Deep-history issues are applied to prehistoric cave art and mobile figurines in Europe from 40,00... more Deep-history issues are applied to prehistoric cave art and mobile figurines in Europe from 40,000 to 11,000 years ago, as evidence of inner-theatre projections, experienced personally and shared collectively. Prehistoric rites are also investigated with built “temples” and statues at Gobekli Tepe, ’Ain Ghazal, Catalhoyuk, and Malta, regarding public and domestic spaces, animal and human figures, and possible projections of a metaphysical theatre. Relations between inner, social, and spiritual audiences are then explored with San Bushman trance-dances, providing insights about prehistoric cave rites and later “temples.” The political dynamics of territorial, hierarchical, and playful drives are considered, too, with theatrical scripts from ancient Egyptian temple dramas and Nile River ceremonies. Further examples of Middle Eastern ritual dramas are mentioned from Cyprus, Anatolia, Sumer, and Akkadia (Mesopotamia).
A. England's Commonwealth and Restoration Periods (1642-1700), TIMELINE • 1642, the English Commo... more A. England's Commonwealth and Restoration Periods (1642-1700), TIMELINE • 1642, the English Commonwealth Period began with the beheading of Charles I and the Puritan-dominated Parliament in power, then involved several civil wars (1642-46, 1648-49, 1649-51) and the conquest of Ireland (1652)-with no king, but a de facto dictator, Oliver Cromwell (until his death in 1658), and Royalists (Cavaliers) fleeing to the European continent • 1660, the English "Restoration" started when Charles II was invited by Parliament to return from the continent and become king, like his executed father, ending the Commonwealth Period • 1665-66, the Great Plague (Black Death) hit London, killing 100,000 people • 1666, the Great Fire of London destroyed 13,200 homes and many other buildings, including St. Paul's Cathedral, which led to the redesign of many churches and theatres by Christopher Wren • 1685, Charles II died and was succeeded by his brother, James II, but he was Catholic and only ruled for 3 years, due to Parliament's disagreement with his religious tolerance toward non-Anglicans, plus his Catholic son as heir and his potential alliance with France • 1688-1702, James's Anglican daughter, Mary, ruled with her husband, William of Orange (who was also the nephew of James), after he invaded from the Netherlands with a fleet of ships in the "Glorious Revolution" 8 Restoration and Baroque Revolutions (1600s-1700s)
A. Major European Events of the Last Half Century, TIMELINE • 1954, the "Western European Union" ... more A. Major European Events of the Last Half Century, TIMELINE • 1954, the "Western European Union" was established among Cold War allies of the US through NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization, 1949) • 1955, the USSR and seven Eastern European countries, including East Germany, established the "Warsaw Pact," reacting to West Germany joining NATO that year • 1956, Hungary's revolution against Soviet-imposed policies, starting with student protests, led to the Communist government collapsing, a new government forming, and the USSR invading to reassert control • 1968 (May), protests by students and strikes by 11 million workers turned into riots and police violence in France, evoking revolutions in "postmodern" art and theory • 1968 (August), "Prague Spring" reforms in Czechoslovakia, with greater rights for journalism, speech, and travel, ended in a Soviet (USSR and Warsaw Pact) military invasion • 1972 (January), in Derry, Northern Ireland, British soldiers shot 28 unarmed protesters, killing 14, on "Bloody Sunday" • 1972 (September), at the Summer Olympics in Munich, West Germany, Palestinian terrorists killed 11 Israeli athletes and a German policeman • 1978, Polish Cardinal, Karol Wojtyła, became Pope John Paul II, which also encouraged the Solidarity movement in Poland to rebel against atheistic, totalitarian Communism
This chapter considers characteristic aspects of African theatre, through artists in Anglophone c... more This chapter considers characteristic aspects of African theatre, through artists in Anglophone countries: Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Zambia, and South Africa (with black and white artists fighting apartheid). It explores theatre in Caribbean and Latin American nations: Martinique, Trinidad, Jamaica, Cuba, Mexico, Costa Rica, Colombia, Brazil, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, and Argentina. It maps distinctive developments in Canada, including French Canadian and “physical theatre” artists. It considers indigenous theatre in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Papua New Guinea. It maps major developments in Asian-Pacific countries: Australia and New Zealand (including feminist, queer, and ethnic theatre), India, China, Korea, Japan, Singapore, Malaysia, and the Philippines. It explores theatre across the Middle East, in Turkey, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Palestine, and Israel.
