bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Sören Brunen's Figurer
Authors: Godard Colette 
Published: April 2006

Sören Brunen's background is in architecture, and he envisions a “Machine-Theatre” that would portray the development of situations through purely mechanical means. Figurer, performed by the Packett Troupe at the Pistol Teatern in Stockholm, represents an initial phase in the evolution toward such a performance.In issue #17 of Théâtre et Université, the production is described as follows:The play is divided into eleven parts. It makes use of film, slide projections, sound tracks, compressed air machines, etc. It is performed by mannequins, silhouettes carved in plywood, and live actors. Each mannequin represents a particular stance or attitude. In other words, a given actor has been frozen in a state of suspension, a theatrical moment. He is perpetually re-creating and repeating the gesture he was making or the words he was speaking at the moment when he became frozen. At the same time, the live performers play the part of mannequins.
Theatre & Culture
Authors: Buenaventura Enrique 
Published: April 2006

At a 1967 symposium in Montreal, I, along with other colleagues, had to answer the question: “What kind of theatre should we do?” Throughout almost my entire professional life, I have been asked that same question and with each new stage of my life I responded differently. But when I heard it in that foreign country, where the only thing familiar to us Latin Americans were the Indian reservations, I suddenly felt I was on another planet, stunned. I don't remember what I answered. I said something vague and unrelated—“anti-culture”—and I realized I was again entering a new stage.At this time I had just finished Documents from Hell, which was staged by Danilo Tenorio of TEC (Experimental Theatre of Cali), my own theatre in Colombia, and was the most serious attempt we at TEC had made to become involved in the life of our people.
The Theatre of Gombrowicz
Authors: Goldmann Lucien 
Published: April 2006

Critics generally have considered Gombrowicz’ plays Ivona, Princess of Burgundia and The Marriage as purely oneiric, incoherent texts whose principal value lies in their grotesqueness and affectivity. Gombrowicz himself interpreted the plays as attempts to present the problem of youth. In contrast to these views, I will try to show that both plays are compelling satires of society.The two plays deal with two different societies. In Ivona, Princess of Burgundia it is pre-World War II European society (the play was written in 1935) or, more precisely, the ruling classes of that society. The Marriage (1946) is about the new society which resulted from the war and from the seizure of power by the communist parties, with emphasis on the events leading up to that seizure.
Some Religious Aspects of Indian Traditional Theatre
Authors: Richmond Farley 
Published: April 2006

Many Indian traditional theatre performances are connected with different Hindu religious cults and deities and performed by devotees. Drawing upon a common body of religious literature—the Puranas, the Mahabharata, and the Ramayana—these theatres enact the individual episodes especially meaningful to a given deity, cult, and, sometimes, region. Since they are most often performed within a religious context, they require ritual cleanliness and other devotional observances. These, the most overtly religious actions, may occur at the opening or closing or may suffuse the entire performance, in which case the performance itself is a votive offering.The main rituals connected with Indian traditional theatre begin in the dressing room hours before a performance. Thus, Kathakali actors begin their makeup procedures with a silent prayer for success.
Korean Mask Plays
Authors: Yoh Suk-Kee 
Published: April 2006

Mask plays, one principal form of traditional theatre in Korea, were developed during the late Yi dynasty (around the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries) from a pure folk origin. Since the Confucian ruling class of the Yi dynasty ignored or tried to suppress all forms of theatrical entertainment, these plays have followed the tastes of popular audiences and thus reflect commoners’ resentment towards the privileged classes of those days. They were performed in the open air and usually lasted throughout the night. Among them the most representative forms still extant are the Yangju Pyol Sandae mask play and the Pongsan mask dance.Mask plays consist of ten scenes or so, very loosely linked. All the characters—every Korean mask play has more than twenty—wear masks, which differ according to role: there are twenty-two masks in the Yangju Pyol Sandae and twenty-six in the Pongsan.
A Midsummer-Night's Dream The Royal Shakespeare Company
Authors: Richie Donald 
Published: April 2006

