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This article draws on media studies and professional wrestling studies to examine how the major American wrestling company All Elite Wrestling (AEW) renegotiated the “liveness” and affective “exces...

Zusammenfassung Bibliotheken gehören zu den wichtigsten physischen Infrastrukturen der Geistes- und Kulturwissenschaften. Zugleich gehören Bibliotheken zu den Early Adopters von digitalen Technologien, seit den 1960er-Jahren im Bereich Katalogisierung und verstärkt seit den 1990er-Jahren im Bereich der Bestände. Die Übergänge zwischen Infrastruktur und Forschung waren seit jeher fließend bzw. integrativ gedacht. Die Möglichkeiten geistes- und kulturwissenschaftlicher Forschung werden von der Beschaffenheit und Verfügbarkeit ihrer Gegenstände bestimmt, daher ist auch die Transformation analoger Bestände ins Digitale bereits Teil des Forschungsprozesses. Digitalität wird aus mehreren Perspektiven in den Blick genommen: (1) als Transfer des analogen Objekts in ein digitales Objekt, (2) als Transformation des Inhalts in ein maschinenlesbares Format, das inhärente bzw. implizite Strukturen und Semantik expliziert, (3) als Methodeninventar, das vom hermeneutischen Annotieren bis zu KI-Verfahren reichen kann. Dabei werden Bestände nicht nur medial und als Bestand einer digitalen Bibliothek „neu-inszeniert“, sondern es stellen sich Fragen nach einer digitalen Epistemologie der Geistes- und Kulturwissenschaften, die gemeinsam erforscht werden müssen.

Resumo: O trabalho retoma algumas teses do teórico da dança André Lepecki (2008), com o objetivo de apontar limites de sua aposta na recusa do movimento como caminho de ruptura com a modernidade e com determinada noção de coreografia. Para tanto, efetua-se uma leitura crítica da narrativa da história da dança desenvolvida em uma obra desse autor, para que então sejam propostos três nuançamentos da noção de movimento, a fim de apontar, desse modo, que a articulação entre dança e movimento não é necessariamente unívoca e nem sempre tem as mesmas implicações com relação a dado projeto político ou metafísico característico da modernidade.

Ang Lee’s 2019 film Gemini Man features the most realistic digital human to grace the cinematic screen, specifically a computer-generated version of young Will Smith who battles his more aged self throughout the film. And for the first time in film history, this photorealistic digital human is Black. This essay explores why this groundbreaking achievement has not been acknowledged or celebrated by the film's production or publicity teams. I argue that Will Smith’s particular “post-racial” identity mediates contemporary concerns related to the racialized implications of facial recognition and other digital imaging technologies, as well as to the future of the film industry in the digital age. In the second half of the essay, I examine how the appearance of Will Smith in deepfake parody videos illustrates how race circulates on screens of various media formats. I conclude with a call to use digital visual effects, deepfake tools, and other advanced technologies to further racial justice instead of repeating the problematic usage of the past.

On July 14, 2019, a 3-minute 36-second video titled “Keanu Reeves Stops A ROBBERY!” was released on YouTube visual effects (VFX) channel, Corridor. The video’s click-bait title ensured it was quickly shared by users across platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit. Comments on the video suggest that the vast majority of viewers categorised it as fiction. What seemed less universally recognised, though, was that the performer in the clip was not Keanu Reeves himself. It was voice actor and stuntman Reuben Langdon, and his face was digitally replaced with that of Reeves, through the use of an AI generated deepfake, an open access application, Faceswap, and compositing in Adobe After Effects. This article uses Corridor’s deepfake Keanu video (hereafter shorted to CDFK) as a case study which allows the fleshing out of an, as yet, under-researched area of deepfakes: the role of framing contexts in shaping how viewers evaluate, categorise, make sense of and discuss these images. This research draws on visual effects scholarship, celebrity studies, cognitive film studies, social media theory, digital rhetoric, and discourse analysis. It is intended to serve as a starting point of a larger study that will eventually map types of online manipulated media creation on a continuum from the professional to the vernacular, across different platforms, and attending to their aesthetic, ethical, cultural and reception dimensions. The focus on context (platform, creator channel, and comments) also reveals the emergence of an industrial and aesthetic category of visual effects, which I call here “platform VFX,” a key term that provides us with more nuanced frames for illuminating and analysing a range of manipulated media practices as VFX software becomes ever more accessible and lends itself to more vernacular uses, such as we see with various face swap apps.

