Nechcených bratov sviatky
Review of: Miloš Šípka - Fehér, Mikuláš, Rusnák, Igor. Cestou k šesťdesiatke. Zvolen 2009. 205 s. Červená, Ľudmila. 50 rokov Štátnej opery v obrazoch a dokumentoch 1959-2009. Banská Bystrica 2009, 111 s.
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Review of: Miloš Šípka - Fehér, Mikuláš, Rusnák, Igor. Cestou k šesťdesiatke. Zvolen 2009. 205 s. Červená, Ľudmila. 50 rokov Štátnej opery v obrazoch a dokumentoch 1959-2009. Banská Bystrica 2009, 111 s.
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The essay presents the thesis that despite their activist tradition, Czech theatres abandoned any social criticism during the COVID-19 pandemic because they were unable to speak publicly about the structural conditions of the crisis (overtourism, mobility, etc.) and possibilities for change. The author argues that it is because the language of theatre professionals is nowadays shallow and clichéd and serves rather as a strategy to secure the positions in the artistic field than the true speech capable of addressing the public. This situation is interpreted in terms of neoliberalism/capitalist realism (Mark Fisher) producing the pragmatic language incapable of imagination and transformation. The intellectuals’ speech of transcendentals (detached from the reality) is contrasted with true speech (Martin Buber, François Laruelle) originating in immanence. The artists are depicted as the keepers of personal, archetypal language capable of producing universal (“terrestrial” – Bruno Latour) images of utopia. This is discussed especially in the context of the environmental crisis.
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The aim of the study is to identify such strategies that reveal the theatrical quality of film language in the movies of Australian director, screen writer, and producer Baz Luhrmann, and to examine how they reflect the development of his poetics as an auteur. Theatricality defines his first three film projects Strictly Ballroom (1992), Romeo + Juliet (1996) and Moulin Rouge! (2001), therefore they are together referred to as the so called Red Curtain Trilogy. The explication of ties to theatre that characterizes Luhrmann’s oeuvre reveals the connection between various types of stage, and staging, as well as the specific qualities and development of Luhrmann’s directorial style, and his understanding of film, and its language. Luhrmann’s film image is complex in the semiotic reading, each detail has an aesthetic, and semantic value often due to the disposition of film language. Luhrmann’s artworks remain in a number of cases saturated by his performative vision of the world. The degree and specific quality of film language such as ostension (manifested as illusionism, meticulously arranged mise-en-scène, and aestheticized sets, and costumes or pompous carnivalesque musical and dancing show), camp, and citations are closely examined in feature films such as Australia (2008) and The Great Gatsby (2013), in the series of short staged interviews between two icons of fashion world Schiaparelli and Prada: Impossible Conversations (2012) and in the TV series The Get Down (2016 – 2017). These cultural products also confirm their connection to theatre and their author’s interest in various stage forms reflecting on culture based on a play principle.
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The term “melologo”, used sporadically in modern language and treated as an Italian synonym for melodrama, was in its genesis associated with the beginnings of melodramma, although it had a distinct genre and stylistic distinctiveness. The aim of the article is to make this term more precise and to discuss examples of related artistic realizations. The confrontation of the notions of melodrama and melolog in a historical and genological perspective, their etymological and linguistic revision, as well as a comparison of artistic works that represent them allow for the specification of the determinants of the eighteenth-century melodrama and for the identification of specific genre features of the melolog, which – under different names – was practiced throughout the nineteenth century and the twentieth century.
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The proposal to look at the topic of melodrama through the prism of dance seems to be not only cognitively interesting, but also justified in terms of academic research. This theatre performance, established in the 18th century, becoming a new genre of popular art, clearly emphasized the close relationship between word, music and dance. The creators of melodramatic works tried to use all means of stagecraft, focusing on eye-catching forms of expression (stage machinery, scenery, costumes) or special effects framing the show’s spectacularity – including dance. We can find melodramatic themes in ballet performances (for example, referring to well-known novels: Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, or by Alexander Dumas (son), The Lady with the Camellias). Dance plays an important role in Bollywood productions (the most common combination used by filmmakers is the musical and melodrama combination). We can already talk about a specific canon of film melodramas in which the main theme is dance (Dirty Dancing, 1987 starring Patrick Swayze; a role unforgettable for of today’s 40-year-olds). Following tracks of popular culture, we can also refer to the form of music videos, often in their narrative, close to the form of melodrama.
