Theatre Journal articles from October 1993

Theatre Journal archives from October 1993

Mabou Mines's 'Lear': a narrative of collective authorship.
October 1, 1993... Let's begin with a few endorsements. "The name Mabou Mines has become a kind of totem in today's theatre. To their peers, this New York-based company represents a model of avant-garde theatricality- in writing, in acting, in directing,...

The iconicity of absence: Dario Fo and the radical invisible.
October 1, 1993... In demonstration of the mysterious power of absence as a staging technique, Italian playwright/performer Dario Fo recounts an intriguing tale of a performance at a mental institution for "untreatable cases" in Turn, Italy. (1) Fo was in the...

Private parts: sex, class, and stage space in 'Miss Julie.'
October 1, 1993... The plot of Miss Julie turns on an unusual conjunction of sexual and spatial determinism, an association which also includes the issue of class. The aristocratic Julie and her valet Jean are literally and figuratively trapped into intercourse...

Caught in the "eye of the eternal:" justice, race, and the camera, from 'The Octoroon' to Rodney King.
October 1, 1993... A white man commits a violent and unjustified act of brutality against a black man. The white man does not know that a camera has caught the crime on film. The crime, which would have otherwise gone undetected, is thus publicly revealed. The...

"Who's to say?" or, making space for gender and ethnicity in 'M. Butterfly.'
October 1, 1993... "Certainly, this private universe was alienating to the extent that it separated you from others--or from the world, where it was invested as a protective enclosure, an imaginary protector, a defense system. But it also reaped the symbolic...

Jean Cocteau's theatre: idea and enactment.
October 1, 1993... Written in 1922, one year after the play was first performed at the Theatre des Champs Elysees, Jean Cocteau's Preface to Les Maries de la Tour Eiffel (The Wedding on the Eiffel Tower) offers in an informal, non-dramatic mode his manifesto of...

Les Atrides. (Park Slope Armory, Brooklyn, New York, New York)
October 1, 1993... By Euripides and Aeschylus. Park Slope Armory, Brooklyn, New York. 2-4 October 1992. There was little chance of surprise when the Theatre du Soleil brought Les Atrides, its ten-hour theatrical cycle of four Greek tragedies, to Brooklyn...

The MahabharANTa. (St. Marks Church, New York, New York)
October 1, 1993... By Lee Breuer. St. Marks Church, New York. 1 November 1992. There was little chance of surprise when the Theatre du Soleil brought Les Atrides, its ten-hour theatrical cycle of four Greek tragedies, to Brooklyn in October. A resounding...

Danton's Death. (Alley Theatre, Houston, Texas)
October 1, 1993... By Georg Buchner. Production conceived and directed by Robert Wilson. New English text by Robert Auletta. Alley Theatre, Houston. 13 November 1992. In a letter of apology addressed to his parents, Georg Buchner defended his...

Obake! Tales of Spirits Past and Present. (Baird Auditorium, National Museum of Natural History, Washington, D.C.)
October 1, 1993... By Brenda Wong Aoki. Baird Auditorium, National Museum of Natural History, Washington, D.C. 24 October 1992. Amid the dioramas displaying American Indians, horses, and anthropologically correct objects assembled in the Smithsonian...

New World (B)Order/El Nuevo (B)Order Mundial. (Dance Place, Washington, D.C.)
October 1, 1993... By Guillermo Gomez-Pena and Coco Fusco. Dance Place, Washington, D.C. 24 October 1992. Amid the dioramas displaying American Indians, horses, and anthropologically correct objects assembled in the Smithsonian Institution's Museum of...

Square Rounds. (Royal National Theatre, London, England)
October 1, 1993... By Tony Harrison. Royal National Theatre, London. 16 January 1993. The dividing line between stimulating political theatre and self-indulgent preaching is a fine one. Poet/director Tony Harrison's new theatre piece Square Rounds totters...

The Love of the Nightingale. (University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas)
October 1, 1993... By Timberlake Wertenbaker. University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas. 3 December 1992. The love of the Nightingale by Timberlake Wertenbaker is a disturbing, provocative, example of feminist theatre. This production takes on even more...

The Birthday Party. (Trueblood Theatre, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan)
October 1, 1993... By Harold Pinter. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Trueblood Theatre. 25 October 1992. A large stucco wall spans the width of the stage, with a crack running from top to bottom, as if the wall were decaying from the inside out....

My Mother Said I Never Should. (Huntington Theatre, Boston, Massachusetts)
October 1, 1993... By Charlotte Keatley. Huntington Theatre Company, Boston. 30 January 1993. Charlotte Keatley's new play, My Mother Said I Never Should, comes to Boston via the Contact Theatre in Manchester, England. Manchester's working class district...

Tattle Tales. (Highways Performance Space, Santa Monica, California)
October 1, 1993... By Shel Wagner. Highways Performance Space, Santa Monica, CA. 27 September 1992. Tattle Tales comprises six works of movement theatre in which Shel Wagner allows the audience to witness the small pleasures and sometimes not-so-tiny...

The Seagull. (Trinity Repertory Theater, Providence, Rhode Island)
October 1, 1993... By Anton Chekhov. Trinity Repertory Company, Providence, RI. 16 October 1992. Interpretations of Chekhov's plays most commonly focus on the characters' struggles with themselves, other characters, and the world. The success of...

Ivona, Princess of Burgundia. (Odyssey Theatre, Los Angeles, California)
October 1, 1993... By Witold Gombrowicz. The Odyssey Theatre Ensemble, Los Angeles. 4 October 1992. In the heat of the 1992 presidential election, Patrick Buchanan, mourning the demise of family values, announced that "the barbarian is already inside the...

