<p> Adam Rapp's <i>Red Light Winter</i>, produced by the University Players at California State University, Long Beach is a play that explores the difference between memory, nostalgia, and reality. The creation of an effective scenic design involves zeroing in on the central meaning of the piece and formulating through metaphoric and poetic associations a stage design that effectively communicates these associations and meanings to the audience. <i>Red Light Winter</i> is ultimately about how people struggle to reconcile their memories, the reality of the present, and strong feelings of nostalgia and how these three things can become intertwined, sometimes to disastrous effect. This visual and poetic association allows for the creation of a room space on stage that forces the audience to look metaphorically through the walls of the room into a confined and claustrophobic memory space. The creation of this room by definition also creates a space outside this room. Just as the audience is peering through the walls of the room and into the memories of the characters, all three characters at some point must see beyond their own memories and catch a glimpse of the harsh reality - the "outside" - of their lives.</p>

M.A.

<p> Abstract not available.</p>

This thesis undertakes a critique of Canada's Stratford Festival as an institutional site of theatre production in the years 1953 through 1967. I propose to identify the major recurring "statements" of the institutional discourse; those statements which were circulated through various printed documents, including commentaries on the Festival and its work and the Festival's public relations material. The exercise of critique reveals that the Festival discourse became a hegemonic discourse, circulating a set of normative and prescriptive understandings as to what should constitute theatre and culture for Canada. The ideology dominating the discourse was that identified by Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno by the term the "culture industry." This ideology allowed for the autonomy of the Festival's productions to be eliminated, such that they functioned as commodities in which all capacity for critique has been abrogated. / It will be shown that the Festival discourse privileged an aesthetic of spectacle and effect throughout these years, an aesthetic which implied a concept of cultural experiences as passive spectatorship and the easy consumption of effects; in short as commodity. In conjunction with this aesthetic, the discourse registered a concept of culture as affirmative--as an experience which affirms existing social relations in offering an apparent, if false, resolution or catharsis of conflict and of social inequality. When the Festival was identified as proof of Canada's cultural maturity and the focus of the nation's "life of the mind" these values were established as the nation's dominant cultural values. Moreover, this discursive portrayal of the Festival established it as Canada's foremost cultural commodity. And so the discourse simultaneously conveyed a concept of culture and of the Festival as commodities. / By the 1960's the Festival was being identified as not simply a leading voice in Canadian culture, but as the institution on which the development of Canadian culture depended, thereby positioning the Festival as hegemonic. The Festival discourse thus articulated the Festival's central duality, its capacity to function as both cultural commodity and authority. The position of the Festival and its discourse as cultural authority ensured that it was the Festival concept of affirmative culture, marked by the displacement of the political, philosophical and existential role of culture, which dominated the discourse on theatre and the wider discourse of Canadian culture. In this respect the Festival failed to offer an active-critical experience which would counter the tendency towards the ethos of spectatorship and passivity which followed from the developing mass media.

<p> Monody in musical dramatic presentations emanates from an early Baroque opera genesis and exists in multiple forms in the musical theater of today. By examining the Baroque characteristics of monody within the opera genre, a direct comparison between Monteverdi's opera <i>Orfeo</i> (1607) and Sch&ouml;nberg's musical <i>Les Miserables</i> (1985) can be established. This correlation becomes pronounced upon the exploration of four specific examples: through the implementation of recitative and aria, the interdependent use of duet and chorus with the solo voice, the innovative incorporation of atypical tonalities within the melodic line, and the inventive application of instrumentation to enhance vocal expression in each work. Just as Monteverdi designed his recitative to express the emotion of the libretto, so Sch&ouml;nberg composes dynamic, emotional songs to enhance the epic story of <i>Les Miserables.</i> Though composed centuries apart, both works employ similar melodic, rhythmic, harmonic and orchestral constructs, confirming a similar genesis.</p>