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The aim of this paper is to analyze the theme of fratricide in its visual, moral and verbal aspect. Fratricide, thanks to the reference to the sublime, is presented in a double aspect: as an insurmountable taboo and as a driving force that allows the hero to change his fate. Thanks to the ludic formula abounding in sudden plot twists and pictorial scenes, the viewer identifies with the problematic. On the other hand, the reference to such strong emotions means that identifying with the characters’ problems turns into consumption and the viewer needs ever stronger impressions to be able to worry about the fate of the main character.
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The article deals with the unique features of the only surviving 2nd century CE. work by Longos, i.e. stories about the love of a shepherd couple, Dafnis and Chloe. The work shows the traits both of the ancient narrative, the short story, the bucolic, and the romance as well as follows the main assumptions of an ancient choreia. However, on closer examination, it turns out that the work carries only single features – like single genes – of these literary genres. Put together, as Dafnis and Chloe, these genres work towards producing a new value, one that is the closest to the category of melodrama, the latter itself a hybrid composition.
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This article analyzes the complex connections and interrelations between opera and the French melodrama of the late 18th and early 19th century, using Ludwig van Beethoven’s 1814 opera Fidelio as a vantage point. Underpinning the author’s inquiry is the question about the ways in which the musical plain deepens and amplifies the melodramatic qualities of the operatic work, and the extent to which one can demonstrate the cohesion of dramatic measures of melodramatic provenance in light of the categories proposed by Aristotle in his Poetics, including anagnorisis, opsis, mythos, probability, and astonishment (to thaumaston). Fidelio’s key scene, the grave-digging duet (Act II, No. 12: Melodrama and duet), may serve as a case in point for Beethoven’s use of such a melodramatic structure. The article comprises four sections. In the first section, the author discusses the connections between Beethoven’s opera and its French melodramatic counterpart, J.N. Bouilly and P. Gaveaux’s comic opera, Léonore ou l’amour conjugal. Fait historique en deux actes et en prose mêlée de chants (1798). The second section discusses Fidelio’s melodramatic structure, while the third analyzes the dramatic layout of the grave-digging scene (Act II, No. 12), emphasizing its key dramatic measures, such as 1) the deceleration of time, 2) the intensification of the characters’ emotions, 3) the accumulation of events culminating in a resolution and a chain of recognitions (anagnorisis), 4) the effect of quasi-reality created in line with the law of probability, and 5) the association of astonishment (to thaumaston) with the rule of suspense. Owing to their melodramatic properties, all of these dramatic measures help appreciate Beethoven’s opera as an immensely sophisticated and refined work of art. The author metaphorically reads Fidelio as what she dubs the “Aristotelian frame story,” on account of its consistent rearrangement of a dramatic form based on the Aristotelian tragedy. The fourth and final section of the article points to the crucial role of the musical plain in creating Fidelio’s setting. In Beethoven’s opera, music serves as a commentator (much like a narrator in an epic story – hence the notion of the “Aristotelian frame story”), regulates the flow of time and (in step with melodramatic intent) nudges one towards the key feelings, premonitions, emotions, and reasoning of Fidelio’s characters.
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The article reveals the issue of the contribution of one of the most authoritative families in Bulgaria – the Shishmanovs in the formation and development of the Bulgarian theatre. In the second half of the 19th century a teacher and public figure Dimitar E. Shishmanov opened the first private trade school, reading room and founded an amateur theatre in Svishtov. He translated dramas of famous European playwrights and created his own plays for the theatre. His son Ivan Shishmanov continued his father’s work in the cultural and educational development of the country. Having received an excellent education abroad, he returned to Bulgaria to raise the level of the education, literature and culture. From 1889 until 1894 Ivan Shishmanov worked as the Head of the Department at the Bulgarian Ministry of Education. During that time, he helped young writers, artists, actors, actresses and musicians to go abroad to study or for an internship. As Bulgarian Minister of Education (1903-1907) Ivan Shishmanov opened the Academy of Music and the National Theatre. His wife Lidia Shishmanova was fond of dramatic art. She collaborated with a number of periodicals, where she regularly published reviews of theatrical performances. The son of Ivan and Lidia – Dimitar Shishmanov continued his parents’ activities. He was a writer, publicist, translator from Ukrainian, German, French, Greek, and a playwright, whose plays were staged at the National Theatre. The ideas of three generations of Shishmanovs stimulated the development of the Bulgarian theatre and their contribution to the cultural treasury deserves high appreciation.
