This book is about science in theatre and performance. It explores how theatre and performance engage with emerging scientific themes from artificial intelligence to genetics and climate change. The book covers a wide range of performance forms from the spectacle of the Paralympics Opening Ceremony to Broadway musicals, from experimental contemporary performance and opera to educational theatre, Somali poetic drama and grime videos. It features work by pioneering companies including Gob Squad, Headlong Theatre and Theatre of Debate as well as offering fresh analysis of global blockbusters such as Wicked and Urinetown. The book offers detailed description and analysis of theatre and performance practices as well as broader commentary on the politics of theatre as public engagement with science. It documents important examples of collaborative practice with extended discussion of the Theatre of Debate process developed by Y Touring theatre company, exploration of bilingual theatre-making in East London and an account of how grime MCs and dermatologists ended up making a film together in Birmingham. The interdisciplinary approach draws on contemporary research in theatre and performance studies in combination with key ideas from science studies. It shows how theatre can offer important perspectives on what the philosopher of science Isabelle Stengers has called ‘cosmopolitics’. The book argues that theatre can flatten knowledge hierarchies and hold together different ways of knowing.
1 Science in performance: convergence, emergence and divergence Starting with a (big) bang Sir Ian McKellen as Prospero: Miranda, go out into the world. Will you be for all of us gathering here our eyes, our ears and our hearts? Shine your light on the beautiful diversity of humanity. Understand those rights that protect us. Look up, stretch your wings and fly. Will you take the journey for all of us and will you set us free? Professor Stephen Hawking: We live in a universe governed by rational laws that we can discover and understand. Look up at the stars and
Sjhá-gàw, the shaman employed here, was made in the Saensuk Akha village in north-western Thailand, in the Chiengrai province close to the Burmese border ( Map 5 ); the priest Àbáw-Gaw assisted with the translation. The shaman texts are said to be personal to each shaman, and to vary from one performance to the next. The shaman, male or female, makes a spiritual journey to find the reason for sickness. While on the journey, the shaman recites or chants everything she encounters. Inga-Lill Hansson went to one
Our research has focused on vocal expressions in the area where speaking and singing overlap. Our ultimate interest has been neither the description of performance practices nor their relation to possible ‘culture areas’, no matter how interesting these things may be, but how those principles that make vocal expressions possible are constructed. Therefore, the cultures under study have been chosen not for reasons of comparison, but for their suitability in studying the borderland between song and speech
people in the Ryukyu Islands to compose waka than ryūka , since only the older generation can speak genuine Ryukyuan, whereas the younger generation speak Japanese only. 2 Waka and ryūka The terms waka and ryūka literally mean uta , ‘song/poem’, in Japan and in the Ryukyu Islands, respectively. It was clear from previous research that the vocal expressions which result from the performance of waka and ryūka lend themselves to study as performance templates. 3 Our
pioneering collaboration, Drama lecturer Dr Matt Jennings has worked with nursing lecturers Pat Deeny and Mary Findon-Henry to improve the communication and interpersonal skills of UU adult nursing and mental health nursing students since 2013. The project initially intended simply to improve the nursing students’ performance in the role-play assessments used to evaluate their clinical skills in the final year of their studies. However, as the project developed, it emerged that specific techniques derived from drama training provided nurses with a systematic approach to
performance, not least by ensuring their performative power. The archive Matusow travelled, but much concerning his life is collected in one place. The Matusow repository at the Special Collections unit at the University of Sussex includes papers and personal documents assembled by the man himself. The collection is split, roughly dividing the early and late lives. Each section consists of a series of document boxes, along with a small collection of books (e.g. last Whole Earth Catalogue , writings on communism in the US, the
2 Fiscal policies, social spending and economic performance in France, Germany and the UK since 1970 Norman Flynn Introduction This chapter looks at the post-1970 development of social policy, its fiscal implications and economic consequences in three European countries. Its purpose is to test a stereotypical ‘left’ proposition, formulated in defence of European social democracy against neo-liberalism, such as: There is a ‘European Social Model’, incorporating a high level of social protection for unemployment and retirement, which, since 1973, has been
Latour (1992) is famous for describing non-humans as the “missing masses” in the study of society. While more recently authors have argued that the increased number of studies examining technology, animals and other non-humans mean that that non-humans are no longer missing (see Sayes, 2014), they remain missing in the study of sports media. There is little attention to the exact technologies utilised by sports producers and how the assemblage of humans such as commentators and technologies such as digital overlays work together to produce the actor-network that is the sports media broadcast.
The goal of this chapter is to begin to remedy this deficiency. The chapter draws attention not to sports media representations, but to the processes by which these representations are produced. It considers how humans and technologies assemble together to produce what we view to be a seamless television broadcast.
In this chapter, the global nature of sporting coverage is considered through Collier and Ong’s (2005) concept of a global assemblage. Following the introduction of this concept, the chapter examines China Central Televison’s production of the 2008 Beijng Olympic coverage, and the history of the broadcasting of the America’s Cup.
The acceleration of interest in Baldwin’s work and impact since 2010 shows no signs of diminishing. This resurgence has much to do with Baldwin—the richness and passionate intensity of his vision—and also something to do with the dedicated scholars who have pursued a variety of publication platforms to generate further interest in his work. The reach of Baldwin studies has grown outside the academy as well: Black Lives Matter demonstrations routinely feature quotations from Baldwin; Twitter includes a “Son of Baldwin” site; and Raoul Peck’s 2016 documentary, I Am Not Your Negro, has received considerable critical and popular interest. The years 2010–13 were a key period in moving past the tired old formula—that praised his early career and denigrated the works he wrote after 1963—into the new formula—positing Baldwin as a misunderstood visionary, a wide-reaching artist, and a social critic whose value we are only now beginning to appreciate. I would highlight four additional prominent trends that emerged between 2010 and 2013: a consideration of Baldwin in the contexts of film, drama, and music; understandings of Baldwin globally; Baldwin’s criticism of American institutions; and analyses of Baldwin’s work in conversation with other authors.