Focusing on a series of YouTube creators, this essay interrogates the persistence of the hegemonic power of the white male hardbody, arguing that digital facial replacements – in particular those of 1980s action stars – produce a mode of white, masculine identity that is essentially exchangeable and transactional. These bodies are capitalist commodities, fundamentally interchangable and asserting the same bundle of ideological traits. The technology of digital facial replacement allows creators to visualize this exchange value. As opposed to the pornographic, invasive, and misogynistic face swap videos originally posted on reddit.com by user ‘deepfakes’ in 2017, the facial replacement videos found on YouTube are more playful in nature, imagining alternate histories and using face swapping as a mode of comedy. This case study of 1980s action stars opens up to a broader examination of issues of identity in digital facial replacement. In the videos under analysis, gender swaps are relatively common, but ethnic swaps are scarce. The reluctance of the YouTubers to ‘blindcast’ their revisionist videos reveals a subtle critique of the fantasy of a post-racial world. Racial difference – and, perhaps, cultural specificity – remains intact, and the creators take a seemingly apolitical, comical, ‘safe’ approach to identity rather than an explicitly critical stance. By denuding the more threatening and destructive aspects of deepfakes, these YouTube videos produce a more palatable version of facial replacement. This version, however, is no less ideologically complex than its more explicitly political and misogynistic counterparts. These contemporary facial substitutions not only continue to ‘reboot’ white male hegemony, but they also function as an ideological reclamation of masculine power in the present through modified images of the (revisionist) past.

20 Shots of Opera, released in December 2020, is a series of twenty short pieces of music theatre between five and eight minutes long. They were created and produced in just a few months. What makes the pieces special is that they were conceived to be produced under pandemic conditions and with purely an online reception in mind. This has affected details of the recording process as well as directorial concepts such as the use of animation or superimposition of pictures. This article will analyze how selected Shots engage with these conditions, look at different types of how the voices are used and assess the specific aesthetic circumstances of digital reception, as well as discussing other specific challenges and opportunities of creating music theatre in times of Covid-19.

Chief Caupolican is Emile Barrangon, an early 20th-century performer in the US who was born in Chile to an indigenous Mapuche father and a French mother. Despite his fame, he has not yet been included in studies on indigenous agency in Native American representations, likely because of his immigrant origins. We situate his indigenous self-identification and media success within the broader context of ongoing pan-indigenous activism in the country and Native Americans’ efforts to engage indigenous representations in the media. The pan-indigenous movement that sought to unify indigenous political claims, regardless of tribal affiliation, enabled and encouraged foreign-born aborigines and persons of mixed ancestry to identify with indigeneity in ways that transcend nation-state borders. By presenting and examining his multi-faceted life, performance, and political views, this article contributes to better understanding the complex dynamics of the indigenous performance landscape in the early 20th century.

Cet article propose une réévaluation critique de la notion de corps sans organes dans l’oeuvre d’Antonin Artaud à la lumière des cahiers d’Ivry publiés fin 2011 et dans lesquels Artaud mentionne un nouveau « corps de gloire ». L’auteur commence par préciser la relation entre « le corps sans organes » et la tradition catholique de façon à montrer comment Artaud détourne cette dernière de façon hérétique. Le corps sans organes d’Artaud est ensuite distingué de sa conceptualisation par Gilles Deleuze et Félix Guattari en prenant appui sur des commentaires de Paule Thévenin, qui a édité les Œuvres complètes d’Artaud, ainsi que sur des textes d’Artaud contemporains à l’émission radiophonique qui contredisent la lecture deleuzo-guattarienne. En effet, le corps sans organes d’Artaud est défini de façon explicite en réaction à la psychanalyse freudienne et sa définition hérétique en tant que « corps de gloire » est destinée à s’opposer dans un même geste à la religion ainsi qu’à la psychanalyse.

Since the 1970s, hundreds of thousands of migrant domestic workers from the Philippines have moved to Hong Kong. As they filled the city’s growing demand for care work, they also altered the city’s art practice and cultural landscape. In this article, I propose to consider a double meaning of ‘domesticity’ ‐ in both the language of motherhood and motherland ‐ as a productive framework to investigate the migratory experience of Filipina domestic workers. Focusing on Cedric Maridet’s Filipina Heterotopia and Xyza Cruz Bacani’s We Are Like Air, I examine how ‘domesticity’ has become particularly pertinent to understanding the ‘border’ through the movement of bodies and the global transferral of care labour.

The life and work of Umashankar Manthravadi is a history of sound and technology through the second half of the twentieth century. As a self-taught acoustic archaeologist, he began measuring the acoustic properties of a premodern performance space in the mid-1990s, and has been building ambisonic microphones since the early 2000s in order to carry out his project in further locations. Bringing together writers, choreographers, dancers, musicians, field recordists and sound designers, A Slightly Curving Place is an exhibition that responds to Umashankar's practice and proposes possibilities for listening to the past and its absence which remains. Umashankar asserts that we cannot just look for theatres in landscapes of the past; we must listen for them. In this dossier, contributors to the exhibition extend the notion of listening to an archaeological site to include practices of listening to text, textures, technologies, the body and the fields of recording.

As contemporary theatre and new production models are now being evaluated with more regard to community empowerment, the importance of proper tools for evaluation of the process has increased. The article explored the community youth theatre practices of the Community Youth Cultural Centre (CYCC) of the National Commission on Culture (NCC) in Ghana. We examined the role of the youth theatre at CYCC in the light of community empowerment. Using the qualitative case study design, six artists with a minimum of five years and a maximum of thirty years of work experience with the CYCC were interviewed. Performance activities and documents of the CYCC were also observed and analysed. The findings revealed four themes: Objectives of the centre; Youth theatre practices; Abibigoro/puppetry theatre models; and non-formal and cultural education. It was found that staff and artists at the CYCC employed diverse theatrical modes to facilitate community empowerment processes. The study recommends that cultural and creative centres in Ghana should harness the potentials of the community youth theatre, develop community-specific and context-driven performance models to support artistic- aesthetic-cultural and non-formal education processes to enhance our collective strive for community empowerment in Ghana.

