Cette thèse propose d’analyser comment la prostitution dans l’oeuvre écrite de Marguerite Duras se décline sous différentes formes. En croisant histoire littéraire,philosophie et psychanalyse, ce travail montre que la prostitution, loin d’être un simple motif,participe à l’acte créateur. L’écriture de Duras, façonnée par l’écart, est constamment prise dans une tension productrice de sens : c’est depuis l’écart en effet que l’écrivain construit son oeuvre (écart par rapport à la doxa, par rapport à la langue), préférant subvertir la norme plutôt que de la suivre.Nous commencerons par envisager la prostitution d’un point de vue thématique : ce motif, prégnant dans l’oeuvre depuis les premiers textes, tisse une véritable fantasmatique et donne à voir une oeuvre qui, renversant l’axiologie, sacralise le profane et fait de l’écart son centre. La prostitution, véritable creuset de l’écrit, devient dès lors un enjeu poïétique (elle fonde l’écriture même). Mais au-delà de l’idéalisation d’un don de soi, il appert que la prostitution a un enjeu plus profond : un enjeu métaphysique. Nous montrerons ensuite comment le fait de s’offrir participe d’une quête infinie, celle de l’Absolu. Proposer son corps est un acte tendu entre désir et deuil et s’apparente à une recherche de l’Alèthéia (la vérité par le dévoilement) plus qu’à une simple transaction dépourvue d’érotisme. Dans tous les cas, se prostituer relève avant tout d’une mise en scène où la théâtralité domine ; c’est ce point que nous analyserons en dernière partie. À partir des années 1980 le rapport de la prostituée à la vérité évolue, et l’écart, plus que le rapprochement entre les êtres, est monnayé. / This dissertation analyses the different meanings of prostitution in the writings of Marguerite Duras. Through the intersecting analytical lenses of literary history, philosophy and psychoanalysis, our research shows that prostitution, far from being a simple subject, is inherent to the creative art and act of the author. Writing, for Duras, is the product of a creative tension shaped by distance : the very margin (away from the doxa, the language itself) from which the author crafted her work is the creative force that informs her desire to diverge from the norm and effectively strive to overturn rather than follow it.We will first consider the thematic of prostitution – prevalent from her earliest texts – throughout Duras’s work and how it weaves a veritable fantasy matrix proposing a body of work that reverses the common axiology by sacralizing profanity and placing the margin at the center. Prostitution becomes a melting pot of the writing process and reveals the agenda of the potentialities within creation (it shapes writing itself). Nevertheless, beyond the idealization of giving oneself to another, prostitution runs deeper than the skin : it has ametaphysical sense. Indeed, we demonstrate how offering one’s body is linked to an infinite quest or thirst that only the Absolute of life can quench. Offering one’s body is a tense act situated between desire and mourning and that can be interpreted as the quest for Aletheia(truth through unveiling), rather than a simple transaction free of any eroticism. In any case,to prostitute oneself is above all, a staged performance deeply rooted in theatricality, and this point is analyzed in the last part of our work. After the 1980s the rapport between the prostitute and the truth changes and distance, far more than the rapprochement between bodies and beings, is then paid in cash.

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William Shakespeare and Sarah Kane are playwrights who for drastically different reasons have left indelible impacts upon the theatrical world. A key factor in each of their plays is the presentation of violence. Shakespeare uses violence for observable, orthodox reasons of driving the plot forward, while Kane uses it for sensory effect, social commentary, and for subverting traditional narrative expectations. This study examines how violence and fighting work as dramaturgical tools in these playwrights’ work, by individual examination, juxtaposition, and the use of other pieces of drama to inform these two differing schools of theatrical violence.

