Tuesday, April 18, 2023

French Physical Theatre of the 20th and 21st Century - Copeau, Dullin, Artaud, Barrault, Lecoq, Gaulier and Pagneux

French Physical Theatre of the 20th and 21st Century - Copeau, Dullin, Artaud, Barrault, Lecoq, Marceau, Gaulier and Pagneux

French Physical Theatre is a style of training, exploration and performance that concentrates on movement as the central form of communication, character and storytelling. It incorporates forms and techniques such as mime, mask work, gesture, movement and dance to train actors, create explorations and performances. While its origins can be seen in theatre forms such as the Commedia dell'arte, Asian forms of theatre and the work of early Absurdist like Alfred Jarry, many see the originator of modern French Physical Theatre as coming from Antonin Artaud and his ideas of the Theatre of Cruelty. Yet modern French Physical Theatre can be seen to start much earlier with the work of Jacques Copeau and Charles Dullin as actors, directors and trainers.

Jacques Copeau (1879 - 1949) 


Jacques Copeau was French theatre director, actor, trainer and dramatist. He was born in Paris in 1879. Due to family problems, he finished his formal education at the Sorbonne in 1901. After a short stint in Copenhagen, he returned to France and co-founded the influential arts magazine Nouvelle Revue Francaise in 1909. In 1913, he founded the revolutionary Theatre du Vieux-Colombier which put artistic merit above all commercial concerns. The small theatre (500 seater and then eventually reduced to 360 capacity) emphasized the ensemble above the individual. The ensemble often rehearsed in his home. He emphasized physicality in rehearsals. The company put on a number of productions but WWI cur short their work. Around this time, Copeau sojourned with the designer/director Edward Gordon Craig and met the eurythmic master Dalcroze and designer Appia and started to develop ideas for three dimensional performance enhanced by mise en scene and lighting elements.

In 1917, Copeau lectured in the United States and brought some of his company across performing The Tricks of Scapin in which he featured. The use of treteau nu (the naked platform) where actors leapt on and off in slapstick antics became a standard feature in this and later performance work of Copeau. When he with his ensemble returned to Paris in 1919, they started a rigorous training and performance schedule that involved rotating up to three productions a week. They used the designs of Jouvet which added to the treteau nu creating levels and steps which helped Copeau's new physical theatre which emphasized character over situation and plot. Together they worked on trying to emotional essence of scenes where a sense of place was suggested. Levels of platforms and staging were used. He believed in simplifying sets and settings to allow greater realism and flexibility in acting. A large number and range of productions were performed. However, the grueling schedule took its toll of Copeau and his company. 

In 1924, Copeau and his company withdrew to a farmhouse in Burgundy. In Burgundy, Copeau started to refine his training techniques, many of which are still the cornerstone of modern actor training programs. Mask work and improvisation became important to his training approaches. As the ensemble reduced in numbers, only a core of six people remained including his son Pascal, his nephew Michel Saint-Denis and actress Suzanne Bing. Commedia physicality and group movement became a trademark of the style developed. In 1927, Copeau left the company and Michel Saint-Denis took over.  Copeau started to direct plays internationally always aiming for a physical and clean form of theatre emphasizing lyrical rhythmic perfection which was non-illusionistic in its aesthetics. His productions were considered choreographic, balletic and organic. He pre-planned movements, timings and pauses which he unified with his love of improvisation in rehearsal. He was prolific as a reader and also amazing at learning and reciting text and often at early he would recite the entirety of the play to his actors. He believed that the best work came from actors when they worked halfway between total freedom and coercion. This led to the acting in his productions being described as ensemble-based presentational realism.

In 1933, Copeau mounted a production of The Mystery of Saint Uliva in the Santa Croce church in Florence. This was followed in 1935 with an outdoor performance of Savonarola in the central square in Florence. In Paris, from 1936 until 1939, he directed Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing and Twelfth Night,  Moliere's Le Misanthrope and Racine's Bajazet. Unable to follow the orders of the Germans in Paris, he resigned from his position as Provisionary Administrator of the Comedie-Francaise due to his continual disobeying of German occupier instructions and commands and retired at his home in Pernand-Vergelesses where he died in 1949.