This critical review serves as a significant formal documentation of the postmodern self-reflexive theatre in the postmodern and post-independence Singapore. Through the Human Lefts Series, which I conceptualised and performed between 2005 and 2009, we are able to look at postmodern Singapore theatre beyond issues relating to the loss of cultural and historical past, which might not be significant for those who were born after 1965. The situation is such that, currently, there is no formal documentation of postmodern self-reflexive theatre in the Singapore context, especially theatre pieces responding to postmodern, post-independence Singapore. This critical review aims to detail analysis made from the Human Lefts Series and its significant contribution to the study of self-reflexivity. More relevant issues to the postmodern Singapore include the current political situation, alternative sexualities (homosexuality and transexualism explored in the Human Lefts Series), and the effect of 'cloning' and appropriation being the key cultural dominant of Singapore. By the end 2009, a total of four pieces of works under the Human Lefts umbrella was showcased to the public. Three main outputs will be discussed in this review. The study aims to answer the following research questions: I. What is self-reflexivity in the postmodern, post-independence Singapore context? 2. How has the Human Lefts Series responded to the self-reflexivity defined in this research? 3. How has the concept of self-reflexivity affected the process of creating the Human Lefts Series? 4. What further inferences can be made, in relation to postmodern theories, from the process of creating the Human Lefts Series? This portfolio also highlights the absence of a physical rehearsal process for the Human Lefts Series. With a clear performance structure, a performer can walk into the performance and begin the delivery of the performance immediately. There is also a discussion on the functions of a performer in a postmodern self-reflexive theatre, in relation to Roland Barthes' essay on The Death of the Author. The performer's experience cannot be totally separated from the character in a postmodern self-reflexive performance. The portfolio consists of the main body of text (the review), a set of appendices and the video recording of the three research outputs. It is recommended to watch the video recording (performances) prior to reading this review.

No description available.

No description available.

Italian commedia dell'arte in 18th century Russia is a phenomenon which demands careful attention from students of the Russian theatre, particularly since comedy was the most important dramatic development of this century. It is significant that Russian dramaturgy vaulted from infancy to maturity in the short space of a century. This remarkable literary feat was contingent upon the influence of commedia dell'arte on Russian comedy. One hundred years, before the Italian Comics first graced the Russian stage, commedia dell'arte-inspired interludes which came from Poland with the Church School Theatre entertained the Slavic indigenes. Later, German players offered the Russian public their adaptations of Italian improvised comedy, and finally, the Comic Masks accepted an invitation to animate the court. The Masks quickly won a large appreciative, audience and, as a result, distinguished Italian comic artists were attracted to Russia. In their wake followed a host of minor comic performers who flooded the country with productions of commedia dell'arte, opera buffa and intermezzi. This cultural 'invasion' which lasted well into the next century, left a permanent impression on the Russian comic repertory. Works of 18th century Russia's most typical comic dramatists, Ya. B. Knyazhnin and I. A. Krylov, have been selected for analysis since they harbour the key principles of Italian commedia dell'arte and therefore facilitate a fruitful comparison. The inclusion of a short section dealing specifically with commedia dell'arte is intended to outline briefly its artistry in order to make more evident the relationship between the Russian comedy and the Italian Comedy of Masks. The comprehensive bibliography presents a spectrum of works concerning this topic but not necessarily referred to in the thesis. / Arts, Faculty of / Central Eastern Northern European Studies, Department of / Graduate

This dissertation is concerned with the representation and reception of Nazis in West German theater as contributions to the cultural memory of the Holocaust. It examines eight dramas and their performances: Ingeborg Drewitz's Alle Tore waxen bewacht (1955), Erwin Sylvanus's Korczak and die Kinder (1957), Rolf Hochhuth's Der Stellvertreter (1963), Peter Weiss's Die Ermittlung (1965), Thomas Bernhard's Vor dem Ruhestand (1979), Heinar Kipphardt's Bruder Eichmann (1983), Joshua Sobol's Ghetto (1984), and George Tabori's Mein Kampf (1987). This study takes into account the literary criticism of the plays and reviews of the world premieres and subsequent stagings. It highlights the role of the media in influencing the formation of public awareness of a text as well as a staged play. The playwrights created a space for the perpetrator memory that has been a taboo in the national discourse about the past since the end of Word War II. They targeted the suppression of this memory in German society's recurrent tropes of denial, invoking “Nazism as a demonic force,” “Germans as victims of Nazism,” the “Nuremberg defense” of “just following orders,” or “just cogs in a machine,” or “just puppets.” The dramatists challenged such cultural myths by revealing their Nazi characters in situations of choice and exposing an individual motivation (anti-Semitism, sadism, fear, careerism) that led to the issue of individual culpability. The playwrights asked their German audiences to accept the perpetrators as human beings similar to themselves and to contemplate their own complicit relationship with and memory of the Holocaust. Despite the ostentatious confrontation with the perpetrator memory, the reviews of the plays' stagings indicate that the media, for the most part, ignored or played down the perpetrator performative in favor of other aspects of the plays. They also tended to conflate the victim and perpetrator categories in plays by Sobol and Tabori that presented Jews as fallible human beings. Nevertheless, there were some critics who did point out the significance of the Nazi characters for a German audience. Overall, the disparity of views expressed shows that dealing with the perpetrator memory has been an ongoing struggle in German society.