This chapter investigates possible Minoan and Mycenaean cultic theatres, 2600–1100 BCE. Then it c... more This chapter investigates possible Minoan and Mycenaean cultic theatres, 2600–1100 BCE. Then it considers the development of ancient Greek theatre with the dithyrambic chorus honoring Dionysus, with Thespis as “answerer” to the chorus, and with the further emergence of many elements in the Western art form, including the Greek theatron, in the 500s–200s. And it explores ancient Roman performances, from theatre spaces and the plays of Seneca, Plautus, and Terence to the violent, mass spectacles of arena games, including the schedule of events, mythic characters, and costumes and props of gladiators—sometimes involving emperors and Christian martyrs as actors.
This chapter maps various realistic and anti-realistic styles, providing a chart of the latter. I... more This chapter maps various realistic and anti-realistic styles, providing a chart of the latter. It relates challenges to traditional views of self, society, and cosmos, from Darwin, Marx, Nietzsche, and Einstein, to psychological realism’s use of the well-made play and naturalism’s study of the human animal. It considers Stanislavski’s acting method, with ties to American artists, plus the propaganda aspects of socialist realism and Nazi marches. It investigates neo-Romantic symbolism, parodied by Jarry. It explores dada as anti-war protest, expressionism as showing social pressures through scenographic distortion, African-American stars emerging through that style, futurism glorifying war and technology, and surrealism drawing on classical myths, personal dreams, and “automatic” writings. It concludes with minimalist and eclectic directors, meta-theatrical playwrights, early book musicals, and improvisational therapies.
This chapter explores the re-emergence of formal theatre in Western Europe, after the fall of the... more This chapter explores the re-emergence of formal theatre in Western Europe, after the fall of the Roman Empire (and restrictions in Byzantium), with English monks performing liturgical drama and the Saxon canoness Hroswitha writing miracle plays in Latin. It considers vernacular biblical plays inside and outside churches, along with an early morality play by the nun, Hildegard von Bingen. It explores the full development of miracle, biblical, and morality plays with specific examples, plus various performance practices, including Jewish Purim plays. It maps distinctive premodern rituals and entertainments in Africa (Malawi, Ethiopia, Egypt, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe). And it considers the deep history of indigenous performances in Australia (with corroborees) and the Americas (in Adena and Cahokia cultures, ancestral Puebloans, Mayas, Aztecs, and Incas).
This chapter explores Artaud’s theatre of cruelty, drawing the audience toward the actor “signali... more This chapter explores Artaud’s theatre of cruelty, drawing the audience toward the actor “signaling through the flames,” and Brecht’s epic theatre of alienation effects (some developed with Piscator) to distance the audience at key points, toward thinking critically and changing society. It considers existentialist and absurdist playwrights, expressing a postwar flattening of metaphysics. It investigates American realism, with Stanislavski’s system taken in different directions, and Odets’s agitprop and domestic plays. It contemplates the poetic, selective realism of Williams and Miller, realized through Mielziner’s scene designs. It also looks at McCarthyism pressuring theatre artists. It concludes with other American developments, including musicals, black revues, Living Newspapers, and extensions of theatricality through the new media of radio and film, especially with Welles.
