Theatres Of Violence

Massacres and mass killings have always marked if not shaped the history of the world and as such are subjects of increasing interest among historians. The premise underlying this collection is that massacres were an integral, if not accepted part (until quite recently) of warfare, and that they were often fundamental to the colonizing process in the early modern and modern worlds. Making a deliberate distinction between 'massacre' and 'genocide', the editors call for an entirely separate and new subject under the rubric of 'Massacre Studies', dealing with mass killings that are not genocidal in intent. This volume offers a reflection on the nature of mass killings and extreme violence across regions and across centuries, and brings together a wide range of approaches and case studies.

This book brings together the fields of theatre, gender studies, and psychology/sociology in order to explore the relationships between what happens when women engage in violence, how the events and their reception intercept with cultural understandings of gender, how plays thoughtfully depict this topic, and how their productions impact audiences. Truthful portrayals force consideration of both the startling reality of women's violence — not how it's been sensationalized or demonized or sexualized, but how it is — and what parameters, what possibilities, should exist for its enactment in life and live theatre. These women appear in a wide array of contexts: they are mothers, daughters, lovers, streetfighters, boxers, soldiers, and dominatrixes. Who they are and why they choose to use violence varies dramatically. They stage resistance and challenge normative expectations for women. This fascinating and balanced study will appeal to anyone interested in gender/feminism issues and theatre.

Provides insight into the ritual lures and effects of mass media spectatorship, especially regarding the pleasures, risks, and purposes of violent display. Contemporary debates about mass media violence tend to ignore the long history of staged violence in the theatres and rituals of many cultures. In Theatres of Human Sacrifice, Mark Pizzato relates the appeal and possible effects of screen violence todayin sports, movies, and television newsto specific sacrificial rites and performance conventions in ancient Greek, Aztec, and Roman culture. Using the psychoanalytic theories of Lacan, Kristeva, and Zðizûek, as well as the theatrical theories of Artaud and Brecht, the book offers insights into the ritual lures and effects of current mass media spectatorship, especially regarding the pleasures, purposes, and risks of violent display. Updating Aristotle’s notion of catharsis, Pizzato identifies a sacrificial imperative within the human mind, structured by various patriarchal cultures and manifested in distinctive rites and dramas, with both positive and negative potential effects on their audiences. Mark Pizzato is Associate Professor of Theatre at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and the author of Edges of Loss: From Modern Drama to Postmodern Theory.

As violence escalates around the world, its victims and perpetrators struggle to develop comprehensible narratives to present truthful accounts of history and experience. This special issue of Theater--a collection of theater artists' responses to contemporary events--examines the human psyche and its capacity for violence and explores theater's possibilities for political dissent. In Theater and Violence, through interviews, play excerpts, and full-length plays--including the first American publication of two major German playwrights and directors--theater artists offer their own narratives for humankind's violent psychologies. One full-length play, Falk Richter's Seven Seconds (In God We Trust), probes the mind of an American pilot moments before he releases a bomb on a city below. Another, René Pollesch's 24 Hours Are Not a Day, humorously explores the ironies and pathologies of globalization after September 11. The issue also includes a commentary on the National Endowment for the Arts' Shakespeare presentations for the U.S. military; interviews with Russian theater artists on the first anniversary of the Chechen rebels' siege of a Moscow theater; and Jonathan Kalb's powerful adaptation of Heiner Müller's Mauser, set in Tikrit. Contributors. Josh Fox, Gitta Honegger, Jonathan Kalb, Anna Kohler, James Leverett, Mark Lord, Marlene Norst, René Pollesch, Falk Richter, Yana Ross, Scott Saul, Tom Sellar, Catherine Sheehy, Robert Woodruff

Among the most intriguing questions of neurology is how conceptions of good and evil arise in the human brain. In a world where we encounter god-like forces in nature, and try to transcend them, the development of a neural network dramatizing good against evil seems inevitable. This critical book explores the cosmic dimensions of the brain's inner theatre as revealed by neurology, cognitive science, evolutionary psychology, psychoanalysis, primatology and exemplary Western performances. In theatre, film, and television, supernatural figures express the brain's anatomical features as humans transform their natural environment into cosmic and theological spaces in order to grapple with their vulnerability in the world.

'It is a stress, yes, to deal, undeniably, to deal with people, yes, but That That That is what I enjoy. That is what I'm good at, okay?' Clair works in real estate. Mike and Liz are selling. James wants to buy. He'll only deal with Clair. Martin Crimp's play Dealing with Clair premiered in 1988 at the Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond. This edition was published alongside a new production of the play at the Orange Tree, in October 2018, in a co-production with English Touring Theatre.

This book examines the critical connection between revolts and revolutions to larger notions of social and cultural performances in Nicaraguan social, cultural and political life. To understand social relations in Nicaragua today, it is crucial to look at those highly theatricalized and rhetorical performances of power and resistance that have spanned specific national spaces for centuries. The book looks, therefore, at the history of Nicaragua from the colonial period to the Sandinista Revolution to frame contingent and temporal social and cultural processes that have become heightened and revealing of the social relations in revolution. The contemporary staging of the ancient El Gueguense play, for instance, illustrates a social space that reveals contemporary issues of oppression and power. Tapping into the spirit of self-consciousness, reflexivity, and narrational disruptions, the book uses the conventions of theatre such as audience and actor relations to make available to readers the theatrical intimacy of interlocutors and researcher.

John Conteh-Morgan explores the multiple ways in which African and Caribbean theatres have combined aesthetic, ceremonial, experimental, and avant-garde practices in order to achieve sharp critiques of the nationalist and postnationalist state and to elucidate the concerns of the francophone world. More recent changes have introduced a transnational dimension, replacing concerns with national and ethnic solidarity in favor of irony and self-reflexivity. New Francophone African and Caribbean Theatres places these theatres at the heart of contemporary debates on global cultural and political practices and offers a more finely tuned understanding of performance in diverse diasporic networks.