NEWARTTHEATRE Evolutions of the Performance Aesthetic
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Prof. Siemund
Veranstalter: Dennis Büscher-Ulbrich Off-Off-Broadway and Beyond: Experimental Theatre Thema: and Avant-Garde Performance 1945–1970 [AA-A3, ENG-7, AA-W] Art der Veranstaltung: Seminar Ib Veranstaltungsnummer: 53-561 Zeit: Mo 18-20 Raum: Phil 1269 Beginn: 17. Oktober 2011 Course Description: The early developing OFF-OFF- BROADWAY MOVEMENT of the 1950s and 1960s sought freedom from the various constraints — aesthetically and otherwise — of conventional theatre. Mainstream theatre at the time was dominated by the musical and the psycho- logical drama, spawning pro- ductions that were conceived as business ventures and, if successful, packaged and toured. The notion of theatre as a packaged commodity offended the avant-garde sensibilities of artists who observed the psycho- logical and physical constraints built within the theatrical space itself. Instead, they enthusi- astically turned to alternative sites and experimental forms, eventually collapsing the dis- tinction between theatre and PERFORMANCE ART. While con- ventional theatre taught the spectator to lose herself in the fictional onstage time, space, and characters, avant-garde theatre and performance relied on the spectator’s complete consciousness of the present, i.e. the real time and space shared by audience and performers. The primary importance of the spectator’s consciousness of the present is that she is an active force in creating the theatrical event rather than a passive observer of a ready-made production. To approach this phenomenon, we will be looking closely at three significant avant-garde moments in postwar American theatre and performance: THE LIVING THEATRE, HAPPENINGS/FLUXUS, and the BLACK ARTS MOVEMENT. We will analyze and discuss experimental plays that still work within the confines of theatrical space, like The Connection (1959) and Dutchman (1964), semi-improvisational and interactive plays, like Paradise Now (1967), as well as Happenings and other ‘far-out’ performances. -
Performance Is a Genre in Which Art Is Presented "Live," Usually by the Artist but Sometimes with Collaborators Or Performers
QUICK VIEW: Synopsis Performance is a genre in which art is presented "live," usually by the artist but sometimes with collaborators or performers. It has had a role in avant-garde art throughout the 20th century, playing an important part in anarchic movements such as Futurism and Dada. Indeed, whenever artists have become discontented with conventional forms of art, such as painting and traditional modes of sculpture, they have often turned to performance as a means to rejuvenate their work. The most significant flourishing of Performance art took place following the decline of modernism and Abstract Expressionism in the 1960s, and it found exponents across the world. Performance art of this period was particularly focused on the body, and is often referred to as Body Art. This reflects the period's so- called 'dematerialization of the art object,' and the flight from traditional media. It also reflects the political ferment of the time: the rise of feminism, which encouraged thought about the division between the personal and political; and anti-war activism, which supplied models for politicized art 'actions.' Although the concerns of performance artists have changed since the 1960s, the genre has remained a constant presence, and has largely been welcomed into the conventional museums and galleries from which it was once excluded. Key Points The foremost purpose of Performance art has almost always been to challenge the conventions of traditional forms of visual art such as painting and sculpture. When these modes no longer seem to answer artists' needs - when they seem too conservative, or to enmeshed in the traditional art world and too distant from ordinary people - artists have often turned to Performance in order to find new audiences and test new ideas. -
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Teresa de Lauretis Futurism: A Postmodern View* The importance of Modernism and of the artistic movements of the first twenty or so years of this century need not be stressed. It is now widely acknowledged that the "historical avant-garde" was the crucible for most of the art forms and theories of art that made up the contemporary esthetic climate. This is evidenced, more than by the recently coined academic terms "neoavanguardia" and "postmodernism," 1 by objective trends in the culture of the last two decades: the demand for closer ties between artistic perfor- mance and real-life interaction, which presupposes a view of art as social communicative behavior; the antitraditionalist thrust toward interdisciplinary or even non-disciplinary academic curri- cula; the experimental character of all artistic production; the increased awareness of the material qualities of art and its depen- dence on physical and technological possibilities, on the one hand; on the other, its dependence on social conventions or semiotic codes that can be exposed, broken, rearranged, transformed. I think we can agree that the multi-directional thrust of the arts and their expansion to the social and the pragmatic domain, the attempts to break down distinctions between highbrow and popular art, the widening of the esthetic sphere to encompass an unprecedented range of phenomena, the sense of fast, continual movement in the culture, of rapid obsolescence and a potential transformability of forms are issues characteristic of our time. Many were already implicit, often explicit, in the project of the historical avant-garde. But whereas this connection has been established and pursued for Surrealism and Dada, for example, Italian Futurism has remained rather peripheral in the current reassessment; indeed one could say that it has been marginalized and effectively ignored. -
