bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Responsible Belief and Our Social Institutions
Authors: van Woudenberg René
Published: January 2009

The idea that we can properly be held responsible for what we believe underlies large stretches of our social and institutional life; without that idea in place, social and institutional life would be unthinkable, and more importantly, it would stumble and fall. At the same time, philosophers have argued that this idea is strange, puzzling, beyond belief, false, meaningless or at any rate defective. The first section develops the alleged problem. The burden of this paper, however, is not to discuss the merits of this idea but rather to measure the damage in case the idea turns out to be defective indeed. This is done by substantiating the claim that this idea indeed underlies large and important stretches of our social and institutional life. Section 2 substantiates that claim by presenting the results of a web search on the use of what I call “deontological epistemic expressions”, i.e. expressions in which deontological and epistemological notions (both broadly construed) are combined; examples are “obligation to believe”, “not permitted to forget”, “right to know”. The ubiquitous use of these expressions, I argue, is linguistic evidence for the claim that the contested idea indeed pervades our social life. Linguistic evidence, however, can be frail and misleading. From the fact that we say that the shade is moving we cannot conclude that shades really exist; likewise it may not be permitted to conclude from the ubiquitous use of deontological epistemic expressions that there really are doxastic obligations (and hence doxastic responsibilities). The third section, therefore, moves beyond the linguistic evidence and discusses two social institutions, viz. education and law as we find them in modern Western societies, and argues that they cannot be made sense of unless the contested idea is in place. Educational and legal systems of course vary greatly throughout the Western world. Such differences as exist, however, are irrelevant for the claim I will be making in this paper. The final section states the conclusion.
No Abiding City: Hume, Naturalism, and Toleration
Authors: Clark Samuel
Published: January 2009

This paper rereads David Hume'sDialogues Concerning Natural Religionas dramatising a distinctive, naturalistic account of toleration. I have two purposes in mind: first, to complete and ground Hume's fragmentary explicit discussion of toleration; second, to unearth a potentially attractive alternative to more recent, Rawlsian approaches to toleration. To make my case, I connectDialoguesand the problem of toleration to the wider themes of naturalism, scepticism and their relation in Hume's thought, before developing a new interpretation ofDialoguespart 12 as political drama. Finally, I develop the Humean theory of toleration I have discovered by comparison between Rawls's and Hume's strategies for justification of a tolerant political regime.
Absurdity, Incongruity and Laughter
Authors: Plant Bob
Published: January 2009

InThe Myth of Sisyphus, Camus recommends scornful defiance in the face of our absurd, meaningless existence. Although Nagel agrees that human life possesses an absurd dimension, he objects to Camus’ existentialist ‘dramatics’. For Nagel, absurdity arises from the irreducible tension between our subjective and objective perspectives on life. In this paper I do two things: (i) critically reconstruct Camus’ and Nagel's positions, and (ii) develop Nagel's critique of Camus in order to argue that humour is an appropriate response to absurdity.
Effect of self focusing on the prolongation of laser produced plasma channel
Authors: Verma U. , Sharma A.K.
Published: January 2009

A theoretical model for the prolongation of lifetime of a gaseous plasma channel formed by two pulse technique at laser intensities below the tunnel ionization threshold is developed. The first laser pulse ionizes the gas completely on the axis and partially off the axis, causing self-defocusing of the pulse. After the passage of the pulse, the plasma expands radially, creating an atom/ion density profile with a minimum on the axis. Partial recombination also sets in. As the second pulse arrives, after a time delay of less than the recombination time (~ns), the electrons get heated, and the recombination rate is slowed down. The second pulse self focuses, enhancing the heating rate and lengthening the lifetime of the plasma channel.
Investigations of plasma jet interaction with ambient gases by multi-frame interferometric and X-ray pinhole camera systems
Authors: Kasperczuk A. , Pisarczyk T. , Nicolai Ph. , Stenz Ch. , Tikhonchuk V. , Kalal M. , Ullschmied J. , Krousky E. , Masek K. , Pfeifer M. , Rohlena K. , Skala J. , Klir D. , Kravarik J. , Kubes P. , Pisarczyk P.
Published: January 2009

Interactions of laser driven plasma jets with He and Ar gas puffs was investigated experimentally by means of three-frame interferometric/shadowgraphic system and three-frame X-ray pinhole camera. A defocused iodine laser beam using the Prague Asterix Laser System (PALS) interacting with massive planar Cu targets generated high-speed well-collimated plasma jets. The PALS third harmonic (0.438 µm), with pulse duration of 250 ps (full width at half maximum), and energy of 100 J was employed in two irradiation geometries: with an incidence normal to the target surface and with an oblique one (30° with respect to the target normal), in order to minimize the heating of the ambient gas by the laser beam. The results of these interaction experiments, in particular, those obtained in case of the oblique incidence geometry, are presented and discussed. They show the effect of the double shock formation in ambient gases: starting by the ablative plasma action, followed by that of the jet.
Demonstration of symcaps to measure implosion symmetry in the foot of the NIF scale 0.7 hohlraums
Authors: Seifter A. , Kyrala G.A. , Goldman S.R. , Hoffman N.M. , Kline J.L. , Batha S.H.
Published: January 2009