A. Initial Questions, Terms, and Goals 1. Why study theatre history today-when information about ... more A. Initial Questions, Terms, and Goals 1. Why study theatre history today-when information about the past is readily available on the Web and we are often more concerned about the present and future in our current "postmodern" era? It is important for artists to know the history of their art form. But are there other ways to benefit, too, from a deep yet global sense of theatricality and its many histories (or her-stories)? 2. We all engage in creative play as children, gaining a fuller sense of self (or possible selves) through imaginary interactions with others, sometimes with big people watching, providing a larger symbolic framework. Peers, parents, and other adults also model the roles we take, offering implicit scripts and explicit directions, along with costumes, props, and settings for meaningful identities. This play-acting as children and later in life involves our family, neighborhood, schools, and other communities, yet also television, movies, and interactive online media-expanding the arenas of our self and other awareness. It may also involve "deep play," which performance theorist Richard Schechner explains as mischief, rebellion, games, and gambling with serious risks. Degrees of joyful or deep play continue from our youth into adulthood through formal theatre, sports, and videogames, on various stages with boundaries and rules. 3. Such theatric(k)s extend the animal drives of cooperation and competition from the nurturing, hierarchical, ego-creative, and traumatic 1 Theatricality in Deep History and the Human Brain
This chapter maps American postmodernism, de-centering the modernist authority of the text and un... more This chapter maps American postmodernism, de-centering the modernist authority of the text and universal values toward audience collaboration with fragments and diverse truths. It considers various directions: politics, philosophies, puppetry-animation, clowning, and anthropologies. It investigates the Living and Open Theatres, rock musicals, Blau’s companies and theories, San Francisco Mime Troupe, Bread and Puppet, and Mabou Mines, plus Akalaitis, Taymor, and Irwin. It considers Schechner’s “environmental theatre” and anthropological “performance studies,” plus “post-dramatic” offshoots. It explores Kaprow’s happenings regarding later performance artists. It contemplates the disorienting spectacles of Foreman and Wilson—and other avant-garde artists. It considers Spolin’s “theatre games,” regional theatres, off-off-Broadway, and musical innovations. It also maps the major directors and playwrights of the last half-century, plus various ethnic, feminist, and queer theatre developments.
This chapter investigates ties between nationalist movements, Marxist and Darwinist discoveries, ... more This chapter investigates ties between nationalist movements, Marxist and Darwinist discoveries, Romantic tragedies, and popular melodramas in Europe. It considers various theatre riots in London, Paris, and New York—and different acting styles: natural-inspired or grand-flamboyant (Romantic), studied-declamatory or studied-domestic (Classical), and sincere-realistic. These contending styles, with star actors becoming director-like managers, relate to the emergence of the Dracula figure as well. The chapter looks at black actors performing in whiteface and the development of a systematic emotional acting method (by Delsarte), plus the well-made play formula (by Scribe). It explores various melodramatic types, blackface minstrel shows, and Wild West tours in the US, involving popular, yet demeaning stereotypes—related to “total artwork” directors, vaudeville variety shows, and new technologies for violent spectacles.
This chapter considers the emergence of Italian humanism, through ancient influences, with neocla... more This chapter considers the emergence of Italian humanism, through ancient influences, with neoclassical rules, perspective scenery, Torelli’s scene-changing device, opera, commedia dell’arte, and new theatres, including Teatro Olimpico, which still has its original set for Sophocles’s Oedipus the King. Then it investigates the adoption of neoclassical rules, scenic devices, and commedia by French theatres, plus court ballets and machine plays. It explores the tensions that developed between moral restraint and pleasurable spectacle, political order and satirical insight—in the French Academy’s critique of Corneille’s Le Cid, other attacks on Moliere’s Tartuffe, and the king’s expulsion of the Comedie Italienne.