Exercise - The Seven Levels of Tension
The seven levels of tension is an approach to actor training and performance invented by Copeau. Students can try these levels in training or also use them as the basis for developing character and/or a performance. Levels 1-4 or more like states or levels of tension used in everyday life. Levels 5-7 are hyperrealities or conducive to heightened performance.
Level 1 - Exhausted or stillness or catatonic. The Jellyfish. There is no tension in the body at all. Begin in a complete state of relaxation. If you have to move or speak, it is a real effort. Create focus without tension in the body
Level 2 - Laid back – relaxed - effortless. Everyday or like a soap opera. Everything you say is cool, relaxed, probably lacking in credibility. Any words are like casual or throw away lines.
Level 3 - Neutral or move and speak with great economy. It is what it is. There is nothing more, nothing less. The right amount. No past or future. You are totally present and aware. It is the state of tension before something happens. Think of a cat sitting comfortably on a wall, ready to leap up if a bird comes near. You move with no story behind your movement.
Level 4 - Alert or Curious (farce). Look at things. Sit down. Stand up. Indecision. Great comic characters like Tati's M. Hulot or Atkinson's Mr. Bean are like this. 
Level 5 - Suspense or the Reactive (19th century melodrama). The crisis is about to happen. All the tension is in the body, concentrated between the eyes. An inbreath. There’s a delay to your reaction. The body reacts. 
Level 6 - Passionate (opera). There is a bomb in the room. The tension has exploded out of the body. Anger, fear, hilarity, despair. It’s difficult to control. You walk into a room and there is a lion sitting there. There is a snake in the shower. 
Level 7 - Tragic (end of King Lear when Lear is holding Cordelia in his arms). Body can’t move. Petrified. The body is solid tension.
(Taken from David Farmer's Resource on the Seven Levels of Tension)

Charles Dullin


Charles Dullin was a French actor, theatre and film director, theatre trainer and manager who did much to further exploration and performance of movement based theatre. Born in 1885 in Yenne in present day France, by the age of 20, he had started as a full time actor performing mostly in melodrama. By 1908, he and fellow actor Saturni Fabre had started their own company staging melodramas and formalist style dramas including the early play works of Alexandre Arnoux. 

After moving to Paris, Dullin joined Copeau's company in 1913 for a short while before committing to Copeau's company more formally in 1917. As a soldier in WWI, he started to use his pantomime and mime skills and his interest in Japanese Kabuki theatre to perform to his fellow troupes. He saw these as essential representations of human nature even in the most dire of circumstances. By 1920, he was training actors at the Theatre Antoine and by 1921 he had developed ideas for a laboratory theatre and commune which he called Theatre de lÁtelier which he established outside Paris in Neronville. He trained and explored with actors for 10-12 hours a day to create a theatre based on common sharing of life and work. Some of the actors in this original troupe included Antonin Artaud and Marguerite Jamois. He later moved his troupe to the Theatre Montmartre in suburban Paris which had been the 'first purpose built theatre in suburban Paris when it was established in 1822.  

Dullin's by 1922 included mime and mirroring exercises, improvisation and vocal exercises exploring 'Voix de Soi-Meme' (the voice of oneself) and 'La Voix du Monde' (the voice of the world). He saw that actors must "see before describing, hear before answering... and feel before trying to express themselves". His use of soundscape movement exercises involving live and recorded sounds were described by many students. This work was influences by the work of Emile Jaque-Dalcroze and his system of Eurhythmics. Also pivotal to this work was the use of mask work from neutral masks to commedia masks to Noh theatre masks. Two of his most famous students from this period in the 1920s were the actor/theatre theorist Antonin Artaud and the actress Jany Holt (aka Ruxandra Ecaterina Vlădescu). It is interesting to note that Dullin used some Asian performance techniques and masks during the 1920s but he did not see his first performance of Asian theatre until in 1930 he saw Tsutsui Tokujiro's troupe perform in Paris in 1930. This performance was a shinpa style which combined kabuki style theatre with Japanese melodrama and swordplay. 

By the 1930s, Dullin's work had moved more into training actors and acting in films. He used his wonderfully physical and symbolic acting techniques to perform in films such as Les Miserables (1934) and Streets of Shadows (1937). His attempts to create a non-Naturalistic theatre and his creation of anti-war productions, meant that he found it difficult to continue his work during World War Two. After, the war, he continued to train actors and perform in films such as Les jeux sont faits ('The Chips are Down') (1947). He died in 1949 in Southern France while touring as an actor. His legacy and training techniques are kept alive through the Academie Charles-Dullin.

Exercises - Dullin

1. Walk to the music and when the music stops, you stop in a frozen pose of dynamic tension. 

2. Skip or dance to music and when the music stops move with the same rhythm and movements in the opposite direction without the music. The can also be done as doing a scene or movement with music and then when the music stops, continue the scene with the same rhythm or mood.

3. Bounce and catch a tennis ball to the rhythm of different music. This can also be done with the ball or ball passing between member of a group.

