Author: Douglas Clayton
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN: 0773564411
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 388
Book Description
Douglas Clayton examines the tradition of commedia dell'arte as the Russian modernists inherited it, from its origins in Italian street theatre through its various transformations: in Italy (Gozzi and Goldini's plays); in France (the development of Pierrot and the restructuring of the plot); and in Germany (Tieck's and Hoffmann's metatheatre). He also analyses crucial texts by Gozzi, Lothar, Benavente, and Schnitzler that came to play a central role in the Russian theatre. Tracing the history of commedia dell'arte on the Russian stage, he demonstrates that the introduction of the tradition was theory-driven and discusses several milestone productions in the pre- and post-revolutionary period. Clayton examines the impact of commedia dell'arte, russified as the new theatrical genre of balagan, on both popular and lesser-known Russian playwrights, and, in conclusion, explores the significance of the commedia dell'arte as a theoretical underpinning for Sergei Eisenstein's theories of theatre and film.
Pierrot in Petrograd
Author: Douglas Clayton
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN: 0773564411
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 388
Book Description
Douglas Clayton examines the tradition of commedia dell'arte as the Russian modernists inherited it, from its origins in Italian street theatre through its various transformations: in Italy (Gozzi and Goldini's plays); in France (the development of Pierrot and the restructuring of the plot); and in Germany (Tieck's and Hoffmann's metatheatre). He also analyses crucial texts by Gozzi, Lothar, Benavente, and Schnitzler that came to play a central role in the Russian theatre. Tracing the history of commedia dell'arte on the Russian stage, he demonstrates that the introduction of the tradition was theory-driven and discusses several milestone productions in the pre- and post-revolutionary period. Clayton examines the impact of commedia dell'arte, russified as the new theatrical genre of balagan, on both popular and lesser-known Russian playwrights, and, in conclusion, explores the significance of the commedia dell'arte as a theoretical underpinning for Sergei Eisenstein's theories of theatre and film.
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN: 0773564411
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 388
Book Description
Douglas Clayton examines the tradition of commedia dell'arte as the Russian modernists inherited it, from its origins in Italian street theatre through its various transformations: in Italy (Gozzi and Goldini's plays); in France (the development of Pierrot and the restructuring of the plot); and in Germany (Tieck's and Hoffmann's metatheatre). He also analyses crucial texts by Gozzi, Lothar, Benavente, and Schnitzler that came to play a central role in the Russian theatre. Tracing the history of commedia dell'arte on the Russian stage, he demonstrates that the introduction of the tradition was theory-driven and discusses several milestone productions in the pre- and post-revolutionary period. Clayton examines the impact of commedia dell'arte, russified as the new theatrical genre of balagan, on both popular and lesser-known Russian playwrights, and, in conclusion, explores the significance of the commedia dell'arte as a theoretical underpinning for Sergei Eisenstein's theories of theatre and film.
Pierrot in Petrograd
Author: J. Douglas Clayton
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN: 9780773511361
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 400
Book Description
Commedia dell'arte was an essential ingredient of the revolution in Russian art in the early twentieth century. During this colourful and creative period artists sought inspiration in surprising places - icon painting, primitive art, and (in the theatre) circus, music-hall, and commedia dell'arte. The devices and motifs of Italian improvisational theatre played a central role in overcoming theatrical realism and naturalism and formed a basis for a new and expressive theatricality.
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN: 9780773511361
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 400
Book Description
Commedia dell'arte was an essential ingredient of the revolution in Russian art in the early twentieth century. During this colourful and creative period artists sought inspiration in surprising places - icon painting, primitive art, and (in the theatre) circus, music-hall, and commedia dell'arte. The devices and motifs of Italian improvisational theatre played a central role in overcoming theatrical realism and naturalism and formed a basis for a new and expressive theatricality.
A Reader's Guide to Andrei Bely's "Petersburg"
Author: Leonid Livak
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
ISBN: 029931930X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 281
Book Description
Andrei Bely's 1913 masterwork Petersburg is widely regarded as the most important Russian novel of the twentieth century. Vladimir Nabokov ranked it with James Joyce's Ulysses, Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis, and Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time. Few artistic works created before the First World War encapsulate and articulate the sensibility, ideas, phobias, and aspirations of Russian and transnational modernism as comprehensively. Bely expected his audience to participate in unraveling the work's many meanings, narrative strains, and patterns of details. In their essays, the contributors clarify these complexities, summarize the intellectual and artistic contexts that informed Petersburg's creation and reception, and review the interpretive possibilities contained in the novel. This volume will aid a broad audience of Anglophone readers in understanding and appreciating Petersburg.
