Fresh perspectives on political theater and its essential contribution to contemporary culture. Focused studies of individual plays complement broad-based discussions of the place of theater in a radically democratic society. This consistently challenging collection describes the art of change confronting the actual processes of change. 17 photos.
Focusing on the experiences of people in Russia and Ukraine, Staging Democracy shows how some national leaders' seeming popularity rests on local economic compacts. Jessica Pisano draws on long-term research in rural communities and company towns, analyzing how local political and business leaders, seeking favor from incumbent politicians, used salaries, benefits, and public infrastructure to pressure citizens to participate in command performances. Pisano looks at elections whose outcome was known in advance, protests for hire, and smaller mises en scène to explain why people participate, what differs from spectacle in totalitarian societies, how political theater exists in both authoritarian and democratic systems, and how such performances reshape understandings of the role of politics. Staging Democracy moves beyond Russia and Ukraine to offer a novel economic argument for why some people support Putin and similar politicians. Pisano suggests we can analyze politics in both democracies and authoritarian regimes using the same analytical lens of political theater.
This fresh and original study analyses how power presents itself in dramatic performance in these two increasingly economically and politically important continents. Emotion and politics play a hugely important role in the politics of Asia and Africa but, as this book sets out, too much of western political research into the subject concentrates on apparent deficiencies - on the weakness of institutions, defects in the bureaucracy or markets, poor management of elections, absent judicial autonomy. Viewing political performance through Western eyes in this way - where politics is primarily about the naked pursuit of power and interests - can lead to a misunderstanding of how politics actually works in Africa and Asia, where process plays a far more important role. Thus performance, drama and emotion are far more integral to political outcome there than in the West. By concentrating on this new perspective the authors, each a recognised specialist in one or more states in Asia and Africa, avoid this trap and offer a coherent picture of the impact political performance has on the culture and politics of these societies and how they function.
In a series of readings, the author examines Shakespeare's five major history plays and accounts for their continued popularity, both in film and on stage. He examines the historical context out of which the plays emerged, and describes how the period gave birth to a modern form of politics.
In Staging Politics and Gender , Cecilia Beach examines the political and feminist plays of French playwrights who have largely been overlooked until now. Beach highlights the importance of theatrical endeavors which women perceived as a powerful way to promote political opinions. The author analyzes the work of Louise Michel, Nelly Roussel, Marie Leneru, Vera Starkoff, and Madeline Pelletier and discusses anarchist theatre and forms of social protest theatre at the turn of the century.
Neoliberalism in Mexico - characterized by free markets, by the privitization of thousands of State enterprises, and by influence from Washington and Wall Street - has forever changed the political climate, making it necessary to theorize new paths for the future. Indeed, liberal ideology champions not only economic freedom but individual liberty as well: In the canon of liberal texts, Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations coexists with John Stuart Mill's The Subjugation of Women, a biting commentary on gender inequality. The debate over neoliberalism in Mexico is not exclusively a left-right conflict. Many leftists see ties with the U.S. as a means to promote social change even though they oppose neoliberal economics; many on the right, while supporting neoliberalism, fear social influences from the North. This volume focuses on the neoliberal debate in plays by four Mexican authors: Sabina Berman, Vicente Lenero, Victor Hugo Rascon Banda, and Alejandra Trigueros. These playwrights stage the complexity of neoliberalism, providing insight into a global trend and its manifestation in Mexico. Stuart A. Chapel Hill.
DIVAn historical analysis of how the Chinese constructed their understandings of their place in the world in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries./div
Staging 21st Century Tragedies: Theatre, Politics, and Global Crisis is an international collection of essays by leading academics, artists, writers, and curators examining ways in which the global tragedies of our century are being negotiated in current theatre practice. In exploring the tragic in the fields of history and theory of theatre, the book approaches crisis through an understanding of the existential and political aspect of the tragic condition. Using an interdisciplinary perspective, it showcases theatre texts and productions that enter the public sphere, manifesting notably participatory, immersive, and documentary modes of expression to form a theatre of modern tragedy. The coexistence of scholarly essays with manifesto-like provocations, interviews, original plays, and diaries by theatre artists provides a rich and multifocal lens that allows readers to approach 21st century theatre through historical and critical study, text and performance analysis, and creative processes. Of special value is the global scope of the collection, embracing forms of crisis theatre in many geographically diverse regions of both the East and the West. Staging 21st Century Tragedies: Theatre, Politics, and Global Crisis will be of use and interest to academics and students of political theatre, applied theatre, theatre history, and theatre theory.
This volume contains three sections of essays which examine the role of commemoration and public celebrations in the creation of a national identity in Habsburg lands. It also seeks to engage historians of culture and of nationalism in other geographic fields as well as colleagues who work on Habsburg Central Europe, but write about nationalism from different vantage points. There is hope that this work will help generate a dialogue, especially with colleagues who live in the regions that were analyzed. Many of the authors consider the commemorations discussed in this volume from very different points of view, as they themselves are strongly rooted in a historical context that remains much closer to the nationalism we critique.
In this volume Florian Schneider shows how mass media events fit into the political, economic, and cultural developments in China. Through expert interviews and empirical studies of production backgrounds and media contents, Schneider explores the communication strategies that informed the Beijing Olympics, the Shanghai Expo, and the 60th Anniversary of the PRC. The book discusses what the implications but also the limits of these strategies might be, and it shows to what degree different actors take advantage of China's mass media events to shape political discourse. Through an in-depth engagement with theories of mass-communication and cultural governance, "Staging China" explores this vital dimension of political communication in contemporary China, providing a novel take on networked politics and legitimation.