In the first part of the article, the author analyses the appearance of the director and the changes in his position in Slovenian theatre from the second half of the 19th century to the present day. In this context, he is particularly interested in the changes in theatre directing that took place in the second half of the 20th century with the emergence of collective theatre. The author methodologically combines historical and comparative analysis, as these processes still take place today, when devised theatre and other forms of theatrical creation are increasingly spoken and written about, moving away from the conventional process by which a playwright writes a dramatic text as a literary work of art and the director then transforms it into a theatrical work of art. There are more and more performances in contemporary Slovenian theatre in which a pre-written dramatic text is not crucial for the final product of the creative process. The two most commonly used terms for this type of performance are po motivih (based on the motifs) and avtorski projekt (auteur performance). Although the terms are not synonymous, both terms imply a devised type of theatre. The author compares group creation with the devised way of creating and points out that although these are practices that can take place in parallel, they cannot be equated. The author concludes that for collective theatre, the specific relationship between the creative group and the director’s position is constitutive. In contrast, for devised theatre, the relationship between the creative group and the playwright’s position is crucial. Finally, the author also touches on the connections between postdramatic and post-directors’ theatre and the emergence of the creative group as a collective subjectivity.

Современный танец – глобальный феномен, однако национальные и этнические аспекты регулярно проявляются и в содержании, и в форме постановок, и в судьбах артистов. Акрам Кхан – один из самых известных и высокооплачиваемых танцоров и хореографов нашего времени: член Ордена Британской Империи за заслуги в области танца с 2005 г., он – создатель множества балетов, представляемых различными труппами, а также автор и исполнитель сольных представлений. Каждое из его выступлений – событие, предлагающее новое видение как формы, так и содержания современного танца. Настоящая статья написана на основе многолетних исследований южноазиатской танцевальной культуры, а также личных бесед Светланы Рыжаковой с Акрамом Кханом в 2017 и 2019 гг. и анализа особенностей его семейной истории, творческого пути и особенности художественной деятельности. Обсуждение проблем этнокультурной идентичности, отношения к языку и к телу, исторической памяти, социальной напряженности, «своего» и «чужого», понятию родины, а также тех путей и способов, с помощью которых современность можно отражать на сцене легли в основу наших разговоров. Contemporary dance is a global phenomenon, but national and ethnic aspects are regularly manifested both in the content and in the form of performances, and in artists’ life-stories. Akram Khan is one of the most famous dancers and choreographers of our time. Member of the Order of the British Empire for Dance Merit since 2005, he is the creator of numerous ballets performed by various troupes and the author and performer of solo programs. Each of his performances is an event that offers a new vision of both the form and the content of contemporary dance. This essay is based on personal conversations of Svetlana Ryzhakova with Akram Khan in 2017 and 2019, as well as observations and analysis of his family history, career and artistic activity. Akram Khan was born and raised in England, but his parents are migrants from Bangladesh, a Muslim, although a very Westernized family. Problems of ethnic and cultural identity, personal attitudes towards language and the body, historical memory, social tension, “friends and foes”, homeland, as well as how modernity can and should be reflected on stage formed the basis of our conversations and reasoning of Akram Khan.

Cultural appropriation, as both concept and practice, is a hugely controversial issue. It is of particular importance to the arts because creativity is often found at the intersection of cultural boundaries. Much of the popular discourse on cultural appropriation focusses on the commercial use of indigenous or marginalized cultures by mainstream or dominant cultures. There is, however, growing awareness that cultural appropriation is a complicated issue encompassing cultural exchange in all its forms. Creativity emerging from cultural interdependence is far from a reciprocal exchange. This insight indicates that ethical and political implications are at stake. Consequently, the arts are being examined with greater attention in order to assess these implications. This article will focus on appropriation in literature, and examine the way appropriative strategies are being used to resist dominant cultural standards. These strategies and their implications will be analyzed through the lens of Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of minor literature.

Some obsessions stay with you for a reason. On its surface, Bertha, the Sewing Machine Girl; or, Death at the Wheel, a ludicrously named melodrama peopled with exaggerated heroines and villains, offers an example of the noncanonical, everyday fare that audiences consumed in playhouses throughout the 19th century. But the deeper I dug, the more questions I uncovered.