Cinema, television, videogames, and the Internet have extended theatre’s ghosts into new projecti... more Cinema, television, videogames, and the Internet have extended theatre’s ghosts into new projective technologies. Yet those screen fantasies still hinge upon the communal expression of ghosts within each spectator’s mind: a linking of cranial computers and internal displays to produce a shared illusion. Theatre within the mind, extending to stage and screen performances, manifests the Other in the actor and the specter of the spectator. The persistence of ghosts and gods, in various dramatic media today, can be traced not only to the early history of theatre, in its emergence from communal rituals (as considered in the next chapter), but also to the evolution of the human brain, with its internal stages and screens. Likewise, a long tradition of mind/brain (or soul/body) dualism in Western philosophy, which reached its climax in the early modern, Cartesian Theatre of the mind’s cogito (“I think” therefore I exist), is now being reconsidered, through new views of ghosts in the machinery of the brain. How did the human brain become an internal theatre—and is there a central director or playwright in charge?
T he human species developed its brain parts and their functions over a long, evolutionary time f... more T he human species developed its brain parts and their functions over a long, evolutionary time frame. Using the same cerebral structures in the much briefer timeframe of human history, Euro-American culture has emphasized a more and more independent ego in the mind and society, with democratic rights, capitalist free markets, and consumer choices. A crucial turning point for the modern ego came in the European Renaissance, with its rejection of medieval submission to the Christian God and cosmic order, stressing instead that "man is the measure of all things." Shakespeare's plays are especially significant in showing this shift from a medieval to modern worldview, even as some of his dramas recall (like much of Renaissance art) the classical, Greco-Roman world of the gods. Shakespeare is also significant to the postmodern, not only for scholars but also for popular culture, through recent film versions of his plays and of his early life as a playwright (Shakespeare in Love, dir. John Madden, 1998). His first tragedy as a young playwright, Titus Andronicus, was a popular hit, set in Roman times and obviously influenced by Seneca's Thyestes. 1 But in times since, it has often been an embarrassment to Shakespeare scholars, with its absurdly extreme acts of violence-including a scene of the main character agreeing to have his hand chopped off onstage. 2 And yet, a comparison of this early Shakespearean play with its recent film adaptation by Julie Taymor offers many insights about early modern and postmodern cultures, regarding the shifting figures of ghosts and gods as phantom limbs of the Self, in all the aspects that Ramachandran maps as persistent structures of the human brain.
Neurologist V. S. Ramachandran has discovered certain ghosts in the human brain that serve to ill... more Neurologist V. S. Ramachandran has discovered certain ghosts in the human brain that serve to illuminate the persistent metaphysics of the mind’s theatre, from ancient stages to postmodern screens. Ramachandran argues that the brain does not function like a computer, sending information in a one-way cascade from sense organs to the higher brain centers. His research shows that brain “connections are extraordinarily labile and dynamic” (Ramachandran and Blakeslee 56). He has used mirrors and other devices to help amputees who feel pain and movement in a missing limb. Seeing the illusion of that phantom limb—in a mirror reflecting the patient’s actual arm and hand on the other side—gradually affects a permanent change. It heals the feedback system between the missing limb and the brain’s body-image areas, which had caused phantom sensations with “no countermanding signals … [against] stored pain memories” (54). Ramachandran has also devised experiments for non-amputees, giving them the sensation of a three-foot nose or of a tabletop as the extension of their hands. Ramachandran thus demonstrates that the body image is surprisingly malleable. “Your own body is a phantom, one that your brain has temporarily constructed purely for convenience” (58). He argues that the body image is partly genetic and partly experiential: “the brain has a dual representation, one of the original body image laid down genetically and one ongoing, up-to-date image that can incorporate subsequent changes.”1
Deep-history issues are applied to prehistoric cave art and mobile figurines in Europe from 40,00... more Deep-history issues are applied to prehistoric cave art and mobile figurines in Europe from 40,000 to 11,000 years ago, as evidence of inner-theatre projections, experienced personally and shared collectively. Prehistoric rites are also investigated with built “temples” and statues at Gobekli Tepe, ’Ain Ghazal, Catalhoyuk, and Malta, regarding public and domestic spaces, animal and human figures, and possible projections of a metaphysical theatre. Relations between inner, social, and spiritual audiences are then explored with San Bushman trance-dances, providing insights about prehistoric cave rites and later “temples.” The political dynamics of territorial, hierarchical, and playful drives are considered, too, with theatrical scripts from ancient Egyptian temple dramas and Nile River ceremonies. Further examples of Middle Eastern ritual dramas are mentioned from Cyprus, Anatolia, Sumer, and Akkadia (Mesopotamia).
