theater theory Flashcards

1
Q

How does A Strange Loop pull from Brechtian Theory?

A

Michael R. Jackson pulls from the theories of Bertolt Brecht through being explicit with intention, making connections to the epic theater, using the theater as instruction for critical analysis, resisting emotional identification, representing a picture of the world, looking at power dynamics, and employing the concept of “gestus” in the characters. The Brechtian goal would be to inspire the audience to go out and induce political and social change in the world.

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2
Q

How is “A Strange Loop” explicit with intention? (Three parts)

A

Jackson is explicit in his construction of Usher and his conflict shows how society shapes the self and what role internalization can play

Usher’s Goal: subvert expectations Black and white from the left and the right for the good of the culture)

Brecht → way to understand is to make strange (strange loop, haha)

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3
Q

How does “A Strange Loop” connect to the epic theater? (4 parts)

A

Hints at point of recognition

Human is point of inquiry

Accounts for jumps/curves that lets the spectator take each scene for itself

There’s some logical progression but it skips

Idea that social being determines thought

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4
Q

How does “A Strange Loop” act as instruction for critical analysis?

A

Both white and Black characters are used as the ground for critical analysis

Takes a cue from the epic theater and reflect “I’d never have thought it” or “that’s not the way” about topics ranging from the Black love of Tyler Perry to sexual power dynamics

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5
Q

How does “A Strange Loop” use gestus in character? (3 parts / Thought example / Usher example)

A

allows the actor to take on the physical embodiments of social commentaries.

This constant shifting creates an interesting visual perspective for the audience.

Conflicting images allow them to represent different social commentaries

EXAMPLE: Thought 6
Plays the Baldwin ancestor/ the white man Usher sleeps with/Mufasa

Usher → versions of himself in “Precious Dreams/AIDs is God’s Punishment”
“Real Housewives” / “mega-church pastor” / “Color Purple”
Embodiment of his different potential selves – ranging from internalized homophobia to a Celie-like self-acceptance – allow him to mimic the fluidity of the Thoughts and show physical embodiment in action.

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6
Q

How does “A Strange Loop” resist emotional identification? (2 parts)

A

Spectator should not be able to identify with characters but instead the play provokes rational self-reflection/critical view of what’s on stage

Directly calls out both Black and white audience members and severs some Black identification/reminds non-Black members of their inability

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7
Q

How does “A Strange Loop” do the picture of the world? What Brecht techniques are used?

A

show is a representation of reality and not reality itself

Shows how constructed it is

This is Brecht (direct audience address/songs to interrupt action)

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8
Q

How does “A Strange Loop” look at power dynamics in two ways? What does one allow Usher to do the other can’t?

A

explores power dynamics in the familial and sexual, dealing with both Blackness and white privilege

Familial → pushes back against the traditional power dynamics that would come from an authority figure like a parent

Pushback → admitting this to his father/calling out his mother for deflecting from her own failures

Sexual/white privilege → man on the train in Usher’s head/the older white man

Usher is silenced in sexual instances/can’t speak for himself like with his parents

Can only articulate self when talking with Black parents

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9
Q

Q: Commonalities between Artaud/Baraka and what they believe of the theater?

A
  1. Both challenge what the theater is capable of enacting/how it can act as a function.
  2. It can be used for social change through making the audience see the reality of their world while also critiquing the status quo to empower those included from the mainstream. 3. Should be change and force change.
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10
Q

How can Artaud’s theory connect to Baraka and The Dutchman? (4 parts)

A
  1. Artaud’s theater of cruelty
  2. Works to free the repressed/unconscious
  3. Disengages power/ liberate possibilities
  4. Shows what happens when men can see themselves as they are when the metaphorical “masks” fall to reveal lies and show the hypocrisy of the world.
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11
Q

Explain the relationship the spectator has with the theater in “Theater of Cruelty”

A

Spectator is exposed instead of protected.

A goal is to bring the audience into direct contact with the dangers of life through the removal of the aesthetic distance. First and foremost, it is difficult for the self. The spectator is centered and surrounded by the spectacle.