ON PAIN in PERFORMANCE ART by Jareh Das
BEARING WITNESS: ON PAIN IN PERFORMANCE ART by Jareh Das Thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of PhD Department of Geography Royal Holloway, University of London, 2016 1 Declaration of Authorship I, Jareh Das hereby declare that this thesis and the work presented in it is entirely my own. Where I have consulted the work of others, this is always clearly stated. Signed: Date: 19th December 2016 2 Acknowledgments This thesis is the result of the generosity of the artists, Ron Athey, Martin O’Brien and Ulay. They, who all continue to create genre-bending and deeply moving works that allow for multiple readings of the body as it continues to evolve alongside all sort of cultural, technological, social, and political shifts. I have numerous friends, family (Das and Krys), colleagues and acQuaintances to thank all at different stages but here, I will mention a few who have been instrumental to this process – Deniz Unal, Joanna Reynolds, Adia Sowho, Emmanuel Balogun, Cleo Joseph, Amanprit Sandhu, Irina Stark, Denise Kwan, Kirsty Buchanan, Samantha Astic, Samantha Sweeting, Ali McGlip, Nina Valjarevic, Sara Naim, Grace Morgan Pardo, Ana Francisca Amaral, Anna Maria Pinaka, Kim Cowans, Rebecca Bligh, Sebastian Kozak and Sabrina Grimwood. They helped me through the most difficult parts of this thesis, and some were instrumental in the editing of this text. (Jo, Emmanuel, Anna Maria, Grace, Deniz, Kirsty and Ali) and even encouraged my initial application (Sabrina and Rebecca). I must add that without the supervision and support of Professor Harriet Hawkins, this thesis would not have been completed. -
Itinera N. 3, 2012
Futurism and Experimentation in Italian Theater in the Late 20th Century di Alberto Bentoglio Abstract This paper aims to understand whether and to which extent the Futur- ism theory of theatre and its practices have influenced the Italian con- temporary scene. Common opinion still has it that Futurism has left lit- tle to no legacy in the Italian theatre, and we cannot properly speak of neo-futurism or of an active Futurist avant-garde. Nonetheless, taking a closer look at some of most significant figures in Italian experimental theatre (for example, Ivrea Manifesto’s project, Carmelo Bene, Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio) this paper aims to underline the many elements that trace back to Futurist’s theatre, suggesting the need to re-read futurist artistic experiences – at least in the field of performing arts – as con- structive practices aimed at the building of a new kind of theatre. In this paper I shall try to understand whether and to which extent the shades of Futurism in and on theatre have been present on the Italian scene. Common opinion still has it that Futurism has left little legacy in the practices of contemporary Italian theatre. Differently from the visual arts, architecture and literature, futurist influences have often been local. According to Silvio D’Amico’s and Renato Simoni’s old and, in my opinion, no more valid belief, they are limited exclusively to sce- nography: «Forse, nel campo del teatro, le influenze futuriste più appa- riscenti si sono avute in materia di scenografia […]. Da ricordare a questo proposito il nome del pittore Enrico Prampolini» (Probably, in the field of theatre, the most evident futurist influences concern sceno- graphy […]. -
Asian Theatre As Method the Toki Experimental Project and Sino-Japanese Transnationalism in Performance Rossella Ferrari
Asian Theatre as Method The Toki Experimental Project and Sino-Japanese Transnationalism in Performance Rossella Ferrari The Sino-Japanese collaboration Zhuhuan shiyan jihua: yishu baocun he fazhan (Toki Experimental Project: Preservation and Development of the Traditional Performing Arts),1 is an intercultural and intergeneric performance network that brings together practitioners of kunqu, or kunju (Kun opera) — the oldest extant form of indigenous Chinese theatre (xiqu) — Japanese noh, and contemporary dance and theatre from Japan and the Sinophone region. Formally inau- gurated in 2012, Toki is a joint initiative of Sato\ Makoto, a pioneer of Japanese underground (angura) theatre and artistic director of Tokyo’s Za-Koenji Public Theatre, and Danny Yung Ning-tsun, an avantgarde theatre pioneer and coartistic director of Hong Kong’s leading trans- medial arts collective, Zuni Icosahedron, in partnership with the Jiangsu sheng yanyi jituan kunju yuan ( Jiangsu Performing Arts Group Kun Opera Theatre), based in Nanjing, China. 1. These are, respectively, the official Chinese and English denominations of the project, as chosen by the organizers. The same applies to all bilingual Chinese-English performance titles provided in the remainder of this essay. TDR: The Drama Review 61:3 (T235) Fall 2017. ©2017 New York University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 141 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/DRAM_a_00678 by guest on 26 September 2021 Originating from a commissioned showpiece for the Japan Pavilion at World Expo 2010 in Shanghai, Zhuhuan de gushi (The Tale of the Crested Ibis), the tri-city collaboration between Tokyo, Hong Kong, and Nanjing subsequently evolved into a regular series of workshops, sem- inars, and performance coproductions devoted to the regeneration and transmission of kunqu and noh — both proclaimed Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity in 2001 by UNESCO — through the medium of contemporary performance. -
