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Agnese Banti, Tilia Hauser e Diana Lola Posani: a partire dall'analisi delle performance di queste tre artiste italiane emerse di recente nel panorama nazionale, questo paper si propone innanzitutto di analizzare le modalità attraverso le quali determinate linee di indagine afferenti al campo degli studi sulla voce, dell'ecologia dell'ascolto e della dimensione relazionale e spaziale del suono incontrino la dimensione performativa, così come le conseguenze che questo incontro produce da un punto di vista di creazione di estetiche e di modalità di fruizione e ibridazione di linguaggi. Scopo del paper non è quello di arrivare a tracciare linee di ricerca comuni, ma, nel rispetto delle diversità stilistiche ed estetiche dei singoli percorsi, cercare di comprendere quali forme, modalità narrative, relazionali ed estetiche queste linee di ricerca stiano producendo, in primis attraverso un lavoro di analisi e descrizione delle singole opere ma anche attivando un dialogo con le artiste sulle rispettive metodologie di lavoro, e in particolare sulla questione del ruolo drammaturgico e artistico svolto dalla figura dell' ascolto all'interno delle loro pratiche.

Electronic music can arguably be considered the genre that has most effectively encapsulated and articulated human relationships with noise, machines and technology, embodying many technology-oriented concepts. The 21st century has brought about a post-condition that has had an impact on popular electronic music, with the rise of what has been labelled “deconstructed club”, “post-club”, and “conceptronica”. This paper presents a critique of the aforementioned terms, arguing that electronic dance music has consistently employed deconstructive and decontextualizing strategies in relation to pre-existent genres, elements, and expressive codes. Indeed, it is argued that a logic of assemblage and an aesthetic of metamorphosis are intrinsic to popular electronic music, given its technological and recombinant essence. If electronic dance music is based on avantgardist techniques such as assemblage and aesthetic détournement, it may be conceived, then, as an expression of popular avantgarde or popular modernism. Moreover, conceptual underpinnings may be found in popular electronic music since its inception. This paper, therefore, aims to reframe the analysis and discourses on popular electronic music by considering its deconstructive and conceptual aspects, and proposes that the most interesting facets of its recent developments may, in fact, lie elsewhere.

In Slovenian (youth) literature, three authors who have worked in the field of drama and/or theatre stand out – namely, Svetlana Makarovič, academically trained actress (Sapramiška), Milan Jesih (Four Plays for Children, adaptations of Andersen’s fairy tales The Emperor’s New Clothes and The Ugly Duckling) and Andrej Rozman Roza. The paper will focus on the latter, who was strongly influenced by the theatre experiment in Slovenia, especially during the formative period of his studies of the Slovenian language (1974–1978). Andrej Rozman Roza (1956) started performing and/or publishing plays in the period 1981–1990 (Inspector Schwake, 1986; collection of texts Ana Monró Theatre, 1991, etc.). He is known in literary history as a youth poet and is included in Slovenian language curricula (1998, 2011, 2018). However, the definition of a systemic author is more appropriate for him (I. Even Zohar, M. Dović) since of the six functions in the literary system (author, institution, market, repertoire, book, reader) he holds at least three roles (author, “institution”, book [living book], etc.). This paper focuses on adaptations of classics of Slovenian (Cankar, Levstik, Linhart, Prešeren, etc.) or world literature that – regardless of literary genre or type – have become crossover literature in the process of literary reception, especially in picture-book editions (e.g., A Midsummer Night’s Dream which has the international fairy tale type number ATU 899A [Pyramus and Thisbe]). According to B. Kümmerling-Meibauer’s definition of crossover classics or authorship, Rozman is a crossover author. In addition, according to L. Hutcheon’s theory, adaptations are an important part of Rozman’s work and contribute to the updating of classics and modern classics. The paper presents the collection Brvi čez morje (The Footbridge Across the Sea), which contains thirteen plays, three of which are folktale texts – Janko and Metka (Hansel and Gretel) [ATU 327], Obuti maček ( Puss in Boots) [ATU 545B], Vžigalnik (The Tinderbox) [ATU 562] – and one which is a fairy tale, Kekec [ATU 1137]). Intertextually, they refer to folktale types.

The paper begins by analysing the ideas, themes and motifs of the theatre texts from the anthology The Generator:: for Manufacturing Any Number of Drama Complexes (Slovenian Experimental Dramatic and Performative Texts from the Modernist Period (1966–1986)). It aims to shed light on the anthology’s selected texts through the female perspective, or rather, its absence. It deals with the consequences that the absence of awareness about the lack of a female perspective in Slovenian drama can have on the representation of women and woman(liness). The paper explores such representations in Slovenian (experimental) drama and raises awareness about the possible effects of patriarchal ideology and its consequences by analysing the plays’ ideas, themes and motifs. In doing so, it pays special attention to the difference between men’s and (rare) women’s playwriting. The texts from The Generator are taken merely as a case study to indicate the presence of particular symptoms in Slovenian (experimental) drama within the anthology’s given period. The paper briefly highlights the differences in the representation of woman(liness) from a broader developmental perspective, from a temporal distance, in the form of a comparative analysis of contemporary women’s playwriting, specifically, Simona Hamer’s 2010 play Nemi lik (The Silent Character).