Implosions using inertial confinement fusion must be highly symmetric to achieve ignition on the National Ignition Facility. This requires precise control of the drive symmetry from the radiation incident on the ignition capsule. For indirect drive implosions, low mode residual perturbations in the drive are generated by the laser-heated hohlraum geometry. To diagnose the drive symmetry, previous experiments used simulated capsules by which the self-emission X-rays from gas in the center of the capsule during the implosion are used to infer the shape of the drive. However, those experiments used hohlraum radiation temperatures higher than 200 eV (Hauer et al., 1995; Murphy et al., 1998a, 1998b) with small NOVA scale hohlraums under which conditions the symcaps produced large X-ray signals. At the foot of the NIF ignition pulse, where controlling the symmetry has been shown to be crucial for obtaining a symmetric implosion (Clark et al., 2008), the radiation drive is much smaller, reducing the X-ray emission from the imploded capsule. For the first time, the feasibility of using symcaps to diagnose the radiation drive for low radiation temperatures, <120 eV and large 0.7 linear scales NIF Rev3.1 (Haan et al., 2008) vacuum hohlraums is demonstrated. Here we used experiments at the Omega laser facility to demonstrate and develop the symcap technique for tuning the symmetry of the NIF ignition capsule in the foot of the drive pulse.
Repetitive outbursts of fast carbon and fluorine ions from sub-nanosecond laser-produced plasma
Authors: Krása J. , Velyhan A. , Jungwirth K. , Krouský E. , Láska L. , Rohlena K. , Pfeifer M. , Ullschmied J.
Published: January 2009

Repeated plasma outbursts were recognized at our analyzing currents of the fast carbon and fluorine ions produced with the sub-nanosecond PALS laser beam (λ0 = 1.315 µm, τL = ≈350 ps,Imax ≈ 6 × 1015 W/cm2) focused onto polytetrafluoroethylene and polyethylene targets. This study deals with a repetitive occurrence of doublets of C6+-C5+and F9+-F8+ion peaks in the time-of-flight (TOF) spectra, whose TOF can be related to the same accelerating voltage:$\tau \propto 1/\sqrt{U}$. The repeated occurrence of ion outbursts containing fully ionized ions can be characterized by a set of discrete voltagesUi, where the subscripti ∈ (1,N) labels the outbursts of ions from the fastest one (i = 1) up to the slowest and in the TOF spectrum yet distinguishable outburst (i = N). These discrete values could indicate plasma pulsations followed by repetitive outbursts of ions. The ions expand with a velocity up to ≈9 × 108 cm/s. The corresponding values of the accelerating voltage of ≈800 kv, and the temperature of ≈1.1 keV were determined by revealing partial ion currents based on the shifted Maxwell-Boltzmann velocity distribution. Characteristics of fast ion outbursts depend on the focus position with respect to the target surface.
Tip over avoidance control for biped robot
Authors: Qing Tang , Rong Xiong , Jian Chu
Published: January 2009

This paper analyzes the stabilization problem from the energy point of view. Perturbations are detected by the gyros and categorized according to the constraints on the zero-moment point, energy, and walking pattern. Ankle torque is exerted to extend the linear inverted pendulum mode (LIPM). Compensation movement is computed according to the analysis on the energy of LIPM and the influence of disturbance to the energy. The experimental results from both the simulation and the physical robot not only proved effective but also explain various human reactions to disturbance in locomotion.
Shakespeare as Spectacle and History: The Victorian Period
Authors: Booth Michael R.
Published: January 2009

The changes in social composition and cultural taste that came over theatre audiences in the late eighteenth century and in the first decades of the nineteenth century had a profound effect upon their attitude to, and consequently the production of, Shakespeare. The social mix of the London playhouse remained relatively unchanged through much of the eighteenth century. Within a fairly small auditorium the aristocratic and upper middle-class gentility of the boxes and the bourgeois respectability of the pit effectively dictated a style of drama and performance that most appealed to the tastes of this, the most dominant audience group. Combined with the limitations imposed upon the techniques of production by an adequate but undeveloped technology and the social stability provided by the slow pace of political and industrial evolution, the early and mid-Georgian theatre (including Shakespeare) preserved a remarkably uniform structure and dramatic viewpoint over a long period.
‘Down With the Boot-Faced’: Public Relations at the Festival Theatre, Cambridge
Authors: Woodruff Graham
Published: January 2009

In a previous article I examined Terence Gray's contribution to the development of theatre architecture and design in England. I argued that Gray's work was not so much an innovation in theatre practice but rather an attempt to bring into the English theatre the production methods that were being developed in Europe. Ideas and techniques were borrowed from Craig and Appia, Meyerhold in Russia, Jessner in Germany, Gaston Baty in France and Norman Bel Geddes in the United States and introduced into the English theatre which had remained isolated since the end of the First World War. Many of Gray's ideas were indeed second hand, but the freshness and exuberance of his work startled the English theatrical scene of the thirties and are still relevant to the theatre of today. One only has to compare the designs of the new National Theatre with Gray's plans for a Festival Theatre at the National Sporting Club, King Street, to see the influence of his work.
Herbert Beerbohm Tree's King Henry VIII: Expenditure, Spectacle and Experiment
Authors: Foulkes Richard
Published: January 2009

