Vanya on 42nd Street (1994) is a modern film interpretation of Chekov’s “Uncle Vanya” (1899), adapted by Mamet. It was filmed by Louis Malle and written by Andre Gregory. The film, based on a theatre workshop led by Gregory over the course of three years (although they had been rehearsing the play for over 5 years), was set against the backdrop of the workshop locale — the then abandoned (for nearly a decade at the time), New Amsterdam Theatre on W42nd Street in Manhattan. The origins of the theatre date back to around the time Chekov’s play was written. According to a review in The New Republic shortly after the release of the film, the “performance is the fruit of genuine exploration, of the play and of actors’ selves, a golden instance of a much-mooted, rarely realized goal” (“From Russia”). The ambiance of the theatre setting (old buttressed ceilings, grand staircases, dilapidated, leaky ceilings, nets hung up to catch the falling plaster), without the use of the theatre stage itself due to safety concerns, contributes …

Volker Schöndorff’s 1985 production of Death of a Salesman was a made-for-television adaptation of Arthur Miller’s 1949 play, receiving several Emmy and Golden Globe awards and nominations in the same year. Schöndorff is a German film director, screenwriter and producer, known for being a member of the New German Cinema movement in the 60s and 70s. The television production of Death of a Salesman was based closely off the 1984 Broadway production, where Dustin Hoffman also performed the role of the protagonist, Willy Loman. Another parallel between the stage and film productions was a repurposing of the stage-like construction in the film set, how their familial house morphed from a New York residence to a country house with a big yard — this was a notable narrative device in how it significantly creates a break in reality that mirrors the protagonist’s mental state. According to Hart, the enduring debate about Miller’s play, known to be based on “the tragedy of the common man,” is whether the ending is pathetic or tragic in nature (60). From …

Lloyd Newson (1957—), an Australian-born theatre director, who worked in Europe for most of his career, founded DV8 Physical Theatre in 1986 as an independent collective, to create socio-political works which largely explored themes of sexuality, interpersonal relationships and homophobia in a 1980s-1990’s European context — where he felt modern dance had lost its way and was no longer imbued with meaning (Lansdale 117-18). Newson’s work at DV8, reflecting his personal interests in social, psychological and political issues, is said to defy categorization in how it spans dance, text, theatre and film. DV8 uniquely has not had a permanent company of performers. The filmed version of the Strange Fish stage play was directed by David Hinton in 1994. According to a review in Frieze, Strange Fish (1992) was about heterosexual coupling, focused on “the female part of the union — sirens, Mary Magdalenes and scarlet women — those females who confuse and confound the boys and lead them astray” (Brackley, Meer, Lansdale 117-118). However, in a more contemporary reading of the play, two characters can …

The 1991 stage production of Gilles Maheu and Carbone 14’s Le Dortoir (with a filmed production in 1991 by Francois Girard) explores issues of identity construction, childhood memory, and social economics of one’s trajectory from childhood. The filmed version of Le Dortoir won several awards including a New York Emmy for Best Performing Arts program. Carbone 14 was an avant-garde, Montréal-based theatre company founded by Maheu, and since dissolved in 2005. It grew out of a mime-oriented street theatre group he formed in 1975 called Les Enfants du paradis. His productions emphasized emotion, physicality and environment over the text, as can be seen in Le Dortoir. Maheu’s approach to theatre is recognized as uniquely Québécois and a significant departure from other approaches to Canadian theatre (Howe-beck). The play is set is an old abandoned dormitory, where the stage features dirty grey-green water-stained concrete walls, with rows of translucent square windows lining the performance space (from above) towards the ceiling. Some are partially boarded up, denoting an old unused or abandoned space. Some lighting comes from …

Download presentation Forced Entertainment is an experimental theatre company founded by Tim Etchells in 1984 (comprised of six artists), and based in Sheffield UK. Etchells is an artist and writer (working in performance, video, text projects, installation and fiction), he is concerned with contemporary identity and the urban experience. Speak Bitterness was directed by Tim Etchells and collaboratively written by the group at Forced Entertainment. The theatre company is described as experimental and innovative theatre that draws from several influences — movies, internet, stand-up comedy, dance, bad television, performance art, music culture, in addition to theatre (“Speak Bitterness”). The Speak Bitterness stage production highlights the theatre company’s appreciation for media and tech influences combining the high brow (theatre), the middle brow (political news comedy on TV) and the low brow (internet), which arguably elevates its ability to resonate with contemporary audiences. Speak Bitterness was a break from their prior works, as a primarily text based work, with mostly static actors. First staged in 1994 (recorded performance from ICA in London in Dec 1995), the play …

Eugenio Barba (1936–) is an Italian theatre director, based in Denmark. He founded the International School of Theatre Anthropology, the Odin Teatret/ Theatre, sat on several advisory boards of scholarly journals, in addition to founding the open access Journal of Theatre of Anthropology. His views are deemed controversial by some, as Barba has been critical of western theatre and eastern theatrical traditions for seemingly opposing reasons. Instead, his theatre of anthropology is described as a means of exploring cultural techniques inherently embedded in a performer. The Kaosmos theatre production was staged by Odin Teatret between 1993-1997, in Denmark. The filmed production was a stage play from 1998. According to the Odin Teatret website, the play is set in an unnamed European village where every spring, the villagers perform The Ritual of the Door — a common theme in European mythology and folklore, where one character asks permission to enter the Realm of Happiness/ Salvation and the doorkeeper tells them to wait, but are then left waiting for a lifetime. The play is meant to illustrate …

Zero Degrees was a play developed in collaboration by Akram Khan and Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, produced in 2005 by the Akram Khan Company and Les Ballets C. de la B. The collaboration between Khan and Cherkaoui came from common ground as 2nd generation minorities growing up in Europe — Khan is a Bangladeshi-British citizen (born in the UK) and Cherkaoui is Flemish-Moroccan. Both are Muslim, however the play is based on kathak dance with a dual Muslim-Hindu origin in South Asia. Given the timing of this play, it seems important to situate it within the geopolitics of two regions at the time of its creation. The play uses a contemporary (western) translation of South Asian kathak dance (an oral storytelling structure for epic narrative), where traditionally elaborate hand and neck movements, footwork and facial expressions have been reinterpreted in this work to denote contemporary fighting (with oneself, others, barriers, etc). Khan’s use of kathak dance underscores the layered complexity of identity conflict conveyed in this work— an artform of shared Muslim-Hindu origin, suppressed during the …

Originally composed by Philip Glass, directed by Robert Wilson and choreographed by Lucinda Childs, “Einstein on the Beach” premiered in 1976 at the Théâtre Municipal in Avignon, France. A filmed version of the play from 2014, staged at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, is analyzed in this report. The play is intended to be abstract, without plot or narrative, to create a poetic vision of the Einstein figure and his subsequent impact on society. Since its premiere in 1976, the work has attained legendary status amongst contemporary operatic work, with suggestions its innovative approach will change opera, although little evidence of it’s impact on operatic performances have since been seen (Broadhurst 34, Lesnie, Swed). The play seems to work on two levels: as a deeper, theoretical comment on Einstein, his theories and role in future impacts of his work, but also as an evolving (more mainstream accessible) comment, questioning whether the application of Einstein’s discoveries in-fact manifested in the betterment of our daily lives. The play draws on notions of time and human productivity …