This article uses the concept of phonography, defined as the representation of sonic events, to examine two of W.B. Yeats’s later plays, The Words upon the Window-Pane and A Full Moon in March. Each of these plays allegorizes its own genesis as a phonographic artwork, a sonic inscription designed to transmit the author’s voice. By asking whether text can serve as a conduit, they provide ample evidence of Yeats’s attachment to phonocentric thought. The Words anticipates Roland Barthes’s pronouncements on “the death of the author” by pessimistically deconstructing Yeats’s own phonocentric position. Its centrepiece is a corrupted séance that functions as a travesty of the play itself, enacting a mechanical medium through a spiritualist medium who seems to relay a recording of the voice of Jonathan Swift. While The Words registers a host of anxieties about mediation, social degeneration, and nullified authority, A Full Moon reconciles voice and inscription in the symbol of the singing severed head. This reconciliation is allegorized as a sacred marriage, a scripted ritual that involves an execution by beheading. The head’s song, which can be read as Yeats’s figure for the phonographic inscription, represents the magically immediate transmission of the poet’s voice to a posthumous audience.

From the opening of treaty ports in 1843, the modern history of performing arts in Shanghai traces more than 170 years of development. This history not only summarizes the modern development of Chinese performing arts; it is also representative of the historical development of Chinese urban space and city culture. Theatre arts, culture, and urban development intertwine, as they are refracted through the rise and fall of theatre buildings, yielding a fascinating legacy of cosmopolitan Shanghai.

Published eight years after the premiere of Copenhagen, his celebrated play about atomic physics, Michael Frayn’s Human Touch (2006) reflects on the epistemological and phenomenological implications of human experience, syntax, and quantum mechanics. Summarily, Frayn posits that reality’s fundamental indeterminacy makes thought, language, identity, culture, and experience possible at all. The book echoes more than Copenhagen’s themes, however, and the pair’s structural similarities invite readers to rethink Copenhagen as a piece of philosophical theatre. The play foregrounds the process of drafting and redrafting, and it stands as a draft of the ideas in the book that soon followed. The book follows suit as it drafts and redrafts its central question through its prodigious length. In conversation with Human Touch, we can read Copenhagen as an exploration of our ability to forge connections between otherwise disparate features of reality (including quantum mechanics). More crucially, Copenhagen demonstrates the pivotal role that theatre plays in the indeterminate epistemology that Frayn espouses in Human Touch. In doing so, Copenhagen embodies an earlier draft of the epistemology Frayn later explicates in the book. In other words, Copenhagen represents a rare example of a thinker working through philosophical ideas on stage before committing them to an argument.

This article considers The Legends of Khasak, a Malayalam play by Deepan Sivaraman, as a landmark Indian eco-theatrical production. I argue for the play as an important development in a nascent Indian eco-theatre, telling an ecologically significant tale about the relationship between humans and nature through performative and scenographic innovations that transform the theatrical space into a sacred grove, a place of deep significance in terms of ecological balance. This essay elaborates on how the play celebrates the pancha bhutas, the five elements of nature, by displaying their agency and invoking the pancha indriyas, or the five pathways of human perception, and thereby awakening an awareness of our status as ecological beings enmeshed in the non-human world. In The Legends of Khasak, Sivaraman has evolved an eco-material aesthetics of performance that, influenced by traditional folk performance forms and rituals and post-independence syncretic theatre, makes a lasting contribution to the development of an Indian eco-drama.

This article presents and discusses solo dance practices developed by Katrín Gunnarsdóttir during the years 2014–2020. She started to develop her practices with the solo work Saving History (2014), a chronological charting of her relationship with borrowing movement. As a consequence of that process she became interested in exploring the virtuosity of slowly morphing one movement into another, and that research developed into another solo work, Shades of History (2016). The act of warming up and getting ready for a performance formed the basis of the third solo, Dancing (to) (2020). Through this series of solo performances, Katrín has realized her ongoing interest in dancing labour, performing the archive and a focus on the dancing rather than the dancer.

Okada is one of the most internationally produced contemporary Japanese playwrights. American directors approach his work both as uniquely Japanese and as a synecdoche for the world. The story of Okada’s web of institutional, professional, and personal relationships is an object lesson in the foreign assembly of international works.

Director and playwright Stan Lai premiered his marathon play Ago in Shanghai at the end of 2019. Staged in his signature “lotus pond” theatre-in-the-surround, Ago is fueled by Lai’s cross-cultural sensibilities and Buddhist philosophy. If theatre is an art of illusion-making and life is like a dream, Lai turns theatre-going into a ritual of self-encounter and self-reflection, where an illusion mirrors a dream.

What makes Zora Neale Hurston different as a musical theatre writer is her concern about the creation of safe spaces for black women actors. By looking at the theatrical representation of black women in Hurston and Dorothy Waring’s Polk County, it is possible to see ways in which they resist intersecting oppressions of gender and race. Hurston’s adaptation of the blues and folk music for the musical is also subject to analysis, as is her lasting impact on musical theatre.

In China, theatre studies has been dominated by Western discourse on serious drama, mostly the theatre of purgation. It is equally important, however, to study popular Western theatre genres, such as musicals, comedies, and relatively uplifting plays, especially in terms of their similarities with Chinese opera—an epitome of theatre of cultivation.

