World Theatres Contexts and Practices
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Learning outcomes
- Demonstrate advanced knowledge specific to World theatre and performance cultures
- Demonstrate an enhanced ability to work directly in a field of performance and cultural practice
- Apply inter-cultural and interdisciplinary principles to creative and scholarly practice
- Evidence an increased confidence in addressing theoretical concepts in an appropriately analytical/critical and practical way and relate them to a performance field
Assessment 6,000-words essay: 100%
GET INSTANT EXPERT HELPChoose ONE of the following Essay Titles:
- Interweaving of performance cultures involves the transformative aesthetics that becomes social reality based on the contents, ideologies and cultures that occur in performance. Using any two of the theatre forms and traditions studied, discuss how the cultural contexts of the performances are reflective of the cultural milieu.
- Avant-garde and post-dramatic theatre reproduces objective political reality outside traditional aesthetics of drama. Analyse at least two performance forms from different traditions that influence political and theatrical developments in their respective cultural contexts.
- ‘The Revolutionary Theatre is shaped by the world, and moves to reshape the world, using as its force the natural force and perpetual vibrations of the mind in the world’ (Amiri Baraka, 1966: 985). In what ways has Baraka’s view influenced the Black Arts Movement and the African-American dramatic development and the development of African-American identity in the 20th century USA, especially the plays of August Wilson and Suzan-Lori Parks? Use at least two plays to illustrate your response.
- A focus on the Natyashastra as an elite repository and ‘precious legacy’ of aesthetic techniques obscures the necessary analysis of the ways it reflects and reproduces social inequalities through its ‘laws of movement’ (Anurima Banerji, 2021). This is reinforced by Bharata’s Rasa Theory, which is presented as a ‘spiritual’ banquet. While engaging with Banerji’s criticism, discuss the theory with examples from your research on the Natyashastra and from Asian theatre practice.
- Intercultural theatre practice arouses divided opinions within the world theatre community. Discuss this statement in relation to Peter Brook’s production of The Mahabharata.