Soon after breakfast-time on the morning of 1 September 1910 ‘suburban ladies with their camp stools, sandwiches, and crochet work took up position outside the pit and gallery doors’ at His Majesty's Theatre in London's Haymarket; later they were joined by messenger boys reserving places for more affluent enthusiasts, and by the time the doors opened at 6.15 p.m. the queue had swelled to the extent that only half could be admitted. Amongst the more privileged members of the audience which thronged the theatre that Thursday evening were to be seen Prince Francis of Teck, the Ranee of Sarawak and Sir Arthur and Lady Conan Doyle, a notable turn-out at a time of year when, according to Vanity Fair, ‘London is supposed to be deserted by that fraction of the population whose absence or presence causes it to be designated as empty or full’. Such intense anticipation is rarely generated by a theatrical event, yet throughout that summer the press had dutifully recorded the latest developments in what was to prove to be Herbert Beerbohm Tree's most lavish Shakespearian production King Henry VIII. Whilst the press and public eagerly awaited the latest Bardic offering (his fourteenth) from the foremost actor-manager of the day, his theatre, from his office in the dome downwards, was a bustle of activity involving actors, designers, costumiers, and all the other participants in a great theatrical enterprise. Tree's own grasp on the mechanics and economics of theatre production was legendarily vague, but, fortunately for him and indeed for us, those matters were handled and meticulously recorded by his manager Henry Dana, and it is through Dana's account books, now in the Tree Archive in the Theatre Collection at the University of Bristol, that the financial framework, on which was to be placed the sumptuous spectacle of Henry VIII, can be found.
Financial Arrangements for the Athenian Dramatic Festivals
Authors: Walton Michael
Published: January 2009

The fifth century BC was the only period of theatre history when plays were created for a single performance. The sense of immediacy that this suggests in terms of the theatrical potential of the plays is frequently overlooked, as is the corresponding freedom from commercial pressures enjoyed by the playwrights. To think of the theatre of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes as entirely free from the ‘taint’ of other than sublime artistic and religious motives, however, is to underestimate both the practicality of the Athenians in organisational matters and the constant dependance of the theatre as an institution on its patrons.
An American Actress at Balmoral
Authors: Jamieson Michael
Published: January 2009

On the afternoon of Wednesday, 25 October 1893, a well-dressed young woman alighted at the terminal station of the Great North of Scotland Railway line to Ballater. A discerning London playgoer, seeing her in the unlikely setting of this remote Scots village, would have recognised the stranger as Elizabeth Robins, one of the three most ‘interesting’ and advanced actresses of the day. American by birth and early stage training, she had passed through London in the summer of 1888 on her way to and from a Norwegian holiday and, encouraged by Oscar Wilde, she had remained to try her luck in the English theatre. Her moment had come in April 1891 when she had triumphantly created Hedda Gabler on the British stage, and early in 1893 – a year she afterwards referred to as ‘outstanding’ – she had won a still greater triumph when she acted Hilda Wangel in her own presentation ofThe Master Builder. Pioneering matinées, however, could not in themselves support an independent, impecunious and expatriate actress, and Miss Robins, who was now thirty-one, had appeared in two Adelphi melodramas as well as for fashionable actor–managers. In May of this very year she had magnanimously yielded the dazzling part of Paula in Pinero's new and adult dramaThe Second Mrs Tanquerayto her friend Mrs Patrick Campbell and so had lost, perhaps for ever, the chance of becoming a celebrated and modish actress.
Jeanne d'Arc During the German Occupation
Authors: Marsh Patrick
Published: January 2009

During the German occupation, theatres in France had never been so full; the reasons for this phenomenon are not difficult to understand: other traditional leisure-time activities were seriously curtailed – restaurants were closed, films were either out of date or impossibly pro-German and there was no petrol for motor-cars. One of the very few areas of French life which was not seriously affected was the theatre; of course the theatre had its difficulties – materials for scenery, costumes and make-up were difficult to come by, and the activities of the censor reduced the number of plays which could be produced.
Censorship in France During the German Occupation
Authors: Marsh Patrick
Published: January 2009

During the German occupation of France the theatre was a place where the Frenchman could, to some extent, rediscover his self-respect, a place where the man in the street could gather courage and the will to resist the invader in innumerable and often totally unexpected ways which often escaped the vigilance of the German censor. The records of the censor have disappeared, as the Germans destroyed the archives of the Propagandastaffel; nor are there any records in the French public archives of plays censored during the German occupation. What does exist, however, are the prompt copies used at the Comédie-Française during the war. A study of the censored passages reveals that it was often the very unlikely and seemingly trivial remarks that, for the reason that they aroused some sort of feeling of resistance in the audience, the occupiers felt had to be cut out. Marcel Thiébaut, commenting on audience reaction during the war, wrote:

… on retourna au théâtre … Ce fut d'abord pour y guetter les moindres allusions qui, d'un coup, auraient rendu toute la salle hostile ou complice. On épiait les sous-entendus.
Shakespeare Performances by Ernesto Rossi and Tommaso Salvini in Flanders in 1876–1877 and 1891
Authors: De Vos Jozef
Published: January 2009

