Contemporary artists have been successful in breaking into prisons and persuading the prison institutions, the general public and prison educators to legitimize artistic activity. However, the discourses on prison theatre have been largely dominated by therapeutic and rehabilitative agendas, possibly at the expense of theatre practice - its aesthetic strategies, and aural and visual qualities. This research comes against such a background. The research project was developed in response to the debates and concerns about artistic work in applied prison theatre. It was located at the borders of what can be articulated about aesthetic intervention 'without purpose' in a prison setting; - without purpose in the sense of eschewing big claims of social and psychological efficacy. Through the practice of a/r/tography, which is a means of inquiry through a method of art making, the research examined what is possible about the work. Of particular interest was the potential to explore possibilities for aesthetic intervention understandings and nuances in prison theatre. Be that as it may, although there was a conscious moving away from the applied umbrella as overtly instrumentalist, it can be argued from the findings that there is a possible tension of falling under the umbrella.

Includes bibliographical references. / The purpose of the study is to investigate the manner in which performance can facilitate communication amongst family members in dealing with the challenges facing families in which there is a member with ‘special needs’. Special needs range from problems of mental or emotional anguish, care, disability or chronic illnesses. My interest in this study is on how these special needs impact on the functioning of the family and family dynamics. Theatrical representation and audience participation is at the heart of exploring the empowering role of applied theatre to engage family members in expressing their difficulties and discussing their issues together.

The Royal Court Theatre has forged its reputation on its ability to source and produce some of the most important new plays of the last sixty years. Its long-standing identity as a ‘writers’ theatre’ has cemented the Court’s allure to playwrights from across the world. Indeed, it is due to the theatre’s, at times, contentious history and continuous dedication to the playwright that the Court has also received substantial academic attention, which has resulted in extensive scholarship and interrogation of the theatre’s work. However, very little consideration has been given to the Royal Court Young Peoples’ Theatre and it is through engagement with this initiative and its development into the Young Writers’ Programme that this thesis provides a long-overdue assessment of this overlooked strand of the Court’s work. This thesis presents an original account of the Royal Court’s history from the perspective of its work with young people and playwrights. Primary sources of material for this thesis are shared between information gathered from the archive of the Royal Court, housed within the Victoria and Albert Museum’s collections at Blythe House, and interviews conducted by the author with key figures from this part of the Royal Court Theatre’s work. This material is located alongside the changing contexts of education, politics, the Royal Court and British theatre more widely, between 1966 and 2007, and looks to assess how each of these areas came to inform and influence the policy of the Young Peoples’ Theatre (YPT). The thesis proposes that the YPT adopted an unusual and alternative approach to working with young people that was at times both radical in its practice and fiercely political. The nature of its work often saw the Scheme ostracised from both a growing theatre-in-education movement and the Royal Court itself, where its survival is often credited to the tenacity of certain individuals. Indeed, the thesis posits that the YPT, despite its breadth of activity, was most welcomed within the theatre’s eco-system during the periods in its history when it focused its policy on young writers and therefore fed into the Court’s fundamental identity as a writers’ theatre.

How does the act of drawing enable the costume designer to design costumes that work effectively with the physicality of the performing body? This research is located in the field of scenography and refers specifically to costume design practices within this field. The research project developed from a growing visibility of performances developed and created primarily from the physicality of the body rather than from a text. In these performance environments, where there is no initial text to work from and sound, lighting and set have yet to be developed the costume designer must predominantly respond to the physicality of the performing body. However, if the costume designer is to ensure that their designs and costumes work effectively with the ideas developed by the performer they must also address the relationship between their interpretation of the performing body and the intentions of the performer. My research responds to limited resources that examine and document how a costume designer can address this relationship and create designs that work with the physicality of the performing body rather than designs that work with a text. As a result of the limited resources in this area of costume design I refer to an additional field for reference. Using training practices based in figure skating to structure my drawing process my research provides new insight into how a costume designer can create costume designs that work with and enhance the physicality of the performing body. By using this repetitive drawing process to both interpret the performing body and initiate a dialogue with the performer my research enhances collaborative practices in costume design and within the field of scenography. In the absence of relevant literature in figure skating, the drawing and redrawing approach I use is primarily examined and supported using a combination of performance and training approaches developed by Jacques Lecoq. These approaches address and explore how performance is created through an awareness of the physicality of the body in relation to the physicality of mark making, and through a repetitive training structure similar to that used in figure skating. Drawing is used as the primary research method, applied within a methodology based on Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological philosophy. This methodological approach both facilitates the costume designer's encounter with the physicality of the performing body and enables an examination of this encounter in order to understand how the designer interprets and makes sense of this body. These encounters are structured through and conducted within three ethnographic case studies based in theatre performance, costume design and figure skating. The research case studies are contextualised using interviews, diaries and background research and are analysed using a structure that draws on Corbin and Strauss's Grounded Theory. The research concludes by outlining three main stages through which the process of drawing and re-drawing is applied and used to create costume designs that work effectively with the physicality of the performing body. In describing and explaining these three stages I outline how the repetitive drawing process integrates within a performance process and as a result becomes a vehicle for collaboration between the costume designer and the performer.