Throughout his literary career, the poet and dramatist W.B. Yeats displayed a keen interest in the phenomenology of the mental image as well as a deep curiosity about the possible mystical functions of the imagination. This article examines the impact of Yeats’s evolving set of beliefs about the power of imaginative vision, including those derived from readings in occult philosophy and personal experiences at séances, upon his dramaturgical decisions as a playwright, particularly in his Noh-inspired “plays for dancers.” Yeats’s convictions about the most effective kinds of acting, staging, and scenography for these dramatic works served an overarching aesthetic and spiritual project: to transform the theatre into a visionary medium that, through the power of the poetic word, could restore a sense of connection to the “world-soul” or anima mundi for audiences of his industrialized, scientific, objectifying age.

In 1953, Shanghai Film Studio produced a Shaoxing opera film version ofThe Butterfly Loversas the first color film of the People’s Republic of China. Noted for its immense popularity in the Sinophone sphere throughout the 1950s, the film actually exemplifies a history of Shaoxing opera that is connected to urbanization and nationalism as well as women’s liberation and the cultural politics of early communist China. It is an early example of how Chinese opera and modern media technology contribute to transnational negotiations and imaginations of Chinese identities.

Teaching theatre and drama in primary and secondary schools is a very difficult task worldwide. In China, there is a huge demand for drama teachers who also know practical theatre. Taking on this mission, the Shanghai Theatre Academy started a program of “drama etudes.” This pedagogical experiment stimulated debate about opposing concepts in theatre education: imitation vs. improvisation.

Interculturalism in theatre, although much critiqued, is an inevitable category for understanding theatre practices and histories. Critical approaches have highlighted the complicity of “hegemonic” Euro-American-led theatre with imperialist structures. Newer critiques tend to focus on encounters in European languages in multicultural cities, and to posit multilateral non-Western collaborations as liberated from colonial power structures. This paper argues that it is necessary to fundamentally rethink interculturalism in theatre by taking seriously the long-standing major theatrical exchanges which do not reference, and are not principally influenced by, Western theatre's sphere. Considering a major example of Sino–Japanese collaboration from 1989,Ryū-Ō(Dragon King), we place it within the genealogy of the two countries’ long-standing theatrical practices of interculturalism. Ryu-O, a kabuki-jingjucollaboration, shows that intra-Asian interculturalism has its own genealogy and is neither new nor beholden to Euro-American models, nor necessarily characterized by the idealism easily invested in overtly counter-hegemonic projects. By examining the show's production process, performance and reception, we re-evaluate how interculturalism in theatre is conceived, urging serious engagement with areas of practice historically grounded and fully independent of both “hegemonic” and “new” intercultural theatre tendencies.

La escena incorpora con frecuencia tecnologías a favor de la comunicación artística, tales como internet, la realidad aumentada, tabletas o teléfonos inteligentes. Gracias a ellas, la última década del siglo XX y las dos décadas transcurridas del XXI han visto formalizarse muchas experiencias teatrales a través de la red. En ese contexto, el confinamiento motivado por la pandemia de covid-19 favoreció la expansión de espectáculos virtuales, muchos de los cuales eran una transformación de su formato físico. Uno de ellos fue Ronem Ram.0, versión previa de la instalación Ronem Ram, la cual aborda el desastre ecológico en el Mar Menor de la Comarca del Campo de Cartagena mediante la especulación artística con base científica. Su creador es Jesús Nieto, director de la compañía Onírica Mecánica, que se enmarca en el teatro de objetos y se caracteriza por la continua investigación de las tecnologías incorporadas a la dramaturgia con gran importancia de la plástica y el sonido escénicos. Este trabajo analiza la pieza enfatizando la relación entre la experiencia virtual y la presencial. Para ello explora desde la recepción de la persona visitante-espectadora cómo la interacción e inmersión planteadas en el recorrido son traspuestas al formato virtual y consiguen generar una experiencia teatral por medio de aprovechar los recursos de la plataforma, los cuales se describen en relación con la dramaturgia espectacular.

La dramaturga Yolanda García Serrano, Premio Nacional de Literatura Dramática 2018 por ¡Corre! y Premio Lope de Vega 2013, es una desconocida para el universo de los estudios críticos, pese a haber publicado y estrenado cerca de cincuenta obras. En este artículo se compila su producción editada y llevada a escena, realizando un recorrido por la misma con objeto de poner en valor su trabajo como creadora y darlo a conocer. Se recogen también en él las estrategias comunicativas empleadas por la autora en su teatro, especialmente en su pieza ¡Corre!, adentrándonos en el texto y el espectáculo al que sirvió de soporte.

This article aims to deepen the understanding of the distribution and reconfiguration of agency and power in relationships between artists from the South and curators from the North. Focusing on the Zürcher Theater Spektakel, an annual performing arts festival in Zürich, Switzerland, it scrutinises the artist-curator relationship through the perspective of the gift rationales. Gift-giving theory can contribute to understanding motifs and logics behind dealings between curator and artist. In order to qualify these interactions, the article fuses gift-giving with relational care ethics. In doing so, it foregrounds the values and ethics that inhabit curator-artist relationships and shows to what degree gift-givers and gift-recipients may influence each other’s work. From this perspective, the article suggests that contemporary curating not only implies that the curator and the artist coproduce artistic performances, rather contemporary curating entails that the curator and the artist coproduce curatorial formats, hence the festival.