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
ISBN: 029931930X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 281
Book Description
Andrei Bely's 1913 masterwork Petersburg is widely regarded as the most important Russian novel of the twentieth century. Vladimir Nabokov ranked it with James Joyce's Ulysses, Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis, and Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time. Few artistic works created before the First World War encapsulate and articulate the sensibility, ideas, phobias, and aspirations of Russian and transnational modernism as comprehensively. Bely expected his audience to participate in unraveling the work's many meanings, narrative strains, and patterns of details. In their essays, the contributors clarify these complexities, summarize the intellectual and artistic contexts that informed Petersburg's creation and reception, and review the interpretive possibilities contained in the novel. This volume will aid a broad audience of Anglophone readers in understanding and appreciating Petersburg.
The Director's Prism
Author: Dassia N. Posner
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
ISBN: 0810133571
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 405
Book Description
Finalist, 2017 Theatre Library Association George Freedley Memorial Award Shortlist, 2019 Prague Quadrennial Best Scenography and Design Publication Award The Director's Prism investigates how and why three of Russia's most innovative directors— Vsevolod Meyerhold, Alexander Tairov, and Sergei Eisenstein—used the fantastical tales of German Romantic writer E. T. A. Hoffmann to reinvent the rules of theatrical practice. Because the rise of the director and the Russian cult of Hoffmann closely coincided, Posner argues, many characteristics we associate with avant-garde theater—subjective perspective, breaking through the fourth wall, activating the spectator as a co-creator—become uniquely legible in the context of this engagement. Posner examines the artistic poetics of Meyerhold's grotesque, Tairov's mime-drama, and Eisenstein's theatrical attraction through production analyses, based on extensive archival research, that challenge the notion of theater as a mirror to life, instead viewing the director as a prism through whom life is refracted. A resource for scholars and practitioners alike, this groundbreaking study provides a fresh, provocative perspective on experimental theater, intercultural borrowings, and the nature of the creative process.
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
ISBN: 0810133571
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 405
Book Description
Finalist, 2017 Theatre Library Association George Freedley Memorial Award Shortlist, 2019 Prague Quadrennial Best Scenography and Design Publication Award The Director's Prism investigates how and why three of Russia's most innovative directors— Vsevolod Meyerhold, Alexander Tairov, and Sergei Eisenstein—used the fantastical tales of German Romantic writer E. T. A. Hoffmann to reinvent the rules of theatrical practice. Because the rise of the director and the Russian cult of Hoffmann closely coincided, Posner argues, many characteristics we associate with avant-garde theater—subjective perspective, breaking through the fourth wall, activating the spectator as a co-creator—become uniquely legible in the context of this engagement. Posner examines the artistic poetics of Meyerhold's grotesque, Tairov's mime-drama, and Eisenstein's theatrical attraction through production analyses, based on extensive archival research, that challenge the notion of theater as a mirror to life, instead viewing the director as a prism through whom life is refracted. A resource for scholars and practitioners alike, this groundbreaking study provides a fresh, provocative perspective on experimental theater, intercultural borrowings, and the nature of the creative process.
Jews and Ukrainians in Russia's Literary Borderlands
Author: Amelia Glaser
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
ISBN: 0810127962
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 305
Book Description
Studies of Eastern European literature have largely confined themselves to a single language, culture, or nationality. In this highly original book, Glaser shows how writers working in Russian, Ukrainian, and Yiddish during much of the nineteenth century and the early part of the twentieth century were in intense conversation with one another. The marketplace was both the literal locale at which members of these different societies and cultures interacted with one another and a rich subject for representation in their art. It is commonplace to note the influence of Gogol on Russian literature, but Glaser shows him to have been a profound influence on Ukrainian and Yiddish literature as well. And she shows how Gogol must be understood not only within the context of his adopted city of St. Petersburg but also that of his native Ukraine. As Ukrainian and Yiddish literatures developed over this period, they were shaped by their geographical and cultural position on the margins of the Russian Empire. As distinctive as these writers may seem from one another, they are further illuminated by an appreciation of their common relationship to Russia. Glaser’s book paints a far more complicated portrait than scholars have traditionally allowed of Jewish (particularly Yiddish) literature in the context of Eastern European and Russian culture.
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
ISBN: 0810127962
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 305
Book Description
Studies of Eastern European literature have largely confined themselves to a single language, culture, or nationality. In this highly original book, Glaser shows how writers working in Russian, Ukrainian, and Yiddish during much of the nineteenth century and the early part of the twentieth century were in intense conversation with one another. The marketplace was both the literal locale at which members of these different societies and cultures interacted with one another and a rich subject for representation in their art. It is commonplace to note the influence of Gogol on Russian literature, but Glaser shows him to have been a profound influence on Ukrainian and Yiddish literature as well. And she shows how Gogol must be understood not only within the context of his adopted city of St. Petersburg but also that of his native Ukraine. As Ukrainian and Yiddish literatures developed over this period, they were shaped by their geographical and cultural position on the margins of the Russian Empire. As distinctive as these writers may seem from one another, they are further illuminated by an appreciation of their common relationship to Russia. Glaser’s book paints a far more complicated portrait than scholars have traditionally allowed of Jewish (particularly Yiddish) literature in the context of Eastern European and Russian culture.
