Dramaturgy Of Sound In The Avant Garde And Postdramatic Theatre

Sound is born and dies with action. In this surprising, resourceful study, Mladen Ovadija makes a case for the centrality of sound as an integral element of contemporary theatre. He argues that sound in theatre inevitably "betrays" the dramatic text, and that sound is performance. Until recently, theatrical sound has largely been regarded as supplemental to the dramatic plot. Now, however, sound is the subject of renewed interest in theatrical discourse. Dramaturgy of sound, Ovadija argues, reads and writes a theatrical idiom based on two inseparable, intertwined strands - the gestural, corporeal power of the performer’s voice and the structural value of stage sound. His extensive research in experimental performance and his examination of the pioneering work by Futurists, Dadaists, and Expressionists enable Ovadija to create a powerful study of autonomous sound as an essential element in the creation of synesthetic theatre. Dramaturgy of Sound in the Avant-garde and Postdramatic Theatre presents a cogent argument about a continuous tradition in experimental theatre running from early modernist to contemporary works.

Sound experimentation by avant-garde theatre artists of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries is an important but ignored aspect of theatre history. Curtin explores how artists engaged with the sonic conditions of modernity through dramatic form, characterization, staging, technology, performance style, and other forms of interaction.

Newly adapted for the Anglophone reader, this is an excellent translation of Hans-Thies Lehmann’s groundbreaking study of the new theatre forms that have developed since the late 1960s, which has become a key reference point in international discussions of contemporary theatre. In looking at the developments since the late 1960s, Lehmann considers them in relation to dramatic theory and theatre history, as an inventive response to the emergence of new technologies, and as an historical shift from a text-based culture to a new media age of image and sound. Engaging with theoreticians of 'drama' from Aristotle and Brecht, to Barthes and Schechner, the book analyzes the work of recent experimental theatre practitioners such as Robert Wilson, Tadeusz Kantor, Heiner Müller, the Wooster Group, Needcompany and Societas Raffaello Sanzio. Illustrated by a wealth of practical examples, and with an introduction by Karen Jürs-Munby providing useful theoretical and artistic contexts for the book, Postdramatic Theatre is an historical survey expertly combined with a unique theoretical approach which guides the reader through this new theatre landscape.

The special issue of International Yearbook of Futurism Studies for 2015 will investigate the role of Futurism in the œuvre of a number of Women artists and writers. These include a number of women actively supporting Futurism (e.g. Růžena Zátková, Edyth von Haynau, Olga Rozanova, Eva Kühn), others periodically involved with the movement (e.g. Valentine de Saint Point, Aleksandra Ekster, Mary Swanzy), others again inspired only by certain aspects of the movement (e.g. Natalia Goncharova, Alice Bailly, Giovanna Klien). Several artists operated on the margins of a Futurist inspired aesthetics, but they felt attracted to Futurism because of its support for women artists or because of its innovatory roles in the social and intellectual spheres. Most of the artists covered in Volume 5 (2015) are far from straightforward cases, but exactly because of this they can offer genuinely new insights into a still largely under-researched domain of twentieth-century art and literature. Guiding questions for these investigations are: How did these women come into contact with Futurist ideas? Was it first-hand knowledge (poems, paintings, manifestos etc) or second-hand knowledge (usually newspaper reports or personal conversions with artists who had been in contact with Futurism)? How did the women respond to the (positive or negative) reports? How did this show up in their œuvre? How did it influence their subsequent, often non-Futurist, career?

This book revisits Hans-Thies Lehmann's theory of the postdramatic and participates in the ongoing debate on the theatre paradigm by placing contemporary Indian performance within it. None of the Indian theatre-makers under study built their works directly on the Euro-American model of postdramatic theatre, but many have used its vocabulary and apparatus in innovative, transnational ways. Their principal aim was to invigorate the language of Indian urban theatre, which had turned stale under the stronghold of realism inherited from colonial stage practice or prescriptive under the decolonizing drive of the 'theatre of roots' movement after independence. Emerging out of a set of different historical and cultural contexts, their productions have eventually expanded and diversified the postdramatic framework by crosspollinating it with regional performance forms. Theatre in India today includes devised performance, storytelling across forms, theatre solos, cross-media performance, theatre installations, scenographic theatre, theatre-as-event, reality theatre, and so on. The book balances theory, context and praxis, developing a new area of scholarship in Indian theatre. Interspersed throughout are Indian theatre-makers' clarifications of their own practices vis-à-vis those in Europe and the US.

"This book examines how writers and artists from the 1870s to the 1960s turned their attention to the physical process of spoken language. Their goal was to capture this vocal-acoustic phenomenon-the bodily articulation of sound-in legible form. At stake was a crossing-over from the audible to the visible, from speech to notation, from body to trace. This book shows how the search for such possibilities-and the various media, techniques, and concepts employed-transformed the age-old genre of poetry into a site of radical linguistic experimentation"--

Combining a range of content with self-reflexive examination by scholars and practitioners, this edited volume interrogates the contemporary significance of the avant-garde. Rather than focusing on a particular region, period, or movement, the contributors bring together case studies to examine what constitutes the avant-garde canon.

This book explores the critical field of theatre sound and the sonic phenomena of theatre. It draws together a wide range of related topics, including sound design and sonic sonographies, voice as a performance of sound, listening as auditory performance, and audience as resonance. It explores radical forms of sonic performance and our engagement in it, from the creation of sonic subjectivities to noise as a politics of sound. The introductory chapters trace the innate aurality of theatre and the history of sound effects and design, while also interrogating why the art of theatre sound was delayed and underrepresented in philosophy as well as theatre and performance theory. Subsequent chapters explore the emergence of aurally engaged theatre practice and focus on examples of contemporary sound in and as theatre, including theatre in the dark, headphone theatre and immersive theatre, amongst others, through theories of perception and philosophies of listening, vocality, sonority and noise.