Attempts to convey the urgency of the climate crisis often rely on the figure of the child. From Greta Thunberg via school-striking students to the grandchildren invoked in the titles of bestselling books about global warming, appearances of children seem especially effective in protesting the loss of a habitable planet. The iconic child that needs saving (or becomes the planet’s saviour) is equally prominent in British plays about climate change. Drawing on queer critiques of the conceptual short circuit between the child and the future, this article identifies two waves of UK eco-theatre: the first wave endorses hetero-nuclear family bonds and future-oriented thinking; the second wave traces alternative relations to nonhuman, ageing, or ailing Others in the present. The first part of the article revisits critiques of reproductive futurism; the second examines the straight ecologies that characterise the first wave of eco-theatre, based on a detailed analysis of Duncan Macmillan’s play Lungs (Studio Theatre, Washington, DC/Sheffield Crucible, 2011). The final part considers climate-change plays that sever reproductive timelines, as exemplified by Caryl Churchill’s Escaped Alone, Lucy Kirkwood’s The Children, and Stef Smith’s Human Animals (all Royal Court, 2016).

Pendant près d’un demi-siècle, les concours du meilleur bébé constituaient l’une des attractions les plus populaires à l’Exposition nationale canadienne (CNE), une fête foraine annuelle à Toronto. Dans le cadre de ces concours, un panel de juges de la région (des médecins, généralement) attribuait des points aux bébés en fonction de catégories liées à « l’apparence saine, la beauté, les méthodes d’alimentation, l’absence de défauts physiques, la propreté, la tenue vestimentaire soignée et la proportion quant à la taille et le poids » avant d’attribuer le grand prix convoité. Tout comme d’autres sites de culture d’exposition, les concours du meilleur bébé misaient sur les pulsions scopophiliques du public et constituaient un mélange complexe de spectacle et d’édification. S’appuyant à la fois sur des études sur les concours de bébés et la culture d’exposition et sur une synthèse de la couverture médiatique des concours qui avaient lieu au CNE au début du vingtième siècle, Allison Leadley fait valoir que ces événements étaient emblématiques de la culture d’exposition dans leurs qualités formelles et stylistiques, mais aussi dans le travail performatif qu’ils mettaient en œuvre : la création, la promulgation et le maintien de nouvelles visions de la « normalité » façonnées par le domaine en pleine expansion de l’eugénisme.

Walt Disney’s studio created second full-length film Pinocchio in 1940. Its plot and interpretation of the characters were significantly different from the Carlo Collodi’s novel. Disney wrote enthusiastic letter to playwright and director Yasha Frank, who staged Pinocchio as theatre extravaganza in 1937. This production has become a landmark of the Children’s Theatre Project in the framework of Federal Theatre Project, being visually picturesque, inventive and up-to-date according to its social message. It was a story about the complexity of the emergence of a new human, which was especially significant in the context of the ideas of revising the structure of society. There is a reason to see in the Pinocchio script an attempt to substitute theatre dramaturgy by circus language, so essential for the Soviet theater of 1910–20s. The plot was split into numbers performed by professional variety and circus performers, and was reassembled: gags were an organic part of this new plot. However, Frank may not have escaped the influence of animation as well. The article is based on Yasha Frank’s working script, photos and reviews. It examines circus and cinema elements that were used for the theatre’s Pinocchio by Yasha Frank, and its influence to famous Walt Disney’ studio cartoon.

Mairi McFadyen and Raghnaid Sandilands offer an account of various collaborative contributions and activities relating to creative cultural activism in the context of the Ceist an Fhearainn or the ‘Land Question’ in the Gàidhealtachd. They introduce the metaphor of ‘cultural darning and mending’ to describe a playful yet questioning creative approach that invites people to take agency in their own place, entering into an ethical and reciprocal relationship with the land, its past, people and their stories. They argue that the act of ‘taking cultural ownership’ is a vital step in consciousness-raising for land reform, a creative process that allows us to make imaginative connections that cut across time. By drawing on our pasts to assemble environmentally and socially just futures, they suggest that creative, cultural and convivial activism holds the potential to create the circumstances necessary for transformation and change.

Theatre has been associated with contagion and contagious emotions since Plato and Aristotle. In the twentieth century, Antonin Artaud proposed that theatre or performance should be like the plague that takes control of actors’ and spectators’ bodies and infects them with an affective energy. For these infections to happen, however, audiences and actors must be in the same room. In times of the corona pandemic, this spatial proximity has been substituted by theatre mostly performed and/or streamed online. This article offers some preliminary thoughts on this development: it considers what we descriptively call “viral theatre.” We argue that we currently witness a form of viral theatre that manifests itself through an interplay of three aspects: first, the fact that both performers and spectators are in a state of disruption, second, the willingness/expectations on the part of spectators to participate in the event, and, finally, the use of communication technologies such as Zoom. The framework of the pandemic, therefore, enhances and modifies what viral theatre can be and what kind of effect it can have, oscillating between more Platonic notions of dangerous contagion when plays force us to explore questions of complicity and the Aristotelian ideal of cathartic emotions when plays/performers reach out to us for moral support.