The Silver Mask
Author: Olga Yu Soboleva
Publisher: Peter Lang
ISBN: 9783039107063
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 304
Book Description
A highly significant movement within the Silver Age, harlequinade did not surface in Russian high culture until the turn of the twentieth century, when it suddenly began to attract the close attention of symbolist authors. In the present work, an attempt is made to show that the proliferation of the new cultural idiom was indicative of the fundamental concerns of the time and intimately related to the development of artistic thought. Although the theme is considered in its cultural totality (visual arts, literature and drama), the work is focused on symbolist poetry. It provides a close analysis of the 'harlequinade' verse of Blok and Belyi - two leading figures of the movement, in whose writings the symbolist theory found its maturity and perfection. The poems in question are conceptually centred on the dialectical unity of self and other - one of the key-notes in the new symbolist outlook. This is traced at various levels of poetic representation: in the imagery system and the principles of text construction, in linguistic features and poetic devices employed by the authors. Special attention is given to the sound organization of the poems, which heightens considerably the semantic potential of the text.
Publisher: Peter Lang
ISBN: 9783039107063
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 304
Book Description
A highly significant movement within the Silver Age, harlequinade did not surface in Russian high culture until the turn of the twentieth century, when it suddenly began to attract the close attention of symbolist authors. In the present work, an attempt is made to show that the proliferation of the new cultural idiom was indicative of the fundamental concerns of the time and intimately related to the development of artistic thought. Although the theme is considered in its cultural totality (visual arts, literature and drama), the work is focused on symbolist poetry. It provides a close analysis of the 'harlequinade' verse of Blok and Belyi - two leading figures of the movement, in whose writings the symbolist theory found its maturity and perfection. The poems in question are conceptually centred on the dialectical unity of self and other - one of the key-notes in the new symbolist outlook. This is traced at various levels of poetic representation: in the imagery system and the principles of text construction, in linguistic features and poetic devices employed by the authors. Special attention is given to the sound organization of the poems, which heightens considerably the semantic potential of the text.
Staging the Absolute
Author: Thomas Seifrid
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 1487551827
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 222
Book Description
Staging the Absolute argues that an array of practices and beliefs came together to define an essential aspect of Russian and Soviet culture in the twentieth century: the persistent desire to interrupt – or disrupt – history. Drawing on sources that define the nature of public rituals, the book reveals the pervasive presence of the impulse to impede history in Russia’s modern era and the realization of the idea in the form of the Stalinist show trials of the 1930s. Thomas Seifrid analyses Soviet festivals, public displays of agitational propaganda, and urban planning, together with such modernist precursors as fin-de-siècle and early twentieth-century projects for reviving the theatre, modernist adaptations of puppet theatre, the Faust legend and its vogue in early twentieth-century Russia, and the nineteenth-century panorama. The book reveals that what binds these otherwise disparate phenomena together is a shared impatience with history and a corresponding desire to appropriate urban space. Illuminating the deeper meanings in these revived archaic forms, Staging the Absolute shows how pervasive the interest in disrupting history was in the Russian modern era.
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 1487551827
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 222
Book Description
Staging the Absolute argues that an array of practices and beliefs came together to define an essential aspect of Russian and Soviet culture in the twentieth century: the persistent desire to interrupt – or disrupt – history. Drawing on sources that define the nature of public rituals, the book reveals the pervasive presence of the impulse to impede history in Russia’s modern era and the realization of the idea in the form of the Stalinist show trials of the 1930s. Thomas Seifrid analyses Soviet festivals, public displays of agitational propaganda, and urban planning, together with such modernist precursors as fin-de-siècle and early twentieth-century projects for reviving the theatre, modernist adaptations of puppet theatre, the Faust legend and its vogue in early twentieth-century Russia, and the nineteenth-century panorama. The book reveals that what binds these otherwise disparate phenomena together is a shared impatience with history and a corresponding desire to appropriate urban space. Illuminating the deeper meanings in these revived archaic forms, Staging the Absolute shows how pervasive the interest in disrupting history was in the Russian modern era.
