Theater and the World Notes

(Uh... these will be incoherent to everyone but myself, probably xD)

Post Modernism

l   Self Reflection

-            Paying homage to itself

-            Take material from the past and re-envision it

l   How do we view…

-            Post Modernism comes from the unrealistic

-            Realism à Naturalism à Surrealism à Post Modernism

l   No multiple theme – experimentation and multiple themes

l   First  postmodernist play = Dada/Dadaism

-            A Dadaist poet is like they get a group of words and throw them in the air, making a poem of the words they collect in the order they do so.

l   Theater of the Absurd

-            Post-war

-            Loss, disillusioned

l   Non-linearism

-            Watch the movie Memento

l   Open Theater

-            Joseph Chaiken: started open theater in the 1960s and 70s

-            Open gender roles, actors are actors playing a role – characters are not alive

l   Women

-            Sarah Ruhl

-            Mary Zimmerman

-            Susan Lorry Parks

-            Sarah Jones

-            One-woman play of fifteen different ethnic groups

l   Non-traditional Casting

l   Globe Theater

-            Upheaval, freedom

-            What kind of response can we get?

-            International focus

-            International interest

l   Macaronic Theater

-            Bodies, gestures, ‘macro=close up’

-            Assimilation, inter-cultural life

-            Focuses on cultural problems

-            AIDs (Angels in America)(Philadelphia)

-            Burktel Brekt (Meryl Streep & Tony Kushner) – The War of Art

l   Spectacular Theater

-            Cirque de Soleil

-            Not the spectacle that which is seen, but something completely spectacular

l   Theatre of Community

-            Clifford Odets/Group Theatre: Waiting for Lefty

-            Cornerstone Theater by Harvard Graduates

l   Movement Art and Dance/Theater

-            Stomp

-            Blue Man Group

-            Pina Bausch

-            Matthew Bourne

l   Verbatim Theater

-            Anna Divere Smith

-            Does not act, she embodies them (L.A. Race Riots)

-            David Hare

-            Take current politics

-            Eve Ensler (Vagina Monologues; interviewed women of Serbian Wars)

-            Solo performances

l   Dangerous Theater

-            Pushing the boundaries

Norman McCleran

l   Dance performance called Norman

Natasha Tsakos

l   Up Wake

Andy Warhol

l   Pop Art (Marilyn Monroe)

Burtel Brekt

l   Director/Genius/Actor/Scriptwriter/etc.

l   Wanted to lose the relationship between the stage and the audience

l   Let the audience know that ‘this is a play’

-            Distancing