The article explores Mojisola Adebayo’s two-hander STARS (preliminary workshop performance, Ovalhouse, 2018) through the lens of Afrofuturism. The play will be discussed in regard to future-making technologies. By analysing the overt as well as subtle references to science fiction and its tropes, this article lays out how Afrofuturism informs the play and how it is formative in liberating the main character. Furthermore, questions of violence against women, forms of resistance, and the function of the imagination will be examined. Adebayo deftly weaves Afrofuturist concerns into the everyday experiences of marginalised groups who face discrimination and exclusion, irrespective of whether their marginalisation is based on culture, gender, or age. Through this, the play offers ways of dealing with bodily and historical trauma and exclusion, while simultaneously addressing violent and harmful practices and power relations. The play may be set in the present and deals with current issues, but its performance of the future – in regard to resistance and liberation – proves to be its central feature.

This article discusses Clare Pollard’s The Weather (Royal Court, 2004) with a focus on how the play critiques the widespread failure to assume responsibility for both personal and collective wrongdoing as symptomatic of the Anthropocene and Capitalocene. More specifically, the paper reads Pollard’s play through the prism of Donna Haraway’s conception of science fiction as a figure, denoting “science fiction, speculative fabulation, string figures, speculative feminism, science fact, so far” (2) in order to demonstrate that it does contain a utopian kernel in its uncovering of the (affective) strings that bind individuals to the logic of the society of consumers (Bauman) and in its final appeal to cut those strings, even though the play does not actually transcend the capitalist imaginary.

This article examines the recent explosion of British dystopian plays, analysing their changing characteristics from the 1990 s to the 2010 s. After an initial brief look at precursors, it then focuses on examples of new writing which tackle the idea of dystopia in the absurdist manner typical of the 2000 s. In a third step, the focus is on the dystopian drama of the 2010 s and its more conventionally structured plots, which at the same time increasingly include ironic and parodistic elements. It becomes clear how this comparatively new genre is able to shake off the constraints of traditional dystopian writing and develop recognisable characteristics of its own. Throughout, emphasis is put on the “reality” of the plays’ fictional worlds, on the usage of the stage space, and on how the audience’s relationship with the stage is constructed as a double bind of distance and closeness.

Collage – the insertion of ready-made materials into artworks or texts – is a technique that has been used in all art forms since the experiments of the early twentieth-century avant-gardes and has, in its different shapes, often been used in theatre performances as well. The British theatre group Forced Entertainment provides a contemporary example of a (post-)avant-garde vocabulary that actively borrows from and transforms the practices of their precursors. They employ a palimpsest-like layering of visual and verbal elements, which I will here define as performative meta-collages. In this article, I will discuss their practice and take a look at the ways in which Forced Entertainment’s performative meta-collages verbalize and produce “future” in one of their recent performances, End Meeting for All, which imagines a scenario that takes place “a year and a day” after the beginning of the COVID-19-triggered lockdown in the spring of 2020.

Dans cet article, Christine Balt examine comment la pièce The Chemical Valley Project, jouée au Théâtre Passe Muraille de Toronto en avril 2019, sert de modèle pour illustrer des méthodes et des pédagogies en théâtre qui permettent de stimuler une action climatique porteuse de sens en théâtre écologique. Plutôt que vouloir comme d’autres trouver une solution de rechange aux récits de « l’inévitable apocalypse » qui caractérisent le théâtre écologique, Balt se demande comment le Chemical Valley Project donne vie à l’idée exprimée par Carl Lavery de « faire de l’écologie » afin de promouvoir le théâtre en tant que ressource capable de proposer des moyens plus affectifs, plus matériels, plus relationnels et porteurs d’espoir qui nous permettront de faire face à cette époque précaire sur le plan écologique. Balt s’intéresse à la manière dont les processus dramaturgiques incarnés et localisés de la pièce constituent un « faire de l’écologie », en passant notamment par le concept d’« appréhension » de Rob Nixon — arrêter et confronter les relations écologiques invisibles qui traversent les différences de temps et d’échelle — et celui d’« esthétique du soin » de James Thompson — où de nouvelles communautés, solidarités et alliances naissent grâce à des moments de participation du public. Balt conclut que l’« appréhension » et une « esthétique du soin » pourraient être mises au service du « faire de l’écologie » ou de pédagogies connexes, lesquels pourraient, à leur tour, aider à formuler une vision plus attentionnée, active et porteuse d’espoir du théâtre écologique et informer des modes d’action décisifs, collectifs et sensibles face à la crise climatique.