A. England's Commonwealth and Restoration Periods (1642-1700), TIMELINE • 1642, the English Commo... more A. England's Commonwealth and Restoration Periods (1642-1700), TIMELINE • 1642, the English Commonwealth Period began with the beheading of Charles I and the Puritan-dominated Parliament in power, then involved several civil wars (1642-46, 1648-49, 1649-51) and the conquest of Ireland (1652)-with no king, but a de facto dictator, Oliver Cromwell (until his death in 1658), and Royalists (Cavaliers) fleeing to the European continent • 1660, the English "Restoration" started when Charles II was invited by Parliament to return from the continent and become king, like his executed father, ending the Commonwealth Period • 1665-66, the Great Plague (Black Death) hit London, killing 100,000 people • 1666, the Great Fire of London destroyed 13,200 homes and many other buildings, including St. Paul's Cathedral, which led to the redesign of many churches and theatres by Christopher Wren • 1685, Charles II died and was succeeded by his brother, James II, but he was Catholic and only ruled for 3 years, due to Parliament's disagreement with his religious tolerance toward non-Anglicans, plus his Catholic son as heir and his potential alliance with France • 1688-1702, James's Anglican daughter, Mary, ruled with her husband, William of Orange (who was also the nephew of James), after he invaded from the Netherlands with a fleet of ships in the "Glorious Revolution" 8 Restoration and Baroque Revolutions (1600s-1700s)
A. Major European Events of the Last Half Century, TIMELINE • 1954, the "Western European Union" ... more A. Major European Events of the Last Half Century, TIMELINE • 1954, the "Western European Union" was established among Cold War allies of the US through NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization, 1949) • 1955, the USSR and seven Eastern European countries, including East Germany, established the "Warsaw Pact," reacting to West Germany joining NATO that year • 1956, Hungary's revolution against Soviet-imposed policies, starting with student protests, led to the Communist government collapsing, a new government forming, and the USSR invading to reassert control • 1968 (May), protests by students and strikes by 11 million workers turned into riots and police violence in France, evoking revolutions in "postmodern" art and theory • 1968 (August), "Prague Spring" reforms in Czechoslovakia, with greater rights for journalism, speech, and travel, ended in a Soviet (USSR and Warsaw Pact) military invasion • 1972 (January), in Derry, Northern Ireland, British soldiers shot 28 unarmed protesters, killing 14, on "Bloody Sunday" • 1972 (September), at the Summer Olympics in Munich, West Germany, Palestinian terrorists killed 11 Israeli athletes and a German policeman • 1978, Polish Cardinal, Karol Wojtyła, became Pope John Paul II, which also encouraged the Solidarity movement in Poland to rebel against atheistic, totalitarian Communism
This chapter considers characteristic aspects of African theatre, through artists in Anglophone c... more This chapter considers characteristic aspects of African theatre, through artists in Anglophone countries: Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Zambia, and South Africa (with black and white artists fighting apartheid). It explores theatre in Caribbean and Latin American nations: Martinique, Trinidad, Jamaica, Cuba, Mexico, Costa Rica, Colombia, Brazil, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, and Argentina. It maps distinctive developments in Canada, including French Canadian and “physical theatre” artists. It considers indigenous theatre in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Papua New Guinea. It maps major developments in Asian-Pacific countries: Australia and New Zealand (including feminist, queer, and ethnic theatre), India, China, Korea, Japan, Singapore, Malaysia, and the Philippines. It explores theatre across the Middle East, in Turkey, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Palestine, and Israel.