Saeli Eshelman HAVC 191P/Winter 2016 Laura Richard March 16, 2016 Tehching Hsieh's Outdoor Piece: the Invisibility of Hegemoni
Saeli Eshelman HAVC 191P/Winter 2016 Laura Richard March 16, 2016 Tehching Hsieh’s Outdoor Piece: The Invisibility of Hegemonic Poaching in the Public Sphere In 1981, Taiwanese endurance artist Tehching Hsieh ventured out into the streets of New York City and proceeded to live outdoors for a full year, ending the piece (aptly titled Outdoor Piece) in 1982. In this yearlong derive of sorts, Hsieh essentially takes on the identity of a homeless individual—although “houseless” would be a more apt description of his type of purposeful displacement—calling into question tensions between public and private spaces and their impact on our everyday lives, as well as the way in which public spaces are navigated on a daily basis.1 Throughout the late-1970s to mid-1980s, Hsieh embarked on a number of other yearlong endurance performances that included living in a cage (One Year Performance 1978-79 (Cage Piece)—Fig. 1), punching a time clock every hour (One Year Performance 1980-81 (Time Clock Piece)—Fig. 6), being tied to fellow artist Linda Montano with a rope (Art/Life: One Year Performance 1983-84 (Rope Piece)—Fig. 2), and living without “art” (One Year Performance 1985-86 (No Art Piece)—Fig. 3). He then concluded this series of works with a final performance entitled Tehching Hsieh 1986-1999 (Thirteen Year Plan) (Fig. 14), during which Hsieh created art, but would not show it publicly. While the subject matter and corresponding themes that Hsieh grapples with in these works varies greatly—from conceptions of solitude to time, human relations to art—he remains 1 Ben Highmore, “Michel de Certeau’s Poetics of Everyday Life,” in Everyday Life and Cultural Theory: An Introduction (London: Routledge, 2002), 137; Adrian Heathfield and Tehching Hsieh, Out of Now: The Lifeworks of Tehching Hsieh (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2008), 38. -
Echoes of the Avant-Garde in American Minimalist Opera
ECHOES OF THE AVANT-GARDE IN AMERICAN MINIMALIST OPERA Ryan Scott Ebright A dissertation submitted to the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Music. Chapel Hill 2014 Approved by: Mark Katz Tim Carter Brigid Cohen Annegret Fauser Philip Rupprecht © 2014 Ryan Scott Ebright ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii ABSTRACT Ryan Scott Ebright: Echoes of the Avant-garde in American Minimalist Opera (Under the direction of Mark Katz) The closing decades of the twentieth century witnessed a resurgence of American opera, led in large part by the popular and critical success of minimalism. Based on repetitive musical structures, minimalism emerged out of the fervid artistic intermingling of mid twentieth- century American avant-garde communities, where music, film, dance, theater, technology, and the visual arts converged. Within opera, minimalism has been transformational, bringing a new, accessible musical language and an avant-garde aesthetic of experimentation and politicization. Thus, minimalism’s influence invites a reappraisal of how opera has been and continues to be defined and experienced at the turn of the twenty-first century. “Echoes of the Avant-garde in American Minimalist Opera” offers a critical history of this subgenre through case studies of Philip Glass’s Satyagraha (1980), Steve Reich’s The Cave (1993), and John Adams’s Doctor Atomic (2005). This project employs oral history and archival research as well as musical, dramatic, and dramaturgical analyses to investigate three interconnected lines of inquiry. The first traces the roots of these operas to the aesthetics and practices of the American avant-garde communities with which these composers collaborated early in their careers. -
Artaud, Living Theatre, Performance Group: Unsuccessful Catalysts for Lasting Cultural Change
Artaud, Living Theatre, Performance Group: Unsuccessful Catalysts for Lasting Cultural Change Prepared by Meghan Landon, B.F.A. Theatre Performance, Kean University Class of 2019 with E. Teresa Choate, Ph.D., Kean University Keywords: Antonin Artaud, theatre, Theatre of Cruelty, Dionysus in '69, The Living Theatre Page 1 of 24 Abstract Theatre actors have been progressively taking ideas from other artists and building on them since the concept of theatrical performance began. It is important then, for each group to look at the artists who have come before and either emulate them, clarify their work, or create new work themselves. Henrik Ibsen, a 19th century Norwegian playwright and director, later reached great acclaim for his ground-breaking work, A Doll’s House. For this and some of his other works (e.g. Hedda Gabler and Ghosts), Ibsen is commonly known as the Father of Realism. His plays brought true life onstage, and he sought to teach the audience a moral lesson. Ibsen’s work propelled realism into the forefront, which, after a time, became outdated and new styles of theatre emerged. Page 2 of 24 Introduction As theatre artists tired of the realism brought into play by Ibsen and his contemporaries, later theatre artists, such as Ellen Stewart of La MaMa and Joseph Chaikin of the Open Theatre, began to forge new paths into what they believed theatre could be if the art form steered away from convention. In the United States, new anti-theatrical establishment mentality stemmed from the works of Antonin Artaud, a 20th century French theorist who seemed to fail at all he attempted. -