At the beginning of Peter Brook's production of A Midsummer-Night's Dream the entire cast, caped like artists of the flying trapeze, stride to the crash of snare drums through the double doors of their canvas-white trapeze-hung set, smile professionally, mindful of later heights and daring, gesture a grand if impersonal welcome and are off into the wings and about their work. This Dream is to be a circus—that best of all dreams for children of a certain age.The play begins. As at the circus the only color is the costume—the actor is boldly outlined against the white, looking at times like an oleo, at times like a Kate Greenaway illustration, at times Chinese. Musicians, prop men are visible at the sides, those actors not working look on from above with a professional interest.
The Living Theatre in Brazil
Authors: Ryan Paul Ryder , Beck Julian , Malina Judith 
Published: April 2006

“The theatre is in the street. The street belongs to the people. Free the theatre. Free the street. Begin.”From Paradise NowThe Living Theatre came alive again during the Summer. A glimpse of the group's new work in progress, The Legacy of Cain, surfaced along with news that 15 members of the group, including Julian Beck and Judith Malina, had been arrested in Brazil.The Legacy of Cain is the first major work by the group since Paradise Now, which had its world premiere in Avignon, France, on July 24, 1968.At this writing, just past mid-August, the 15 members of The Living Theatre are still being held in “preventive detention” by the authorities in Brazil. A spokesman for the group said that under Brazilian law the group could be held until October 1 without formal charges being brought.
From the Bauhaus to Black Mountain
Authors: Schawinsky Xanti 
Published: April 2006

My theatre work started when I was studying art and architecture under Kandinsky, Klee and Gropius at the Bauhaus in Weimar in 1924. One day, Kurt Schmidt, rushing by, said: “Hey, Schawinsky! Come to my atelier tonight at eight!” When I arrived, several of his friends were already there. The gathering ended in a theatrical improvisation in which a hilarious group of characters danced, acted and exclaimed a lot of nonsense—Napoleon, Goethe, a dog, Frau von Stein, Voltaire, Bismarck. Rags, hats, umbrellas and other objects served as costumes and props. I was fascinated. It reminded me of my boyhood marionette and puppet theatre, but this, of course, was much more sophisticated.The following day, Schmidt asked me if I would join in the preparation of a full-fledged stage performance. We met at the theatre workshop in the park. It was a large gothic pavilion that was empty except for a grand piano and an old armchair.
Theatre of Fact
Authors: Isaac Dan 
Published: April 2006

Scarcely any political question arises in the United States that is not resolved, sooner or later, into a judicial question.Alexis de ToquevilleTheatre of Fact, like a fast sock in the jaw from, the thirties, has forced its way onto the American stage again. But unlike its noisy brawling predecessor, the Living Newspaper, which was fathered by the Federal Theatre out of the fertile discontent of the depression, this present brand of Theatre of Fact has lowered its voice and grown more decorous. It has entered the courtroom.Two German playwrights have had a prime influence in the use of court records as dramatic material. Heinar Kipphardt's In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer and Peter Weiss’ The Investigation, produced first in Germany and then here in the United States in the mid-sixties, effected radical departures in dramatic form insofar as they relied almost entirely on the sheer weight of fact and the dialectic of courtroom argument to provide the movement and emotion expected of an evening in the theatre.
Oedipus, a New Work
Authors: Perreault John 
Published: April 2006

The performance area is a large rectangle set off by silver tape. The audience is arranged on three sides of the rectangle.Throughout the performance a young girl holding a cane sits on a stage or a platform. She is “Antigone.” She does not move until Section Fifteen.There should be spotlights focused on the performance rectangle and one dim spot on “Antigone.” Behind her should be a large screen for slideprojections. Everything else should be dark, and the lighting should be arranged in such a way that it will be possible to see the slide projections without turning off the lights.All of the objects and props to be utilized are arranged within the rectangle. There are: Silver tape, incense sticks stuck into small lumps of clay, four full-length mirrors—the inside of the mounting is painted red so that when they are broken this becomes visible, but the backs are painted black—twelve wooden yardsticks, six pairs of nylon stockings, the I Ching, three gas masks, three stones, a hammer.
Women's Theatre Groups
Authors: Rea Charlotte 
Published: April 2006

