Reflection Journal 10 (22/10/12)

Presentation continued...

Feminism in 20th century

3 waves

1st wave
- 19th century til 1920s.
- Basic political rights

2nd wave
- 1960s-1980s
- Personal lives and education
- Women's Liberation movement

3rd wave
1990s til today
lack of attention to differences among women
'Wave' theory
Women of colour and working class women

Types of feminism
- LIberal fem - social reform equal opportunities for women. Gender and education, race and class
- Socialist - interaction of capitalist system and patriarchal system. Gender inequality. Work force.
- Radical - Sexuality and figure fertility. Eradicate women's symbol.
- Post structural - Concept of gender is conceive by existence.

- Highlights female voices and addressing stereotypes
- Radical performance strategies
- Experimental/ avant garde playwriting ensemble-based
- 'Doubling' (an actor playing multiple roles in the same play. See why there are changes in role)
- Non-linear plot with open-ended conclusions
- Ambiguity rather than clarity. (Mostly thought provoking)

Caryl Churchhill
- Non-naturalistic techniques and feminist themes
- Dramatisation of the abuses of power and exploration of sexual politics.
- Use of Brecht's 'Epic theatre'
- Experimented with dance theatre
- Incorporated Artaud's 'Theatre of Cruelty' (Surrealism)
- 'Cloud Nine' play
- Use shocking scenes to highlight the oppression of women
Magdelena project
- Primary creative voices from women instead of men
- Women from the public

Annie Griffin, Rose English, Bobby Bakin, Karen Finley
Karen Finley
- Nude, Symbolism, combination of truth and parody '38D'
- Emotional intensity
- Incest, rape, violence, suicide, poverty, discrimination, controversial subjects.

Liberalism
- an Ideology used in theatre i 18th century
- Post war. Social discontent and rise of workers theatre movement in fight for their rights
- Rapid growth in industrialization, telecommunications, education, social, political and religion issues
- Anti-oppression (class, gender, culture)
- More personal perspectives, human consciousness.
- Pushing of limitations, boundaries.
- Liberalism in performing, creating and developing in theaters
- Epic theatre and theatre of cruelty
- For gays, lesbians and minority races as well
- Berlin was the 20th century stage for modern drama.
- Latin America theatre - Paulo Freire's pedagogy of the oppressed.
- Caryl Churchhill.
- Philippines theatre for education and liberation for all females. Eradicate poverty. Social transformation
'Mother Courage'

Reflection Journal 9 (15/10/12)

Continuation of Presentation...

Minimalism ( Candice)
- Expose the essence of subject while generating visual and psychological impact.
- Emphasizing on simplification of forms and shapes
- Prominent figures : Beckett and Grotowski
- Does away decor and music (richness of the play). Truth through acting.
- Less is more. Elements demands more creativity.
- Cause of war. Pure notion of self. Essence of life. Inner most truth

Theatre
- Less details, props, elements brings about more imagination, creativity and essentials.
- Emphasis on language, gestures and body.
- Tension between Silence and words.
- Tension between mobility and immobility. Creates a kind of dynamic.
- Tension between century space. Adding weight into the physical space.

Poor theatre (Polish)
- Takes away unnecessary
- Spectacle makeup, decorations.
- Rhythms and other elements
- Less about acting, more about being.

How did it began?
- Expressionism (unclear through expressions)
- Content more explicit through moods.


Naturalism (Ezanne) 

- Started 1879

- Virtual reality

- Naked, pure, undiluted
- movement that seeks to replicate a believable everyday reality while realism is the opposite.
- Strictly no miming. Realism encourages miming.
- Grounded by Darwin's Notions of Evolution.

Theatre Libre (1887) by andre antoine
- free theatre
- Exempt from censorship
- Plays Banned in Europe

Emile Zola
- French writer, important contibution to naturalism in theatre.
- No dream-scape, mythological stuff.
- Effect of Materialist causes
- Based alot on Darwinian notions of evolution
- Human beings as a product of biological evolution.
- Governed by social environment (cause). Our behaviour is the effect of social causes.
- Focus on depicting lower class.

Leo Tolstoy
- Russian playwright
- Considered life related to christian agenda
- Vivid moral lessons
- Sin and redemption, involving adultery and infanticide, lower classes.
- 'Power of Darkness' - reveals 'human animal' in sheer brutality.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUUjmQI-CQ8

Buddhism, Modern Age (Si Chuan)
- Influenced art, dance, music and theatre.
- Elements of symbolism and expressionism. Symbolism, gestures for expressions.
- Inner peace, Relaxation.

Burmese Marionette theatre (Yokhte Pwe) - Puppetry
Burmese dance-drama (Zat Pwe) - more dramatic and realistic direction.