According to Elinor Fuchs, the main characteristic of postmodern theatre and, consequently, the main reason for the decline of the dramatic text as the most important element of classical theatre is the death of character. While the traditional Hegelian view of drama depends heavily on a unified fictional subject, Fuchs argues that both modern and postmodern theatre destabilise and subvert this subject to the degree that we can no longer see it as a coherent whole. Yet, her theory, like Hans-Thies Lehmann’s, has one notable methodological weakness: she almost entirely ignores comedy. Her study omits in its analysis a substantial portion of the repertoire not only of the mainstream but also of fringe and experimental theatres. This paper attempts to rectify this omission and hopes to determine whether character also disappears from postdramatic comedy and not just from serious postdramatic theatre. The analysis focuses on three forms of postmodern comedy that deviate from the traditional narrative format and seem to support Fuchs’s reading: on sketch, stand-up and improvisational comedy. Using examples from sketch comedy Beyond the Fringe, George Carlin’s stand-up acts and The Second City improvs, the main body of the argument tests the cogency of the basic tenets of Fuchs’s theory. The second part of the paper offers a counterargument and a possible supplement to her hypothesis.

In this paper, we will focus on one of the most active and successful artists in the contemporary Slovenian theatre, the dramatist Simona Semenič, and one of her most theoretically intriguing texts, the feast or the story of a savory corpse or how roman abramovič, the character janša, julia kristeva, age 24, simona semenič and the initials z. i. found themselves in a tiny cloud of tobacco smoke (2010). We will look at how the text affects the viewer/reader, whom the author directly and constantly addresses through the character of the narrator. Based on an analysis of the form and content of the selected text, we will assess to what extent it can be classified as no-longer-dramatic text (Poschmann) or as “dramatic drama” (dramatisches Drama – Birgit Haas) and put in the field of postdramatic theatre (Lehmann). The paper aims to analyse the (no longer or again?) dramatic form of the feast, the specifics of the author’s writing style and the construction of the text. On the other hand, it also aims to explain the author’s methods of emphasising the ethical and moral responsibility of those involved (especially the readers/ viewers) in the happening.

The paper deals with different forms of the performance text, still a new phenomenon in contemporary theatre, which requires new instruments for its analysis. The structural transformation of the written text into the performance, including the role of the spectator in it, confirms the fact that the performance text does not simply mean a new kind of the written text – and even less a new type of theatre text, but rather an essentially changed hypertext. Instead, the performance text could also be called an open text of the performance, in the sense that it requires spectators to become its active co-writers. Can we, therefore, define the performance text as a scenic écriture, collective writing, hypertext, stretch text, or even écriture corporelle? Furthermore, how can it be translated from stage to page to be preserved for future studies? The performance text is impossible without its author(s). Therefore, the paper deals with the performances of The Wooster Group, Motus, René Pollesch, Joris Lacoste, Milo Rau and Oliver Frljić, who are all constantly producing performance texts with their actors, without separating the process of writing from directing.

This paper reviews women’s theoretical production in the field of Cultural Performances, evincing that these scholars themselves have still not sufficiently referred to other women theorists’ epistemologies. In this context, the work demonstrates how important it is for women scholars to make theory from other epistemological standpoints which include both their corporeality as researchers and the corporeality of knowledge in their studies. Being theoretical writing a form of performative writing, as a conclusion the paper considers this writing as founded on the shift of hegemonic writing codes in which academic research and practice, theory and everyday life experience work together.

This paper examines a series of drammi per musica written by Adriano Morselli during the last years of his own career as librettist for the Teatro di S. Giovanni Grisostomo in Venice: Amulio e Numitore (1689), Pirro e Demetrio (1690) and L’incoronazione di Serse (1691), with music by Giuseppe Felice Tosi; La pace fra Tolomeo e Seleuco (1691) and L’Ibraim sultano (1692), with music by Carlo Francesco Pollarolo. Investigating a series of topoi and dramaturgical devices that place this works in the wake of the writing conventions of late seventeenth-century Venetian opera, the paper takes into consideration the dramatic models employed by the poet, with their direct influences from the classical French theatre. This allows us to consider Morselli’s libretti as an example of a poetic trend, only partially studied by theatrologists and musicologists, which flourished in Venetian opera during the last quarter of the 17th century.

The thinking about the idea, forms and practices of communitas has developed a specific discourse in political philosophical writing since the 1980s. This paper retraces the ways in which Jean-Luc Nancy established a “community of writing [and] the writing of community,” how in his view community compears with philosophical writing. Taking Nancy’s discussion as a ground line, the author modulates the perspective on writing—as both text and practice—and focuses on the confrontation with community in reading. By poetologically tackling Nancy’s essay “The Confronted Community” (2001), she investigates into the text’s performing of community and the affective interaction between text and corporeality. Her reading of Nancy’s writing thus activates not only its ecstatic valences leading towards the proposed community of those who have no community; it also uncovers the aesthetic, social and political implications that emanate from Nancy’s writing in this situated reading. Therefore, this paper analytically retraces the textual micro-performances of community in writing as a performative confrontation entailed in reading.

The paper aims to think the interweavings between art, politics and education within the action titled Traga Sua Luz, carried out in 2008 by Política do Impossível collective. Intended to question the process of gentrification in Luz neighborhood - located at São Paulo city center -, it consisted of a silent and collective performance in which candles and small lamps were carried and deposited on lands expropriated by the then mayor. Through the theoretical contributions of Walter Benjamin, Georges Didi-Huberman, Roland Barthes and Jacques Rancière, this paper elucidates how the suspension of the merely communicative function of language permeates art, education and a politics of silence.