Does a deep dive into an area that the playwright sees as needing significant social change (Baraka’s desire to overthrow a white-dominated American social order)

Shows the unsuspecting audience the reality of their world through using the theater as a function that shows that social change is direly needed on an extreme level

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12
Q

How does “The Dutchman” use the theater of cruelty?

A

Instead of allowing the spectacle on one side and the public on the other, The Dutchman exposes its audience to things both revolutionary and violent.
I
t’s violent/bold/irrational/intimate

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13
Q

Examples of freeing the unconscious in the “Dutchman” (4 parts)

A

Clay smiles at Lula without self-consciousness at first even though she’s staring at him

Lula pushes him throughout the show until he snaps

Becomes violent/physical/talks about killing her

Sheds the persona of a book reading mild mannered son of a Republican

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14
Q

How does the Dutchman show liberated possibilities?

A

Theater was created to “drain abscesses” in society.

Through showing how Black/white cannot integrate or get along, he liberates the possibility of using theater to teach them their deaths

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15
Q

What is the abscess in the “Dutchman”? How is it shown?

A

Shows how Lula’s genocidal racism is an abscess to be drained

Showing that Black Americans have reason to hate the white man for hating

Lula’s actions are both scripted and unfounded/innate and natural

Nature of a white American to enact violence against a Black

Lula has a power dynamic over Clay from the beginning

“Free from their histories” line
Their histories become their presents that they cannot break free from

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16
Q

How does the Dutchman show falling masks?

A

theater can help the mind see the source of its conflicts (here: lack of freedom)

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17
Q

What does the Dutchman as theater teach us?

A

Clay sees through Lula, her lies and the society that has shaped him

Clay’s freedom → dark and aggressive (Artaud says true freedom is dark)

Theater should teach us things and Dutchman shows how Black life – Clay’s emotion – is unable to survive when faced with white oppression.

We see how Clay is shackled by white society even if he thinks he’s free

“Revolutionary Theater” → we must “isolate the ritual and historical cycles of reality”

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18
Q

Q: Which of the theorists on your list would be most useful for analyzing Funnyhouse of a Negro? Why?

A

Munoz is the most helpful for analyzing Funnyhouse because Sarah uses a version of disidentification tactics.

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19
Q

What kind of survival strategies is disidentification?

A

Survival strategies that a minority subject may practice in order to negotiate a phobic majoritarian public sphere that eludes and punishes the existence of subjects who do not conform to the phantasm of normative citizenship.

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20
Q

How does Sarah/Negro disidentify? With who? Why?

A

Sarah identifies and disidentifies with the Duchess of Hapsburg, Queen Victoria Regent and Patrice Lumumba to create spaces of productivity where her identity’s fragmentary nature can be accepted and negotiated for cultural, material and psychic survival.

To locate a point of departure for herself

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21
Q

Disidentification/historical violence with example

A

About managing and negotiating historical trauma and systemic violence / acts as a response to state and global power apparatuses that employ systems of racial, sexual, and national subjugation

Sarah uses the disidentified selves to discuss / talk through her family trauma and historical trauma (like Lumumba’s assassination)

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22
Q

Interiorized passing/tactical misrecognitions of the self

A

Sarah’s monologue about needing white friends so she doesn’t reflect about being a Negro

Can’t recognize herself so she turns to fragmented embodiments

Grafts the embodiments with traits they did not possess (makes versions of them at odds with reality)

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23
Q

Subjects as constructed and contradictory

A

fictionalized beings that are part self and part historical figure

Blurring of fact and fiction

“Real self” who comes into being through fiction is not the self who produces fiction, but is instead produced by fiction as binaries falter and fiction becomes real.

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24
Q

Blurring of binaries in “Funnyhouse”

A

Binaries falter throughout the show (truth/fiction)

Sarah says “When I am the Duchess” but we also see the Duchess independently

The potential lie about her father

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25
Q

Time in “Funnyhouse of a Negro”

A

we witness a new formation within the present and the future

Sarah’s fragments exist outside of space-time

Duchess/Lumumba are deceased when the show starts

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26
Q

Investing objects with new life

A

recycles and reforms an object that already had its own powerful energy
(bust of Victoria/kinky hair)

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27
Q

Q: What’s the relationship between “disidentification” / “rep & rev” / “archive/repertoire” / “avatars”? (4 parts)

A

All 4 theorists remix/recycle/reuse/revive/reworks (r words) in various ways.