Feminism (Annie)
- Gender equality
- Removal of pre-set gender roles. Away with woman being stereotyped as housewife, etc.

Responding through theatre
- Non-linear
- Makes use of ensemble
- Singapore only take certain strands of western feminism

How feminism manifests itself in Singapore
- Disrupting, Dismantling and returning the gaze. Affirmative actions.  Gaze is silent.
Disrupting - Breaking the tension between the gaze of men to women
Dismantling - Overdoing the stereotypes of woman
Returning - giving them back the gaze
Affirmative actions - uniqueness of women instead of how they are perceived.
'Ovidia Yu'

Chin Woon Ping '4 Daruma'
- Strong symbolic elements
- Satire and humour

Eleanor Wong
- Address the cultural inability to accept homosexual relationships.

Feminism (Hailwa)
- 2nd wave of feminism, Political movement in 1960s.
- Urging woman to recognise their universal oppression.
- Gender, race, class and sexuality. Lesbianism included
- Initially focused only on Middle class white woman and then came the black women theatre.
- Feminist theatre of the 1970s dominated by white middle class woman.
- Created their own perf groups, space or networks. But not successful.

Magdalena Project - Wales (1986)
- International network of women in contemporary theatre.
- forum for discussion and a source of support and performance training.
- 1989, Put up 1st all black perf. Tried to move to multi racial group.

Theatre of the Black women
- Shut down in 1988. Founders Bernadine and Rendell.
- Aim to give artistic expression to the experience of the black women in past and present.
- Focus on black women
- Fight against oppression and define feminism in their own terms by reliving history and own struggles.
- Involve very few men and females in their production.

A process towards Liberalism (Sharon)
- Constantly in search of inner truth, more dialectic.
- Liberalism is a philosophy on ideas of liberation and equality. Eg. French, American revolution.

Forum theatre by Augusto Boal (1950s)
- Joker to facilitate the process
- Alot of physical aggression.
- Theatre of the oppressed
- Dialogue becomes monologue. Aim is to become human again by re-establishing the dialogue' Describes us as animals.
- Inclusivity and express their own solutions.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOgv91qQyJc

- Conscientization - complex process of self enlightenment through critical consciousness.
- Theatre as catharsis
- Essence of Self consciousness
- Bertolt Brecht Breaking the 4th wall, Paulo Freire pedagogy of the oppressed, Karl Marx class struggles.

Surrealism (Joyce)
- Andre Breton inspired by Sigmund Freud and his studies of subconscious.
- liberate imagination by using the dream analysis. (Conscious, pre-conscious and unconscious)
- Surprise, hypnosis, unexpected juxtaposition, hallucinations, effects of dreams.
- Defy logic and structure of reality.
- Autonomy and liberation in writing and drawing.
- Experimental theatre with moral, psychological and ideological problems.
2 phenomenon: - Disappearance of custom and using sternographic resources. (Order, Clarity, rational thought)
Rid the audience of civilized thought and free their natural energy.
Go through a catharsis (relieving of emotions)
- Experimented with a stream of consciousness techniques, creating works that defy logic and structure of reality.

Exquisite corpse
- Producing a surprising and absurdphrase.

Existentialism (Lloyd)
- Seen in Shakespearean plays.
- To understand what a human being is through more than scientific knowledge
- Nietzsche, Satre, Camus.
- came about by God, christianity. It can apply to any religion/ philosophies.
- Can transcend it


Post Modernism (Hui Chi)
- Fauvism
- Post modernist found Modernist too pure
- High brow art.
- Merging of different art forms.
- Influx of ideologies during cold war period. Alot of countries developing.
- Hybrid of multiple interpretation of words and hybrid of popular and high culture.
- Relativity to our culture of today.
- Questions alot but not answering anything

Deconstruction (Jacques Derrida)
- The way u deconstruct the scripts
- Readers more authority instead of the director. More active role now.

Death of the Author (Roland Barthes)
- Presence of the author is not there. Power of author is being reduced.
- Authoritative.

' The Comedy of Error'
- Perform key roles and trickery. Modern rejected this impurist.

Orientalism

Constructivism
- Driven by sharing and meaning making by the casts rather than scripted text.
- More full and whole because it involved more people.

Reflection Journal 8 (8/10/12)

20^th century Presentation

Futurism - Jeanne

Expressionism - Shahidah and Shehana

Dadaism - Joanne

Symbolism - Carmen

Orientalism - Jasmine (Me)

Surrealism - Faeezah

American Realism - Ernst

My thoughts

I felt that throughout these few presentations, I was more informed of the various styles of the ‘ism’ involved in the 20^th century theatre Avande Garde movement. They differ in concepts, perspectives, styles and techniques from each other. They may oppose each other; some were influenced by one another. Example, the Dadaism gave birth to Surrealism. Because there were so many ‘isms’, I felt that it was a great idea to share knowledge about the 20^th century theatre through the individual study of each different ism, and then presenting it to the whole class. That way, more time was spent on exploring the different plays of the different isms. (eg, Doll House, Waiting for Godot, etc.) It was a good exposure and privilege to be able to work out those plays.