– In this paper, the so-called Crisis of Representation is discussed as a hallmark of Western Theatre and Modernity. The key hypothesis of overcoming such a crisis is investigated through the emergence of a performative turn, in which performance is understood in a broader sense derived from Performance Studies. To address this, the paper builds on authors such as Artaud, Derrida, Heidegger, Gumbrecht and Féral for a general theoretical background, and on the work of authors such as Cull, Street and others for a more specific approach concerning the field of Performance Philosophy. This paper argues that a philosophical turn in Performance Studies has happened through a radicalization of ‘Presence’.

This paper examines the teaching of Igbo literature adapted from F.C.Ogbalu’s Uremma-one of the folktales in an Igbo literature titled Nza na Obu. The literature text is a compendium of popular folktales and folksongs of Igbo people in Eastern Nigeria, and was in the Nigerian schools’ Igbo language/literature curriculum for decades. The paper shares a pedagogical experiment involving the teaching of the Igbo language folktale as literature and as a video film in a class of young 18 teenagers. Odum na Akwaeke is the video adaptation of Akwaeke(Uremma) folktale. The folktale was adapted into “Odum na Akwaeke,” (Amayo Uzo Philip dir., 1998)- a popular narrative video film, and became one of Nollywood (Nigerian film industry)’s most popular Igbo films at its release in 1998. The pedagogical experiment reveals that video film viewership affects the students’ appreciation of not just the literature, but also the language; and equally creates a warm learning atmosphere which enables the students to cooperate, share and contribute in the learning exercise. The research experiment buttresses the importance of interactive teaching methodology in teaching and learning indigenous knowledge. The paper concludes that faced with globalization and persistent technological invasion, scholars particularly those interested in African culture and cultural studies need to reflect on newer and innovative approaches to teaching local languages and literature in order to sustain youth interest in African culture/ cultural studies in a technological era.

The paper focuses on Beton Ltd., a theatre collective comprised of three actors, Primož Bezjak, Branko Jordan and Katarina Stegnar, established in 2010. Beton Ltd. emerged on the Slovenian performing arts scene with a collective approach to theatre-making and is thus a special case as far as non-hierarchical and collective production models in Slovenia are concerned. In the last ten years, Beton Ltd. has created seven performances: So Far Away: Introduction to Ego-logy (2010); I Say What I am Told to Say (2012); Everything We’ve Lost, While We’ve Gone on Living (2013); Revolting Man (2014); Ich kann nicht anders (2016); Große Erwartungen/Great Expectations (2018) and Mahlzeit (2019). Through introspective self-analysis, the paper elaborates on the necessary preconditions for the formation of a collective, as well as the conditions necessary for effective collaboration in performance making, combining a short historical overview of the case in question, including specific collaborative strategies developed by Beton Ltd. during the past decade.

The main aim of this paper is to analyse micropolitical dynamics activated in queer migrant people mutual-support groups run by NGOs. In particular, this article examines how humanitarian personnel picture, organise and experience LGBTQI+ migrant collectives. The selected fieldwork is the Samos LGBTQI+ collective as, in 2021, the first Closed Control Access Centre was inaugurated on the island. The centre is part of the identification and surveillance facilities located in the Aegean Sea. Such institutions are the cornerstone of the European Union’s migrant fluxes management strategy articulated in The New Pact on Migration and Asylum (COM - 609/2020). This article then examines humanitarian personnel’s perspective investigating “safe space”’s management, as well as the intersectional dynamics of power which characterise its gatherings, the very definition of queer community and group’s relationship with migration regime’s authorities.

This paper discusses the ancient form of belly dance as an example to speak more in depth about the public spaces of Istanbul, where the female body is constantly under surveillance by the male gaze. Over thousands of years, the ancient dance form of belly dance has been transformed from a collective women’s ritual to a form of entertainment that serves the male gaze. This paper looks for the possibilities tore-define belly dance as a feminist counter strategy to revive its essence. Framed by the Muted Group Theory, this paper also exemplifies various artworks and strategies produced by female artists and analyze them in the light of this theory. It also searches for redefining the belly dance as part of a feminist identity and asks whether these artistic strategies could be pathways in re-defining belly dance as a feminist practice. Keywords Feminism. Public Space. Belly Dance. Muted Group. Gender.

The paper explores the potential of sound to repoliticize theatre and performance. By examining the activity and dramaturgical practices of the multimedia art collective Medea Electronique (Greece), it highlights contradictions of contemporary art, particularly the continuous transition from ‘everything is political’ to ‘no, not everything is political’ and vice versa. From a post-Brechtian perspective, the political function of art lies in preserving the diverse sensibilities at the core of art’s autonomy. This entails avoiding that art be reduced to a post-political gesture or aligning it too closely with everyday aestheticized experiences.

Questo paper si concentra sul tema del world-building applicato ad una serie di progetti sonori contemporanei, proponendo un percorso multidisciplinare volto a delinearne le caratteristiche in relazione all’interazione con l’ascoltatore. Il testo esplora la dimensione speculativa di questi progetti, mettendo in luce come, oltre a rappresentare la realtà, essa venga anche messa in discussione, favorendo un'analisi critica su temi politici e sociali contemporanei. L’articolo prende avvio dalla rassegna New Worlds di Alice Bucknell e dall'articolo The Rise of Conceptronica di Simon Reynolds, i quali forniscono il contesto teorico di partenza per comprendere il ruolo crescente del world-building sonoro. Attraverso l’applicazione del modello del “database” di Azuma, verrà esplorata la struttura di questi progetti, ponendo successivamente attenzione sull'agentività del suono, che rappresenta un fattore cruciale nell’interazione con il fruitore. Inoltre, la sonic fiction e il design speculativo verranno analizzati come pratiche parte di questi progetti, sovvertendo le strutture narrative tradizionali e fungendo da strumenti chiave per esplorare temi contemporanei quali il controllo, la resistenza e l'inclusione. Tali opere offrono nuovi modi di concepire il futuro, proponendo alternative alle visioni dominanti e aprendo spazi per una riflessione critica sulla realtà e sulle sue possibili trasformazioni.