In 1806, Longman & Co. publishers commissioned the accomplished actress, playwright, and novelist Elizabeth Inchbald to compose a series of prefatory remarks for the plays to be included in their British Theatre series. One hundred and twenty-five in all, each of the plays for Longman's British Theatre was originally published and sold separately at a rate of about one per week. Once the series was complete, the plays were bound together and sold as a twenty-five-volume set. As the surviving diary entries from the two-year period during which she wrote her Remarks testify, the task proved both arduous and unrelenting for Inchbald, especially as she had no hand in selecting the plays to be included and no control over the order in which she was asked to compose her critical commentaries. Working almost constantly, no sooner had she read one play, drafted her remarks, and copyedited the proof, than she had to turn to the next play sent by Longman, collect her thoughts, and start the process all over again. For the most part, as Annibel Jenkins has noted, “[T]here seems to be no pattern of publishing by date or genre; a tragedy by Shakespeare came out one week and a contemporary comedy the next.” At one point, the strain of this process was so unbearable that Inchbald even tried to renege on her contractual obligations, writing to Longman, “begging to decline any further progress.” This request, as her first biographer, James Boaden, records, Longman “could not be expected to permit; and she was therefore compelled to remark through the whole year.” In the event, and however “dreadful” the task may have been for Inchbald, the widely advertised series proved a “great commercial success,” and Inchbald's Remarks have come down to us as one of the first great achievements in English dramatic criticism of the early nineteenth century.

On the Fourth of July, 1860, the New York Times introduced readers to a new persona treading the minstrel boards: Matinées are the order of the day, two at both the Bowerys, at George Christy's, at Bryant's, and at the Palace Gardens. Here “versatile performers” and “talented danseuses” will diversify the hours of patriotic emotion with comic pantomime and grand “Japanese ballets,” led by “Little Tommy.” Japan has dropped a little into the sere and yellow leaf, perhaps, for the natives, but for the “strangers from the provinces” the land of blacking may still have charms, and we desire that “all such” may understand that the Japan of their dreams will be on exhibition to-night at Miss Laura Keene's Theatre.

Noted British actress Fanny Kemble lived eighty-four years on and off the theatrical and political stages of the nineteenth century. Kemble was an active writer who authored her first five-act play, Francis the First, at the age of eighteen. She would go on to write at least ten other published works, including a second full-length play, multiple journals recording her personal observations, notes on Shakespeare, and poetry collections. While Kemble remained devoted to writing as personal practice throughout her life, her most well-known piece of writing is her 1863 Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation in 1838–1839. Kemble's journal documents her outrage and disgust at the living conditions, harsh daily existence, and enslaved individuals she encountered while living on the two Sea Island plantations that her husband, Pierce Butler, inherited off the coast of Georgia.

This article discusses the role of colonial oppression in creating conflicting perspectives in the reproduction of dance as Indigenous cultural heritage. The debate on kahiko, the ancient Hawaiian dance, of which practice was severely controlled and then revived through the cultural renaissance, demonstrates that the radical deprivation of the practice has created multiple understandings of the dance among different practitioners. Of primary importance in these respects is the intergenerational divide within the dance community, manifest in the critical perspective of the post-renaissance variant of kahiko, which highlights the “continuity” of the practice through the colonial rupture.

This essay is part of a wider research project that has introduced puppets into the drawing studio. Puppets are odd operators, and this is an unorthodox approach to drawing research. In this case, eccentricity is appropriate given that orthodoxies of skilfulness and good drawing are the subject of investigation. Unlike other contemporary practices that utilize puppetry as subject matter, motif and narrative device, this project invites draughtspuppets to make drawings. These draughtspuppets are distinct from automata and other drawing machines, and these distinctions are outlined. The paper focuses on the virtue and value of dexterity. In drawing and in puppet manipulation, dexterity brings scrutiny to the hands as the primary site of action and queries the relationship between ‘good hands’ and ‘good drawing’. The text begins by connecting traditions of dexterity, manipulation, drawing and puppetry before delving into the essence of puppets – their animism and (semi-)autonomy – and the tacit implications of dextrous hands. This article asks the question: can puppet ontologies expose the value of dexterity as a procedural component of (good) drawing? Connecting a range of puppet scholarship, the author’s interactions with the draughtspuppets and over 25 years of teaching experience, this article finally argues for the productive capacity of draughtspuppets to transform orthodox beliefs about the tenets of dexterity and good drawing. In the final passage, the motifs present in the draughtspuppets’ recent drawings are briefly analysed and correlated with this examination.

This article is a very short guide to navigating institutional racism within universities. Focal points of this piece are how institutional racism works, how it can be diagnosed, and how one can invent ways to survive it. The first section of this article is an overall analysis of how institutional racism is set up, particularly in the humanities and arts departments of North American universities. The second section is a step-by-step guide to surviving institutional racism in the university, and particularly in graduate programs. This article is distilled through and explained by first-hand experiences and observations and is written both to archive the structure and affect of the current atmosphere of institutional racism and to document and propose some strategies of awareness and resistance.

Joann Kealiinohomoku's Silhougraphs®, traces of the silhouettes of dancers, were her attempt to operationalize her cultural relativist commitments and create a new method of dance analysis. Silhougraphs illuminate underexamined scholarly presumptions, methods, and tools that both contributed to and paralleled the emergence of dance studies as a discipline. Silhougraphs are also a cautionary tale demonstrating the ways culturally sensitive research commitments and methods can unintentionally yet decisively reiterate tools and logics of racist typologies.