On Working with Lucinda Childs, a Choreographer Whose Work Endures by Megan Bridge
On working with Lucinda Childs, a choreographer whose work endures by Megan Bridge Working as a professional dancer for a living wage is increasingly rare in today’s cultural funding climate. In Philadelphia, much dance funding is provided by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage through Dance Advance*, an organization which stipulates minimum hourly pay rates for dancers in the budget section of its grant application. There is stiff competition among Philadelphia dancers to land a Pew- funded project; along with four others (Marie Brown, Bethany Formica, Nora Gibson, and Annie Wilson) I am involved in such a project now. I’m a full-time dancer for three weeks, getting paid to take technique class from Ty Boomershine every morning and rehearse with choreographer Lucinda Childs each afternoon, learning two of her 1977 works: Melody Excerpt and Interior Drama. Many know Childs for her role as a member of Judson Dance Theater. But it’s her minimalist works, notably her collaborations with composer Phillip Glass(Einstein on the Beachand Dance) that catapulted her out of the 1970s experimental dance scene in New York and into the role of a major international artist. According to Childs, “Judson was an important era for me. I employed a lot of the same ideas in my later work, limiting myself to very simple movement, but I eliminated the use of props and monologues.” The Judson choreographers all followed their own post-Judson paths, continuing to define the genre of post-modernism in dance and branching out into new forms (Steve Paxton and contact improvisation, Childs and minimalism). -
Richard Foreman Is Angry
Liminalities: A Journal of Performance Studies 2.3 (2006) Richard Foreman is Angry Interview with Laura Winton Richard Foreman has created over 50 plays, for which he has received 5 Obie awards for best play and 5 others for his directing and “sustained achievement.” He has received a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship, the PEN Club Master American Dramatist Award, and an award from the National Endowment for the Arts for “Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre.” In 1968 he founded the Ontological- Hysterical Theatre, housed at New York’s St. Mark’s Church in the Bowery, which has also been home to the influential Poetry Project since 1966. Foreman describes his work as “total theatre,” uniting “elements of the performative, auditory and visual arts, philosophy, psychoanalysis and literature.” His work is known for its nonlinear structures and exploration of language as well as for his unique stagings, fantastic costumes and sets. His work is difficult to sum up or generalize, but to say Richard Foreman’s theatre conjures a certain type of work for those who have experienced it, and it is, in fact, the experience that people talk about most. His plays have been collected and published in several volumes, along with his writing notes and manifestos, including Unbalancing acts: foundations for a theater, Reverberation machines: the later plays and essays, Plays and manifestos, No-body, My head was a sledgehammer, and Love & Laura Winton is a writer, performer, and doctoral candidate in the Department of Theatre at the University of Minnesota. She creates experimental works, often in the Dada and Surrealist tradition, and frequently works under the name Fluffy Singler. -
Syllabus Theatre 1903 Avant-Garde Theatre.Pages
Teatre 1903 Avant-Garde Teatre: Symbolism to Surrealism Term: Spring 2015 Instructor: Peter Wood Section #: 28451 email: [email protected] Location: 1627 cell phone: 347.416.4515 Time: Tues/Turs 4:00 - 5:15pm Office: 1612 Office Hours: Tursday, 1:00 - 3:30 COURSE DESCRIPTION From installation theatre like Sleep No More to the work of companies like Quantum Teatre, the Neo-Futurists, and the Wooster Group, there are many ways in which contemporary theatres experiment with form, structure, venue, and performance styles. Tis course will provide context and connections between contemporary experimental theatre and the historical avant-garde. We will examine the following movements: Symbolism, Expressionism, Futurism, Dada, and Surrealism. Looking at the theories and key texts associated with these movements, as well as their social and political moment in history, we will question how each movement impacted the theatre of the time, as well as what affects they may have on contemporary theatre. We will also question the presumptions and mythologies that have built up around each of the various avant-garde movements, looking at texts that argue for a greater understanding of how women participated in the avant-garde as well as the ways in which transnational theatrical practices impacted and infuenced these movements that are often thought of only in terms of European men. Students will be expected to conduct research as well as create performances and other styles of art that refect each of these avant-garde movements. Te course will culminate in a research paper that bridges the historical avant-garde with contemporary experimental practices.