More...Nonsense strategies and translation of Kirsi Kunnas's poem "Mr Pii Poo"
It has been suggested that in nonsense literature the form sometimes directs the events of the story (Tigges 1988, Lecercle 1994). Translation of a poem may make this even more evident,as with "Mr Pii Poo" (1956, originally “Herra Pii Poo”), a poem by the Finnish author Kirsi Kunnas, born in 1924. "Mr Pii Poo" tells a story of a magician in a conflict between rural and urban elements, a figure who is introduced also as a witch and who could at the same time be interpreted as an alter ego of the poet Kunnas. In this poem, Kirsi Kunnas binds a bizarre bundle of rhymed and free verses around the Finnish word noita (a witch) and its multipleuses as a noun, a pronoun, and a case ending. I discuss the nonsense elements of this witty and whimsical poem by describing its translation process from Finnish into English – a piece of work I has done with the help of my nonsensical colleagues. As a collocation, I present a"movable reading" of another poem by Kunnas called “Kattila ja perunat”, "The Pan and the Potatoes".
More...Quirk, S. (2015). Why Stand-Up Comedy Matters. How Comedians Manipulate and Influence. London and New York: Bloomsbury. 248 pages.
More...May, Shaun (2016). A Philosophy of Comedy on Stage and Screen: You Have to Be There. Bloomsbury Methuen Drama. London: Bloomsbury, 213 pp. ISBN: 9781472580436
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List of publications on Wadowice and the surrounding area, which appeared in 2002.
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Theater ist undenkbar ohne Körper, ganz gleich, ob es sich um die lebendigen Körper der agierenden Schauspieler, um jene der Zuschauer im Theatersaal oder um leblose Dinge auf und außerhalb der Bühne handelt. Körper müssen im Theater immer miteinander interagieren, sie müssen in Bewegung und in Stillstand versetzt werden, sie müssen sich bewegen, sie müssen bewegt werden und sie müssen am Ende bewegen. Die folgenden Aufführungsanalysen veranschaulichen diesen theaterspezifischen Vorgang aus theaterwissenschaftlicher und -praktischer Perspektive anhand einiger Beispiele und sie fokussieren auf Körper in Behältnissen, auf Körper als regungslose Blöcke und als Marionetten, auf Text-Körper.
More...Bouissac, Paul (2015). The Semiotics of Clowns and Clowning: Rituals of Transgression and the Theory of Laughter. Bloomsbury Advances in Semiotics. London: Bloomsbury, 218 pp.
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The hanging or burning of effigies as an expression of dissent is a well-established genre of playful political protest. It is enacted in a variety of ways, accessing the conventions of various traditional rituals and social practices, and can function either as a progressive force demanding change, or repressively in seeking to enforce the existing order. Building on a close reading of media images of effigy protests from over the world, I relate the employed strategies of reversal and debasement and the grotesque aesthetics of these dummies to Bakhtin’s concept of the carnivalesque. I trace the different kinds of laughter that emerge during the effigy protests and explore the complicated relationship between laughter and violence inherent in these performed images of violent death.
More...Gian Luigi De Rosa, Francesca Bianchi, Antonella de Laurentiis & Elisa Perego (eds.) (2014). Translating Humour in Audiovisual Texts. Bern: Peter Lang, 533 pp.
More...The Acharnians at the National Theatre of Greece (1961–2005) and the State Theatre of Northern Greece (1991–2010)
The paper explores the reception of Aristophanes’ first extant comedy 'The Acharnians' (425 BC) in post-war Greek modern theatre by the two government-sponsored theatre institutions of Greece, namely the National Theatre of Greece (NTG) and the National Theatre of Northern Greece (NTNG). It discusses translation trends of Aristophanes’ text and focuses on the transference of source text humour in five playscripts, which were all performed from 1961 to 2010. Consequently, it will hopefully address issues of humour translation from a theatrical perspective. The paper applies linguistic tools and humour translation methodology in order to examine source text humour transference in a self-compiled corpus of target texts. I will focus on the paratragedy scene of the comic hero’s (Dikaiopolis’) visit to the house of Euripides (lines 394–488) in order to show that translators systematically mix verbal and referential humour in their texts, even when source text humour is clearly referential. I will also argue that translators extensively employ play with register, colloquialisms and anachronisms. When viewed historically, recent target texts tend to be ‘free adaptations’ of Aristophanes’ text rather than ‘translations’. Following this major conclusion the paper argues that Aristophanes’ comedy is culturally relocated by the two government-sponsored Greek stages. This strategy is probably necessitated by the function and the aims of the source text translation and its intended audiences, that is, theatrical performances in open theatres at popular summer festivals viewed by varied audiences of an equally varied assumed level of theatrical and classical sophistication.
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The success that the kabuki play Tōkaidō Yotsuya Kaidan enjoyed was not simply due to its spectacular stage tricks, but also because of the inescapably intimate (human) nature of the horror displayed on stage. Sexuality and gender in particular dominate the horror on stage. The central character Oiwa serves as a vehicle for gendered fears rooted in Edo period attitudes towards sexuality.
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