This paper is a review of the thoughts and ideas of Mika Hannula presented in his book Artistic Research: Theories, Methods, and Practices. As its title indicates, this book discusses artistic research, specifically related to the theories, methods, and practices of its implementation. In this paper the writer attempts to review: the urgency of artistic research, the philosophical foundations of artistic research, artistic research and science, epistemology and axiology, methodology of artistic research, and its expediency and guidelines for use in art research.

The paper aims to think the interweavings between art, politics and education within the action titled Traga Sua Luz, carried out in 2008 by Política do Impossível collective. Intended to question the process of gentrification in Luz neighborhood - located at São Paulo city center -, it consisted of a silent and collective performance in which candles and small lamps were carried and deposited on lands expropriated by the then mayor. Through the theoretical contributions of Walter Benjamin, Georges Didi-Huberman, Roland Barthes and Jacques Rancière, this paper elucidates how the suspension of the merely communicative function of language permeates art, education and a politics of silence.

– In this paper, the so-called Crisis of Representation is discussed as a hallmark of Western Theatre and Modernity. The key hypothesis of overcoming such a crisis is investigated through the emergence of a performative turn, in which performance is understood in a broader sense derived from Performance Studies. To address this, the paper builds on authors such as Artaud, Derrida, Heidegger, Gumbrecht and Féral for a general theoretical background, and on the work of authors such as Cull, Street and others for a more specific approach concerning the field of Performance Philosophy. This paper argues that a philosophical turn in Performance Studies has happened through a radicalization of ‘Presence’.

Since the 2009 launch of NT Live, the National Theatre has been at the forefront of UK livecasting so the calls to respond to the complete lockdown of the UK in March 2020 weren’t surprising. This paper will analyse how this pandemic response utilised the multiple temporalities of NT Live to create a theatrical event in viewers’ homes. Despite using past recordings, the NT At Home programme was a response to a specific historical event and was structured around an “ontological now” that in return shaped the reception of those recordings. NT Live capitalised on the liveness and the exclusivity of their broadcasts. Performances were shown at a set time, streamed simultaneously into cinemas. NT At Home challenged every part of this system of liveness and in doing so created its own contradictory and fluid temporal identity. In this paper I will draw on liveness studies from multiple disciplines to cover three aspects of these new temporalities and present a case study of liveness practice. NT Live capitalised on the liveness and the exclusivity of their broadcasts. Performances were shown at a set time, streamed simultaneously into cinemas. NT At Home challenged every part of this system of liveness and in doing so created its own contradictory and fluid temporal identity. In this paper I will draw on liveness studies from multiple disciplines to cover three aspects of these new temporalities and present a case study of liveness practice.

Claude Lévi-Strauss' relationship with Japan is as in-depth as it is little known. The culture and history of the archipelago were never the direct subjects of his research and studies, except for some fragmentary mentions. These writings on Japan by Lévi-Strauss have been recently collected in a volume. From this work emerges his excellent knowledge about Japan and the crucial role that the country has played since childhood in his education as a man and as a scholar. This paper focuses on the analogy between Lévi-Strauss's approach to Japan and the way we look at the world of the bricoleur through the lesson of The Savage Mind. Guided by a strong empathy, Lévi-Strauss finds many resemblances between Japan and the West, France mainly, also working through binary oppositions. With this background, this paper analyses the work of the ningen kokuhō (living national treasure) in Japan and the Maître d'art in France, and the recognition they both share for their savoir-faire.

The paper proposes to study the documentation of Jan Dorman’s production based on Oscar Wilde’s Happy Prince as a model for Jan Dorman’s thinking about a connection and a feedback loop between theatre and archive. The production forms the basis for a more detailed examination of Dorman’s multi-layered interest in his own archive as well as the ways in which memories of his art and private life can be preserved. Using the findings developed in the area of archival turn and hauntology, the paper elaborates on the most important spheres of Dorman’s intentional self-archiving: his frantic collecting and cataloguing, the habit of constructing a cultural repository for himself and his co-workers, confabulating and self-mythologising, recycling of objects, characters and motifs to be used again in subsequent productions. In the resulting vision of Dorman’s archive, it appears to be a deliberately constructed performative space rather than merely a collection of material traces of his professional and private life.

The paper looks at Jan Dorman’s pedagogical and artistic practice through the prism of child’s sensibility of his audience. The drawings and letters of the spectators at the performance of Awantura z ogniem (“Fire with Fire”, 1950) are considered as a collection of ego-documents. The paper examines their usefulness for expanding our knowledge about the history of Dorman’s theatre and the reception of his plays.