This chapter investigates possible Minoan and Mycenaean cultic theatres, 2600–1100 BCE. Then it c... more This chapter investigates possible Minoan and Mycenaean cultic theatres, 2600–1100 BCE. Then it considers the development of ancient Greek theatre with the dithyrambic chorus honoring Dionysus, with Thespis as “answerer” to the chorus, and with the further emergence of many elements in the Western art form, including the Greek theatron, in the 500s–200s. And it explores ancient Roman performances, from theatre spaces and the plays of Seneca, Plautus, and Terence to the violent, mass spectacles of arena games, including the schedule of events, mythic characters, and costumes and props of gladiators—sometimes involving emperors and Christian martyrs as actors.
This chapter maps various realistic and anti-realistic styles, providing a chart of the latter. I... more This chapter maps various realistic and anti-realistic styles, providing a chart of the latter. It relates challenges to traditional views of self, society, and cosmos, from Darwin, Marx, Nietzsche, and Einstein, to psychological realism’s use of the well-made play and naturalism’s study of the human animal. It considers Stanislavski’s acting method, with ties to American artists, plus the propaganda aspects of socialist realism and Nazi marches. It investigates neo-Romantic symbolism, parodied by Jarry. It explores dada as anti-war protest, expressionism as showing social pressures through scenographic distortion, African-American stars emerging through that style, futurism glorifying war and technology, and surrealism drawing on classical myths, personal dreams, and “automatic” writings. It concludes with minimalist and eclectic directors, meta-theatrical playwrights, early book musicals, and improvisational therapies.
This chapter explores the re-emergence of formal theatre in Western Europe, after the fall of the... more This chapter explores the re-emergence of formal theatre in Western Europe, after the fall of the Roman Empire (and restrictions in Byzantium), with English monks performing liturgical drama and the Saxon canoness Hroswitha writing miracle plays in Latin. It considers vernacular biblical plays inside and outside churches, along with an early morality play by the nun, Hildegard von Bingen. It explores the full development of miracle, biblical, and morality plays with specific examples, plus various performance practices, including Jewish Purim plays. It maps distinctive premodern rituals and entertainments in Africa (Malawi, Ethiopia, Egypt, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe). And it considers the deep history of indigenous performances in Australia (with corroborees) and the Americas (in Adena and Cahokia cultures, ancestral Puebloans, Mayas, Aztecs, and Incas).
This chapter explores Artaud’s theatre of cruelty, drawing the audience toward the actor “signali... more This chapter explores Artaud’s theatre of cruelty, drawing the audience toward the actor “signaling through the flames,” and Brecht’s epic theatre of alienation effects (some developed with Piscator) to distance the audience at key points, toward thinking critically and changing society. It considers existentialist and absurdist playwrights, expressing a postwar flattening of metaphysics. It investigates American realism, with Stanislavski’s system taken in different directions, and Odets’s agitprop and domestic plays. It contemplates the poetic, selective realism of Williams and Miller, realized through Mielziner’s scene designs. It also looks at McCarthyism pressuring theatre artists. It concludes with other American developments, including musicals, black revues, Living Newspapers, and extensions of theatricality through the new media of radio and film, especially with Welles.