Antonin Artaud and the Theatre of Cruelty











Artaud was born in Marseille in 1896. At the age of 18, he was admitted to a sanitoria. In 1916, he was conscripted into the French army. He was discharged from the army due to sleepwalking and was put back under psychiatric care. He eventually moved to Paris in 1921 and began some training with the symbolist poet and director Lugne-Poe. After a short holiday in Marseille, he joined Dullin's troupe and trained under Dullin in physical theatre techniques. Besides training with Dullin, he also developed over 11 roles for Dullin productions. 

During his eighteen months with Dullin's company, Artaud started to develop the beginnings of his theories for the Theatre of Cruelty. The physical work in Dullin's company helped Artaud to believe that gesture and movement were more powerful as a performance tool than text. He saw the function of lights, sound and set not as merely decorative and aesthetic elements but as tools for sensory disruption. He saw the audience as central to the performance. Around this time he started to describe theatre as an act of 'organised anarchy'. Like Dullin, he was strongly influenced by Eastern philosophy and performance. Whereas Dullin thought believed in a theatre of transposing or translating Eastern performance techniques to Western theatre because he did not "... impose on our Western theatre rules of a theatre of a long tradition which has its own symbolic language...", Artaud saw the adoption of Eastern symbolic gesture and movement as crucial to the survival of Western theatre. By 1923, he was writing poems and essays that became the basis for his work The Theatre and its Double.

During the late 1920s, Artaud started to work in films as an actor and writer and to start to work with the surrealist movement. He was a talented artist as well as a performer. However, Artaud was expelled from the surrealists by Breton because Artaud saw the communist leanings of the Surrealist and Breton's viewpoint that all theatre was bourgeois and anti-revolutionary as counterproductive. Artaud even made a direct attack on the Surrealists in 1926/27 in hos 'The manifesto for an Abortive Theatre' where he called for an "essential metamorphosis of society". Artaud saw film as the natural transition to this process. His most notable acting roles were as Jean-Paul Marat in Gance's Napoleon (1927) and as a monk called Massieu in The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928). Ten of the over thirty screenplays he wrote survive including one of the few which was produced which was the 1928 Dulac directed surrealist film The Seashell and the Clergyman. 

After being expelled from the Surrealists, Artaud, Robert Aron and Roger Vitrac formed the Theatre Alfred Jarry, where they staged a broad range of productions in different styles. The theatre company put on four seasons of plays including Artaud's own play Theology (1928). In 1931, Artaud's interest in traditional theatre was to change forever when he saw a Balinese dance at the Paris Colonial Exposition. Specifically, Artaud was struck by the hypnotic rhythms of the gamelan and the way the dancers interacted in a dynamic way with the music. This significantly influenced his only official staging of a Theatre of Cruelty performance, Shelley's The Cenci in 1935 at the Theatre des Folies-Wagram in Paris. The play's challenging themes of the play along with directions in the text helped Artaud finally explore his theories on theatre in practice. As Artaud himself said of the play's opening scene, the scenes is "suggestive of the extreme atmospheric turbulence, with with-blown drapes , waves of amplified sound... as well as the presence of numerous large mannequins". Although the play was a commercial flop, it introduced many innovations including the first use in theatrical performance of an electronic instrument called the ondes martenot which was similar to a theremin.  

Later in 1935, Artaud received a grant from the Mexican Legation in Paris to travel to Mexico. Artaud believed that he needed to get away from Western decadence and get back to the deep roots of humanity that he believed existed in societies like Mexico. He studied, lived and even ran with the Tarahumaran in their rugged mountainous homelands and took part in peyote rites. His writings and insights from this period were written up in the book Voyage to the Land of the Tarahumara. 

Back in France in 1937, Artaud was given a staff by a friend which he believed was the the famous Irish religious relic called the "staff of Jesus". He travelled to Ireland but eventually was deported as destitute. After an incident where he was attacked on a boat returning to France, he ended up in a straightjacket. This started a period in his life when he was in and out of asylums. He published his famous writings The Theatre and its Double (1938) during this period. He advocated for a theatre of magic and ritual with totem and gesture as its language. He saw words as not able to express the mind and saw that theatre should show spaces crammed with images and sounds where the audience is seized by a whirlwind of higher forces. As WW2 started and continued, Artaud was in and out of mental institutions. In 1943, he was transferred to Rodez in France and underwent electroshock therapy combined with art therapy under the guidance of Dr. Ferdiere. After the war, he was transferred to an institution in Ivry-sur-Seine and friends supported him writing and drawing again. In late 1947, he recorded for radio Pour en Finir avec le Jugement de Dieu (To Have Done With the Judgment of God) which stands as a lasting testament to his vision of a theatre of cruelty. The Director of French Radio, shelved the work the day before its scheduled airing in 1948. He died on March 4th in 1948, found seated in his bed holding a shoe by a gardener at the Ivry-sur-Seine clinic.  