On 22-23 November 2018 at the Institute of Art of the Polish Academy of Sciences, the international conference “Theatre and Drama in Prison. Prison in Theatre and Drama” took place. The subject of theatre work in prison dominated the proceedings, with practitioners: artists, therapists, educators, officers of the prison service, as speakers and participants of the discussion. They talked about their own experience and about organizational and financial limitations. Their reflections were of sociological and psychological nature. Participation in the theatre has a significant impact on prison inmates, but also on viewers from outside. We heard about projects carried out in the United States, Scotland, South Africa and Poland (Warsaw, Wrocław, Grudziądz, Opole Lubelskie, Gębarzewo, Poznań, Kalisz, Kwidzyn, Sztum, Nisko, Nowogard, Gliwice, and Stargard). We became familiar with the programmes and methods, including: working with masks, Popular Participatory Theatre, Theatre of the Oppressed, Forum Theatre and “Shakespeare Behind Bars” (the film Shakespeare Behind Bars, being a record of work on The Tempest at Luther Luckett Correctional Complex in Kentucky). Some projects are targeted at a specific group of prisoners, such as mothers serving sentences. Music can also be the instrument of rehabilitation, and a nursing home can be the place of isolation. Several papers addressed imprisonment in drama and on stage (Lorca’s House of Bernarda Alba, Cossa’s Bunia and Gris de ausencia, and Giselle in the interpretation of Mats Ek). The last paper focused on the restriction of the artist's freedom on the example of the fate of the Russian director Kirill Serebrennikov. The conference first of all showed that theatre in prison is of great social importance.

The paper concerns the production of the Forefathers’ Eve, directed by Jan Maciejowski at the Współczesny Theatre in Szczecin in 1966. Maciejowski's Forefathers’ Eve – contrary to the philological and stage tradition – was arranged in order according to Mickiewicz's numbering of its parts, and the interpretational emphasis of the drama was put on the final Fourth Part, in which Gustaw-Konrad settled a score with the Priest, his former teacher. The Szczecin Forefathers’ Eve was a generational experience: Maciejowski’s work posed the questions that were fundamental for the generation whose formative experiences were both the Warsaw Uprising of 1944 and the Polish October of 1956. Stanisław Bąkowski's stage design left no room for doubt: Forefathers’ Eve was set in the underground sewers of the Uprising. The metaphor of the sewer, used in the film by Andrzej Wajda less than a decade before, took on new meanings in Maciejowski's production. Wajda intended the sewage canal to be a figure of a dead end, which was becoming painfully relevant in the political realities of the time. The production, though appreciated by the critics and the audience, was neglected and marginalised in the official circulation of the PRL culture. Maciejowski, who directed both Forefathers’ Eve and – two years later – Stanisław Wyspiański’s Liberation, paid the price for his work when he lost his position of the Head of the Szczecin theatres. The paper includes a reconstruction of the course of the production, while analyzing its themes and meanings in the context of the upcoming political crisis of 1968.

In the face of a global pandemic, with the shutdown of the Australian theatre industry and the wholesale shift to online modes of delivery within tertiary institutions, Queensland University of Technology academics in performance production and scenography developed a new pedagogical approach to shift the highly practical, studio-based theatre production program into the online space. This paper will present the teaching model that emerged from the university’s Virtual Theatre Production (VTP) Project, a collaborative project which shifted normal performance processes for five student theatre works online. The VTP Project engaged students, staff, industry experts, designers, directors and partner companies in a new online collaborative process. Constrained by real-world budgets and restrictions, student designers, technicians and managers were guided by a team of expert lighting, vision, sound, set, props and curatorial mentors to combine traditional analogue techniques with digital design processes across a range of software and platforms. This paper will detail the development of the pedagogical approach that underpinned this work; the project’s strengths and weaknesses; and finally, present the tested model for future use in creating online training grounds for undergraduate production students in an unstable educational environment. The pedagogical model builds on the emerging conversations around performance training online during the COVID-19 pandemic (Cervera, Schmidt and Schwadron; Pike, Neideck and Kelly), and expands on the notion of crisis-prompted remote teaching (Gacs, Goetler and Spasova; Hodges, Moore, Lockee, Trust and Bond).

The response of many theatremakers to the crisis ushered in by the coronavirus pandemic has been to turn to making work on the internet. Some have seen online theatre simply as a necessity, a lifeboat in which theatre can survive until conditions allow for a return to the liveness of the performer and the presence of the audience member. However, some theatremakers and commentators believe that the turn, en masse, to online work will prove to have altered theatre profoundly. This paper insists on the seminal liveness of theatre as an art form and challenges some of the grander claims being made for online theatre. The paper also acknowledges that a small minority of theatre artists, motivated by artistic concerns (including an emphasis on liveness), rather than a global health crisis, have created innovative theatre works on the internet.

This paper seeks to explore the new landscape that has emerged during the period of the so-called “corona crisis” within arts (cultural) journalism, focusing specifically on theatre reporting and theatre reviewing. Drawing examples from the Greek and international print and online media, I aim to show the extent to which the sudden pause of artistic life and the rules of social distancing have reshaped not only the contents, formats and genres of journalistic writing for the arts, but also the very essence of the notion of cultural event and cultural news. The paper will consider the importance of the role of theatre journalists and critics in identifying and highlighting urgent issues within the arts in the context of the pandemic. It will also explore the new challenges that have emerged during (and, indeed, as a consequence of) the pandemic. Finally, it will ask if the changes in media coverage of the arts are only temporary, or if arts journalism is entering a new era.

This paper seeks to explore the interaction of music and theatre, especially in the form of musical theatre, and how that interaction contributes to the processes of shaping the identity of a nation. To substantiate its thesis, the paper uses the example of creation of the Croatian national opera at the end of the nineteenth century, and how it was used in order to reinforce ideas of the cultural character of the nation.

