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From Aristotle’s theory of tragic katharsis to Brecht’s formulation of the Verfremdungseffekt, theorists of the theatre have long engaged with the question of what spectatorship entails. Such question has, directly or indirectly, extended to the investigation of acting. In the wake of Brecht’s critique of conventional theatre, emphasis has been put on the study of spectatorship from the point of view of its cultural determinants and its conscious cognitive aspects, while unconscious processes have been mostly ignored. In this thesis I take a psychoanalytic perspective to analyse theories of the theatre that have investigated the process of identification of the spectator or the actor with the character. According to psychoanalysis, mechanisms of unconscious identification, such as projection and introjection, are fundamental to psychic development and to the construction of the self. By analysing Aristotle’s theory of tragic katharsis through Freud’s theory of transference, I propose a new understanding of spectatorship as transference dynamic. I then conduct an in-depth enquiry into eighteenth-century theories of acting which lead up to Diderot’s Paradoxe sur le comédien. I investigate the paradox of the actor, in its fruitful tension between sensibility and understanding, from the perspective of Melanie Klein’s concept of unconscious phantasy and Bion’s theory of alpha-function. I hence interpret the art of the actor as the performing of alpha-function on the spectator’s unconscious emotions. The new insights afforded by a psychoanalytic perspective of spectating and acting illuminate the moral function of theatre and resolve some of the controversial points brought forward by various theorists, including Brecht and Rousseau. The moral function of theatre can be construed as a transpersonal process in which unconscious identifications between spectator and actor promote the development of a reflective view of the self.

After the end of the Cold War had signalled for many the demise of political theatre, a re-emergence of British political plays since the turn of the century has become an acknowledged phenomenon. Customary definitions of this cultural practice, however, have become historically and theoretically obsolete. An alternative philosophical framework is needed which breaks with both the unrealistic expectations of the traditional Left and the defeatist limitations of postmodernist positions. This thesis aims to provide a revised definition of political theatre based on the ideas of Jürgen Habermas. The development of his philosophical project is described together with its refinement as the result of interjections by other thinkers from within the neo-Marxist tradition of Critical Theory, in particular feminist contributors. In addition to exploring key concepts such as the reconstruction of historical materialism, the paradigm of discourse ethics and the model of post avant-garde political art, greater focus is placed on the notion of the public sphere, which has special relevance when examining the contemporary dynamics of political theatre.

This thesis explores how we understand and articulate the idea of ‘absorption’ as a necessary aspect of an ‘optimal’ ‘mode of being/doing’ for the performer. By drawing upon pertinent aspects of the fields of phenomenology, consciousness studies, cognitive neuroscience and play theory coupled with Csikszentmihalyi’s notion of ‘flow’, the study develops a lexicon of terminology with which to articulate and understand the nature of ‘absorption’ for the performer in the context of ‘dance theatre’. By developing a focused articulation of the actual nature of ‘absorption’ for the performer in performance, seen as necessary to an ‘optimal’ ‘mode of being/doing’, the study intends to contribute to the language of discourse in this area of performance studies, and, importantly become a useful resource for the enquiring performer and practitioner. Consequently, in developing an understanding of ‘absorption’ for the performer, in order to edge closer to articulating an ‘optimal’ ‘mode of being/doing’ for the performer, the work and actions of the performer remain the focus of the study. The study is anchored in practice through examination of the work of three companies working within the genealogy of ‘dance theatre’. This multi-company approach gives a chronological and genealogical overview of ‘dance theatre’ practices useful in understanding ‘absorption’ for the performer, whilst also facilitating examination of individual points of practice within that overview. The companies profiled are: Pina Bausch, DV8 and Vincent Dance Theatre (VDT). The examination of work by Bausch and DV8 draws upon and reframes extant documentation of performance currently in the public domain. Examination of VDT’s work draws on original footage and interviews undertaken by the researcher during fieldwork.

The focus of this dissertation is the theatrical representation of both the individual and war in a time of disintegrating national states and the dramatisation of destruction versus survival as the driving forces on stage. In a study on the future of empire it has been observed that instead of progressing into a peaceful future, the 21st century has slipped back in time into the nightmare of perpetual and indeterminate state of warfare: ceasing to be the exceptional state, war has become 'the primary organising principle of society', thus echoing Giorgio Agamben's declaration that the state of exception has become the status quo. Seminal studies on contemporary warfare and society such as Mary Kaldor's New & Old Wars (2005) and Ulrich Beck's World at Risk (2008 [2007]) trace how the face of war has changed over the past fifteen years. The dramatic texts examined in this thesis reach from plays depicting inner-state conflict, civil war and the politics of fear, for example Caryl Churchill's Far Away (2000), Sarah Kane's Blasted (1995) and Zinnie Harris's war trilogy (2005-2008) over documentary and verbatim-based plays and their attempt to portray the trauma of war by recreating on stage the process of giving testimony and by endorsing public grieving (e.g. various Tricycle productions and Gregory Burke's Black Watch [2006]), to adaptations of Greek tragedies (like Martin Crimp's Cruel and Tender [2004]) and a Shakespearean play. The questions underlying this work are: how can war be represented on stage? and, how do the plays replicate the sociological structures leading to violence and war and explore their transformation of societies? Springing from the discussion about 'New Wars' in the age of globalisation, it will be demonstrated here how these 'New Wars' also bring forth new plays about war.

In this thesis I dealt with commonly accepted theory, that Czech author Emil Arthur Longen wrote his plays in style similar to film slapstick comedy. The work starts with biography of Emil Arthur Longen. He was born in 1885 and died in 1936, his life was filled with many rises and falls because of his short temper, alcoholism and turbulent relation with his first wife, Polyxena (commonly called Xena), also an actress. Longen started as a student of Arts in Prague, but never ended his studies and left to pursue his interest, first in painting, later in another fields like filmmaking and acting, but he is most known as a playwright. He wrote more than seventy dramatic pieces and adapted another hundred more for his own theatre and also for other houses he worked with. His first efforts were cabaret shorts, he also wrote more serious things, but his most succesfull plays are farces one to four acts long. He was a principal playwright who wrote plays for the theater of Vlasta Burian, nicknamed The King of Comedians in interwar Czechoslovakia, who excelled in many of them. Critics during his lifetime but also later ones noted that his plays are inspired by American film slapstick comedy. Theory of comedy says that there are many types of comedy, number of the types varies greatly among notable authors, I...

This thesis analyses the dramatizations of larger epic units, which have appeared on the Czech national (or regional) shows of children's theatre since 1989. After characterizing the role of dramatic text created for the theatre played by children, the work attempts to establish the evaluation criteria for the dramatization of the investigated area. With regard to the artistic and educational objectives, the work compares the composition, language and thematic basis of selected texts. At the centre of attention are those means of adaptation which acquire particular significance especially in connection with a child actor; ways of creating adult characters, the depiction of the inner world of children's heroes etc. The main task of this text analysis is to answer the question about how far the authors were able to get within the narrow borders brought on by focusing on child actors up to fifteen years of age.