This thesis investigates the cultural uses and implied signifying practices of the work of actors who are popularly and frequently described as 'Shakespearean.' Though ubiquitous figures within culture, there is a dearth of criticism which questions what qualities are invoked in the use of the term ‘Shakespearean’ and what implicit judgements of value or taste, class or cultural function are at work in its attribution. Although works such as Carol Chillington Rutter’s Clamorous Voices have analysed the figure of the female Shakespearean, moreover, the male Shakespearean remains largely an unexplored site of meaning and definition. It is this focus on the body of the actor which represents my original contribution to knowledge. Indeed, despite the preponderance of actor-based studies in Film Studies or, indeed, Theatre Studies, Adaptation Studies has been slow to locate the body as an adaptive site; concentrating instead upon themes, authors, the work of directors or, more recently, the influence of production factors. My thesis argues for the Shakespearean actor as a site of adaptation, positing it as a conduit for the transferable commdity value which is ‘Shakespeare’ and thereby considering the differences which may occur in the production of meaning as the Shakespearean actor moves between cultural hierarchies: from ‘high’ to ‘low’, or mainstream culture. An essential part of this thesis and an aspect which further argues for its contribution to this field is, therefore, analysis of popular cultural texts which have largely been ignored by adaptation critics. Although figures such as Richard Burt have recognised the value of popular or counter-cultural texts for an understanding of Shakespeare’s far-reaching and often surprising influence, the more tangential work in the Shakespearean actor’s filmography provide equally valuable ground to mine. An understanding of a Shakespearean actor’s cultural function is thus served by critiquing their mainstream films as well as their more documented Shakespearean oeuvre. By focusing on the implicitly multidirectional possibilities of adaptation as a process, I explore what values the ‘Shakespearean’ holds in contemporary culture and whether these maintain a popular perception of the Shakespearean actor as a representative of conservatism, elitism and ‘high’ culture. Or, whether the Shakespearean actor contains the potential for subverting some of the associations which Shakespeare’s legacy has accrued over time.

This dissertation is devoted to the stage history of Goethe’s Faust I in Imperial Russia with the goal of initiating academic discussion of this previously ignored topic. The significance of this study lies not only in the fact that it enlarges our comprehension of the play’s treatment in the Russian context, but more importantly in its direct implications for earlier studies of Russian literature in relation to Goethe’s Faust. The dissertation records analytically dramatic productions of the play before 1917 and provides a bibliography of their production, performance and reception processes. The central premise of the dissertation is that theatre is a social phenomenon, informed by the contemporary setting in which it is produced and received. With this in mind, five distinctive adaptations are investigated with the goal of identifying the peculiarities of the play’s treatment and highlighting the influences of the socio-historical factors surrounding it. In particular, this study considers the dependence of the adaptation on contemporary theatrical conventions and explores the relationship between theatre, culture and the state in Imperial Russia. It argues that a successful adaptation of Goethe’s Faust I in Imperial Russia was delayed until the flourishing of ‘directorial theatre’, which in turn opened new possibilities for future theatrical explorations of the play. The analysis describes strategies of cultural appropriation and affirms the conformity and sensitivity of theatre to the state.