In the latter half of the nineteenth century, but especially from the late seventies onwards, several internationally renowned actors or companies presented their Shakespeare productions in the main cities of Flanders. Undoubtedly, they provided an important impetus to the creation of a Shakespeare tradition in Flemish cultural life. In the present article I wish to draw attention to the successful performances which the greatest Italian interpreters of Shakespeare, Ernesto Rossi and Tommaso Salvini, gave in Flanders and which hitherto have been left unnoticed.
Hassan: The Road to the Haymarket
Authors: Kidd Timothy
Published: January 2009

When Basil Dean died in 1978 at the age of ninety, his death broke a link, though not the last, with one of the most important stage productions of the 1920s. The history of that performance and of the play itself is a complex one; it tells us a great deal about the problems of matching poetry to the modern theatre. For among Dean's major achievements was the production of Hassan.
‘Crooked Jimmy’ and ‘Limping Joe’: Russian Theatrical Satire in the 1920s
Authors: Pearson Anthony G.
Published: January 2009

With the opening in the year 1908 of the Bat theatre (Letuchaya Mysh') in Moscow and the Crooked Mirror (Krivoe Zerkalo) in St Petersburg, intimate theatres of ‘small forms’ made their first commercial appearance in Russia. Inspired in part by the cabaret theatres and caféschantants of Paris, Berlin and other Western capitals, these new theatrical undertakings soon established themselves as an alternative to the regular dramatic and operatic theatres. Beginning as tiny chamber theatres intended primarily for the bourgeois intelligentsia, the Crooked Mirror, and to a lesser extent the Bat, developed into genuine aesthetic theatres of parodox and wit. The Crooked Mirror in particular sought to entertain by satirizing and parodying stale conventions and stultifying routine prevalent in society and in the arts. The repertoires of these theatres consisted entirely of miniature forms – a combination of one-act plays and separate variety numbers with music and dancing. One important innovation to which both theatres contributed was the introduction to the Russian stage of the figure of the ‘conférencier’ or compère who, like his French predecessors, had the task of linking the various items of an evening's programme by means of witty, topical dialogue, innuendo and spontaneous asides. Nikita Baliev, the founder of the Bat, made a speciality of this.
E. G. Craig: The Drama for Marionettes
Authors: Siniscalchi Marina Maymone
Published: January 2009

In these notes I shall deal with the origin of the Drama for Fools – a drama for marionettes by E. G. Craig. That is, I intend to approach the drama along the thread that Craig himself must have followed from his initial liking for marionettes up to his writing of playlets for them. Naturally by thread I mean Craig's artistic experience in the development of its events. I have been stimulated to proceed along this line by practical and theoretical problems. Practical because I have been able to examine many unpublished papers which, however, still require a long period of study; for this reason the present notes must be considered preliminary conclusions. Theoretical because I believe that for a full understanding of the Drama it is essential to examine the contribution of the marionette ‘Toward a New Theatre’, Craig's outstanding project elaborated between 1900–10. It can be said without a shadow of doubt that the marionette is the source from which the characters of the ‘New Theatre’ have drawn inspiration: it has characterized the human element in the scene, it is the prototype of what he chose to call the übermarionette, that new figure created by Craig and integrated into his scenic machine. It dictates his style to the actor-artist. This leads me to the conclusion that the Drama begun in 1914 was nothing but the continuation of the ‘New Theatre’ with other means and in another period.
Staging ‘The Master's’ Works: Wagner, Appia, and Theatrical Abuse
Authors: Roth Marc
Published: January 2009

Recent productions of Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen, especially those by Patrice Chereau at Bayreuth and Peter Stein at the Paris Opera, have caused the greatest hue and cry from audiences since Wieland Wagner first presented his controversial interpretations of his grandfather's works. Once again, the distressing knee-jerk reaction from many critics has been to admonish today's directors and scenic designers to ‘go back to Wagner's original intentions’ and restore the illusionism prescribed in his stage directions. The debate over the proper performance of Wagner's works is tied to the larger and inherently unresolvable question concerning the proper domain of theatrical interpretation. It is very appropriate for one of the most heated arguments on this subject to center around Wagner because his music dramas were the springboard of the modern scenographic revolution, and there has been a tendency to brand Wagner as one of the prime movers behind twentieth century theatrical abuse. At the end of the last century a Swiss Wagnerite named Adolphe Appia changed the art of scenic interpretation through his stagings of The Ring and Tristan und Isolde. As every student of theatre history knows, Appia's designs and writings published in his book Die Musik und die Inscenierung (1899) form the basis of modern scenography. What most people fail to recognize, however, is that Appia's book is an immensely valuable study of Wagner. His ideas for staging The Ring influenced the most important Wagner interpreters of the twentieth century, and his analysis of the ‘profound significance’ of the music dramas anticipated most of literary studies about Wagner published in recent years.
The Philanthropist and The Misanthrope: A Study in Comic Mimesis
Authors: Bennett Kenneth C.
Published: January 2009