The Plays of Caryl Churchill: Theatre of Empowerment.
October 1, 1993... By Amelia Howe Kritzer. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1991; pp. 217. $39.95 cloth. When Caryl Churchill's Serious Money transferred to the Wyndham's Theatre in London's West End, playgoers, largely women and men from the City (that is,...

Dramatic Re-Visions: An Annotated Bibliography of Feminism and Theatre, 1972-1988.
October 1, 1993... By Susan M. Steadman. Chicago and London: American Library Association, 1991; pp. 367. $50.00 or $45.00 for ALA Members. In approximately 850 entries, Dramatic ReV-isions: An Annotated Bibliography of Feminism and Theatre 1972-1988...

Drama by Women to 1900: A Bibliography of American and British Writers.
October 1, 1993... By Gwenn Davis and Beverley A. Joyce, comps. Toronto and Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 1992; pp. 189. $100.00. In approximately 850 entries, Dramatic ReV-isions: An Annotated Bibliography of Feminism and Theatre 1972-1988 covers...

The First English Actresses: Women and Drama, 1660-1700.
October 1, 1993... By Elizabeth Howe. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1992; pp. xiii + 226. $59.95 cloth, $17.95 paper. This long overdue book on the Restoration actress both informs and disappoints. While a welcome anodyne to John Harold Wilson's...

The First German Theatre: Schiller, Goethe, Kleist and Buchner in Performance.
October 1, 1993... By Michael Patterson. Theatre Production Studies. New York: Routledge, 1990: pp. xiv $207. $74.50. Both Lesley Sharpe's Friedrich Schiller and Michael Patterson's The First German Theatre aim to fill voids in the scholarship on their...

Friedrich Schiller: Drama, Thought and Politics.
October 1, 1993... By Lesley Sharpe, Cambridge Studies in German. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991: pp. xii + 389. $54.95. Both Lesley Sharpe's Friedrich Schiller and Michael Patterson's The First German Theatre aim to fill voids in the...

The National Stage: Theatre and Cultural Legitimation in England, France, and America.
October 1, 1993... By Loren Kruger. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1992; pp. 246. $34.00 cloth, $12.95 paper. The discourse about theatre as an institution of nationhood is remarkable for its presumption of a natural affiliation between theatre...

Hamlet and the Concept of Character.
October 1, 1993... By Bert O. States. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1992. Pp. xxv + 244. For twenty years, and maybe a good deal longer, Bert States has been contemplating a book on Hamlet, and grappling with how to write that book...

Women in Power in the Early Modern Drama.
October 1, 1993... By Theodora A. Jankowski. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1992; pp. xi + 237. $34.95 cloth, $14.95 paper. Theodora A. Jankowski's first book is a vigorous textual analysis of women ruler characters in a number of English...

Casting Shakespeare's Plays: London Actors and Their Roles, 1590-1642.
October 1, 1993... By T.J. King. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992; xvi + 284. $59.95 cloth. Because of the ephemerality of theatre, many staging practices of Elizabethan plays must unfortunately remain speculative, even though sufficient...

Brawl Ridiculous: Swordfighting in Shakespeare's Plays.
October 1, 1993... BRAWL RIDICULOUS: SWORDFIGHTING IN SHAKESPEARE'S PLAYS. By Charles Edelman. The Revels Plays Companion Library. Manchester, England: Manchester Univ. Press, 1992; 1919. vi + 281. Theatre is perhaps the most ephemeral of the arts: when the...

Methods and Practice of Elizabethan Swordplay.
October 1, 1993... METHODS AND PRACTICE OF ELIZABETHAN SWORDPLAY. By Craig Turner and Tony Soper. Carbondale: Southern Illinois Univ. Press, 1990; pp. xxiv + 140. $22.95. Theatre is perhaps the most ephemeral of the arts: when the show is over, the art is...

The Alexander Plays.
October 1, 1993... THE ALEXANDER PLAYS. By Adrienne Kennedy. Emergent Literature Series. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992; pp. 107. $15.95 cloth, Intersecting Boundaries (1992) is the first book devoted to an analysis of Adrienne Kennedy's...

Intersecting Boundaries: The Theatre of Adrienne Kennedy.
October 1, 1993... INTERSECTING BOUNDARIES: THE THEATRE OF ADRIENNE KENNEDY. By Paul Bryant-Jackson and Lois More Overbeck, editors. Minneapolis: Minnesota Press, 1992; pp. 254. $16.95 paper, Intersecting Boundaries (1992) is the first book devoted to an...

Directors in Rehearsal: A Hidden World.
October 1, 1993... DIRECTORS IN REHEARSAL: A HIDDEN WORLD. By Susan Letzler Cole. New York: Routledge, 1992; pp. xiii + 282. $15.95 paper. Susan Letzler Cole invites her reader to accompany her on a hero's journey, a quest for the elusive essence of...

The Right to Speak: Working With the Voice.
October 1, 1993... THE RIGHT TO SPEAK: WORKING WITH THE VOICE. By Patsy Rodenburg. London: Methuen Drama, 1992. Available in the U.S, from HEB, Inc.: Portsmouth, NH; pp. 299 & ix. $15.95 paper, Two new books by major voice practitioners invite...

Freeing Shakespeare's Voice: The Actor's Guide to Talking the Text.
October 1, 1993... FREEING SHAKESPEARE'S VOICE: THE ACTOR'S GUIDE TO TALKING THE TEXT. By Kristin Linklater. New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1992; pp. 214. $12.95 paper. Two new books by major voice practitioners invite considerations of how the...

The Tragic Middle: Racine, Aristotle, Euripides.
October 1, 1993... THE TRAGIC MIDDLE: RACINE, ARISTOTLE, EURIPIDES. By Richard E. Goodkin. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1991; pp. ix + 211. $37. Another book about tragedy may seem repetitious, but not if it brings new insights into an...