Search

Author(s): Martin Aeschlimann [1]; Michael Bauer [2]; Daniela Bayer [1]; Tobias Brixner (corresponding author) [3]; F. Javier García de Abajo [4]; Walter Pfeiffer [5]; Martin Rohmer [1]; Christian Spindler [3]; [...]

Derek Wright. Twayne's World Authors Series. New York: Twayne, 1993. 220 pages. Much has been published about Wole Soyinka over the last years, but a great deal of scholarly research [...]

In large part due to the relative lack of productions in Europe, the plays of Wole Soyinka have mostly been approached from a literary point of view rather than analyzed as theatrical events. Because the plays rely heavily on non-verbal conventions, this neglect of visual and acoustic patterns promotes an incomplete understanding of Soyinka's idea of theatre. Here, for the first time, a play by Soyinka is analyzed from the point of view of performance - specifically, the production of Death and the King's Horseman staged at the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester, in 1990. Martin Rohmer examines the transformation of playscript into mise-en-scene, focusing in particular on the use of music and dance, but looking also at the production as an intercultural event - asking not only how far a European company has to rely on African performing skills, but how far a European cast and audience is capable of a proper understanding of the play. This article is a revised version of a lecture delivered at the Conference of the Association for the Study of the New Literatures in English, held in Bayreuth in June 1992. Martin Rohmer studied Drama, German Literature, Anthropology, and Philosophy in Munich, and Theatre, Film and TV Studies at the University of Glasgow, before completing his MA in Munich in 1992. Presently he is a Research Assistant at the University of Bayreuth, where he is working on a PhD on the performing arts in Zimbabwe.

Coherent control of ultrafast nano-optical excitations of a corrugated silver surface is demonstrated by means of predetermined few-parameter scans and adaptive polarization laser pulse shaping. “Hot spots” in the multiphoton photoemission signals are enhanced and manipulated with a high contrast. Switching between separated and closely spaced hot spots is shown. The latter allows controlling the shape of hot spots and yields improved nanofocusing and “purification” of the photoemission signals. Complex pulse shapes were obtained in adaptive optimizations whose features were reproducible in repeated runs. Predetermined few-parameter control scans provide insight into the interpretation of optimal pulse shapes. The results indicate the existence of long coherence lifetimes on a corrugated silver surface. This combination of collective strong nanoplasmonic near-field enhancement and long-lived coherence may be used to achieve an even stronger field enhancement (“superenhancement”) making these hot spots ideal candidates for future nanophotonic, spectroscopic, sensor and quantum information applications. In addition the observation of such long coherence lifetimes is relevant to the understanding of surface-enhanced spectroscopies such as single-molecule Raman spectroscopy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]