<p>The objective of this essay is to approach a larger comprehension of the drama of George Bernard Shaw. The essay studies the combination of ideas and aesthetics in the play Mrs Warren’s Profession; how theatrical and mainly literary aesthetics interplay with political ideas and what the consequence of this combination is. The study illustrates that the dramatic method consists of using ideas as effective theatrical tools to move the reader/viewer by thought and not by sentiment. The study also illustrates that a key to understanding Shaw’s drama can be found in the construction of operas and symphonies; musical theoretic constructions are an integrated dramatic technique in Mrs Warren’s Profession. The study shows that it is a play with a political and social purpose; to raise awareness of the mechanisms of prostitution. The play does not use simplifications in terms of good and evil. It questions conventionality, unveils social hypocrisy and attempts to disillusion the reader/viewer. The antithesis between realism and idealism is an important source of dynamics and constitutes one of the principal aesthetical constructions.</p>

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 2006. / Title from PDF title page screen. Advisor: Russ McDonald; submitted to the Dept. of English. Includes bibliographical references (p. 394-433).

The objective of this essay is to approach a larger comprehension of the drama of George Bernard Shaw. The essay studies the combination of ideas and aesthetics in the play Mrs Warren’s Profession; how theatrical and mainly literary aesthetics interplay with political ideas and what the consequence of this combination is. The study illustrates that the dramatic method consists of using ideas as effective theatrical tools to move the reader/viewer by thought and not by sentiment. The study also illustrates that a key to understanding Shaw’s drama can be found in the construction of operas and symphonies; musical theoretic constructions are an integrated dramatic technique in Mrs Warren’s Profession. The study shows that it is a play with a political and social purpose; to raise awareness of the mechanisms of prostitution. The play does not use simplifications in terms of good and evil. It questions conventionality, unveils social hypocrisy and attempts to disillusion the reader/viewer. The antithesis between realism and idealism is an important source of dynamics and constitutes one of the principal aesthetical constructions.

Acts of “passing” inform the plots of Zoë Wicomb’s Playing in the Light and Nella Larsen’s Passing. Examples of contemporary South African fiction and Harlem Renaissance fiction respectively, these texts explore racial passing and its correlative, social passing. Social passing includes enactment of social relationships, responds to class anxieties, and requires repression of emotions as participating characters attempt to fix their performed roles into permanent identities. At issue are the texts’ multiple enactments of passing with special interest paid to these acts’ constitutive theatricality. Characters perform within narrative settings, locations subsequently deconstructed exposing both implicit and explicit theatrical functions. Threshold spaces of doors and windows form frames within settings, focusing the audience’s gaze and simultaneously creating and dismantling private and public places to reconstitute them as theater. This study culminates in reflections on the tension between the relative freedom and containment of characters that pass.