This paper examines the teaching of Igbo literature adapted from F.C.Ogbalu’s Uremma-one of the folktales in an Igbo literature titled Nza na Obu. The literature text is a compendium of popular folktales and folksongs of Igbo people in Eastern Nigeria, and was in the Nigerian schools’ Igbo language/literature curriculum for decades. The paper shares a pedagogical experiment involving the teaching of the Igbo language folktale as literature and as a video film in a class of young 18 teenagers. Odum na Akwaeke is the video adaptation of Akwaeke(Uremma) folktale. The folktale was adapted into “Odum na Akwaeke,” (Amayo Uzo Philip dir., 1998)- a popular narrative video film, and became one of Nollywood (Nigerian film industry)’s most popular Igbo films at its release in 1998. The pedagogical experiment reveals that video film viewership affects the students’ appreciation of not just the literature, but also the language; and equally creates a warm learning atmosphere which enables the students to cooperate, share and contribute in the learning exercise. The research experiment buttresses the importance of interactive teaching methodology in teaching and learning indigenous knowledge. The paper concludes that faced with globalization and persistent technological invasion, scholars particularly those interested in African culture and cultural studies need to reflect on newer and innovative approaches to teaching local languages and literature in order to sustain youth interest in African culture/ cultural studies in a technological era.

The goal of this paper is to present a decolonising research methodology. The first section of this paper problematises western knowledge production, using Aníbal Quijano’s colonial matrix of power. The second section theorises how an epistemological pluralism that is critical, decolonising and performative could address western knowledge production and the colonial matrix of power. The third section discusses how this methodology has been applied to Butoh to develop Critical Butoh. The final section presents He rawe tona kakahu/ She wore a becoming dress, a Butoh performance exploring the intersection of gender and colonisation, as a practical application of this methodology.

The paper addresses some methodological and technical issues involving the process of reconstructing a theatrical production based on its surviving documentation and other archival materials as well as the working out of the so-called documented and critical score. With that in mind, the author confronts the premises and assumptions of the Schillerean theatrology (Zbigniew Raszewski, Jerzy Timoszewicz) and Bédierean text-editing (Konrad Górski, Zbigniew Goliński) with solutions proposed by performative studies (Tomasz Kubikowski, Diana Poskuta-Włodek) and contemporary scholarly editing (Maria Prussak, Krzysztof Mrowcewicz). The paper is a part of a theoretical supplement to Mateusz Żurawski’s doctoral dissertation, Edycja krytyczna scenariuszy autorskich Jerzego Grzegorzewskiego (‘A critical edition of authorial scenarios by Jerzy Grzegorzewski’) written under the supervision of Dr. Habil. Tomasz Kubikowski and Dr. Habil. Krzysztof Mrowcewicz at the Institute of Literary Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences (2017).

This paper analyzes the safeguarding process, started in the 1960s, of the first Italian Element inscribed in the UNESCO’s ICH 2003 List, the Opera dei pupi, which became a Masterpiece of Humanity in 2001. This participatory process combines museographic activity, field research and the staging of shows, both traditional and innovative. It was promoted by the Antonio Pasqualino Puppet Museum of Palermo, which is a museum of performance, a museum-narration, a place of ideas and not of things, which goes beyond the simple collection and becomes a meta-story, an “open work”.

The paper interrogates the value and meaning of the concept of intangible heritage as defined in the Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage established by UNESCO in 2003 as an embodied practice and from a decolonial perspective. The reflection focuses particularly on the case of the play Xajoj Tun Rabinal Achí by the indigenous Quebec company Ondinnok, which in 2010 staged in Montreal a theatrical reworking from the 15th-century Guatemalan Mayan drama Rabinal Achí, which predates the Hispanic colonial conquest and was declared in 2005 by UNESCO to be one of the masterpieces of the oral and intangible heritage of humanity .

Jerzy Timoszewicz, a historian of literature and theatre, and an editor, was born on 9 September 1933 in Warsaw. He received a magisterium degree in Polish philology from the University of Warsaw in 1956. The diploma essay on Dziady [Forefathers’ Eve] as staged by Leon Schiller, which he wrote under the tutelage of Professor Jan Kott, was awarded the third prize in the Mickiewicz Competition organised by the Ministry of Higher Education. While studying at the University, Timoszewicz was a member of the Young Critics Circle run by Edward Csató and made his press debut with a review of Słowacki’s Balladyna (Sztandar Młodych, no. 26, 1954). From October 1957 to September 1992, he was a member of the Pamiętnik Teatralny Editorial Board. He edited several monographic issues of the journal, devoted to Andrzej Pronaszko, Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz, the Vilnius theatre, and the Jewish Theatre in Poland. In November 1965, Timoszewicz defended his doctoral dissertation, „Dziady” w inscenizacji Leona Schillera: Partytura i jej wykonanie [Dziady as Staged by Leon Schiller: The Score and Its Execution] (Warszawa, 1970) whereby he undertook a task without precedent: he reconstructed the stage shape of four productions of Dziady by Schiller and the director’s score of the Warsaw production of 1934. The four volumes of Leon Schiller’s Pisma [Papers] that Timoszewicz edited are a paragon of editing (each is provided with a chronicle of Schiller’s life and work) and the finest piece of Timoszewicz’s editorial work. He also published a volume of recollections about Schiller, Ostatni romantyk sceny Polskiej [The Last Romantic of the Polish Stage] (1990) and Leon Schiller’s version of Historyja o Męce Najświętszej i Chwalebnym Zmartwychwstaniu Pańskim [The History of the Most Holy Passion and Glorious Resurrection of Our Lord]. Another hero whom Timoszewicz was fascinated with from a young age was “the prince of Polish essayists,” Jerzy Stempowski. Of Stempowski’s oeuvre, Timoszewicz published a two-volume selection of Szkice literackie [Literary Sketches] (1988; 2nd edn 2001), a collection of Stempowski’s radio editorials, Felietony dla Radia Wolna Europa [Editorials for Radio Free Europe] (1995), and Pamiętnik teatralny trzeciej klasy i inne szkice [A Theatre Memoir of the Third Class and Other Sketches] (1999); he also edited a volume of reminiscences „Pan Jerzy”. Śladami nieśpiesznego przechodnia: Wspomnienia i szkice o Jerzym Stempowskim [“Pan Jerzy.” Following the Footsteps of the Unhurried Ambler: Reminiscences and Sketches About Jerzy Stempowski] (2005). Other editorial works by Timoszewicz include an edition of theatre reviews by Edward Csató (1979), a collections of texts about Polish theatre by Zbigniew Raszewski, Spacerek po labiryncie [A Walk in a Maze] (2008), a volume of reminiscences, articles and letters by Zbigniew Pronaszko, Zapiski scenografa [Notes of a Stage Designer] (1976), and a selection of articles, Rzeczy teatralne [Things Theatrical] (1984), by the émigré critic Tymon Terlecki, with whom Timoszewicz exchanged letters for over thirty years. A large selection of their correspondence, which has just been published, shows that Jerzy Timoszewicz was a prolific and accomplished letter writer. His addressees included renowned scholars and artists; Timoszewicz donated a huge collection of their letters to the Ossolineum. The reviews of books on theatre that Timoszewicz published in Teatr, Dialog and Rocznik Literacki for many years are a valuable source of information about the history of Polish theatre studies and the circulation of publications on the subject. Timoszewicz knew theatrical literature through and through, as can be attested by the column Świstek Teatralny [Theatrical Paper Slip] he prepared for Teatr in 1960–1961, where he published various fragments and quotes from old magazines, diaries, letters, interviews, reviews, lexicons, and other historical documents. His students at the Theatre Studies Department of the Academy of Dramatic Arts in Warsaw, where he lectured in 1975–1979, collected all the texts that appeared in the Świstek Teatralny column, printed it in one volume and gave it to Timoszewicz on his eightieth birthday on 13 September 2013.

