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"Rings Drama"
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Opera and the Politics of Postdramatic Theatre: Frank Castorf's Bayreuth Ring
This article considers Frank Castorf's Bayreuth Festival production of Wagner's Ring (2013–17) and its relationship to postdramatic theatre, including the latter's fraught relationship to conceptions of the political. Framework and context are provided by Castorf's theatrical practice, both prior to and following German reunification; by Wagner's nineteenth-century revolutionary and post-revolutionary experience, both historical and as dramatised in the Ring; and by Hans-Thies Lehmann's theoretical writing on postdramatic theatre. The production was a story of fascinating collisions: on the one hand, between different, often opposing, conceptions of drama and theatre; on the other, between different, yet in some ways complementary, political experiences. Interpretation proceeds by means of detailed description and analysis of the staging and a broader theoretical discussion. Compelled to reconcile themselves, at least in part, with ideas of musical drama and the work concept, Castorf's postdramatic aesthetics underwent significant challenge. In the wake of this production, ideas of Wagner staging and, more broadly, staging of opera in general have similarly undergone transformation.
Journal Article
Ancient Austrocedrus tree-ring chronologies used to reconstruct central Chile precipitation variability from A.D. 1200 to 2000
Abstract
An expanded network of moisture-sensitive tree-ring chronologies has been developed for central Chile from long-lived cypress trees in the Andean Cordillera. A regional ring width chronology of cypress sites has been used to develop well-calibrated and verified estimates of June–December precipitation totals for central Chile extending from a.d. 1200 to 2000. These reconstructions are confirmed in part by historical references to drought in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and by nineteenth-century observations on the position of the Río Cipreses glacier. Analyses of the return intervals between droughts in the instrumental and reconstructed precipitation series indicate that the probability of drought has increased dramatically during the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, consistent with selected long instrumental precipitation records and with the general recession of glaciers in the Andean Cordillera. This increased drought risk has occurred along with the growing demand on surface water resources and may heighten socioeconomic sensitivity to climate variability in central Chile.
Journal Article
From Hobbits to Hollywood
Peter Jackson's film version of The Lord of the Rings (2001-2003) is the grandest achievement of 21st century cinema so far. But it is also linked to topical and social concerns including war, terrorism, and cultural imperialism. Its style, symbols, narrative, and structure seem always already linked to politics, cultural definition, problems of cinematic style, and the elemenal mythologies that most profoundly capture our imaginations. From Hobbits to Hollywood: Essays on Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings treats Jackson's trilogy as having two conditions of existence: an aesthetic and a political. Like other cultural artefacts, it leads a double life as objet d'art and public statement about the world, so that nothing in it is ever just cinematically beautiful or tasteful, and nothing is ever just a message or an opinion. Written by leading scholars in the study of cinema and culture From Hobbits to Hollywood gives Jackson's trilogy the fullest scholarly interrogation to date. Ranging from interpretations of The Lord of the Rings' ideological and philosophical implications, through discussions of its changing fandoms and its incorporation into the Hollywood industry of stars, technology, genre, and merchandising, to considerations of CGI effects, acting, architecture and style, the essays contained here open a new vista of criticism and light, for ardent fans of J.R.R. Tolkien, followers of Jackson, and all those who yearn for a deeper appreciation of cinema and its relation to culture.
eBook
The Adrienne Kennedy Reader
Introduction by Werner Sollors Adrienne Kennedy has been a force in American theatre since the early 1960s, influencing generations of playwrights with her hauntingly fragmentary lyrical dramas. Exploring the violence racism visits upon people’s lives, Kennedy’s plays express poetic alienation, transcending the particulars of character and plot through ritualistic repetition and radical structural experimentation. The Adrienne Kennedy Reader is the first comprehensive collection of works by one of our greatest living playwrights.
