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- Bergström, Gunnel, 1942-
(author)
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In search of meaning in opera : an opera singer's approach to the dialectics of words, music & myth in opera from Monteverdi to Verdi
- 2000
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The aim of this thesis is to show that the opera singer's art is to transmit word and music into vocal action. It is assumed that opera, like all the arts, communicates myth. Of the stage arts opera is unique in that it expresses mythic metaphors through a combination of words and music.The point of departure is the opera singer's: confronted with the text, comprising libretto and music, how can this be used to achieve a dramatic effect? Stanislavsky's theory of acting is often applied in practice, but whatever its merits for the stage, it has shortcomings for opera. More promising, it is argued, is a form of hermeneutic approach that Ricoeur calls "backward relatedness": the composer's score is relied on to contain all essential information, but further understanding may be gained by studying any human science that gives insight into how the poet expresses his life experience.In this spirit, the first part of the thesis surveys the history of opera from Monteverdi to Verdi with a focus on how composers have handled the relation between words and music to give expression to human conflicts that are the stuff of myth. The second part comprises two chapters in which arias from each of the main periods studied are analysed with attention paid both to the libretto and the music and how these combine in vocal action that communicates myth. It is here that the fruitfulness of Ricoeur's insights are demonstrated. In a final part, the conditions for the present-day opera singer are discussed.
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| 2. |
- Bystedt, Britt-Marie, 1931-
(author)
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Krigaren på scen : Krigarens makt och maktens krigare sedda genom scenkonstens prisma
- 2016
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The warrior has played an important role in most societies, often representing power. The military/ defence system is founded more or less on the ideal of the good and noble warrior. The aim of the thesis is to examine how the warrior's power has been expressed on stage in different times and different contexts. Three perspectives are discussed: 1) The warrior in society, 2) The warrior's self-image (ethos and warrior virtues), 3) The warrior in drama and on stage. In society, warriors in uniform are one means to increase dignity and give credibility to ceremonies. Society uses the same actions as theatre – music, choreography and costumes (parade uniforms). In the thesis there are some examples from the cultural history of the warrior (uniforms, gestures, music etc.). The principal part of the thesis is a study of the warrior as theatrical motif and a discussion of a series of warrior figures in literature and drama on stage. These figures are analysed from the perspectives of masculinity, play and historiography.The warrior in literature and drama is rarely a hero. The thesis gives examples under the following headings. The submissive warrior: Catherine de Medici used the warrior as a pliable tool to reduce internal court quarrels, when they were commanded to participate in the court ballets. A different kind of docility in warriors is found in the nineteenth century English melodrama. The false and coward warrior: Ancient writers often used satire in their plays, and warrior figures were easy prey for this. Miles Gloriosus and the Capitain in Commedia dell’arte are two examples. The weak warrior: Anthony, in Anthony and Cleopatra by Shakespeare, is a warrior hero who abandons his wife and family to live with the Egyptian queen, attracted by the luxury and refined lifestyles at her court. The oppressed warrior: The Good Soldier Schweik, created by Bertolt Brecht after a story by Jaroslav Hasek, is an oppressed ordinary soldier in the Czech army, who faces oppression by doing exactly as he is told, and consequently is creating confusion. Georg Büchner’s drama Woyzeck contains an altogether deeper darkness. The outmanoeuvred warrior: The captains in August Strindberg’s two plays The Father and The Dance of Death are both in conflict with their wives but lose their fights. The optimistic warrior: Chekhov introduces in the play Three Sisters two warriors with bright visions of the future but also tells the audience that life can be a tragedy.To portray the good and noble warrior is of course possible but it is seldom dramatic, whilst weak and lovesick, false and treacherous warriors are dramatically effective. The theatre's tradition of subversion is a variety of the ancient custom of 'turning society upside-down' during Lent, analysed by Michail Bakhtin in Rabelais and his World. The theatre is also a microcosm. The performing arts make use of the individual to criticize the whole. In drama, it is the individual warrior who bears the responsibility without the need to say anything about the armed forces. Sometimes this is done through the mirror of laughter. When the warrior is seen through the theatre's lens, the picture is enlarged and – according to physical principles, at a certain distance – shows the warrior as part of the upside-down world.