A. Initial Questions, Terms, and Goals 1. Why study theatre history today-when information about ... more A. Initial Questions, Terms, and Goals 1. Why study theatre history today-when information about the past is readily available on the Web and we are often more concerned about the present and future in our current "postmodern" era? It is important for artists to know the history of their art form. But are there other ways to benefit, too, from a deep yet global sense of theatricality and its many histories (or her-stories)? 2. We all engage in creative play as children, gaining a fuller sense of self (or possible selves) through imaginary interactions with others, sometimes with big people watching, providing a larger symbolic framework. Peers, parents, and other adults also model the roles we take, offering implicit scripts and explicit directions, along with costumes, props, and settings for meaningful identities. This play-acting as children and later in life involves our family, neighborhood, schools, and other communities, yet also television, movies, and interactive online media-expanding the arenas of our self and other awareness. It may also involve "deep play," which performance theorist Richard Schechner explains as mischief, rebellion, games, and gambling with serious risks. Degrees of joyful or deep play continue from our youth into adulthood through formal theatre, sports, and videogames, on various stages with boundaries and rules. 3. Such theatric(k)s extend the animal drives of cooperation and competition from the nurturing, hierarchical, ego-creative, and traumatic 1 Theatricality in Deep History and the Human Brain
This chapter maps American postmodernism, de-centering the modernist authority of the text and un... more This chapter maps American postmodernism, de-centering the modernist authority of the text and universal values toward audience collaboration with fragments and diverse truths. It considers various directions: politics, philosophies, puppetry-animation, clowning, and anthropologies. It investigates the Living and Open Theatres, rock musicals, Blau’s companies and theories, San Francisco Mime Troupe, Bread and Puppet, and Mabou Mines, plus Akalaitis, Taymor, and Irwin. It considers Schechner’s “environmental theatre” and anthropological “performance studies,” plus “post-dramatic” offshoots. It explores Kaprow’s happenings regarding later performance artists. It contemplates the disorienting spectacles of Foreman and Wilson—and other avant-garde artists. It considers Spolin’s “theatre games,” regional theatres, off-off-Broadway, and musical innovations. It also maps the major directors and playwrights of the last half-century, plus various ethnic, feminist, and queer theatre developments.
This chapter investigates ties between nationalist movements, Marxist and Darwinist discoveries, ... more This chapter investigates ties between nationalist movements, Marxist and Darwinist discoveries, Romantic tragedies, and popular melodramas in Europe. It considers various theatre riots in London, Paris, and New York—and different acting styles: natural-inspired or grand-flamboyant (Romantic), studied-declamatory or studied-domestic (Classical), and sincere-realistic. These contending styles, with star actors becoming director-like managers, relate to the emergence of the Dracula figure as well. The chapter looks at black actors performing in whiteface and the development of a systematic emotional acting method (by Delsarte), plus the well-made play formula (by Scribe). It explores various melodramatic types, blackface minstrel shows, and Wild West tours in the US, involving popular, yet demeaning stereotypes—related to “total artwork” directors, vaudeville variety shows, and new technologies for violent spectacles.
This chapter considers the emergence of Italian humanism, through ancient influences, with neocla... more This chapter considers the emergence of Italian humanism, through ancient influences, with neoclassical rules, perspective scenery, Torelli’s scene-changing device, opera, commedia dell’arte, and new theatres, including Teatro Olimpico, which still has its original set for Sophocles’s Oedipus the King. Then it investigates the adoption of neoclassical rules, scenic devices, and commedia by French theatres, plus court ballets and machine plays. It explores the tensions that developed between moral restraint and pleasurable spectacle, political order and satirical insight—in the French Academy’s critique of Corneille’s Le Cid, other attacks on Moliere’s Tartuffe, and the king’s expulsion of the Comedie Italienne.
Cinema, television, videogames, and the Internet have extended theatre’s ghosts into new projecti... more Cinema, television, videogames, and the Internet have extended theatre’s ghosts into new projective technologies. Yet those screen fantasies still hinge upon the communal expression of ghosts within each spectator’s mind: a linking of cranial computers and internal displays to produce a shared illusion. Theatre within the mind, extending to stage and screen performances, manifests the Other in the actor and the specter of the spectator. The persistence of ghosts and gods, in various dramatic media today, can be traced not only to the early history of theatre, in its emergence from communal rituals (as considered in the next chapter), but also to the evolution of the human brain, with its internal stages and screens. Likewise, a long tradition of mind/brain (or soul/body) dualism in Western philosophy, which reached its climax in the early modern, Cartesian Theatre of the mind’s cogito (“I think” therefore I exist), is now being reconsidered, through new views of ghosts in the machinery of the brain. How did the human brain become an internal theatre—and is there a central director or playwright in charge?