This thesis explores the Theatre of the Oppressed's practices at the point of interaction with peasants of Brazil's Landless Movement. It uses the interactive docufragmentary entitled Rehearsing Reality to explore the social and political role of art, and to ask whether particular applications of theatre and film can be used to understand and possibly transform points of view and raise consciousness about contemporary issues in the world. The Theatre of the Oppressed created by Augusto Boal comprises a series of interactive games, exercises and other theatrical methods developed with the purpose of using these drama techniques as a subjective medium contributing both to question and search alternatives for personal and social problems. Amongst its theatrical methods is Forum Theatre, the main practice adopted by Brazil's Landless Movement. This technique breaks with the conventions of the traditional language of theatre. Its main aim is to transform passive audiences into active participants of a theatrical scene. This thesis argues that Forum Theatre is an open medium that offers people the chance to participate democratically in the theatrical space in order to suggest and rehearse new ideas to be applied into their lives. In order to explore how these theatrical experiences work in practice this thesis includes a central element entitled Rehearsing Reality, which is specifically designed to adapt some of the main features from Forum Theatre to film language. Its aim is to activate viewers to interact with the film process. This thesis also explores the historical developments of the Theatre of the Oppressed with major emphasis on Forum Theatre and its practices amongst members of Brazil's Landless Movement living in camps and settlements in the hinterland of Sergipe State, North-East of Brazil. The structure of the thesis is divided into five parts: Chapter One analyses the relevant literature on the subject; Chapter Two provides a reflective account of the filming period; Chapter Three offers an overview of Boal' s life and the development of the Theatre of the Oppressed methods; Chapter Four briefly looks at the history and development of the Brazilian Landless Movement and provides a practical analysis of the experiences of Theatre of the Oppressed amongst the Landless Movement and Chapter Five analyses the creative process of making the docufragmentary Rehearsing Reality. The Conclusion suggests that the social and political aspect of art can significantly contribute to the process of comprehension and transformation of the world.

This dissertation is devoted to the stage history of Goethe’s Faust I in Imperial Russia with the goal of initiating academic discussion of this previously ignored topic. The significance of this study lies not only in the fact that it enlarges our comprehension of the play’s treatment in the Russian context, but more importantly in its direct implications for earlier studies of Russian literature in relation to Goethe’s Faust. The dissertation records analytically dramatic productions of the play before 1917 and provides a bibliography of their production, performance and reception processes. The central premise of the dissertation is that theatre is a social phenomenon, informed by the contemporary setting in which it is produced and received. With this in mind, five distinctive adaptations are investigated with the goal of identifying the peculiarities of the play’s treatment and highlighting the influences of the socio-historical factors surrounding it. In particular, this study considers the dependence of the adaptation on contemporary theatrical conventions and explores the relationship between theatre, culture and the state in Imperial Russia. It argues that a successful adaptation of Goethe’s Faust I in Imperial Russia was delayed until the flourishing of ‘directorial theatre’, which in turn opened new possibilities for future theatrical explorations of the play. The analysis describes strategies of cultural appropriation and affirms the conformity and sensitivity of theatre to the state.

This thesis argues that the popularity of the clandestine marriage plot in English and Spanish drama following the Reformation corresponds closely to developments and emerging conflicts in European matrimonial law. My title, ‘casos de honra,' or ‘honour cases', unites law and drama in a way that captures this argument. Taken from the Spanish playwright Lope de Vega's El arte nuevo (1609), a treatise on his dramatic practice, the phrase has been understood as a description of the honour plots so common in Spanish Golden Age drama, but ‘casos' [cases] has a further, and related, legal meaning. Casos de honra are cases touching honour, whether portrayed on stage or at law, a European rather than a strictly Spanish phenomenon, and clandestine marriages are one such example. I trace the genealogy of three casos de honra from their recognisable origins in Italian novelle, through Italian, French, Spanish, and English adaptations, until their final early modern manifestations on the English and Spanish stage. Their seeming differences, and often radical divergences in plot can be explained with reference to their distinct, but related, legal concerns.

Failure Theatre: An Artist’s Statement, is an invitation to a rumination on failure. The project is divided into four discreet offers that combine together to form a portrait of failure. A full play text, a manifesto and a choreographed response to research as well as an Artist Statement merge into a pastiche that sheds light on failure’s possible position(s) within the Canadian theatrical milieu. Basing the overall approach on work by Judith Halberstam, Sara Ahmed, Ann Bogart plus several other Feminist, Queer and Performance authors, this thesis examines failure as a force for resistance and change. / Thesis (Master, Cultural Studies) -- Queen's University, 2013-01-28 15:45:13.857