Disidentification engages with and recycles popular forms with a difference in a way similar to how rep & rev recycle with difference.

Performative re-citations then shape the subject and characters.

Rep &Rev, Avatars, Disidentification, and the Archive/Repertoire try to invest objects/ideas/words/performances with new life.

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28
Q

Difference between disidentification / rep & rev / avatars / archive & repertoire

A

survival strategy (Munoz/McMillan/Taylor) vs stylistic device (Parks)

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29
Q

How does Rep/Rev work?

A

Taking inspiration from jazz, it’s a stylistic device that relies on the repetition of words/ideas/plot devices where the character revises each time to give them new life as they change/evolve.

Art shouldn’t just tell you but instead challenge you to think differently.

When a character refigures their words through rep & rev, they show that they are experiencing a situation anew even when dealing with literal incorporations of the past.

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30
Q

Rep/Rev example?

A

Three-card monte hustle in Topdog/Underdog

Booth/Lincoln repeat instructions rapidly including phrases such as “watch me now” and “lean in close” in different variations

The cards change along with the imagined scenarios and instructions (revision)

Booth becomes volatile/obsessed and Lincoln becomes enticed to return

31
Q

Connect rep & rev to Munoz with example

A

disidentification can reform an object that has already been invested with a powerful energy

Revision has a powerful energy both metaphorically/physically

Cards have power

Lincoln’s magnetic physicality/ease shows a higher level of skill while the cards hold an energy of potential in that they could represent an out for the brothers from their poverty

32
Q

How do “Avatars” work?

A

Focuses on black female bodies/movement/objecthood.

Avatars are simulated beings given human-like agency.

Stylized rep of arts shows how Black female bodies move and are perceived by others

33
Q

“Objecthood” (3 parts)

A

strategy for Black female performers

means for Black subjects to become art objects/wield their bodies as pliable matter

Tool for performing one’s body highlight/stretch the subordinate roles available to the Black female.

34
Q

Connect Avatars to Munoz (4 parts)

A

Avatars/disidentification help navigate public/private spheres

Munoz → majoritarian public sphere continuously eludes/ punishes the existence of subjects who do not conform to the phantasm of normative citizenship

Black females → not granted entry to the private sphere

their bodies, unlike most bodies, are “not off limits, untouchable, or unseeable”

35
Q

Give an example of Avatars with connections to disidentification/ rep&rev

A

Ellen Craft as “William Johnson”

REP/REV → Embodying him required constant revision of self / Assertions that she was a white man were repeated/adjusted to fit situations

DISIDENTIFICATION → object already imbued with power (white male body) and gave it new energy

36
Q

What is the Repertoire?

A

provides a means of transmitting knowledge for those who may not have access to or are excluded from the written culture.

It’s a survival tactic.

archival system of transfer focusing not on written but embodied techniques

Enacts embodied memory such as performances, gestures, orality, movement, dance, singing (non reproducible knowledge)

37
Q

What is archival memory to Taylor?

A

objects supposedly resistant to change (documents, maps, literary texts, letters, archeological remains, bones, videos, films, and cds)

38
Q

What is performance to Taylor?

A

system of learning, storing and transmitting knowledge

39
Q

How does the repertoire relate to one older theorist/one modern?

A

Embodied motions → can change

Actor can’t make same gesture twice (Artaud)

CONNECTION: Embodied acts in the repertoire also be change as repeated (rep & rev)

40
Q

Q: How do the dramatic texts on the main list offer strategies to think beyond the logic of repetition?

A

Michael R. Jackson and Jeremy O. Harris uses discussions of temporality, reparations, and time travel to show survival strategies in A Strange Loop and Slave Play.

41
Q

Relationship between race/repetition/performance?

A

Instead of understanding race and performance as being constituted by repetition, repetition is constituted by race and performance.

Repetition has limits for explaining what makes (some) performances meaningful in and as time.