Christopher Hampton's The Philanthropist, seen in relation to its source, Molière's The Misanthrope, provides not only a modern commentary on that play but an insight into the nature of comic mimesis. Though startlingly different in most respects, the two plays present us with ‘unrealistic’ extremes which are simply distortions of tendencies we can see both in our society and in our selves. Such distortions are comic in that the audience perceives the disparity between the action and what would ordinarily occur in reality, but the distortions pose no threat to laughter because of the author's careful control of the context in which they occur.
Controlling Obscene Stage Plays in England
Authors: Manchester Colin
Published: January 2009

Throughout most of the theatre's history, control of obscene stage plays and indeed stage plays generally has been vested in the Lord Chamberlain, the official with overall responsibility for the running of the King's household. One of the Lord Chamberlain's functions would be to ensure that actors and players appeared to entertain the royal household and it was presumably for this reason that he acquired control over the performance of plays. This power of control, which he possessed initially under the authority of the King, was later clarified and put in statutory form in the Theatres Acts 1737–1843.
Some Notes on Noh Dancing
Authors: Brandt George W. , Munakata Kuniyoshi
Published: January 2009

When a company of Japanese actors under the leadership of Manzaburo UMEWAKA* presented some noh plays at the Aldwych Theatre in 1967 as part of the World Theatre Season, a good many British critics confessed themselves to be more than a little baffled. Opinions ranged from one reviewer's: ‘Noh is stylised to the point of static incomprehensibility’ to Philip Hope-Wallace's guarded appreciation: ‘The sound which prevails is curious; wailing and hooting noises like owls with indigestion. But the combination of strange noises and slow, potent, intense movement adds up to some very exotic and memorable poetry; to those (so to speak) in the know, it must be a lifetime's experience.’ To Irving Wardle the cultural barrier was impenetrable. ‘I found the performance totally alien: a blank cheque with no doubt centuries of artistic credit behind it, but which might equally almost have been staged as a hoax on the cultural community… I doubt whether any such vision can be transmitted without a shared language…’ Even critics anxious to enter into the spirit of this, to them, wholly new experience admitted that they found it hard going. W. A. Darlington wrote, ‘The plays were performed by a company trained from childhood to a stylised form of art of which one cannot hope, without study, to appreciate the finer points.’
The Merchant of Venice, Rosamond and Other English Plays Performed on the Continent in 1703?
Authors: Motten J. P. Vander
Published: January 2009

In September 1781, Jean Van Gulpen, printer in the city of Maastricht, brought out a small octavo volume, entitled Tableau du Spectacle Français ou Annales Théâtrales de la Ville de Mastrigt. Now a rarity, this historical view of the Maastricht stage was the work of the lawyer François Bernard (fl. 1788), a shadowy figure today only remembered – if remembered at all – as the author of a number of works on political and economic history, all published at Leyden in the 1780s. Bernard dedicated his Tableau to ‘Madame Clairville, Première Chanteuse de l'Opéra Français de la Ville de Mastrigt’ and preceded his two-hundred page account of the ‘Spectacle Français’ with a lengthy defense of the stage, in which he claimed due recognition for the acting profession and greater support for the players whose condition was ‘flétri par l'injustice des hommes’.
Racine, Menestrier, and Sublime Effects
Authors: McGowan Margaret
Published: January 2009

The year 1674 is a very interesting one for the study of Racine. In that year a quarrel had temporarily separated Lully and Quinault, and the composer needed a new libretto. Racine (aided by Boileau) began work on La Chute de Phaëton, and although the opera was never finished (as Louis XIV forced Lully to work again with Quinault) the fact that Racine agreed, however reluctantly, to compose verse for opera is not without significance. Indeed, Vanuxem has argued that Racine was here showing a continuing interest in this form since he had already been engaged three years earlier on an opera based on the story of Orpheus, of which nothing survives. Quinault's extraordinarily successful opera Alceste was performed at Versailles on 7 July 1674 while, in the same year, Boileau celebrated his increasing importance at Court and in literary circles with the publication of a translation from the Greek of a Treatise on the Sublime, a work traditionally attributed to Longinus. And finally, in August 1674, Racine's Iphigènie received its first performance in a spectacular setting, in a theatre, built at the entrance of the Orangerie at Versailles, created for the occasion by the Vigarani brothers. The play was much applauded, and yet the excitement it aroused was outdone by the illuminations and fireworks which exploded immediately after its performance. Some 30,000 varied fireworks were invented by Le Brun to celebrate the magnificence of Louis XIV triumphing over his foes despite ‘L'Envie representée par le Dragon’ belching forth from every orifice torrents of flame and thick smoke.
Continental Plays produced by the Independent Theatre Society, 1891–8
Authors: McDonald Jan
Published: January 2009

J. T. Grein, a Dutchman who was the founder of the Independent Theatre Society, first stated the aims such a body should have in the article he wrote with C. W. Jarvis in The Weekly Comedy (30 November 1889). It should be ‘a theatre free from the shackles of the censor, free from the fetters of convention, unhampered by financial considerations’.
An Early Soviet Play at the Moscow Arts Theatre
Authors: Russell R.
Published: January 2009

