"Music as Theater," The SAGE International Encyclopedia of Music and Culture, ed. Janet Sturman, 2019, pp.2177-2181. (original) (raw)
Related papers
This document brings together three essays that I published on my blog the biting point in 2016, on the subject of music and theatre. The first essay confronts the unstable and dissatisfactory category of 'music theatre', via a book review of Eric Salzman and Thomas Desi's The New Music Theatre (2008). Through the course of the next two essays, I then attempt to reconstruct a sturdier definition of music theatre, on the basis of newly posited definitions of 'music' and 'theatre', inspired by Richard Schechner and Alain Badiou. My listener-oriented definition of 'music' relies on a concept derived from theatre: becoming-music as a dramaturgy of sound. This means that both 'theatre' and 'music' are defined according to the same basic operation—presentation-as-world—yet, while the 'world' of theatre is always mimetic, the 'world' of music-qua-music is always exceptional to the 'real' world. Thus, the operation of theatre can be considered a solution to the impossibility of musical reality: music theatre is the 'presentation-as-world' of the musically possible. The picture of 'music theatre' that emerges from this framework is a very broad one, which necessarily includes all live musical performance. In the third essay, I outline a theory of musical genre that differentiates between the various aesthetic criteria that arbitrate within this wide field, making different demands of different performances on the basis of different genres. At the heart of this theory is a notion, borrowed from Schechner and Victor Turner, of music theatre as ritual. The result is a quasi-anthropological survey of genre rituals (from pop and jazz, to opera and experimental music) as they relate to the 'worlds' of music and theatre, the modality of music's 'appearance' within the fictional world presented, and the 'aesth-ethic' criteria of success within each ritual performance.
The (Musical) Performance at Stake: An Ethnomusicological Review
2020
I have always considered the observation of a musical manifestation more or less as the analysis of a musical "performance." My recent interrogations and research about what is, in fact, a "performance"? have led me to formulate an observation. While looking for an answer in the performance studies literature, it is quite clear that music is not included as a subject of analysis but appears more as an object or a pretext to the analysis of the meaning(s) hidden behind the music, the best example being theater. A simple Internet search for "performance studies" only shows a few titles on music. Even The Cambridge Introduction to Performance Theory (2016) presents performance with keywords like "Drama and Theater" and "Literature." Also, looking to different performance studies programs and courses syllabi from American universities like New York University, Brown, Northwestern, University of California, Davis, etc., it is quite clear that the notion of "performance" is widely associated with communication. 1 Though it surely is, this understanding appeals to a very particular intellectual lineage, characterized by the writings of eminent authors like philosophers John L. Austin (1962) and John R. Searl (1969), cultural anthropologist Victor Turner (1982, and drama theorist Richard Schechner (1988), for whom the performance is at first a way to observe language, ritual, and everyday life interactions.
Musicality in Theatre. Music as Model, Method and Metaphor in Theatre-Making (2014)
2014
As the complicated relationship between music and theatre has evolved and changed in the modern and postmodern periods, music has continued to be immensely influential in key developments of theatrical practices. In this study of musicality in the theatre, David Roesner offers a revised view of the nature of the relationship. The new perspective results from two shifts in focus: on the one hand, Roesner concentrates in particular on theatre-making - that is the creation processes of theatre - and on the other, he traces a notion of ‘musicality’ in the historical and contemporary discourses as driver of theatrical innovation and aesthetic dispositif, focusing on musical qualities, metaphors and principles derived from a wide range of genres. Roesner looks in particular at the ways in which those who attempted to experiment with, advance or even revolutionize theatre often sought to use and integrate a sense of musicality in training and directing processes and in performances. His study reveals both the continuous changes in the understanding of music as model, method and metaphor for the theatre and how different notions of music had a vital impact on theatrical innovation in the past 150 years. Musicality thus becomes a complementary concept to theatricality, helping to highlight what is germane to an art form as well as to explain its traction in other art forms and areas of life. The theoretical scope of the book is developed from a wide range of case studies, some of which are re-readings of the classics of theatre history (Appia, Meyerhold, Artaud, Beckett), while others introduce or rediscover less-discussed practitioners such as Joe Chaikin, Thomas Bernhard, Elfriede Jelinek, Michael Thalheimer and Karin Beier.