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| 4. |
- Gindt, Dirk, 1975-
(author)
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Playing Activists and Dancing Anarchists : Men and Masculinities in Cultural Performances in Contemporary Sweden
- 2007
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Playing Activists and Dancing Anarchists is a Ph.D. dissertation that aims to analyse men and masculinities in political demonstrations and similar manifestations by conceptualising and analytically approaching such cultural performances as theatrical events. The case studies include the large peace demonstration in Stockholm in February 2003 against the invasion of Iraq; a street theatre performance by the comedians Kesselofski and Fiske, who argue against the European Monetary Union; four Social Democratic May Day celebrations with former prime minister Göran Persson as the main speaker; two anti-racist demonstrations, one of which leads to a violent street battle between activists and a riot police squad.The dissertation proposes Performance Studies as a relevant means of examining men and masculinities in political live events. The method of study is based on participant observation and the material is complemented with additional sources. The theoretical and analytical approach is inspired by Willmar Sauter’s model of the theatrical event and Raewyn Connell’s theory of hegemonic masculinity.The different chapters identify and discuss a broad range of men and masculinities, from a cowboy-politician and a financial shark to dead political father figures and masked collectives of martyrs. A closer analysis reveals that many of them are contemporary embodiments or complicit supporters of hegemonic masculinity. Underneath the playful surface of some of the events are strong undercurrents of this ideal. The study also shows the growing resistance offered by feminist activists, performers and musicians. Cultural performances prove to be loci where hegemonic masculinity is not only reproduced, but also contested. The concept of the theatrical event helps to identify and spotlight these attempts and shows how Performance Studies can contribute to analysing men and masculinities.
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| 5. |
- Granath, Sara
(author)
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Käket & Moralen : teatersällskapet Proteus/Mercurius från studentteater till länsteater
- 1997
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The aim of this dissertation is to study the development of a so called free theatre group in the south of Sweden. This group, here called Proteus/Mercurius, started out as a travelling amateur theatre, emanating from the Student Theatre of Lund, in 1965, and waas finally established as the regional theatre of the county of Skaraborg, in 1988. The group' s leadeer and director Ulf Gran became the head of the new theatre.The French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu uses the concept of cultural field to characterize the arena,where agents and institutions fight over the correct definition of, in this case, Good Theatre. My main objective is to find and correlate the various factors contributing to the changing legitimacy of Proteus/Mercurius within the Swedish theatre field.Placing myself within this field I have studied the traje´ctory of ProteusMercurius in relation to the other theatre groups that made up the free theatre movement from the mid-sixties onwards.I have found that Proteus/Mercurius differed frommany other groups at a time when leftist political declarations were common. It also had a clearly defined leader and director, when team work was the word of the day. When other groups wrote their own plays, Proteus/Mercurius specialized in classics, such as Shakespeare, Marivaux, Strindberg, Holbnerg and so on. It seems to be a matter of timing; Proteus/Mercurius was nevdr in the mainstream of the theatre groups.But viewed from a distance many similarities between Proteus/Mercurius and other groups have become evident. One of the reasons for Proteus/Mercurius' changing legitimacy seems to be that various kinds of symbolic capital such as education and social relations proved valuable at different moments.When the groups, thanks to generous state subsidies, overflowed the market, factors such as state educated actors became more important. And, even though Proteus/Mercurius actually managed to form the basis of a new regional theatre, its tradition of using amateurs or student actors in productions became an increasingly negative factor.Still, I have found that Proteus/Mercurius over the years kept to its initial goal of interacting with the audience in new and unusual ways, often in psaces not ordinarily used for theatre. The most appreciated part of the group' s work was aLWAYS THE OUTDOOR SUMMER performances, REACHING AUDIENCES OUTSIDE THE GROUP OF habitual theatre-goers. The same went for performances for specific groups, such as improvisations with nurses and Winnie-the-Pooh for mentally handicapped children. Even if Proteus/Mercurius did not reach lasting fame within the field, it med with some very appreciative audiences.
