Experimental Theatre of the 1960’s – Challenges of the Performance. Performativity and Intentionality: Kennedy and Baraka

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Experimental Theatre of the 1960’s – Challenges of the Performance. Performativity and Intentionality: Kennedy and Baraka

Journal Title: humanistica 21 - Year 2017, Vol 0, Issue 1

Abstract

“Experimental Theatre of the 1960’s – Challenges of the Perfor-mance: Performativity and Intentionality – Kennedy and Baraka” explores the nature of the borderline experience of interpreting a drama in the process of stage production. The text discusses two aspects, namely the intention of the playwright as reflected in the play script and the intention of the director manifested in the theatre performance. This borderline experience, albeit foreign to other literary genres, has been inherently inscribed into every play known in history. The playwright’s intention embodied in the script is evaluated and subsequently trans¬formed by the director. The level of transformation, though, depends on the nature of stage directions. In order to explain the mechanism which underlies the differentiated levels of produc¬tion-based transformation, the paper refers to Richard Court¬ney’s idea of a play as a skeletal literary form, as well as to Beards¬ley’s, Ingarden’s and Stanislavski’s theories of intentional author/playwright. There are two in-depth case studies, of Adrienne Kennedy’s Funnyhouse of a Negro and Amiri Baraka’s Slave Ship, which exemplify the theory that the directors may in fact be restricted in their freedom of script interpretation. The paper provides an insight into the mode of playwright’s intentional seizing the control of stage production with the facilitated stage directions.

Authors and Affiliations

Małgorzata Chrzan

Keywords

EP ID EP412495
DOI -
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