Exercises - Artaud - Theatre of Cruelty 

Non verbal Arguments

Non-verbal arguments. Find a partner. This can be done face to face or online. You are to have an argument consisting of only sounds-- primal, aggressive sounds such as barks, howls, grunts, and moans. Manipulate the tone and pace of your argument as you proceed with the argument. Keep going until you and your partner come to an ending. This activity shows how an audience can interpret emotion without words. Sounds can convey the intensity of feeling in a non naturalistic, almost primal manner. Two. Repeat the exercise but this time, use one word each. You must stick to your chosen word and not change it. One word and one word only. You don't need language to evoke meaning. As Artaud said, 'Theatre of Cruelty serves not to entertain nor instruct but to effect'.

References

Artaud, A. 1947. Pour en Finir avec le Jugement de Dieu (To Have Done With the Judgment of God). Audio Recording Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DsPUuIQvdQ

Barber, S. 1993. Antonin Artaud: Blows and Bombs. Faber and Faber: London.

Copeau, J. 1991. Copeau: texts on Theatre. Edited and translated by John Rudlin & Norman H. Paul. Routledge: New York.

Deak, F. 1977. "Antonin Artaud and Charles Dullin: Artaud's Apprenticeship in Theatre". Educational Theatre Journal. 29 (3):346.

Esslin, M. 1976. Antonin Artaud. John Calder: London.

Farmer, D. 2019. 'The Seven Levels of Tension', Drama Resource. Retrieved from https://dramaresource.com/seven-levels-of-tension/

Leiter, S. 1994. The Great Stage Directors. Facts on File: New York.

Ristow, G. 2019. 'Favorite Dalcroze Games Vol. 1', UTheory. Retrieved from https://info.utheory.com/favorite-dalcroze-games-vol-1-2926e42e7a58/

Rudlin, J. 1986. Jacques Copeau. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, UK.

Yoremikids. 2022. Dalcroze Eurhythmics Activities for Kids. Retrieved from  https://www.yoremikids.com/news/dalcroze-eurhythmics-activities-for-kids


Jean Louis Barrault and Modernist Total Theatre


Jean Louis Barrault was born in 1910 and died in 1994. He was an actor, director, mime artist and theatre trainer who refined methods of modernist physical theatre which he called Total Theatre. He initially studied as a painter before entering actor training with Charles Dullin from 1931 until 1935. He saw early that classical European theatre forms like the commedia dell'arte could be reformed when joined to Asian theatre forms and the ideas of Artaud's 'Theatre of Cruelty' and Edward Gordon Craig's concepts of a symbolism total theatre where the actor was a like a marionette. His work as an actor, director and theatre trainer saw actors portray not only human characteristics but also the characteristics of animals and inanimate objects using mask work, found spaces, rituals, incantatory sounds and hieroglyphic forms of physical and facial expression.

Barrault's debut as a director happened in 1935 with a stage adaptation of William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying. The production used 'total theatre' with chorus chanting, drum beating, dance drama, exaggerated movements, dance-drama and movements of human, non-human and inanimate objects. This was followed in 1937 with a rich movement-based adaptation of Cervantes's The Siege of Numantia. In 1940, he joined the Comedie Francaise where he directed plays using vocal orchestration. Around this time, Barrault started to stage the plays of Paul Claudel which many people thought unstageable. His staging of Claudel's verse play The Satin Slipper used mystical overtones using mime, vocal musical orchestration and stylistic movement. 

In 1945, Barrault left the Comedie Francaise and he and his wife, the famous actress Madeleine Renaud, formed the Compagnie Renaud-Barrault.