Using Oliver Frljić’s highly controversial production of Klątwa (The Curse) at Warsaw’s Teatr Powszechny in 2017 as a starting point, this paper addresses the challenges of collectivity in theatre institutions and the forms of political participation they produce, both deliberately and unintentionally. Moving across performance sites (ensemble, protest, audience) the paper problematises easy assumptions around collectivity as an uncontested public good. Drawing on Michael Warner’s concept of “counterpublics,” Lease unpacks the ways in which publics need to be understood as plural rather than singular. The assertion of a singular public constitutes culture as autonomous in time and space, rather than porous, open to change and multivalent. This article argues that the emergence of rival publics and counterpublics challenge the assertion of a singular public and invites readers to interpret theatre performances and public protests collectively.

This paper seeks to explore how age as a determining category of identity was represented on the American stage in the years following the American Revolution. By bringing early American drama—a field largely neglected in itself—into the discussion of performance and age studies, this paper examines age from a political perspective, as performance of the emerging American republican culture and as metaphor for national identity-formation and development.

This paper presents an overview of Lithuanian theatre processes during the last four years before Eimuntas Nekrošius’ death. It uses descriptive statistical analysis to look at current trends from various perspectives. It looks at the number of performances produced and introduces the most productive artists and groups. The paper presents the organisational and financial system of Lithuanian theatres and looks in more detail at the activities of national, state, municipal and independent theatres that hold professional status. The paper proposes general guidelines for understanding the main operating principles within the Lithuanian theatre system.

In 1984, Roberta Carreri, Odin Teatret actress since 1974, saw Niwa (The Garden), a Butoh dance performance by Muteki-Sha, and attended a three-day workshop with Natsu Nakajima, direct heir of the Butoh pioneer Tatsumi Hijikata. In 1986, she traveled to Japan to work with Natsu Nakajima and Kazuo Ohno. The meeting with the Asian masters changed her approach to training and the creative process. For her, the most remarkable aspect of this apprenticeship was the work with the eyes. The way the eyes are used in Butoh conditioned Carreri’s training and the creative process of her solo performance Judith (1988). Since those same years, the Italian actress has been developing her own pedagogy. Today, she travels globally leading the workshop Dance of Intentions, which includes “flexing the eyes,” an exercise whereby the actress transmits to trainees how it is possible to shape the quality of scenic presence through the eyes. Drawing on a rich bibliography, Roberta Carreri’s work diaries, unpublished documents, and audiovisual materials kept at the Odin Teatret Archives, this paper aims to analyze how the actress embodied the ability to find the kokoro (Japanese for “heart” or “soul”), its application to the creative process and the performance, as well as her pedagogic work, and how this Butoh apprenticeship conditioned her professional identity.

This paper calls into question the central tenets of the Dancer-Researcher-Performer (BPI) method taught at the Universidade Estadual de Campinas (Unicamp) in Brazil. The analysis problematizes the underlying assumption that students lack an awareness of their own Brazilianness, which they must find through BPI, and questions a choreographic methodology where students are coached to be possessed by the dance. The paper draws attention to the power imbalances inherent in BPI’s co-habitation experience, where students research marginal others who are understood as the source of authentic Brazilian culture. The paper invites BPI students and teachers to reconsider the ethics of this research methodology, and to consider the possibility of choreographic research that engages both mind and body critically and consciously.

