Nationalism And Youth In Theatre And Performance

Nationalism and Youth in Theatre and Performance explores how children and young people fit into national political theatre and, moreover, how youth enact interrogative, patriotic, and/or antagonistic performances as they develop their own relationship with nationhood. Children are often seen as excluded from public discourse or political action. However, this idea of exclusion is false both because adults place children at the center of political debates (with the rhetoric of future generations) and because children actively insert themselves into public discourse. Whether performing a national anthem for visiting heads of state, creating a school play about a country’s birth, or marching in protest of a change in public policy, young people use theatre and performance as a means of publicly staking a claim in national politics, directly engaging with ideas of nationalism around the world. This collection explores the issues of how children fit into national discourse on international stages. The authors focus on national performances by/for/with youth and examine a wide range of performances from across the globe, from parades and protests to devised and traditional theatre. Nationalism and Youth in Theatre and Performance rethinks how national performance is defined and offers previously unexplored historical and theoretical discussions of political youth performance.

Through an examination of children's and youth plays and performances about the Holocaust from Germany, Israel, and the United States, this book offers an entirely new way of looking at the vital role of youth performance in coping with the legacy of historical tragedy. As the first book-length critical examination of this subject, Holocaust Memory and Youth Performance considers plays that are produced by major theatre companies alongside performances written by young authors and pieces taken from the diaries and memoirs of those who experienced the Holocaust as children or adolescents. While youth-focused plays about the Holocaust have been in the repertories of top professional companies throughout the world for decades and continue to be performed in theatres, schools, and community centers, they are often neglected in concentrated and comparative studies of Holocaust theatre. Erika Hughes fills this gap by examining plays (including The Diary of Anne Frank and Ab heure heißt Du Sara), musicals, performances, scripts, a rock concert, a performance on Instagram, and pedagogically-focused works of applied theatre – a diverse collection of performances for young audiences that tell the stories of young people who experienced the Holocaust. Adopting Hannah Arendt's notion of natality as a powerful framework, this study examines the ways in which youth-theatre performances make a vital contribution to intergenerational witnessing and the collective memory of the Holocaust.

This book studies the intersection of performance and nationalism in South Asia.It traces the emergence of the culture of nationalism from the late nineteenth century through to contemporary times. Drawing on various theatrical performance texts, it looks at the ways in which performative narratives have reflected the national narrative and analyses the role performance has played in engendering nationhood. The volume discusses themes such as political martyrdom as performative nationalism, the revitalisation of nationalism through new media, the sanitisation of physical gestures in dance, the performance of nationhood through violence in Tajiki films, as well as K-Pop and the new northeastern identity in India. A unique contribution to the study of nationalism, this book will be useful for scholars and researchers of history, theatre and performance studies, cultural studies, postcolonial studies, modern India, Asian studies, political studies, social anthropology and sociology.

This book argues that US theatre in the 20th century embraced the theories and practices of internationalism as a way to realize a better world and as part of the strategic reform of the theatre into a national expression. Live performance, theatre internationalists argued, could represent and reflect the nation like no other endeavour.

As early as Plato, theorists acknowledged the power of theatre as a way of teaching young minds. Similarly, starting with Plato, philosophers occasionally adopted an anti-theatrical stance, worried by the “dangers” theatre posed to society. The relationships between learning and theatre have never been seen as straightforward, obvious, or without contradictions. This volume investigates the complexity of the intersection of theatre and learning, addressing both the theoretical and practical aspects of it. In three sections—Reflecting, Risking, and Re-imagining—theatre researchers, education scholars, theatre practitioners consider the tensions, frictions and failures that make learning through theatre, in theatre and about theatre interesting, engaging, and challenging. Loosely based on the proceedings from the 20th Festival of Original Theatre (F.O.O.T.), which took place in February 2012 at the University of Toronto, this book contains academic articles and interviews, as well as position, reflection and provocation papers from both established researchers in the field of Applied Theatre, such as Professor Helen Nicholson and Professor Kathleen Gallagher, as well as experienced and emergent scholars in Education, Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies. It also introduces the unorthodox work of the pre-eminent Swedish director and inventor of Babydrama, Suzanne Osten, to the academic audience. Theatre and Learning will be interesting to a wide range of audiences, such as theatre artists and students, theatre researchers and educators, and will be particularly useful for those teaching Theatre Theory and Practice, including Applied Theatre, in higher education.

How has theatre engaged with the nation-state and helped to formulate national identities? What impact have migration and globalisation had on the relationship between theatre and nation? Theatre & Nation explores how theatre institutions, playwrights, theatre-makers and performance artists engage with the nation, nationalism and national identity in their work. The book argues that theatrical representations of the nation are constantly in flux and that the way theatre engages with the nation changes according to different geographical, political, economic, social and cultural circumstances. Foreword by Nicholas Hytner.

There is a complex relationship between performance, youth, and the shifting material circumstances (social, cultural, economic, ideological, and political) under which theatre for children and youth is generated and perceived. This book explores different aspect of theatre for young audiences using examples from theatrical events globally.

"Throughout the history of the nation-state, theatre has contributed to the construction and reappraisal of the nation and national identities. This book argues that ideas of the nation are constantly in flux and explores the way theatre engages with such changes according to different geographical, political, economic, social and cultural climates"--