Saturday, June 20, 2020

Killing Dead White Men - Conference Paper - Drama Victoria

Killing Dead White Men
Dr. Mark Eckersley

(Workshop and Paper delivered at 2019 Drama Victoria State Conference
‘Unity: Exploring diversity and inclusion in drama education’
Graduate School of Education, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria, Australia, December 2019)

Tanderrum - Acknowledgement of Country


I would like to acknowledge the Wurundjeri people and the peoples of the Kulin Nation who are the Traditional Custodians of this Land. I would also like to pay respect to the Elders both past and present of the Kulin Nation and extend that respect to other Indigenous Australians peoples present.
In the spirit of diversity and unity under which this conference is titled, I would like to acknowledge the individual groups who are and were caretakers to this land on which we stand. When Europeans first colonised this land we stand on, it was occupied and cared for by five language groups often known as the Kulin (Koolin) nation of peoples these are:
·       Woiwurrung (Woy-wur-rung) - The Wurundjeri People
·       Boonerwrung (Bun-er-rong) - The Boonerwrung People
·       Wathaurong (Wath-er-rong) - The Wathaurong People
·       Taungerong (Tung-ger-rong) - The Taungerong People
·       Dja Dja Wrung (Jar-Jar wrung) - The Jaara People

In the spirit of the 'Uluru Statement of the Heart', I hope I can in this workshop give ‘Voice’ to those who have been silenced, reveal ‘Truth’ where it has been concealed and endorse ‘Treaty’ as we move forward to understanding and justice.

What is wrong with the picture?
Women make up approximately 49.6% of the world’s population (Ritchie & Roser 2019). 5% of the world’s population is Indigenous (World Bank 2019)

What's the picture and the truth in Theatre and Drama
Worldwide – Female Directors 17%, Female Playwrights 21%, Actresses 40%, Female Managers/Producers/Artistic Director 5%, Female Audience 56% estimated Indigenous Combined 1% (European Theatre Convention 2015 & Lock 2018)
England – Female Artistic Directors 13% (2018), Playwrights 35%, Actresses 38%, Female Audiences 68%, Indigenous figures not available (Pascal 2018 & Freestone 2012)
Australia
2012 – Female Directors 16%, Female Playwrights 14% (Lally 2012)
A program was undertaken by state governments and federal government bodies in Australia to address this inequality in Australia. By 2019, the picture had changed significantly.
2019 – Female Directors 58%, Female Playwrights 47%, Female Actors 52%, Female Managers/Producers 12%, Female Audiences - 52% Victoria – Overall Cultural market & Indigenous Australian Combined 5% (Howard 2019 & Arts Victoria 2014)
Within education, we think of ourselves as progressive but often we reinforce gender inequality and stereotypes. Here are some Australian statistics from Victoria on examination level programs.
VCE Theatre Studies & Drama Lists and productions -2001-2019 (VCAA 2019)
184 plays and productions – Female Directors, 29%, Female Playwrights 30% av., Indigenous 4%

Conclusion - Women are disproportionately underrepresented and Indigenous peoples are culturally underrepresented in theatre and educational theatre endeavours both in Australia and overseas. One way to address this is for us as educators to monitor and use self-imposed quotas to consciously address these gender and cultural inequities.

Voice & Treaty


u  Dramaturgy seemed motherless for quite some time: born into a family, the theatre, in which women initially had no role except as narrowly drawn characters performed by men, for men, in plays written by men, expressing male values before an audience that was not exclusively male. Yet drama has always has a mother, it just has chosen to forget its family and its mother.
u  Yankunytjatjara and Pitjantjatjara peoples use Awelye – body painting of symbols in preparation for storytelling, ritual and performance. Below is the symbol for ‘Women’:

u  Create a circle. Sand and stones are used to create the space for exploration & performance

Know my Name, Say my Name
As an exercise 10 pictures or photographs of male and female playwrights and performance makers were shown to the participants made up of drama teachers and lecturers in drama. Of the five males shown a recognition rate of 85% was evident. Of the females shown, the recognition rate was 5%. The issue of how to value and recognize females in theatre was discussed.

Creating a New Dreamtime – recognizing the people in our lives
Activity - The New Dreamtime – Giving Voice
u  Look at all the people in the circle slowly. Think that they have stories and backgrounds which are rich and you don't know about. Now turn your attention inward.
u  Think of a woman who was important to making who your are.
u  Give a special label to mythologize them. Mythologize this woman.
u  Now think of a way you could tell the story of this woman to the group.
u  Example: "Mother, the Spirit Weaver. She was a magician. She gathered a group of young people and gathered their energy and spirits and had them dance and move and tell their stories and then she threw their dreams into a space and the images, stories and dreams would come to life. My Mother, the Spirit Weaver."

Workshopping the Work of Women
The workshop then comprised exploring and workshopping speeches and scenes from different female writers whose work was performed over many years and many continents. Here are some of the writers covered:
Enheduanna (Sumerian) 2285 BC – 2250 BC (Ritual Theatre):


“Beloved of Enlil - You made it (the storm) blow over the land,
You carried out the instructions of An.
My Queen, the foreign lands cower at Your cry,
In dread (and) fear of the South Wind…”

Sappho (Greek) Sa-ppho 630 BC – 570 BC Lyrical Theatre:



“Stars near the lovely moon
cover their own bright faces 
when she is roundest
and lights earth with her silver.”