Modern Popular Theatre
Author: Jason Price
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350316520
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 311
Book Description
This book offers a concise history of popular theatre since the early twentieth century. Using key popular culture theories and critical perspectives, Jason Price analyses popular theatres across different cultural and political contexts, drawing on a diverse range of international artists and theatre-makers who have worked with popular forms, including Vsevolod Meyerhold, Blue Blouse, Bertolt Brecht, Erwin Piscator, the San Francisco Mime Troupe, the Bread and Puppet Theatre and more. As well as defining what 'popular' means in relation to performance and the audiences who watch it, the book considers some of the political frameworks and causes that popular theatre has been placed in service of, such as socialism, the New Left and the gay rights movement. It also addresses the uses of cabaret, puppetry and circus outside their native popular contexts, examining the role they play in avant-garde and experimental theatre practices. In doing so, Price encourages readers to look beyond popular theatre as a simple form of entertainment and to consider its potential as a form of political activism, as a community-builder, and as a valuable tool for artistic experimentation.
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350316520
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 311
Book Description
This book offers a concise history of popular theatre since the early twentieth century. Using key popular culture theories and critical perspectives, Jason Price analyses popular theatres across different cultural and political contexts, drawing on a diverse range of international artists and theatre-makers who have worked with popular forms, including Vsevolod Meyerhold, Blue Blouse, Bertolt Brecht, Erwin Piscator, the San Francisco Mime Troupe, the Bread and Puppet Theatre and more. As well as defining what 'popular' means in relation to performance and the audiences who watch it, the book considers some of the political frameworks and causes that popular theatre has been placed in service of, such as socialism, the New Left and the gay rights movement. It also addresses the uses of cabaret, puppetry and circus outside their native popular contexts, examining the role they play in avant-garde and experimental theatre practices. In doing so, Price encourages readers to look beyond popular theatre as a simple form of entertainment and to consider its potential as a form of political activism, as a community-builder, and as a valuable tool for artistic experimentation.
Permanent Liminality and Modernity
Author: Arpad Szakolczai
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317082176
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 299
Book Description
This book offers a comprehensive sociological study of the nature and dynamics of the modern world, through the use of a series of anthropological concepts, including the trickster, schismogenesis, imitation and liminality. Developing the view that with the theatre playing a central role, the modern world is conditioned as much by cultural processes as it is by economic, technological or scientific ones, the author contends the world is, to a considerable extent, theatrical - a phenomenon experienced as inauthenticity or a loss of direction and meaning. As such the novel is revealed as a means for studying our theatricalised reality, not simply because novels can be understood to be likening the world to theatre, but because they effectively capture and present the reality of a world that has been thoroughly ’theatricalised’ - and they do so more effectively than the main instruments usually employed to analyse reality: philosophy and sociology. With analyses of some of the most important novelists and novels of modern culture, including Rilke, Hofmannsthal, Kafka, Mann, Blixen, Broch and Bulgakov, and focusing on fin-de-siècle Vienna as a crucial ’threshold’ chronotope of modernity, Permanent Liminality and Modernity demonstrates that all seek to investigate and unmask the theatricalisation of modern life, with its progressive loss of meaning and our deteriorating capacity to distinguish between what is meaningful and what is artificial. Drawing on the work of Nietzsche, Bakhtin and Girard to examine the ways in which novels explore the reduction of human existence to a state of permanent liminality, in the form of a sacrificial carnival, this book will appeal to scholars of social, anthropological and literary theory.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317082176
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 299
Book Description
This book offers a comprehensive sociological study of the nature and dynamics of the modern world, through the use of a series of anthropological concepts, including the trickster, schismogenesis, imitation and liminality. Developing the view that with the theatre playing a central role, the modern world is conditioned as much by cultural processes as it is by economic, technological or scientific ones, the author contends the world is, to a considerable extent, theatrical - a phenomenon experienced as inauthenticity or a loss of direction and meaning. As such the novel is revealed as a means for studying our theatricalised reality, not simply because novels can be understood to be likening the world to theatre, but because they effectively capture and present the reality of a world that has been thoroughly ’theatricalised’ - and they do so more effectively than the main instruments usually employed to analyse reality: philosophy and sociology. With analyses of some of the most important novelists and novels of modern culture, including Rilke, Hofmannsthal, Kafka, Mann, Blixen, Broch and Bulgakov, and focusing on fin-de-siècle Vienna as a crucial ’threshold’ chronotope of modernity, Permanent Liminality and Modernity demonstrates that all seek to investigate and unmask the theatricalisation of modern life, with its progressive loss of meaning and our deteriorating capacity to distinguish between what is meaningful and what is artificial. Drawing on the work of Nietzsche, Bakhtin and Girard to examine the ways in which novels explore the reduction of human existence to a state of permanent liminality, in the form of a sacrificial carnival, this book will appeal to scholars of social, anthropological and literary theory.
Russian Opera and the Symbolist Movement
Author: Simon Morrison
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520229436
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 375
Book Description
A pioneering study of the Symbolist Movement in early twentieth-century Russian opera.
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520229436
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 375
Book Description
A pioneering study of the Symbolist Movement in early twentieth-century Russian opera.