eBook
“Scott Fitzgerald As I Knew Him”: F. Scott Fitzgerald and the Secondary Memoir
This essay deals with three memoirs on F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sheilah Graham's Beloved Infidel (1958), Tony Buttitta's After the Good Gay Times (1974), and Frances Kroll Ring's Against the Current (1985). These texts are representative examples of an interesting sub-genre of memoir I have labeled the “secondary memoir,” which takes as its focus the author's time with some other person, giving us a “moderated image” of that person, in this case F. Scott Fitzgerald. The secondary memoirs on Fitzgerald have been critically neglected and deserve scholarly attention, though they do present some problems. Although we might question the objectivity (or, conversely, the subjectivity) of each, these secondary memoirs present an image of Fitzgerald more comprehensive than the passing mentions in the memoirs of Cowley and Stein, and more sincere than the apparently contrived scenes in the memoirs of Hemingway and Callaghan. Graham, Buttitta, and Ring elegantly fill in the gaps, moderating between the rigid lines of serious scholarly study of Fitzgerald's life and the loose, superficial scribbles of the Fitzgerald myth.
Journal Article
Music, Drama, and Sprechgesang
Wagner's music, aesthetics, and personality were influenced profoundly by the declamation and recitation techniques of his time. “Declamation” as an optic-acoustic phenomenon embraces in this context both the actor's artificial speech and physical delivery. The theatrical declamation of Wagner's childhood and youth, i.e., the declamation of Saxon actors in Dresden and Leipzig during the 1820s and 1830s, differed widely from today's practice. The wide range of pitch, tempo, and dynamics, as well as the highly idealized expression of nineteenth-century German actors, may be described as manifest musical qualities. These qualities have been lost during the course of history, but are preserved by Wagner in his music. As his sketches, letters, and theoretical explanations show, his way of creating a drama may be interpreted as a chain of different performative processes, which employed declamation, recitation, and acting. The final goal of this process was not to create a score or any other scriptural document, but to provide posterity with a fixed tradition of the staging of his works that would remain unchangeable. Wagner's hybrid ambitions in this context become comprehensible when we consider his way of creating a drama. To put it simply: the vocal lines—especially those exhibiting Sprechgesang—resemble the actor's speech very closely, while the orchestral part often has the function of determining the rhythm and expression of the gestures, attitudes, and actions on stage. That theatrical declamation was Wagner's point of departure when he created his works and became forgotten some decades after his death due to profound changes in theatrical performance practice.
Journal Article
Cinematic countrysides
Recent years have witnessed an explosion of interest in the 'spatialities of cinema' across the social sciences and humanities, yet to date critical inquiry has tended to explore this issue as a question of the 'city' and the 'urban'. For the first time, leading scholars in geography, film and cultural studies have been drawn together to explore the multiple ways in ideas of cinema and countryside are co-produced: how 'film makes rural' and 'rural makes film'. From the expanse of the American great west to the mountainous landscapes of North Korea, Cinematic Countrysides draws on a range of popular and alternative film genres to demonstrate how film texts come to prefigure expectations of rural social space, and how these representations come to shape, and be shaped by, the material and embodied circumstances of 'lived' rural experience. At the heart of this volume's varied apprehensions of the 'cinematic countryside' is a concern to argue that ideas of rurality in film are central to wider questions of 'modernity' and 'tradition', 'self' and 'other', 'nationhood' and 'globalisation', and crucially, ones that are central to an account of the 'cinematic city'
eBook
Revitalizing \Arja\ in Globalized Bali
The author has produced three new arja: Meeting in Tampaksiring (Katemu Ring Tampaksiring, 2004), King Adhipusengara (Prabu Adhipusengara, 2006), and Rape of Sukreni (Sukreni Gadis Bali, 2008). While keeping the essential elements of arja intact, each production shows significant aesthetic changes and theatrical innovations, intended to prevent arja from disappearing in globalized Bali.
Journal Article
David Lewin and Valhalla Revisited: New Approaches to Motivic Corruption in Wagner's Ring Cycle
David Lewin (1992) revealed striking connections between the Tarnhelm and Valhalla motives in Wagner's Ring, suggesting that further analysis could penetrate deeper into the musical-dramatic fabric of Wagner's complex technique of motivic transformation. This paper takes Lewin's insights a step further and traces the process of motivic manipulation from a neo-Riemannian perspective. A split-note transformation connecting triads and seventh chords relates the Valhalla, Magic Potion, and Tarnhelm motives, and transformational graphs of selected occurrences of these motives contextualizes them within their diatonic surroundings; particular emphasis is given to Act I, Scene 3 of Götterdämmerung and its rotational form.
Journal Article