Okuni (Japan) O-kuni 1572 – 1613 AD Mother of Kabuki Theatre:


The movements of kabuki are lively, energetic and vertical movements, sometimes fast and sometimes slow. Get in groups of two or three
Using either an extract from Okuni’ plays or the haikus of the female poet Chiyo-ni, create a performance where either you all do a line each or one person or two speak the words and one or two people do actions using a fan. Remember to punctuate each line or image with a mie (a dramatic pose).
u  Text 1 – Okuni
“She prays for her daughter’s repose in the other world.
She keeps back her tears.
The toll of the evening bell comes from within.”
u  Text 2 - Chiyo-ni (Female Haiku poet)
Moonflowers
The beauty
Of hidden things

Aphra Behn  (English) 1640-1689 – Restoration Theatre:


Extracts from her play The Rover (1677)
Valeria: Am I put into the number of lovers?
Helena: You? Why coz, I know thou’rt too good natured to leave us in design…And if you are not a lover, it is an art soon learnt.
Florinda: I wonder how you learnt to love so easily… Thou art too rash to give a heart at first sight.
Helena: Hang your considering lover… I shall have my beauty praised, my wit admired – though little or none – and have the vanity and power to know I am desirable.
Discussion Questions
What are the stylistic elements evident in Aphra Behn’s text?

Elizabeth Robins (USA) 1862-1952 - Naturalism, Expressionism, Epic Theatre styles


Votes for Women (1907)
Ms E. B.: Bills or resolutions have been before the House for the last 36 years. That, roughly is our history. We found ourselves before the close of year 1905 with no assurance that if we went on in the same way, that any girl born into the world in this generation would live to exercise the rights of citizenship, though she lived to be a hundred.
Discussion Questions
What elements of didactic drama are evident in Elizabeth Robins’ work?

Jane Harrison (Australian Indigenous) b. 1960 – Realism & Documentary Drama



Stolen (2003)
ACTIVITY- Abuse in Foster Homes Read the following text on Page 8.  Have the group read the Children as a group character. Have one student play Ruby.
CHILDREN: What did he give to ya?
RUBY: Gave me a doll.
CHILDREN: (They clap) He gave her a doll. What else did ya do? (They stop clapping).
RUBY: I promised not to tell. JIMMY: Oh, Ruby!
  1. Write a passage on the internal conflict going on within Ruby in this scene.
  2. Write and share how you would stage this section of the play to highlight Ruby’s tumultuous inner life.
  3. Write a page discussing the importance of this play to a contemporary audience.

Mary Zimmerman (USA) – b. 1960 – Classical, Eclectic style


Arabian Nights (1994)
The group enacts two group scenes for the lines below. Group tableaux can be used to create the scenes. Dance or movement with freezing done in a musical chairs style can be used to create the scenes. The dialogue can happen when the action is frozen.
Scheherazade: My father, why do you look so sad? Know father that as the poet says, “You who are sad, oh be comforted, for nothing endures, and just as every joy vanishes, so also vanishes every sorrow.”
AND Near the end of the play
Scheherazade: I know the hour is late, O auspicious king, but I have one more story, just one more very subtle tale to tell. Let it be one thousand nights and one night, before you grow weary of me.

Conclusion
u  The first step to privileging Feminist and Indigenous drama is to know and use female writers, directors, theorists, theatre companies and the Indigenous writers, directors, theorists, theatre companies
u  One way for teachers to address the gender and cultural imbalance is to educate themselves on the diversity out there
u  Another way is for teachers to self-impose quotas – i.e. 50% of the plays I read, do and see with students should be by females, 10% of the plays I read, do and see with students should be by Indigenous writers and groups
u  Teachers should educate themselves on the theories, practitioners and styles developed by female and indigenous individuals and groups (I have included some texts and websites in the bibliography to start with.
A final word or two: “You make beauty and it disappears, I love that.” Caryl Churchill (Far Away)