However, 15 min for each ism is quite short because I felt that I did not have time to elaborate though I wanted to. I missed a few key points and my videos were not shown. I missed out the last segment where I wanted to touch on Orientalism on other forms of Art.

I emailed Dr Jane, regarding a question between my presentation and Faeezah’s presentation because I realized that Faeezah said that theatre of cruelty came from surrealism, but my research (Pronko's book on western and eastern perspectives on theatre and 'artaud on theatre' by Schumacher) stated that he moved away from surrealism. Dr Jane reassured that I did fine and she was pleased with the material that I use and the face that I address such an important topic that particularly concerns the people in Singapore, as Singapore is a country between the East and West.  I felt comforted that my content of the presentation was well because I did not want my classmates to absorb the wrong information. Also, I was afraid my topic is out of topic.

What interests me the most is futurism. I think if I were an audience who has to choose an ism down a row of theatres, each offering a different ism, then I will choose to go for the futurism theatre, because it is very engaging in an entertaining way. I love how the actors could make audience laugh. However, it no matter which ism I like, it still depends on which one I want to watch. It depends on my mood also. For example, if I want to have a good laugh, I will go for a futurist play. If I want to make my brains work a little, it would surrealist or symbolist play, plays that are thought-provoking and deep enough to make my brains go on fire or to make me think for many days. 

Brief info for each ism

Futurism

-       Came about in relation to velocity. The swiftness of pictures just zooming by.

-       Did not like to be related to the past/history themes. Even sort to demolish historical museums and artifacts. Emphasized on the future.

-       Dynamism of fake.

-       The Variety of Manifesto, 1913 – money vs inspiration. Money for the tickets was randomly picked by throwing dice.

-       Manifesto of synthetic theatre, 1915 – brevity.

-       Neo futuristic - 2 min per play. 20 min, 20 people reduced to 2 min.

-       Non-illusionary theatre - Audience interaction, all characters as themselves.

-       Dislike naturalism. More engaging and entertaining.

Expressionism

-       Emphasis on Conscious & Sub-conscious mind

-       German.

-       Dramatic forms, emotional effect in order to evoke moods. Objective reality but rather the subjective emotions and responses that objects and events arouse in him

-       Georg Buchner, 1813 – 1837.

-       Stringberg – more than 70 plays.

-       Meyerhold

-       Bizarre shapes and colours. Broken episodes. Disjointed tabloids. Characters as figures. Grotesque

-       Intense colour. Staccato telegraphy

-       Deliberate departure from realism of Stanislavsky

-       Atheletic, Physical control. Biomechanics. Prepare for next action + middle of act + reaction of action.

-       ‘Woyzeck’ play and ‘Spring awakening’.

Dadaism

-       Against any cultural intellectual conformity. French Avant Garde movement.

-       Rejects reason and logic

-       Negative and illogical

-       Destruction = creation

-       Hugo Ball, who is like Artaud, was quite mad.

-       Cabaret Voltaire – spoken word, dance and music in the night club by Hugo Ball.

-       No clear name.

-       Spontaneity, shouting and growling.

-       Acomapanied by music, dance, theory, poems paintings, masks and costumes.

-       Abstract minds

-       Not linked to reality.

-       Simultaneism.

Surrealism

-       Emphasis on Sub conscious mind and conscious mind. The Human dreams and their desire.

-       Does not follow any logic form

-       Andre Breton (1896 – 1966)

-       Surprise, attractive, abstract, unexpected, humour

-       Element of cruelty in sex, love, violence and insanity.

-       Metaphysical. Physically, mythological. World of dreams. Shatter reality. Realization of worse nightmares and fears

-       Disjointed structure

-       Truth that they did not want to see.

-       Led to ‘theatre of Absurd’

-       Literary, artistic and revolutionary movement.

-       Source of truth

-       Liberation and exploration of soul and body

American realism (1865 – 1915)

-       Contemporary

-       Hardships. Tests actors and actresses.

-       Normal people in everyday life – portray life as it is.

-       Marked by end of civil war.

-       2 literary movements: Realism (Norwegian Henrik Ibsen) & Naturalism (German Anton Chekhov)

-       Lab performance. Public theater.

-       Provoking moral and social questions.

-       Removing of fourth wall – relating to past and present. Imagery wall

IIt is really interesting to have knowledge about these isms. I am really excited to see what is in store for us next week. =)