42
Q

How does temporality work in Slave Play?

A

Creates a model of temporality that blurs past/presence and uses continuation not repetition

Relationship with time puts the characters both in the past at the scenes of subjection and in the modern present where they are with their white partners consensually.

Instead of repeating past violences it re-presents the encounters and reframes them so that the participants can gain new understandings from the dynamic

43
Q

How does Slave Play time travel? (2 parts)

A

Requires layered time travel/physical embodiment of power dynamics

Revists past/restages present/recalls future → graphic revisits to the past/a staged present in the therapy session

44
Q

How does “Slave Play” recall the future while in the past

A

musical obsession disorder blurs the past/future

45
Q

“Overlaid temporal logic”

A

Elizabeth Son) where “ancient time, mythic time, past, present, and future commingle as manifested in techniques of movement, breath sound and visual energy”

46
Q

Example of time travel / overlaid temporal logic in “Slave Play”

A

Kaneisha twerks to “Work” → visual energy/movement is loaded with a future the enslaved version of

Kaneisha should not have access to
Breaks patterns of rep by giving the enslaved modern flair

Within/without time being both past/present

47
Q

How does “Slave Play” address reparations?

A

performance/embodiment allows the white partners to pay reparations

(has double significance as it involves the quest for reparations and a reparative reading)

48
Q

Who does “Slave Play” suggest performance can be therapy for? Give an example

A

Performance can be therapy for the minoritarian/oppressed subject

Jim embodying his white “virus” helps Kaneisha feel at peace with ancestors watching

He pays emotional/spiritual reparations to Kaneisha

49
Q

How does “Slave Play” reevaluate temporal systems and power dynamics in the Americas

A

They break the repetition of a white man taking advantage of a white women when Kaneisha uses the safe word

50
Q

How does “Slave Play” address the burden of acting out historical memory? (2 parts)

A

Burden of acting out historical memory needs to be shared with Black/white subjects to break repetition

Black performance not about repairing white feelings but re-centering on Blackness

51
Q

How does “Strange Loop” play with time? (3 parts)

A

A show about making a show with parallels to the playwright’s life.

Spectator watches Usher plan the show knowing he’s doomed to do it again next curtain.

Keeping the author in mind alters temporality Jackson broke out of the loop Usher is stuck in

52
Q

Relate “Strange Loop” to Alexandria Eregbu

A

Black subject is out of space/time as shown through performance as Black bodies need a concurrent process of differential temporalization”

Usher will never finish the play/it’s completed

Exists at beginning/end simultaneously

53
Q

Relate “Strange Loop” to Katherine Zien

A

telling parables in shape of parabola

“opens up possibilities that might not otherwise emerge in a coherent narrative of self”

54
Q

What is feeling brown/brown thought?

A

a certain ethic of the self that is utilized by poc/minoritarian subjects who don’t feel quite right within the protocols of normative affect and comportment.

55
Q

what is brownness?

A

a self-understanding of the unachievability of whiteness and accounts for the condition of having one’s feelings perpetually marginalized.

56
Q

What’s a strategy of resistance in “A Strange Loop”? Give examples.

A

“queer aesthetics”

Not individual acts but collective ones that distort time to lead us to emancipatory possibilities / allowing us to dream and enact new and better realities

Usher is at the beginning/end

Emancipation: from the estrangement of Usher’s own self/his failure to embrace his identity.

Play can’t end until Usher faces himself (which he does)

57
Q

Q: How does Shange offer strategies of resistance to think beyond the logic of repetition?

A

We need to get rid of “straight theater” for a decade and open drama up to the physical instead of just words. In For Colored Girls, Shange uses motion to create a new language alongside words for an “all-encompassing moment” of poetry as a strategy of resistance against repetition’s logic. Through creating a new form (choreopoem), she shows what Black refusal/resistance looks like instead of just what it sounds like.

58
Q

What does Jasmine Johnson say about Black vernacular dance?

A

it’s embodied language that speaks to Black body’s capacity to push past physical limits/death/show how Black time is of the past/ongoing

59
Q

What happens when Shange uses embodied language?