T he human species developed its brain parts and their functions over a long, evolutionary time f... more T he human species developed its brain parts and their functions over a long, evolutionary time frame. Using the same cerebral structures in the much briefer timeframe of human history, Euro-American culture has emphasized a more and more independent ego in the mind and society, with democratic rights, capitalist free markets, and consumer choices. A crucial turning point for the modern ego came in the European Renaissance, with its rejection of medieval submission to the Christian God and cosmic order, stressing instead that "man is the measure of all things." Shakespeare's plays are especially significant in showing this shift from a medieval to modern worldview, even as some of his dramas recall (like much of Renaissance art) the classical, Greco-Roman world of the gods. Shakespeare is also significant to the postmodern, not only for scholars but also for popular culture, through recent film versions of his plays and of his early life as a playwright (Shakespeare in Love, dir. John Madden, 1998). His first tragedy as a young playwright, Titus Andronicus, was a popular hit, set in Roman times and obviously influenced by Seneca's Thyestes. 1 But in times since, it has often been an embarrassment to Shakespeare scholars, with its absurdly extreme acts of violence-including a scene of the main character agreeing to have his hand chopped off onstage. 2 And yet, a comparison of this early Shakespearean play with its recent film adaptation by Julie Taymor offers many insights about early modern and postmodern cultures, regarding the shifting figures of ghosts and gods as phantom limbs of the Self, in all the aspects that Ramachandran maps as persistent structures of the human brain.
Neurologist V. S. Ramachandran has discovered certain ghosts in the human brain that serve to ill... more Neurologist V. S. Ramachandran has discovered certain ghosts in the human brain that serve to illuminate the persistent metaphysics of the mind’s theatre, from ancient stages to postmodern screens. Ramachandran argues that the brain does not function like a computer, sending information in a one-way cascade from sense organs to the higher brain centers. His research shows that brain “connections are extraordinarily labile and dynamic” (Ramachandran and Blakeslee 56). He has used mirrors and other devices to help amputees who feel pain and movement in a missing limb. Seeing the illusion of that phantom limb—in a mirror reflecting the patient’s actual arm and hand on the other side—gradually affects a permanent change. It heals the feedback system between the missing limb and the brain’s body-image areas, which had caused phantom sensations with “no countermanding signals … [against] stored pain memories” (54). Ramachandran has also devised experiments for non-amputees, giving them the sensation of a three-foot nose or of a tabletop as the extension of their hands. Ramachandran thus demonstrates that the body image is surprisingly malleable. “Your own body is a phantom, one that your brain has temporarily constructed purely for convenience” (58). He argues that the body image is partly genetic and partly experiential: “the brain has a dual representation, one of the original body image laid down genetically and one ongoing, up-to-date image that can incorporate subsequent changes.”1
Gibson’s film extends a long tradition of Euro-American passion plays and martyr dramas, related ... more Gibson’s film extends a long tradition of Euro-American passion plays and martyr dramas, related also to the ritual sacrifice of “god-actors” in other cultures. Yet, the extreme violence of this popular religious movie involves the devotional dangers of cinematic sadomasochism and melodramatic paranoia, with Jews, Romans, and devils as villainous stereotypes–as well as the potential value of tragic catharsis–on a vast scale for today’s mass-media audience, especially in the post-9/11 context.
... is only "intended to open a door to cognitive studies for theatre and performance ... an... more ... is only "intended to open a door to cognitive studies for theatre and performance ... and empirical research about the mind's embodiment: how "having a human body guarantees that people's minds will produce a certain number of unchanging, cross-cultural, perhaps even ...
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