The story of the production in 1928 by the Moscow Arts Theatre (MKhAT) of Valentin Kataev's play Rastratchiki (The Embezzlers) is of interest both in itself, as part of the history of the Russian stage, and for the light it sheds on the character and artistic ideas of the theatre's leading figure K. S. Stanislavsky. In order to understand the importance of the staging by MKhAT of modern plays written by young, relatively unknown authors, one must appreciate the uniquely prestigious position of the theatre and its directors in the cultural life of the country. The fact that Chekhov's plays had first been performed by the theatre, the importance of the new style of acting propounded by Stanislavsky and the venerability of Stanislavksy and Nemirovich-Danchenko secured for MKhAT a position of great cultural importance.
Theatre in Berlin: Studies by the Knudsen ‘School’
Authors: Claus Horst
Published: January 2009

This is the way in which in 1882 the journalist and writer Julius Hart — later one of the founders of the Freie Bühne – experienced the magnetic attraction of the young German capital. Like Hart, hundreds of poets, journalists, writers, actors rushed to the rapidly expanding metropolis which seemed to offer opportunities for all talents. From 1880 until the 1930s, Berlin represented a sort of theatrical Mecca. Writing and performing artists alike were completely captivated by the Berlin theatres, looking for their inspiration particularly to the Deutsches Theater, the Lessingtheater, the Schauspielhaus am Gendarmenmarkt; similarly, the editors of the entertainment sections of the provincial newspapers took as gospel the reviews in the Vossische Zeitung, the Berliner Tageblatt and the Berliner Börsen-Courier.
The Essential Ambiguity in Lope de Vega'sPeribáñez: Theme and Staging
Authors: Varey J. E.
Published: January 2009

The town of Madrid was first chosen as the permanent seat of the Court in 1561; for a few years, from 1601 to 1606, Valladolid challenged Madrid's supremacy, but in that year Madrid was confirmed as the capital of Spain. The years from 1561 saw, as a result, a rapid growth in Madrid, an explosion of population and of size which was not to have its counterpart again until the 1870s and, more recently, the 1950s and 1960s. Inevitably, the growth of Madrid sucked into the town a great number of peasants and, by the early decades of the seventeenth century, a significant part of the population must have consisted of first- and second-generation town-dwellers, imbued, to judge from the evidence of the plays performed in the commercial theatres, with a nostalgia for the country-side, a nostalgia which was reinforced by and expressed in terms of the old literarytoposof the dispraise of life in the city (or at Court) and the praise of country life.
The Signs of the Theatre
Authors: Gossman Lionel
Published: January 2009

There have been few systematic studies in English of the signs of the theatre. I hope in this essay to indicate something of the range and interest of the topic. The focus of attention, clearly, will be the theatrical act of representation or performance rather than the dramatic text or script. The dramatic text has a life of its own, independent of all performances of it: on the one hand, as Gordon Craig, one of the great champions of the theatre over the text, recognized, it overflows all performances and is exhausted by none; on the other, any performance overflows the literary text that it purports to be a performance of, and is not reducible to it. A clear distinction must therefore be made between theatrical representation and literary text. As most theatrical performances are based on dramatic texts, however, some consideration of the nature of the relation between the two is desirable. Before broaching the subject of signs in the theatre directly, therefore, I propose to say a word or two about this question.
French Opera and the Making of the Dorset Garden Theatre
Authors: Visser Colin
Published: January 2009

In the summer of 1671, after the court had left London and after his performance as Ladislaus in John Crowne's Juliana – a play thwarted, as the preface declared, by the fact that ‘the Dog-Star was near his Reign’ – Thomas Betterton made his way with Joseph Haines to Paris. What they, and particularly what Betterton, saw there helped to determine the form of the Dorset Garden Theatre which was then under construction, and which would open in November that year. When we compare what was happening on the French stage during and immediately after Betterton's visit with what we know of the Dorset Garden Theatre, however, it becomes clear that Betterton's experience was to have an effect on the form of the Dorset Garden Theatre not immediately, but in the years that followed its opening, and that the single most influential work was not one that Betterton saw on his visit to France in 1671, but one which was first performed two years later.
The Play of Letters: Les Liaisons dangereuses on the Stage
Authors: Overton Bill
Published: January 2009

Christopher Hampton's play Les Liaisons Dangereuses, based on the novel by Laclos, was first produced at The Other Place at Stratford-upon-Avon in September 1985. It was immediately acclaimed, and after its transfer early in 1986 to The Pit at the Royal Shakespeare Company's London centre, the Barbican, both play and performers won several awards, including four for Best Play. In October 1986, with only a few changes of performer, the production further transferred to the Ambassadors Theatre in the West End. At the time of writing the Ambassadors production, recast, has opened to enthusiastic reviews, while the original production has achieved transfer to New York. Hampton's triumphant success in dramatizing Laclos's novel deserves the closest attention.
Towards a Poor Theatre in Brazil
Authors: George David
Published: January 2009

