Thesis (MDram (Drama))--University of Stellenbosch, 2009. / In this thesis I examine the way in which fictionalised and dramatised narratives in theatre have the potential to create significant alternative narratives that can potentially be regarded as a crucial part of history writing. This is done through a critical analysis of three historically orientated dramatic texts, Ubu and the Truth Commission by Jane Taylor (1998), Copenhagen by Michael Frayn (1998) and Ghetto by Joshua Sobol (1984). I investigate how these playwrights narrativised history by fictionalising and dramatising events and people of historical importance, and how each of these plays individually contributes to the debate on narrative in historiographical discourse. Drawing on Hayden White’s theory on the poetic and narrative nature of history writing, as represented by his definitive work, Metahistory, I explore different theories and works on the philosophy of history to determine the precise nature of narrative itself as well as the historical work. Chapter Two is therefore an exploration of White’s philosophy on the ‘historical imagination’ as he describes his theory on the narrative and poetic nature of the historical document. In addition, this chapter provides an introduction to narrative in a theatrical text. This is done in order to examine how we can apply White’s theory to investigate narrative in theatre that focuses on historical events for the purpose of possibly including the dramatic narrative in the broader discourse on narrative in history writing. In this I highlight the theatrical narrative as a specific practice of language beginning with an interlude on representation in theatre. This is applied as the basis for examining the three texts in subsequent chapters. There are both general and more specific advantages in pursuing these arguments. Firstly, it may generate an understanding of some of the broad claims and problems bearing on the impact that literary theory is said to have on a subject which is not normally considered to fall within its domain, namely history writing. The work of Hayden White has been singled out to represent these claims, as he challenges the traditional distinction between history and literature. As a result, we are made aware of those arguments which set out to show that there are aspects of historical writing which are often ignored or which we generally overlook. An example of such an aspect that serve as the focus of this study is the narrative in historical explanation, representing the “ineluctably poetic nature of the historical work” (White 1983:xi). As such theatre can be an important tool in the process of constructing memory and alternative narratives, arguing that these narrativised histories could provide a “countermemory to the dominant narrative of the official histories” (Hutchison 1999:3). The theatrical texts singled out demonstrate that these alternative narratives in the theatrical texts function as a discourse of multi-levelled stories that engage with the complexities of the society and the complexities present in the context of the plays, making a contribution to the practice of historiography itself.

My dissertation examines mass movement and dancing choruses as forms that proliferated across national, political, and artistic boundaries during the interwar period. Bringing together diverse professional and amateur dance practices such as German movement choirs, American and Soviet pageantry, Busby Berkeley films, and early Martha Graham, I analyze how concepts of unity, precision, and futurity operated within the shared mass movement aesthetics but divergent politics of the United States, Germany, and Soviet Russia. While these forms have been examined by dance scholars as individual phenomena or in their national settings, there has been no full-length comparative study that encompasses this range of forms of dance and national and political ideologies. I argue that form does not predetermine a politics; rather, forms gain political significance through use and interpretation by artists and spectators with political and ideological perspectives—sometimes overt, sometimes implicit. Furthermore, the relationship among the individuals within a group and whether and how they relate to a leader is indicative of how the group participates in politics. I examine the development of German movement choirs and their association with political movements in Weimar and Nazi Germany; I pay special attention to the leftist movement choir activity of Martin Gleisner and Jenny Gertz, figures not well-known in English-language scholarship. I compare Soviet mass spectacles and American leftist dance, both of which were influenced by the Pageantry Movement, and argue that the artists’ political relation to the state impacted what kinds of futurity they could imagine. To argue that the precision chorus line was a site that produced and contested ideals of American womanhood, I bring together the Radio City Rockettes, the chorus in the all-Black film Harlem is Heaven (1932), and Busby Berkeley’s Dames (1934). Finally, I analyze Martha Graham’s all-female 1930s company alongside her political work Chronicle (1936) to discover connections between the company’s social visions and how the choreographed work implicated spectators in a collective future. My project contributes to the dance historical field by bringing together a broad range of artistic and cultural phenomena that are more often found within their national or genre boundaries. By connecting these sites of inquiry through archival research and analysis of textual and visual materials, I show that the political identity of a mass or chorus develops from the particular way that the individuals within the group relate to one another, to any leader present or imagined, and to the constituted outside of the group. In making these arguments, I seek to make dance history part of a larger social history of aesthetics and politics.

