Search results for ""Author Anja Hartl""

Written in the aftermath of the Covid crisis, this book brings the past, present and future of theatre-going together as it explores the nature of the relationships between performance practitioners, arts organisations and their audiences. Proposing that the pandemic forced a re-evaluation of what it means to be an audience, and combining historical and current cultural sector perspectives, the book reflects on how historical conventions have conditioned present day expectations of theatre-going in the UK. Helen Freshwater examines the ways in which developments in technology, architecture and forms of communication have influenced what is expected by and of audiences, reflecting changes in theatre’s cultural status and place in our lives. Drawing on the first-hand experiences of festival director and performance practitioner Kate Craddock, it also contends that practitioners now need to turn their attention to care, access and sustainability, arguing that the pandemic taught us, above all, that it is possible to do things differently. Part vision, part provocation, part critical interrogation, Theatre and its Audiences offers an insightful appraisal of past norms and assumptions to set out a bold argument about where we should go from here.

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Offering one of the first scholarly examinations of digital and distanced performance since the global shutdown of theaters in March 2020, Barbara Fuchs provides both a record of the changes and a framework for thinking through theater's transformation. Though born of necessity, recent productions offer a new world of practice, from multi-platform plays on Zoom, WhatsApp, and Instagram, to enhancement via filters and augmented reality, to urban distanced theater that enlivens streetscapes and building courtyards. Based largely outside the commercial theater, these productions transcend geographic and financial barriers to access new audiences, while offering a lifeline to artists. This study charts how virtual theater puts pressure on existing assumptions and definitions, transforming the conditions of both theater-making and viewership. How are participatory, site-specific, or devised theater altered under physical-distancing requirements? How do digital productions blur the line between film and theater? What does liveness mean in a time of pandemic? In its seven chapters, Theater of Lockdown focuses on digital and distanced productions from the Americas, Europe, and Australia, offering scholarly analysis and interviews. Productions examined include Theater in Quarantine’s “closet work” in New York; Forced Entertainment’s (Sheffield, UK), End Meeting for All, I, II, and III; the work of Madrid-based company Grumelot; and the virtuosic showmanship of EFE Tres in Mexico City.

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Brecht Yearbook 48 features a section on Brecht's and Heiner Müller's engagement with modern living, a group of essays on "Brecht Post-2020," and additional new Brecht research on various topics. The Brecht Yearbook, published on behalf of the International Brecht Society, is the central scholarly forum for the study of Brecht's life and work and of topics relevant to him. Volume 48 opens with an article on the research that informed the 2022 exhibition Brecht's Paper War. The next section examines Brecht's and Heiner Müller's engagement with modern living: from the housing question in the 1920s to the dramaturgical function of furniture to dialectical stage-auditorium configurations in the early GDR. The following section on "Brecht Post-2020" explores dramaturgical approaches to the learning play under pandemic conditions as well as the "spectrological" aspects of Drums in the Night. Additional new research includes essays on the critical edition of Brecht's notebooks, his reception in fascist Italy, the ambivalence of the heroic in his work, the prioritization of political parable over avant-garde aesthetics in Round Heads and Pointed Heads, boxing as inspiration for epic theater, Hegelian aspects of Refugee Conversations and The Measures Taken, and the working alliance of Brecht and Kurt Weill. Edited by Markus Wessendorf. Contributors: Fanti Baum, Luke Beller, Manuel Clancett, Daniel Cuonz, Fritz Hennenberg, Matthew Hines, Alba Knijff, Sophie König, Grischa Meyer, Marie Millutat, Zafiris Nikitas, Cornelia Ortlieb, Matthias Rothe, Kumars Salehi, Francesco Sani, Stephan Strunz, Lara Tarbuk, Raffaella Di Tizio, Julia Weber, Marten Weise, Noah Willumsen, Claus Zittel.

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