A

Opportunity to make things happen/shows varied Black women instead of those who have conquered their pain/environment with their art

Language still has a place (it’s a play, not musical) but needs a beat

Movement is integrated to handle the weight of the message

60
Q

Explain the significance of Alexandria Wailes as the Woman in Purple the 2022 “For Colored Girls” revival (6 parts)

A

Mixed-race/deaf/signed monologues while another spoke them

Performance made words become physical in addition to verbal

Physical embodiment of the poems integrated with dance brought new life to her lines

Literal embodiment of language

Incapacity of her body to hear music pushed past as she signed to the rhythm/danced

The words are reconfigured when they are translated into a new language entirely.

61
Q

What does Black performance do according to Eregbu?

A

Generates its own “spatial, temporal and social material” from “the Blackened grounds of (non)being and (non)presence”

62
Q

Explain staging Blackness under terms of racial contract and how it relates to Shange

A

Nyong’o says staging Blackness under terms of racial contract entails more than documenting Black lives holistically/realistically like Hansberry/Wilson

Shange tackles real topics in an original way.

63
Q

How does Shange show Black lives in a new way?

A

Uses repetition/speaking in poem/stylistic devices

EXAMPLE: Lady in Blue repeats “i usedta live in the world” but revises it each time

Motions are accompany words

Breaking out into dance while speaking usually is only in musicals

Has movement essential to speaking

64
Q

In addition to Black lives, what does Shange use the motion/language combo to show? Give 2 examples of it.

A

Worlds

EX: Lady in Orange says, “i’m a poet who writes in english / come to share worlds witchu / come to share our worlds witchu / we come here to be dancin”

Sharing worlds is just as much the focus as the writing and dancing. The poet writes in English but also communicates through dance.
That does not make this world any less real than the ones depicted in a play.

EX: “i cdnt stand bein sorry & colored at the same time / it’s so redundant in the modern world” → this shared modern world allows them self-identification and recognition.

65
Q

Choreography’s relationship with repetition for Shange

A

seems like basic repetition (pre-scripted dances) but have fresh/new motions

Characters embody new roles with fresh motions (bring new life to what they repeat)

66
Q

Q: What are afro-fabulations? How do they differ from fabulations?

A

hacks of the code of an anti-Black world but not lies or storytelling,
unlike fabulation (act of inventing false/fantastic tales).

“points to the deconstructive relation between story and plot” and exposes the “relation” between truth and lying.

They are resistance strategies.

67
Q

Relate afro-fabulations to Audre Lorde

A

a critica and fabulative archiving of a world that was never meant to survive or appear.

68
Q

Relate afro-fabulations to Saidiya Hartman

A

Like “critical fabulation”, they’re “tactical fictionalizations” of a world already false from the view of Black social life but focus on performances as they provide strategies for Black/queer bodies bodies to use against anti-Black racism that seeks to silence and erase them.

69
Q

Relate afro-fabulations to Jose Esteban Munoz

A

Those who are outside the dominant narrative can fabulate, similar to disidentification.

70
Q

How are afro-fabulations resistance strategies?

A

allows the Black artist and subject to work against the “apparatuses of capture” such as the stage where they would be held to an objectifying scrutiny.

These strategies come together to create a strategy of resistance.

71
Q

What did Faith Ringgold’s mural do? (2 parts)

A

made a version of relationality (fabulationality) when she refuses the terms of an anti-Black and anti-women social order through the creation of a mural

Through it, another world becomes not only possible but virtually present.

72
Q

How do Shange/Ringgold relate?

A

does something similar when the characters reject the anti-Black/anti-women social order through the words/motions

73
Q

When Shange relates to Ringgold, what happens to her characters in “For Colored Girls? (3 parts)

A

They dare to love/accept themselves in a world that does not love or accept them.

They are victims of domestic violence, rape, and oppression but they enter a world where they can push back against the dominant narrative that would not only silence them but also deny them self love or acceptance.

Like Ringgold, Shange’s world becomes present on the stage instead of merely a possibility.

74
Q

What would the stage do as an “apparatus of capture”? What does Shange show?

A

it would objectify and scrutinize the women

how fabulationality can become a strategy of resistance.