São Paulo's Grupo Macunaíma has established a paradigm for a unique form of poor theatre, which has had a marked influence on alternative troupes in Brazil attempting to break the commercial mould and to return to a social vision, lost during the darkest years of the military dictatorship. Grotowski's Towards a Poor Theatre outlines the abstract formulation and practical applications of the method he elaborated in his Polish Laboratory Theatre. The director-theoretician proposed first and foremost to overturn what he called rich theatre: a form of staging using ‘borrowed mechanisms’ from movies and television and expensive scenic technology. The Polish Laboratory was also an actor-centred theatre in which the stage was redesigned architecturally for each performance to allow the performers to interact with the audience and in which there were no naturalistic sets or props, no recorded music or sophisticated lighting. The actor, through a complex system of signs, continually created and recreated the meaning of text, constumes, set, and props. ‘By this use of controlled gesture the actor transforms the floor into a sea, a table into a confessional, a piece of iron into an animate partner, etc.’ (Poor Theatre, p. 21). Grotowski's plays were filled with costumes made of torn bags, bathtubs serving as altars, bunkbeds becoming mountains, hammers used as ‘musical’ instruments. ‘Each object must contribute not to the meaning but to the dynamic of the play; its value resides in its various uses.’ Other tenets of the Grotowski system germane to this study are a return to mythical and ritual roots, the theatrical remaking of classical works, and the collective basis of stagecraft.
Argentine New Theatre: The Coming of Age of Popular Tradition
Authors: Kaiser-Lenoir Claudia
Published: January 2009

In order to assess Argentine New Theatre and traditional popular drama as comprising a phenomenon of convergence and continuity, one needs first to examine both forms in their relationship to hegemonic culture. Culture is viewed here not in monolithic terms, but rather as defined by its organic ties to a specific socio-political context. Consequently, the central question to be addressed is the way those ties become explicit in the artistic products themselves and, most importantly, in their functionality within the social sector they are inserted in. That functionality defines the ideological line between popular and mass culture, and determines the dynamic links between the New Theatre and traditional dramatic forms, in spite of obvious differences in discourse.
The Kembles and Vocal Technique
Authors: van Dijk Maarten
Published: January 2009

Stage speech, like the other techniques of acting, such as gesture, movement, and the interpretation of character, has always been subject to the theatrical conventions of an age. The conventions, while superficially based on current fads and fashions are on a more profound level the result of an underlying creative method reflecting commonly held views about the correct or ‘natural’ methods of imitating nature on the stage. Nothing demonstrates the enormous changes in stage speech over the last hundred years more vividly than the few existing recordings made by actors who had most of their training and their careers in the mid-to-late nineteenth century.
Freedom of Memory v. Copyright Law: The American Première of Caste
Authors: Barrett Daniel
Published: January 2009

Playgoers needed no special incentive to attend the opening of T. W. Robertson's Caste at the Broadway Theatre in New York on 5 August 1867. The same author's Ours had been the hit of the previous New York season, and the enthusiastic reception of his latest domestic comedy in London heralded its American appearance. A few days before the première, however, Broadway manager Barney Williams received an unwelcome piece of extra publicity: a temporary injunction against the forthcoming production had been granted by the New York Supreme Court to Lester Wallack, actor-manager of the renowned Wallack's Theatre. Although the essential facts of the subsequent hearing have been accurately preserved in Odell's Annals, the case deserves to be reopened and examined more carefully. To contemporary observers, the proceedings revealed the court's inability and unwillingness to protect the work of a respected English dramatist. Yet events following the judge's decision ultimately won for Robertson and Wallack the vindication denied by the court, and the case is now remarkable as a judicial ‘last stand’ against the legitimate rights of foreign authors.
‘It was Play or Starve’: John Banvard's Account of Early Showboats
Authors: Hanners John
Published: January 2009

John Banvard was a nineteenth-century adventurer, painter, poet, and theatre owner. Born in 1815 in New York City, he was forced to leave home at fifteen years of age when his father died and left the family penniless. He followed an older brother to Louisville, Kentucky, where he worked as an apothecary's helper and amateur artist. In 1833 he joined the Chapman Family as a scenic artist on the Floating Theatre, also known as Chapman's Ark, America's first showboat. This experience inspired Banvard to operate his own showboats and display his landscape paintings.
Shaw's Reviews of Daly's Shakespeare: The Wooing of Ada Rehan
Authors: Jackson Russell
Published: January 2009

George Bernard Shaw reviewed three of Augustin Daly's Shakespeare productions in the course of his stint as theatre critic of The Saturday Review, and wrote briefly on another when he was the music critic of The World. At the beginning of the last of these notices, describing As You Like It in 1897 and Ada Rehan's performance in it, Shaw wrote: ‘I never see Miss Ada Rehan act without burning to present Mr Augustin Daly with a delightful villa in Saint Helena.’ Listing some of the production's errors produced a more sombre threat:

To think that Mr Daly will die in his bed, whilst innocent presidents of republics, who never harmed an immortal bard, are falling on all sides under the knives of well-intentioned reformers whose only crime is that they assassinate the wrong people! And yet let me be magnanimous. I confess I would not like to see Mr Daly assassinated. Saint Helena would satisfy me. (ShSh, 44) Readers of Shaw's reviews, especially those who encounter them only through Edwin Wilson's selection in Shaw on Shakespeare, will only know Augustin Daly's productions as seen by Shaw. But these critiques were part of a campaign on behalf of Shaw's aims for the theatre, and, specifically, a ‘wooing’ of Ada Rehan for the Shavian drama.
John Galsworthy'sStrife:Striving for Balance or the Audience as Jury
Authors: Weiss Rudolf
Published: January 2009