This project charts two tandem phenomena in late modern Britain: the emergence of a new mode of political theatre that I term “claustrophobic dramaturgy” and the growth of the carceral state. Through close textual analysis, performance reconstruction, and archival research, I demonstrate how two generations of feminist playwrights have honed and exchanged a complement of narrative and/or theatrical strategies which stage their dramatic protagonists as entrapped. These literal representations of confinement work to suggest more abstract, structural modes of confinement, including criminalized social identities, punitive public policies, and new carceral technologies. I draw together a surprising constellation of plays, produced since 1979, and united by a common investigation of the impacts of privatization and austerity on British state institutions. Chapter 1 identifies social housing plays as a distinct sub-genre of British social realism. This sub-genre reveals how, as social housing became increasingly residualized, social renters were subjected to increasing state surveillance. Chapter 2 extends overdue critical attention to Clean Break Theatre Company, which has, since 1979, dedicated its entire oeuvre to the topic of women’s incarceration. Chapter 3 investigates theatre’s surprising preoccupation with psychiatric hospitals in the midst of broadscale deinstitutionalization and funding cuts to the mental health sector. Finally, Chapter 4 examines the conjunction of Shakespeare adaptation and claustrophobic dramaturgy, both to reveal how carceral logics are embedded in the Shakespeare texts themselves and to demonstrate the new political dramaturgy’s saturation of British theatre culture. To the field of theatre studies, this project advances a critical reevaluation of late modern and contemporary British theatre history. While Socialist theatre often has been characterized as the province of a white boys’ club of the 1970s, I demonstrate how women playwrights take up this Socialist mantle to decry the carceral consequences of dismantling the welfare state. Case studies of plays by Black British playwrights are central to each chapter, weaving the history of Afrodiasporic theatre in the UK into the heart of my account of dramaturgical innovation. This project also offers one of the earliest examinations of professional theatre guided by questions and insights from the growing, multi-disciplinary field of carceral studies. If, as carceral studies scholars assert, the carceral is an ever moving and expanding target, we, as audiences and scholars, can look to claustrophobic dramaturgy to illuminate new carceral incursions on civic life and institutions.

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Agradecemos a compreensão. on 2018-07-05T12:59:42Z (GMT) / Submitted by Rodrigo Morais Leite (leitemorais@ig.com.br) on 2018-07-05T13:40:01Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Tese (Versão Final).pdf: 3414715 bytes, checksum: a15097db7716a2205fbc956ec6188a85 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Laura Mariane de Andrade null (laura.andrade@ia.unesp.br) on 2018-07-11T12:44:11Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 leite_rm_dr_ia.pdf: 3190092 bytes, checksum: 12769717101f026f9ce6e10cd98aee06 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2018-07-11T12:44:11Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 leite_rm_dr_ia.pdf: 3190092 bytes, checksum: 12769717101f026f9ce6e10cd98aee06 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2018-05-18 / A pesquisa apresenta uma reflexão sobre a historiografia teatral de Décio de Almeida Prado, importante crítico e historiador do teatro brasileiro. Intelectual ligado à terceira fase do movimento modernista, que alguns autores designam como a “Geração de 1945”, seu pensamento estético e historiográfico possui laços estreitos com uma certa concepção de mundo moderna, donde se explica o título conferido ao trabalho. A tese defendida objetiva demonstrar os diferentes imbricamentos existentes entre os ensaios de Prado sobre o passado cênico nacional e semelhante cosmovisão, procurando deslindá-los à luz de certos parâmetros como, por exemplo, a filosofia da história e algumas noções estético-teatrais que conformariam essa vertente de sua obra. Em que pese, contudo, o foco mais concentrado nos ensaios historiográficos, informe-se que suas críticas de espetáculos, produzidas ao longo de anos, não foram ignoradas, na medida em que fazem parte do escopo deste estudo, cujo projeto, dentro de suas possibilidades, é analisar o pensamento de Prado como um todo. Tendo isso em vista, para uma melhor compreensão do assunto, empreendeu-se uma comparação, que atravessa a pesquisa do início ao fim, entre o ensaísmo teatral de Prado e o ensaísmo literário de Antonio Candido, lembrando que ambos começaram suas carreiras juntos ao fundarem, em parceria com outros nomes, como Paulo Emílio Salles Gomes e Ruy Coelho, a revista Clima (1941-1944). Pelo fato de suas respectivas historiografias apresentarem muitos vínculos entre si, a ponto de ser possível afirmar que elas pertenceriam a um mesmo projeto intelectual, tal cotejo acabou se mostrando fundamental para as pretensões embutidas na tese, fazendo com que este trabalho se tornasse, à sua maneira, uma obra de historiografia comparada. / This research presents a reflection on the theatrical historiography of Décio de Almeida Prado, an important critic and historian of Brazilian theater. As an intellectual associated with the third phase of the modernist movement, which some authors call the “Generation of 1945”, his aesthetic and historiographical thinking has close ties with a certain conception of the modern world, which explains the title given to this paper. The thesis defended here aims to demonstrate the different overlaps existing between Prado’s essays on the country’s theatrical past and similar worldviews, aiming to address them in the light of certain parameters, such as the philosophy of history and some aesthetic and theatrical notions that shape this aspect of his writings. However, despite the more concentrated focus on his historiographical essays, the reviews of performances he penned over the years have not been ignored, to the extent that they are included within the scope of this paper, which is intended, as far as this is possible, to analyze Prado’s overall thinking. That said, in order to provide a better understanding of the topic, a comparison has been made, throughout the research from start to finish, between Prado’s theatrical essays and the literary essays of Antonio Candido, recalling that they both started their careers together when they founded, in partnership with other names such as Paulo Emílio Salles Gomes and Ruy Coelho, the magazine Clima (1941-1944). Given that their respective historiographies are related in many ways, to the point that it is possible to say that they belong to the same intellectual tradition, this comparison proved to be instrumental for the aspirations of this thesis, turning this paper, in its own way, into a comparative historiography.