Jag har i denna studie intervjuat sex olika lärare på tre olika skolor i Stockholmsområdet. Studien handlar om hur teaterlärare skapar en teaterföreställning. Mina frågeställningar är: Hur skapar teater lärare teaterföreställning i skolan? Vilka metoder använder sig teaterlärare av i sin undervisning? Vad har lärare för synpunkter på fördelar utifrån metoder som den använder vid skapande av en teaterföreställning? Ingår det andra ämnen vid skapande av en teaterföreställning i skolan? Vad anser lärare att elever lär sig med teater i skolan? Min avsikt är inte att påvisa vilken metod eller sätt som passar bättre än någon annan, utan att lyfta fram flera tankar om hur man kan arbeta med teaterföreställning i undervisningen. Jag har arbetat med en kvalitativ metod och varje intervju tog en timme att genomföra. Sedan har jag transkriberat ned lärarnas svar och delat in svaren i olika frågeområden och analyserat det utifrån det konstpedagogiska perspektivet enligt Mia Sternudds avhandling. Svaren har jag även analyserat med mål att kunna använda som riktlinjer för att kunna skapa en teaterföreställning liksom kursmål för scenisk gestaltning som lärarna utgick ifrån när denna undersökning gjordes. Med det konstpedagogiska perspektivet som jag har använt mig av i denna undersökning handlar det om att göra en teaterföreställning till publik och att elever utvecklas socialt, kommunikativt och personligen med processen att skapa en teaterföreställning i skolan.  I undersökningen kom jag fram till att alla lärare arbetar med text för att skapa en teaterföreställning i skolan. En del lärare som ingick i undersökningen brukade ibland utgå från improvisation. Alla lärare arbetade med koncentrationsövningar och fantasiövningar och hade utgångspunkten i Stanislavskijtekniken vid skapande av en roll i en teaterföreställning. Elevdemokrati fanns med på alla skolorna vid skapandet av en föreställning, men det var i regel läraren som hade sista ordet. Vissa skolor arbetade ämnesintegrerande och det var mest ett samarbete med svenska eller engelska. Samarbetet med andra ämnen bedömdes av lärarna rent generellt som mycket tidskrävande. Samtliga lärare som ingick i undersökningen menade att arbetet med en teaterföreställning skapar ett gott samarbete mellan eleverna och ett gott arbetsklimat i skolan. Lärarnas uppfattning är att eleverna med teater i skolan lär sig att samarbeta, ta ansvar och respektera varandra, egenskaper som är värdefulla när eleverna senare ska fungera i ett demokratiskt samhälle. / In this study I have done an interview with six different teachers of theater in three different upper secondary schools in the area ofStockholm. The study describes how the teachers work in creating a theatrical performance at the school. The questions in the study were: How do the teachers create a theatrical performance in school? Which viewpoints did the teachers have about the advantage of a certain method? Are other subjects than theater involved in the performance? What do the theatherteachers think of the educational value for the pupils when creating a theatrical performance? The method is qualitative and every interview lasted for at least an hour. Because of the long duration of the interviews I used a tape recorder to register the whole information which I later transcribed in smaller parts. The answers were analyzed from an art pedagogical perspective according to the definition by Mia Sternudd. In this study I found that all teachers worked with a written text when they created a performance. Some teachers in the study sometimes used improvisation. All teachers were working with trainings of concentration and fantasy and the foundation for them all were the techniques of Stanislavskij. Democracy of pupils was present in the creation of a performance, but usually the teacher had the last word to be told. In some of the schools the teachers worked with integration of subjects. In these cases integration usually was with Swedish or English. The cooperation with integration of subjects generally was very time-consuming. All teachers in the study thought that the creation of a theatrical performance in school creates a good cooperation and a good working climate. The teachers thought that the pupils by working with theater in school learned to cooperate, to take responsibility and to respect each other, qualities which are important when the pupils later are going to function as citizens in a democratic society.

The works of William Shakespeare reflect the society in which he lived, and they can therefore be studied for the light they shed upon certain aspects of this society that may otherwise have been ignored or misrepresented by other surviving documents. This is especially true of prostitution. Women in this shifting English society were marginalized, and the prostitute occupied an especially precarious place since her profession identified her as an outsider, legally and morally. Surviving historical documents address the legality or morality of this institution, but fail to reveal how it was perceived by society as a whole. Shakespeare receives much praise for his keen observations of human behavior, so his plays can be seen as a type of historical document themselves. I am interested in how the characters of prostitutes function in his oeuvre and whether they uphold or subvert the attitudes implied by the other existing documents and scholarship on the topic.

The ideal city project was a performance that presented the design for an ideal city with stories about how that imaginary city failed. The design was represented as a 4’0” x 4’0” wood and Styrofoam sculpture. Upon seeing this design, seven writers created scenes and monologues outlining the destruction of the city. The flaws they discovered were not designed into the city intentionally. In fact, the writers pointed to several different sources for the downfall ranging from issues with its layout to socio-political breakdowns. At the end of the performance the audience was left with the ruins of something that was once so full of hope. This piece was intended to serve as a reminder that cities are not predetermined utopias, but continually changing and evolving environments created by those who live in them. Even the best examples eventually fail or evolve into something different. However, this does not mean we stop trying to create better places to live. George Bernard Shaw said “A reasonable man adapts himself to his environment. An unreasonable man persists in attempting to adapt his environment to suit himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” Theater performances provide an excellent way to explore ideas and create dialogue about what these better places look like and how they function. / text