Strife, arguably John Galsworthy's best play, can most fruitfully be studied from four different perspectives: theatre history, textual history, dramatic analysis, and critical reception.
Macbeth Becomes Ma Pei: An Odyssey from Scotland to China
Authors: Li Ruru
Published: January 2009

Ma Pei is the protagonist in Blood-Stained Hands (Xie shou ji), adapted from Macbeth by the Shanghai Kunju Troupe (Shanghai Kunju Tuan). This production was first presented at China's first Shakespeare Festival in the spring of 1986, and came to Britain for the 1987 Edinburgh Festival and subsequently went on tour, to great acclaim, to Manchester, Birmingham, Cardiff and London. Its significance is marked not only by a fusion of Shakespearian characterization into stock Kunju character types, but also by its forcing changes on the Kunju stage.
Oscar Wilde and A Wife's Tragedy: Facts and Conjectures
Authors: Shewan Rodney
Published: January 2009

Whenever a new fragment by Wilde appears, it inevitably raises hope that the often vulgarized but still fascinating relationship between the life and the work will somehow be clarified. Did the one really get all the genius, the other merely the talent, as he told Gide? Were the two always so disparate, so irreconcilable, as he insisted? Did work always seems, as he once said it seemed, ‘not a reality but a way of getting rid of reality’? If so, was this why ‘the real life is the life we do not lead’, the life of the literary imagination? Or was it that the ‘real life’ and ordinary life alternately promised Wilde those intense experiences his imagination craved, then took it in turns to double-cross him?
L'Illusion comique: A Dramatic Anticipation of Corneille's Critical Analyses of his Art
Authors: Barnwell H. T.
Published: January 2009

Eric Bentley's statement is singularly appropriate to L'Illusion comique, with its plays within a play and its apparent insistence on the magical art of Alcandre which conjures up for Pridamant a theatrical vision of the reality he seeks, and for him and for us a demonstration of the imaginative power of drama, a territory governed by its own laws which Corneille calls ‘les préceptes de l'art’, adding that ‘il est constant qu'il y a des préceptes, puisqu'il y a un art…’ In the dedication of the first edition of L'Illusion comique, which appeared in 1639, three or four years after its first performance, the dramatist called the play ‘un étrange monstre’, ‘une invention bizarre et extravagante’, ‘cette pièce capricieuse’, and when, in 1660, his Examen of the comedy appeared in his collected works, he used similar expressions to describe it, ‘une galanterie extravagante’ and ‘ce caprice’, referring deprecatingly to his failure to observe the rules, those ‘precepts’ which by then he appeared to accept as a necessity.
What Do We Put Centre Stage?
Authors: Lai Jane
Published: January 2009

Hong Kong is a bi-lingual community, and drama in Hong Kong has, over the last few decades, developed along two lines: drama in the predominant dialect of Chinese for the vast majority of the local population, and drama in English for expatriot westerners and a small English speaking minority of Chinese theatre goers.
The Private Theatre Auditorium
Authors: Orrell John
Published: January 2009

What shape was the Blackfriars' auditorium? Those reconstructions that have been made to date are agreed that it was rectangular, the galleries following the line of the walls of the Upper Frater or Parliament Chamber, the large rectangular room in which the theatre was fitted up by James Burbage in 1596. Because the room was oblong, so was the auditorium. Yet the sparse material evidence about the playhouse is silent on this point, and no serious study has been made in an attempt to justify the usual interpretation. The matter is far from trivial, for a rectangular house suggests kinship with the routine fitting-out of the various halls at Court for the performance of plays and masques, while the alternative – that the Blackfriars had a segmental or U-shaped auditorium – would almost certainly indicate derivation from a European theatre tradition most readily available in the woodcut designs published by Sebastiano Serlio in the second book of hisArchitettura(Paris, 1545), and stemming originally from the rounded form of the ancient Roman theatre.
Two Playgoers, and the Closing of the London Theatres, 1642
Authors: Butler Martin
Published: January 2009

An interesting incident at one of the London theatres, which has been overlooked by theatre historians, is recorded in the Historical Collections of Nehemiah Wallington, a citizen and turner of London. Wallington (1598–1658) operated a small independent business in Eastcheap and, in common with many other contemporaries of middling station, had a very pious cast of mind. For thirty years he compiled a collection of memorabilia of men and affairs, and particularly of events which revealed the workings of Providence. Early in 1642 he recorded the following:

Mark the judgement of God upon one that stood in defence of plays, and to maintain them.
The Court Theatre at Fontainebleau
Authors: Rice Paul F.
Published: January 2009

The historic château of Fontainebleau was a favourite temporary residence of French kings from the twelfth century to the time of Napoleon. The château served as a place of rest and relaxation for the Jung and his court and at least one voyage was customarily made each autumn for the purposes of hunting and recreation. During the reign of Louis XV such voyages were carefully planned and the king set down the dates of arrival and departure on his calendar each New Year's day. Nothing was allowed to interrupt this schedule.