Women's theatre groups in the United States have developed during the last five years as a means of exploring and expressing women's identity, potentialities, and the nature of oppression. By dramatizing their conflicts and joys, the women in these groups seek to make other women feel good about being female and to experience outrage at what they consider to be the gross injustices in the relationship between the sexes.Feminists began forming their own theatre groups because they felt stifled by male domination in both the traditional and experimental theatre worlds. The groups, most in the New York area, vary in performing style, intent and internal structure from the traditional mode of The New Feminist Theatre, a group with a well-defined leader, to the collective arrangement of the It's All Right to be Woman Theatre, where feminism is expressed through the structure of the group and theatre pieces.
T’ai Chi Ch’uan: The Integrated Exercise
Authors: Delza Sophia 
Published: April 2006

T’ai Chi Ch’uan is a system for activating the body for the simultaneous development of physical, emotional and mental well-being. It is useful for the actor because it promotes a heightened perceptivity, sensitive awareness and stamina. Since the exercise has no stylistic mannerisms, it enhances the ability to manipulate the body expressively for any desired effect.T’ai Chi Ch’uan (pronounced Tye Gee Chwon) has a long history. Its roots go back into the Chou Dynasty (5th Century B.C.), when concern for physical and mental health was being expressed in a philosophy of movement. But the organized exercise of T’ai Chi as we know it today dates from the 12th Century.
Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes
Authors: Kirby Victoria Nes 
Published: April 2006

The work of Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes is not very well known in the United States. Although he appears to be a playwright of some importance, none of his plays has, until now, been translated into English. Of course there are reasons for this neglect, one of which may be that he has been involved in other arts, primarily painting, and has not concentrated his energies exclusively in the theatre. During his lifetime, Ribemont-Dessaignes, who is now 87 years old, has been a painter, poet, novelist, essayist, editor, composer, radio personality, actor and “dancer,” as well as playwright. In addition, he has written a children's book and translated into French works by Nietzsche and Michelangelo.The son of an obstetrician, Ribemont-Dessaignes was born on June 19, 1884, at Montpellier in the south of France. When he was young he secretly composed symphonies, operas and quartets and wrote a drama.
Journey to Ka Mountain
Authors: Langton Basil 
Published: April 2006

We had flown to Tehran and motored for two days across the vast country of Iran to arrive just in time for the royal opening of the Arts Festival in Persepolis, featuring the Kathakali Dance Theatre of India. The following day was hot and I was already tired, but I was there to see the Festival, and the next event was Robert Wilson's Overture to KA MOUNTAIN and CUARDenia Terrace, performed by the Byrd Hoffman School of Byrds. My host in Iran had told me a great deal about the importance of Robert Wilson's work in the theatre. He said it was “significant,” “avantgarde,” and “new.” But I was not impressed. I had never heard of Robert Wilson.I have spent some 45 years in the theatre as an actor and a director, and I like to think that I have not only seen everything that is new in the theatre, but I have also done what is new.
Red Grooms’ Homemade Theatre: Hippodrome Hardware
Authors: Argelander Ronald 
Published: April 2006

Red Grooms is an artist whose creative activities have been numerous and varied in arts peripheral to (but making use of) painting, such as film, sculpture and performance.In 1963, Grooms began to have one-man shows regularly in New York. These took place at the Tibor de Nagy Gallery on 57th Street. At least two of his five art exhibits in this gallery included films—Fat Feet (1966) and Tappy Toes (1970). Prior to 1963, Grooms had “performed” an action-painting entitled “A Play Called Fire” (1958), a proto-Happening called The Burning Building (1959), and a Happening-like work dubbed The Magic Train Ride (1960).While Grooms’ art includes a wide range of mediums, there appears to be no sharp stylistic differentiation between them. His paintings, films and performance pieces all exhibit a highly personal, if not idiosyncratic, way of working. Many of his friends appear as performers in his films and theatre pieces, and as cutouts in his constructions.
Infinidome
Authors: Saltzman Jared , O'Donnell Stephen 
Published: April 2006