Criticizing the “culinary theatre”[1] of his age, Brecht elaborated on the epic theatre and the Verfremdungseffect (V-effect), and constructively interpreted/misinterpreted Mei Lanfang’s jingju performance to back up his idea. Since the 1980s, xiqu[2] performances that interweave different performance cultures have flourished on the Chinese stage. Productions in this vein include: kunqu Macbeth (1984), bangzi Medea (1993), yueju Hedda Gabler (2006) and jingju Metamorphosis (2013). The yueju performance The Good Person of Jiangnan adapts not only the dramatic text of Brecht’s The Good Woman of Szechwan, but also endeavors to practice the V-effect with the materiality of the performance. This attempt distinctly transgresses the common “western story, eastern body” mode. This paper, firstly, elaborates upon the practice of the V-effect, especially the method based upon the traditional xiqu role system, within The Good Person of Jiangnan. The V-effect requires making the action strange, alien, remote or separate, and, consequently, inspires the audience to think. Yet, The Good Person of Jiangnan’s adaptation of the “story” together with the “body” ensured no critic of the culinary theatre. In the context of modern China, as the “world’s factory,” and the major social issue of migrant workers, it is surprising that this production gave rise to little discussion of this subject. Instead, the hot topics of debate turned out to be its perceived lack of authenticity and its relationship to the global intercultural tendency. This paper endeavors to explore the reason for this debate, based upon critical analysis of the production. Furthermore, the profound reasons for the traditional cultural upsurge and the authentic discourse of xiqu will also be considered.

This paper presents the edited transcript of a conversation between two distinguished Shakespearean actors, Derek Jacobi and Mark Rylance, about why the Shakespeare Authorship Question should be accorded respect and taken more seriously by the theatre, literary and academic communities. The content of the present paper was recorded originally for the Shakespeare Authorship Coalition in April 2016.

The therapeutic role of theatre and drama has remained useful to health experts as a preventive measure and for patients as a fast recovery antidote. This paper examines the medical dimension of the play Cauldron of Death by Tracie Chima Utoh. The play denotatively invokes the dangers of HIV/AIDS and serves preventive and life-sustaining purposes for HIV/AIDS patients. Utilizing the artistic and content analysis approaches, the paper re-examines this one-act play as a preventive and healing template for HIV/AIDS disease both for those who read the play as text and for those who view it in performance. As an HIV/AIDS conscientization play, Cauldron of Death is not only a tool for the usual conventional theatre pedagogy but also an invaluable resource material/drug for pharmacists, doctors, patients and disease prevention NGOs.

The paper is about the history of productions of Shakespeare’s plays in Georgia. It discusses how Shakespearean plays were staged to fight against the Russian Empire and, later, the Soviet rule. In particular, it elaborates on how the first translations of Shakespeare into Georgian were done in a context in which the Georgian language was not welcomed by the ruling elite. The paper also touches on the famous Shakespeare productions staged by Robert Sturua at the Rustaveli National Theatre in the late twentieth century.

To some extent, contemporary drama is the heir of the neo-avant-garde of the late 1960s and 1970s. This time was that of the so-called performative turn, which pulled theatre away from representation and towards presentation. The subsequent development can be designated by various labels, such as postdramatic theatre, the aesthetics of the performative and, in the case of dramatic texts, the no longer dramatic theatre text, “In-Yer-Face” theatre, etc. In Slovenia, a decisive turn from text to event took place towards the end of the 1960s. During this time, the first happenings and performance art pieces were taking place. In reviewing the performance Pupilija, papa Pupilo pa Pupilčki (Pupillja, Papa Pupilo and the Pupilceks), Veno Taufer went as far as to declare the death of literary theatre. At first glance, it would thus appear that contemporary playwriting is merely repeating earlier patterns. While contemporary playwriting may more radically formulate linguistic and aesthetic games, it deconstructs the dramatic form and thus radicalises the premises of the neo-avant-gardes; in the last two decades, we have been talking about a return to dramatic, post-postdramatic and dramatic drama, etc. Through a comparative analysis of two of the more radical texts from Blaž Lukan’s anthology Generator:: za proizvodnjo poljubnega števila dramskih kompleksov (The Generator:: for Manufacturing Any Number of Drama Complexes), namely Dušan Jovanović’s Sinopsis za happening Hlapci (Synopsis for The Happening of Lackeys) and Rastko Močnik’s Generator, ki iz določenih enot in po preprostih pravilih proizvaja poljubno število dramskih kompleksov (A Generator that Produces Any Number of Drama Complexes from Given Units and According to Simple Rules) as well as Simona Semenič’s mi, evropski mrliči (we, the european corpses) and Varja Hrvatin’s Vse se je začelo z golažem iz zajčkov (It All Started with the Bunny Rabbit Goulash), the paper shows that the neo-avant-garde is more about the question of theatrical performances and the form of the dramatic text, while contemporary drama is more about the search for authenticity and dramatic effects.

In the paper, the authors discuss the concept of staged readings, arguing that they are the predominant performance format for presentations of young playwriting. However, such presentations should not be understood as an intermediate stage between reading and performing but as a fully-fledged and independent artistic genre. Many staged readings thus lose the function of “first information” about the text and its author. Instead, they have become a proper way of performing a text, thus opening up a wider area for theatrical experimentation. Using concrete examples, the authors will reflect on practices characterised by the text becoming the main or even the only thing necessary for a theatrical event and reading (in all its possible ways and forms) becoming the key theatrical means.

This paper aims to investigate, employing Foucault’s archaeological approach, notions of subjectivity in which actors become subjects of their own musical practice, particularly of their vocal expression. The empirical materials are narratives and interviews with professionals from the performing arts, who execute the soundtracks of their live performances vocally and through the use of musical instruments. In this paper we analyze the predominant presence of the voice of the mother figure in the memories of actorsmusicians