two are forever in conversation with each other even if—or, more typically, when—the theatre/cultural producers involved cannot consciously process all aspects of the cultural crossfire at which their works operate.

Dans cette thèse, nous allons aborder le problème de l'interprétation et de la compréhension de l'image filmique en traitant des vues du Cinématographe Lumière, et en particulière des films tournés au Japon. Nous devons ici confronter plusieurs points de vue pour différencier des lectures diverses, par exemple un point de vue historique et un socioculturel. Notre point de vue actuel sur les images du Japon prises par des Français à la fin 19e siècle est très éloigné de celui du spectateur du Cinématographe à cette époque-là. Cette distance est un des intérêts majeurs de la thèse, car aucune personne ne peut échapper au point de vue provenant de sa propre culture lors de sa rencontre avec l'extérieur. / In this thesis, we address the problem of the interpretation and understanding of the cinematic image, analyzing films by the Cinematograph Lumière, especially films shot in Japan. Here we must confront several points of view to differentiate various translations, such as a historical perspective and a sociocultural perspective. Our current point of view of the images of Japan taken by two French operators in the late 19th century is really far from the point of view of a spectator at the time of the Cinematograph. This distance is a major interest of the thesis, because no one, when confronted with a foreign culture, can escape from his own point of view based on his own culture.

This thesis explores the relationship between performance poetry and page-based poetry and the academic and non-specialist audience for performance poetry in the UK. Performance poetry in the UK is rapidly becoming a popular medium for experiencing poetry and I analyse the impact this has, and will have, in relation to the study of poetics, and the reading of poetry within the public sphere. I have identified three primary areas of research. First, I analyse the reception of performance poetry in the academy. Second, I assess the mechanisms of affect transmission in performance. Finally I interrogate the utilization of space through performance which contributes to the production of social spaces. Alongside an exploration of how these factors construct a different affective experience for the reader I analyse the critical position performance poetry holds in relation to the wider body of poetics. Performance poetry has been relatively absent from critical study of poetry and the formation of a poetic canon in the UK. I contend that there has traditionally been an opposition to performance poetry in the academy, defined along the lines of a ‘high’ and ‘low’ art binary. This is a contention I analyse with focus on the development of UK poetics in the mid-20th century. By assessing the value discourses inherent to an academic appraisal of spoken word I stage a discussion of the pedagogical potential of performance poetry. Combining both the affective capacities of performance and the role performance plays in renegotiating our experiences of social and shared spaces, I argue performance is an important tool for structuring a re-engagement with contemporary poetry. Tracing the potential pedagogical implications of performance poetry through each of these aspects brings the thesis to a conclusion regarding the value of contemporary UK performance poetry and the important pedagogical role it plays. Underpinning my analysis, I conduct interviews with various prominent UK performance poets in order to construct an accurate account of the contemporary performance poetry scene, and to facilitate predictions regarding its future development.