“Since Gordon Craig, every artist of the theatre has tried every way conceivable to bridge the gap between audience and stage,” wrote Blanding Sloan, artist, scene designer, and Eastern Regional Director of the Federal Theatre Project, in 1939. “The Infinidome is the answer, and makes possible the ultimate in theatre production and creation.” It was to be, as he put it, “the last word in modern theatre design, and the first step toward the theatre of the future.”From the beginning of Sloan's career, a radical approach to design was an integral part of his work. In an article in Theatre Arts in 1918, a critic wrote that Sloan's sets revealed “a structural sculpturesque sense of the play of light and the third dimension. Like the other stage artists to whom the unities of the drama are something felt, and not a merchant phrase, Mr. Sloan has searched in vain for a definition, a word, that will explain rationally and coldly what he can consummate irrationally and artistically.
Shiraz-Persepolis and the Third World
Authors: Ryan Paul Ryder 
Published: April 2006

“The Theatre of the Third World” was the main theme of the Seventh Festival of Arts that was held this year as in years past in the spectacular ancient environments of Shiraz and Persepolis in Iran. The festival, which was held from August 30 to September 9, presented a number of works by “Third World” theatre troupes in addition to hosting the Second Third World Theatre Conference.Where is the Third World? The term Le Tier Monde (the Third World) was invented by a number of French writers during the late 1950's. To them, the Capitalist countries constituted the “first” world, while the “second” consisted of nations living under Communist regimes. Thus, the newly independent nations of Africa and Asia were termed “the Third World,” with some South American states, for little reason, also being lumped into this category.
The World Festival of Youth and Students
Authors: Julian Michel 
Published: April 2006

The Tenth World Festival of Youth and Students was of such proportions that it seems difficult to believe it really happened. “Think big,” I was told before I went to East Berlin, capital of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), “only then will you have some idea of what to expect.” Even with this advice, I was totally unprepared for what was probably the biggest festival in the world since World War II.The opening ceremony unleashed activity that grew in momentum, scope, and size for nine days. As part of a festival by and for young people, it was much more colorful and boisterous than any Olympic opening. Delegations of young people from 119 countries marched through the city of Berlin for three hours before arriving at the festival stadium, which was already packed with nearly sixty thousand people. The event itself was so big that the delegations had been split into two groups in the morning.
The Golden Age of the Boulevard
Authors: Carlson Marvin 
Published: April 2006

To the theatre historian, the year 1830 means Hugo and the premiere of Hernani. For the great majority of the theatre public of the period, however, Hugo was a name scarcely known and the battle of Hernani was a minor passing scandal. Neither the new romantic experiments nor the declining neoclassic tradition they were attempting to replace represented theatre to this public. For them, theatre was the rope-dancing of Mme. Saqui, the pantomimes of Déburau, Kiony the elephant performing in plays written especially for him, the view of Timbuktu at the Cosmorama, the spectacular melodramas of Bouchardy, or the full-scale Napoleonic battle recreated at the Cirque-Olympique.This astonishingly varied popular theatre was the direct descendant of the fair theatres, which had challenged the entertainment monopoly of the state-supported theatres, with varying degrees of success, for two hundred years. Then, primarily because of the rapidly changing political situation, the great fairs had disappeared. The Foire Saint-Germain, destroyed by fire in 1762, was never rebuilt.
The Actor and the Magician
Authors: Olf Julian M. 
Published: April 2006