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| 7. |
- Jai-Ung, Hong
(author)
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Creating theatrical dreams : a Taoist approach to Molander's, Bergman's and Wilson's productions of Strindberg's A dream play
- 2003
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The aim of this dissertation is to explore the Tao of theater through the study of the productions of Strindberg’s A Dream Play on stage. For the purpose of understanding these dynamic relationships Taoism is used and especially I Ching, the essence of eastern philosophies. In this thesis the I Ching provides an important concept of “the Tao of theater.” The Tao of theater means a way of unity and harmony and a process of continual flow and change in the theater. Its principal characteristic is the cyclical nature of its ceaseless motion. The I Ching shows the activities of the theater world, which once expanded, reveal the endless process of universal change.The point of departure is Strindberg’s explanation about the dreamer’s consciousness in his foreword of this play. It is deeply related to lucid dream, which means that the dreamer is aware of his or her dreaming. During his Inferno period, Strindberg’s experience of astral projection and dreaming corresponds to the phenomenon of dream lucidity. This study explores the phenomenon of dream lucidity through the dream theories of Sigmund Freud, Carl Gustav Jung, Paul Kugler and James Hillman.The question of the dreamer’s identity provides the key to an understanding of the productions of Strindberg’s A Dream Play. Three kinds of dreamer in the productions of this play are presented: the author, the director and the spectator. In order to examine the three kinds of dreamer, Olof Molander’s 1935/1955, Ingmar Bergman’s 1970/1986 and Robert Wilson’s 1998 productions of A Dream Play in Stockholm were chosen. The three kinds of dreamer are characterized by two states of identification: dreamer-as-participator and dreamer-as-observer in these productions. These states are deeply related to the idea of the interplay between yin and yang. The basic and essential image, the hexagram in the I Ching shows the endless change of yin and yang in the dreamer’s existence, character and role-playing, stage and auditorium, in the productions of A Dream Play. The I Ching gives a new insight into the analysis of the productions of this play.
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| 9. |
- Jónsson, Jón Viðar
(author)
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Geniet och vägvisaren : om den isländska skådespelerskan Stefanía Guðmundsdóttir (1876-1926) och författaren och regissören Einar H. Kvaran (1859-1938) = [The genius and its guide] : [on the Icelandic actress Stefanía Guðmundsdóttir (1876-1926) and the writer and director Einar H. Kvaran (1859-1938)]
- 1995
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The principal aim of this dissertation is to investigate the artistic career of lceland’s leading actress during the first half of this century, Mrs. Stefania Gudmundsdottir. Mrs. Stefam'a was unanimously hailed as an extraordinarily gifted artist by her contemporaries who never tired of praising her, particularly for her embodiment of dramatic roles like Magda in Die Heimat by Hermann Sudermann, Marguérite Gautier in La dame aux camélias by Dumas fils and Ulrikka in The Sisters at Kinnekullen by the Danish playwright Carsten Hauch.When read today these ovations are bound to seem somewhat naive, not least because the quality of Icelandic theatrical criticism was generally rather low during these years. One also has to remember that Mrs. Stefania and her co-actors were amateurs without any formal training. The author of the dissertation therefore maintains that in order to make the contemporary evaluation of her art convincing, one has to understand the premises from which she worked and set her into a correct historical context. His main thesis is that the secret of her appeal resided in a combination of her charismatic personality, her genuine pathos, her precise control of the physical means of expression and, most importantly, a certain spiritual perspective from which she approached her figures. One of the foundations of this perspective was an optimistic view of human nature, which has a close counterpart in the philosophy of the writer Einar H. Kvaran, who as artistic director of Mrs. Stefania’s theatre, Reykjavik Acting Company, RAC, made a very important contribution to theatrical progress. Kvaran, a gifted and popular writer, was deeply concerned with social, ethical and spiritual issues, a convinced spiritualist and an untiring spokesman for human rights against corruption and the abuse of power. In a way similar to his Mrs. Stefania made a strong impact upon her audiences by her portraits of suffering women, although her most outstanding creation seems to have been the greedy Ulrikka, whom she managed to invest with something of a tragic grandeur.The dissertation also describes the general development of RAC, the first serious theatrical venture in Iceland and a forerunner of its National Theatre, during its first twenty-five years. The careers and artistic profiles of Mrs. Stefania’s co-actors are given extensive treatment. The main conclusion is, however, that both as an artist and a resolute and innovative theatre leader Mrs. Stefania Gudmundsdottir is up to this date a unique figure in Icelandic theatre history.
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