1) "The Society of the Spectacle" - Guy Debord
Debord argues that "spectacle epitomizes the prevailing model of social life." (13) With this in mind, how can we better read re-imaginings of classic texts, especially Shakespeare's? What do these re-placed performances tell us about our current societal state?
2) "The Theatre of Cruelty: First Manifesto" - Antonin Artaud
How can the idea of theatrical sublimation help or hinder the creation of new theatre? Would it invite more "unsettled" forms of theatre and/or performance (to appropriate Levin's term)? Or would it swing the pendulum the other direction, forsaking multidimensionality for wholly "on-message" performance? (inspired by Artaud's discussion of violence onstage sublimating spectators' violent impulses offstage, 258 - 259)
3) "Unsettling Opera: Staging Mozart, Verdi, Wagner, and Zemlinsky" - David J. Levin
In Levin's article, he criticizes the impulse to neaten or simplify operas, instead of embracing their "unruliness", which is the result of the blending of many genres into one art form. This"unruliness", and his argument for the inclusion of video recordings of operas into the scholarly conversation - - - are these applicable to the study of photographs as performance or as evidence of performance? (inspired both by Levin's aforementioned stances, and Robin Bernstein's reading of photographs in her article "Dances with Things")
4) "The Avoidance of Love" - Henry Cavell
When "reading" a photograph, like Bernstein does in "Dances with Things", is there a Cavellian notion of separateness going on that we can interrogate further? Is there a "Desdemona" and a "Mrs. Siddons"? Is there this "monument" of the photograph, in opposition to (or conversation with) the reality of the subject? (inspired by Cavell's discussion of yokels, identifying oneself with onstage characters, and Othello - pg. 145)
No comments:
Post a Comment