Bibliography
Arts Victoria. April 2014. Audience Atlas Victoria. Arts Victoria, State Government of Victoria: Melbourne. Retrieved from
European Theatre Convention. 2015. Audiences for European Theatre. Imprint Publications: London. Retrieved from https://issuu.com/europeantheatreconvention/docs/etc_study_european_theatre_audience
Eckersley, M. 2019. Killing Dead White Men – The History of female Theatre and Theatre Makers. [Blog] Retrieved from https://markeckersleywomenstheatre.blogspot.com/2019/09/killing-dead-white-men-female.html
Eckersley, M. 2014. Australian Indigenous Drama. [Book & Blog] Retrieved from https://australianindigenousdrama.blogspot.com/2014/03/australian-indigenous-drama-introduction.html
Freestone, E. Dec. 10 2012. ‘Women in Theatre’. The Guardian. The Guardian: London. Retrieved from
Howard, J. April 13, 2019. How Australian Theatre Fixed its Gender Imbalance in a Decade. Retrieved from
Keyssar, H. 1990. Feminist Theatre. Palgrave Macmillan: London.
Lally, E. 2012. Women in Theatre – A Research Report and Action Plan for the Australia Council for the Arts. Australia Council: Surry Hills, NSW. April 2012. Retrieved from https://www.australiacouncil.gov.au/workspace/uploads/files/research/women-in-theatre-april-2012-54325827577ea.pdf
Lionheart Theatre. January 28, 2016. Five Female Playwrights to Remember. Retrieved from https://lionhearttheatre.org/5-female-playwrights-to-remember__trashed/
Lock, S. August 27, 2015. Theater and Broadway in the U.S. – Statistics and Facts. Statista: New York. Retrieved from https://www.statista.com/topics/1299/theatre-and-broadway/
Nolan, Y. 2015. Medicine Shows – Indigenous Performance Culture. Playwrights Canada Press: Toronto.
Pascal, J. April 24, 2018. ‘Woman are being excluded from the Stage: Its Time for Quotas’. The Guardian. The Guardian: London. Retrieved from
Ritchie, H. & Roser, M. 2019. Gender Ratio. Our World in Data: Oxford, UK. Retrieved from https://ourworldindata.org/gender-ratio
VCAA. 2019. VCE Drama Examination Past Papers. VCAA: Melbourne. Retrieved from https://www.vcaa.vic.edu.au/assessment/vce-assessment/past-examinations/Pages/Drama.aspx
VCAA. 2019. VCE Theatre Studies Past Papers. VCAA: Melbourne. Retrieved from https://www.vcaa.vic.edu.au/assessment/vce-assessment/past-examinations/Pages/Theatre-Studies.aspx
World Bank. 2019. Indigenous Peoples. World Bank. Retrieved from
Women’s Museum of California. (2017). Get Thee to a Stage – A Brief History of Women in the Theater. Women’s Museum of California: San Diego, CA. Retrieved from

Saturday, May 4, 2019

South America - Females in Theatre and Drama in the 20th and 21st Century


South America – Females in Theatre and Drama in the 20th and 21st Century

Salvadora Medina Onrubia 


Salvadora Medina Onrubia was an Argentine playwright, poet, narrator, feminist and storyteller who was born in 1894 in La Plata in Argentina and died in 1972 in Buenos Aires. From the young age of 15, Onrubia embraced anarchist and feminist principles and she was a follower of Russian anarchist Simon Radowitzky. Much of her life and her writings were highly political and she was a regular contributor to La Nacion, El Hogar, Critica and Faces and Masks. She was arrested and imprisoned for many of her publications.


Onrubia’s dramatic writings were mostly written for children’s and youth theatre. Her work is often characterized as Thesis Drama since it uses debate and didactic techniques to further plot through argument. Her female characters both conform with and contrast tradition representations of females. Her 1914 play Almafuerte (‘Strong Soul’), explores life in the Buenos Aires’ slums and the way that females can both accept and question the roles society and circumstances designate them. Public health and the political aspects of everyday life are strong themes in her work. Although she only published a small number of plays, her work is significant in its style, content and form.



Claudia Piñeiro




Born in 1960 Claudia Piñeiro, is an Argentine playwright, novelist, crime write and screenwriter. She initially worked as an accountant before taking to writing. One of her first plays in 2004 was How much a refrigerator is worth. This piece examines domestic life and the stories that lie beneath domestic life. This was followed soon after by The Same Green Tree in 2006. Her later work has been described as dark and absurd in its humour and portrayal of the human condition. These works include Verona (2007), Morite, Fat (2008) and Three Old Pens (2009). As her popularity grew as a crime writer, Piñeiro has written very little work for the theatre. 

Ana Maria Gonçalves


Born in Ibiá, Minas Gerais in Brazil in 1970, Goncalves is a Brazilian playwright and screenwriter who has worked in Brazil and the United States of America. Her plays explore what it is like to live as a black woman in modern day societies like Brazil where racial and gender prejudice are prominent.