In many respects the stage magician is an initiate in some of the subtlest, most sophisticated challenges ever to face a performing artist. Where he succeeds, his success is due to his unique solutions to problems that are by no means peculiar to his craft. They are problems of the deepest concern to many actors as well. The following observations compare the art of the actor with that of the magician. An effort is made to identify an area of both practical and theoretical concern that bridges theatre and the neighboring field of popular entertainment.Most art conceals the complexity of its manufacture. In the performing arts, the problem of concealment is compounded because we do not see the product separate from its maker—nor do we even necessarily see it at the completion of its manufacture. The performing artist demonstrates the process of manufacture, and a large portion of our appreciation stems from his continual affirmation of its simplicity in the face of our knowledge of its inherent complexity.
The Creation and Development of People Show #52
Authors: Kirby Victoria Nes 
Published: April 2006

The members of the People Show do not call their presentations “plays.” Nor do they consider themselves to be actors. A show does not begin with a script; there is little or no story or narrative. Between shows, the performers lead very separate lives, but they constantly collect material and ideas for new pieces. When they come together to create a new show, each person contributes his own ideas and helps decide on an over-all structure. They choose their own costumes and create their own characters.The fact that they are all the “authors” of a show and that the characters they play are created from their own imaginations gives the People Show an unusual energy and freedom. Although the structure and images usually remain the same in each repetition, the performers are free to improvise and experiment, using each other, props, and other elements as cues and motifs.
Meyerhold's “D. E.”
Authors: Hedgbeth Llewellyn H. 
Published: April 2006

D.E. was a political review in three acts and fifteen episodes directed by Vsevolod Meyerhold and first produced in Leningrad on June 15, 1924, for delegates to the Fifth Congress of Comintern. It re-opened on July 3, 1924, in Moscow at the Meyerhold Theatre. Based primarily on Ilya Ehrenburg's novel, Trust D.E., it also drew heavily on Bernard Kellermann's The Tunnels and touched upon novels by Pierre Hamp and Upton Sinclair.A 1927 program offers a synopsis of the play, as well as the order of the episodes. Two world powers, the falling bourgeoisie and the rising proletariat, are juxtaposed in short theatrical sketches. Three American millionaires—Jubs, Twist, and Hardayle, who are in search of new markets—accept a proposal by Jens Boot, an international adventurer, to form “D.E.,” an organization whose aim is to destroy Europe, without boycotting American products or disseminating Socialistic ideas. Their ultimate goal is to claim Europe as an American colony.
Theatre du Soleil: The Golden Age, First Draft
Authors: Kirkland Christopher D. 
Published: April 2006

The Théâtre du Soleil, the gaudy and tumultuous star in a rising constellation of French leftist theatre troupes, emerged early this spring from eighteen months of work to offer a devoted public some contemporary reflections. The Golden Age, First Draft, staged by director Ariane Mnouchkine in three warehouses of an abandoned arsenal in the woods of Vincennes on the eastern outskirts of Paris, has succeeded in moving the group in an entirely different direction from their previous work, such as the unanimously acclaimed 1789 (see T52). But the current production, unlike its predecessors, is not offered as a finished product or as a concept fully realized. It is rather a public beginning, a point of departure.Mnouchkine's troupe began attracting wide attention in 1967 with a production of Arnold Wesker's The Kitchen. It has grown increasingly popular with an innovative, pre-Brook production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, which was performed in a circus hall; with its step into nonliterary, collective creation titled The Clowns; and with the satirically caricatured historical spectacles 1789 and 1793.
Air Dancing
Authors: Carroll Noël 
Published: April 2006

The introduction of non-traditional materials in contemporary art has facilitated the emergence of air dancing—dances that are performed off the floor by means of support systems, such as scaffolding, ropes, rubber cords, wires, or a combination of these materials.This article is not intended as a historical survey of air dancing. Rather, it represents a theoretical speculation on the esthetic options afforded by air dancing. For this purpose, I have contrasted two choreographers, Batya Zamir, who has only recently incorporated aerial elements in her work, and Stephanie Evanitsky, whose Multigravitational Experiment Group has been involved in air dancing since 1969. The choice of these artists has not been undertaken to evaluate what air dancing ought to be or who the best aerial dancers are. The aim is more limited. Zamir and the Multigravitational Group were chosen to clarify two opposing poles of artistic development in dancing.