Browsing by Subject "Artaud, Antonin"
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Item From retrospect to Millie's War: Writing a configurative play(2006-05) Wintour, Elizabeth G.; Bert, Norman A.; Check, Ed; Stoune, Michael; Marks, Jonathan; Person, LorraineMillie's War is a configurative play written as an experiment in form, an exercise exploring the possibilities of a more suitable structure for the content of an earlier written play. In 1990, I wrote Retrospect, a play about a woman who discovers the answer to a mystery in her past: the death of her father in World War II. The story becomes a murder mystery, but in the end, Retrospect answers all the protagonist's questions about the death of her father. Retrospect is a linear play with horizontal movement. It tells a complete story. Traumatic memory rarely works in this way. Since the original play, Retrospect, failed to handle the issues of war, loss, and suffering in a manner that satisfied me, I wrote a new play. The motivation for the new play was to take the internal traumatic experience of a young girl who lost her father in war, and see if I could represent dramatically how the mind goes through trauma. With Millie's War, I was interested to see if, by changing the shape of the play, I could better express the traumatic experience. With Millie’s War, I explore what happens when logical, causal structure is transformed into a structure shaped by image, chance, juxtaposition, and movement. A successful Millie’s War shall mirror the pre-narrative stage of traumatic experience dramatically through a configurative structure. The play shall thus embody the chaos of a traumatized mind: it shall be repetitious and illogical as it replays snatches of memory in a circular fashion. Rather than presenting a story, meaning and significance shall come through the power of its symbolic associations, like a dream. Additionally, in the Millie’s War script, I feel an audience response should be measured in a Brechtian sense rather than an Aristotelian sense. In other words, an audience, instead of empathizing with Millie, should be enlightened to the experience of trauma caused by war. I provide a dramaturgical analysis of Millie's War to place it within the context of current playwriting practice. I explore elements of configurative form and their relationship to Samuel Beckett’s Eh Joe, Bill T. Jones’s Last Supper at Uncle Tom’s Cabin/The Promised Land, Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls, Robert Wilson’s Einstein on the Beach, Suzan-Lori Parks’s Imperceptible Mutabilities of the Third Kingdom, Joseph Chaikin with Jean-Claude van Itallie’s The Serpent, and Joseph Chaikin with Susan Yankowitz’s Terminal. Additionally, I chronicle my writing process from the inspiration of the first play, Retrospect, through the writing and production processes of the new play, Millie's War. Finally, I evaluate how well the new script held up as a tool for communicating my vision of the play, and I explore possible solutions for revisions.Item From retrospect to Millie's War: writing a configurative play(Texas Tech University, 2006-05) Wintour, Elizabeth G.; Bert, Norman A.; Check, Ed; Marks, Jonathan; Person, Lorraine; Stoune, MichaelMillie's War is a configurative play written as an experiment in form, an exercise exploring the possibilities of a more suitable structure for the content of an earlier written play. In 1990, I wrote Retrospect, a play about a woman who discovers the answer to a mystery in her past: the death of her father in World War II. The story becomes a murder mystery, but in the end, Retrospect answers all the protagonist's questions about the death of her father. Retrospect is a linear play with horizontal movement. It tells a complete story. Traumatic memory rarely works in this way. Since the original play, Retrospect, failed to handle the issues of war, loss, and suffering in a manner that satisfied me, I wrote a new play. The motivation for the new play was to take the internal traumatic experience of a young girl who lost her father in war, and see if I could represent dramatically how the mind goes through trauma. With Millie's War, I was interested to see if, by changing the shape of the play, I could better express the traumatic experience. With Millie’s War, I explore what happens when logical, causal structure is transformed into a structure shaped by image, chance, juxtaposition, and movement. A successful Millie’s War shall mirror the pre-narrative stage of traumatic experience dramatically through a configurative structure. The play shall thus embody the chaos of a traumatized mind: it shall be repetitious and illogical as it replays snatches of memory in a circular fashion. Rather than presenting a story, meaning and significance shall come through the power of its symbolic associations, like a dream. Additionally, in the Millie’s War script, I feel an audience response should be measured in a Brechtian sense rather than an Aristotelian sense. In other words, an audience, instead of empathizing with Millie, should be enlightened to the experience of trauma caused by war. I provide a dramaturgical analysis of Millie's War to place it within the context of current playwriting practice. I explore elements of configurative form and their relationship to Samuel Beckett’s Eh Joe, Bill T. Jones’s Last Supper at Uncle Tom’s Cabin/The Promised Land, Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls, Robert Wilson’s Einstein on the Beach, Suzan-Lori Parks’s Imperceptible Mutabilities of the Third Kingdom, Joseph Chaikin with Jean-Claude van Itallie’s The Serpent, and Joseph Chaikin with Susan Yankowitz’s Terminal. Additionally, I chronicle my writing process from the inspiration of the first play, Retrospect, through the writing and production processes of the new play, Millie's War. Finally, I evaluate how well the new script held up as a tool for communicating my vision of the play, and I explore possible solutions for revisions.Item The Artaudian audience/performance relationship: Theatre of cruelty and modern possibilities(2012-05) Delano, Rhiannon; Gelber, Bill; Bush, James B.In 1938, Antonin Artaud established his undeminishable place in theatre history with the publication of his manifesto The Theatre and Its Double. His writing concerning Theatre of Cruelty has challenged theatre practitioners to reexamine popularly accepted theatre practices and possibilities. The fundamental problem with Artaud’s theories, one that has persisted for the past 70 years, lies in the interpretation of his writing. The precarious nature of those theories has taken widely varying shape in the works of theatre artists in the 20th and 21st centuries. Chapter I examines the possible interpretations and (mis)interpretations of Artaudian theory as applied to group theory and concepts of drama therapy. While many scholars and directors have interpreted Artaud’s writing as a means of therapy that is conducive to the emotional stimulation experienced by the audience, others argue that Artaud’s theories are most accurately applied to audiences as a mass entity for the purposes of political manipulation. Chapter II follows The Living Theatre, whose performance history has beginnings in conjunction with the birth of Artaud’s theories. As the oldest surviving experimental theatre, The Living Theatre claims to directly embrace Artaud’s writing and ideology in the production of their own works. When considering a repertoire that began in 1947, how has this company applied (or misapplied) theory to performance practice? In chapter III, the performance biography of Peter Brook takes primary focus. While the ideas behind Theatre of Cruelty comprise a fundamental part of Brook’s own directorial approach, how have those theories undergone a very distinctive evolution in 60 years of application?