STAGING THE WORLD: PERFORMANCE SPACE AS AN UNIFIED FIELD OF DRAMA AND SOCIETY
«All the world is a stage», wrote Petronius, and the same was repeated by William Shakespeare plagiarizing the Roman writer. They were both wrong, because in both their lives, the world – or at least the theatrical world – was not all of it a stage. In fact, according to Jean Duvignaud, theatre was defined by two polarizing spaces: the stage and the audience. The first where the drama took place, the second where the drama was supported and socialized by its watchers. However, contemporary stage somehow breathed life to the dream – or nightmare - of Petronius and Shakespeare. That was what Walter Benjamin already felt in epic theatre, noting that in his time the “dead people” on stage and the living people in the audience were mingling more and more, and the frontier that divided them was becoming more and more blurry, so that the Magic Circle of Johan Huizinga or the Magical Conclave of Jean Duvignaud became more and more all-encompassing, turning all the world into a stage, but also the stage into a world. Drawing from the classical and contemporary theories and ideas of Aristotle, Georg Simmel, Johan Huizinga, Roger Caillois, Walter Benjamin, Erving Goffman, Jean Duvignaud, Raymond Williams, Richard Schechner, Miwon Kwon, Cathy Turner, Markus Montola and Ian Bogost about drama, performance, game, and adventure, and also on concepts of social theory and the theories of action, I will try to understand the meaning, impact and limitations of fictional interventions in real space, focusing on a anecdote told by the renowned theatre director and thinker, Anne Bogart, to try to understand the particular relationship between performance and space and the impact that it can have on their creators, participants, spectators and on the surrounding environment.
Music Theatre: Concepts, Theories and Practices
2013
This research paper explores music theatre writing and research since its conception in the 1960s. It will explore what music theatre is or isn’t and will serve as a resource for me to draw upon whilst writing my own music theatre portfolio. I will be looking at different practices and practitioners such as Kagel and Cage as well as more contemporary practitioners and music theatre groups. Please note the focus of this paper is toward MUSIC THEATRE as apposed to musicAL theatre. http://www.lulu.com/shop/ryan-green/music-theatre-concepts-theories-and-practices/paperback/product-22097945.html
Performance and performativity have emerged as key concepts in social and cultural theory. The recent rise of the interdisciplinary field of performance studies has shifted our understanding of performance as mere entertainment to performance as ‘a way of creation and being’ (Madison and Hamera 2006: xii, original emphasis). As a result, the concept has expanded to encompass everyday action and interaction, as well as ritual and cultural events beyond the stage, influencing a wide range of academic fields. At the intersection of cultural studies, theatre studies, sociology, anthropology, linguistics, gender studies and psychology, studies of performance and performativity clearly grapple with questions about the complex interrelation between the individual, culture and society.
Special Issue: Dance in musical theatre
Studies in Musical Theatre, 2019
This special issue of Studies in Musical Theatre examines the role of dance in musical theatre from a variety of perspectives. Given the scholarly turn from textual analysis to performance analysis, even studying musicals without extensive dance per se can benefit from understanding how movement shapes meaning. The introduction below explains some key themes that have emerged in the six articles that follow. One is the question of genre: what exactly is musical theatre dance? Another is auteurship: what is the role of the choreographer in shaping musicals? A third is technology, which reminds readers that choreography extends beyond human bodies. Finally, the articles all consider questions of methodology and history – how do we best study musical theatre? While there are several other areas of potential inquiry not covered in these six articles, this special issue, the first in the field to focus on dance in musical theatre, aims to help define and cohere an important subfield.