Her first dramas were written in 2001 and are the verse dramas Beside You - On the Edge of What You Feel for Me and A Defect of Colour. After working as a lecturer in race relations and also as a writer in residence at Tulane, Stanford and Middlebury, she returned to São Paulo in Brazil and in 2016 she wrote her most famous play Diverse. The play explores the relationship of a couple João and Márcia and their efforts to stray away from the prejudices of a racist and sexist society. Fortified by João (a black 28 year old), Márcia, a 40 years old and of mixed race, slowly begins to examine and reclaim her black roots. João must re-examine himself and whether he can cope with and not be intimidated by Márcia’s new sense of purpose and identity.

Goncalves’ plays and writings have been performed and published in many languages and many countries including Brazil, Portugal, the United States of America and Italy.

Cidinha da Silva 



Cidinha da Silva is the playwright and novelist from Brazil. Her play "Got pregnant, gave birth to horses and learned how to fly without wings" is a strong magic realism and surrealist drama revealing the daily routine of six black women who live in the same apartment building. They have no interaction nor do they know each other, however, their similar yearnings reveal the private truth of buried affections.

Cidinha is a prose writer and playwright from Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais. Author of 11 books, she chronicles the lives of adults and writes short stories and romance for children and adolescents. She organized two fundamental works on contemporary race relations in Brazil: Affirmative actions in education: Brazilian experiences (2003) (Ações afirmativas em educação: experiências brasileiras) and African racial relations: inputs for public policies of books, reading, literature and libraries in Brazil (2014) (Africanidades e relações raciais: insumos para políticas públicas na área do livro, leitura, literatura e bibliotecas no Brasil).


Marcia Zanelatto



Marcia Zanelatto is a Brazilian playwright and screenplay writer. Her most famous play is The Body’s Night. The plot of the play follows Clara and Isabel who are beautiful, young, talented, and in love. But the meaning of life is questioned when one of them is diagnosed with a degenerative disease. With the support of the doctor and friend, Paula, Isabel deals with the reality, finding new limitations of power and courage that she never thought she would have.

Zanelatto lives and works in Rio de Janeiro, where she writes for theatre, television and cinema, and teaches script writing. Her work often engages with ideas of racism, public security, and sexual and gender identity. She has received several awards, including the Brazil at Scene Award 2009 (Prêmio Brasil em Cena) for the play Time of Solitude (Tempo de Solidão), the Favelas Award from the Ford Foundation for the play They ain’t Got No (Eles não usam tênis naique); and the 2014 Theatre Producers Association of Rio de Janeiro Award (Prêmio APTR) for Best Author, with the play Frumpiness (Desalinho). In 2016, the Royal Exchange Theater, Manchester, UK, commissioned a new work for the Birth Festival, which resulted in her play The Birth Machine. Her work has been translated into English, Spanish, French and Swedish.

Ana Paula Arendt 


Ana Paula Arendt is a Brazilian playwright, screenplay writer, diplomat, poet and children’s book author who was born in 1980. She often writes under the pseudonym of R. P. Alencar. Her most famous play is the much awarded The Constituent which is a verse drama. 
Arendt was born in Rondonia in Brazil. She spent a significant part of her life living in Rio Branco where she lived with and was heavily influenced by the Indigenous Kaxarari tribes and clans. She eventually moved to São Paulo, Montevideo, and then Brasilia. Many of her plays are verse dramas concerned with issues of power, gender and the environment and much of her poetry is also is also performed. Much of her work is done in both Portuguese and French. Her plays and performed poetry include The Constituent (2015), Callista (2015), The Creation of Pindorama (Portuguese, 2015) and The Venerable Virtues of Men (2016).

References for South America – Females in Theatre and Drama in the 20th and 21st Century

Arendt, A.P. (2015). The Constituent. (English Edition). eBook: Ana Paula Arendt. Retrieved amazon.com 2019-04-20.
Arendt, A.P. (2016). Callista. (English Edition). eBook: Ana Paula Arendt. Retrieved amazon.com 2018-11-07.
Azougue. (2018). The Truth is a Daughter of the Lie. Azougue Editorial. Brazilian National Association of Writers. Retrieved April 12, 2019.


Evoé Collective. (2017). Meet the Playwrights of Female Voices from Brazil. Retrieved April 8, 2019 from https://www.evoecollective.com/single-post/2017/10/19/Meet-the-Playwrights-of-Female-Voices-From-Brazil


Farnsworth, M.S. (2017). Sex Work, Sickness, and Suicide: Argentine Feminist Theatre in the 1910s and 1920s. New York: Hemispheric Institute. Retrieved from