Chapter 13: Theatre Today: Diverse and Global

Scholars have estimated that more than __________ feminist-oriented theatre companies have been founded in the United States.

100

In Asia, theatre in India began perhaps __________ years ago.

2000

Ivo van Hove's production of which classic American play featured one character spending most of the play naked in a bathtub?

A Streetcar Named Desire

A number of significant dramas such as The Normal Heart, The Baltimore Waltz, and Angels in America were spurred by the __________ crisis.

AIDS

In Canada as well as Australia there are theatres that focus on native peoples and people of African descent. One example is the Australian musical Bran Nue Dae which dealt with __________ life.

Aboriginal

The first black theatre company in the United States, founded by James Hewlett in New York, was called the _________.

African Grove Theatre

Internationally recognized Brazilian playwright, director, and theorist __________ is perhaps best known for his innovative approach to socially conscious theatre in Theatre of the Oppressed.

Augusto Boal

The most significant development of black theatre during the Depression of the 1930s was the which set up separate black units in cities across the United States to employ thousands of African American playwrights, performers, and technicians.

Blank 1: Federal Blank 2: Theatre Blank 3: Project

were popular forms of entertainment that caricatured blacks using songs, dances, and skits performed by white entertainers who blackened their faces and exaggerated the eyes and mouth.

Blank 1: Minstrel Blank 2: shows

A Native American as well as feminist theatre, is the longest continually running women's theatre in North America.

Blank 1: Spiderwoman Blank 2: Theatre

Ivo van Hove is a known for minimalist interpretations of traditional texts.

Blank 1: director

Though there are many artists who are pushing the boundaries of subject matter and style, much of today's Chinese drama remains in style and socialist in point of view.

Blank 1: realistic

Derived from Bombay (now Mumbai) and American Hollywood, emphasizes theatrical elements including choreography.

Bollywood

Athol Fugard

Cattacked apartheid in plays such as The Blood Knot, Sizwe Banzi is Dead, and Master Harold...and the Boys

Even though this country's communist government controls most theatres, companies such as Teatro Studio, Compañía Teatral, Argos Teatro and many others still thrive and even present international playwrights and deal with contemporary issues.

Cuba

A prominent Asian American playwright, __________ found success in the 1980s starting with his play FOB. He later wrote M. Butterfly and more recently Chinglish.

David Henry Hwang

What theatrical form is based on historical documents, which give an air of historical reality and authenticity to the drama?

Documentary drama

Caryl Churchill

English playwright; Cloud Nine and Mad Forest

Yasmina Reza

French playwright; Art and God of Carnage

Heiner Müller

German playwright; Hamletmachine

Latino-Latina theatre may also be referred to as theatre.

Hispanic

The three great Asian theatre traditions are:

Indian Chinese Japanese

Martin McDonagh

Irish playwright; The Beauty Queen of Leenane

Due in part to the global success of his play Ghetto, Joshua Sobol is perhaps the most internationally recognized dramatist from __________.

Israel

Dario Fo

Italian playwright; wrote satirical political comedies

Many regard August Wilson to be the most important United States playwright of the second half of the twentieth century. His more important plays include:

Joe Turner's Come and Gone The Piano Lesson Fences

__________ is a traditional form of theatre that comes from India.

Kathakali

Perhaps the most important play in the postwar era, A Raisin in the Sun was written by:

Lorraine Hansberry

Hispanic, or Latino-Latina theatre may be placed in three categories or groups. They are:

Puerto Rican or Nuyorican Theatre Cuban American Theatre Chicano Theatre

__________ reflects the influence of modern playwrights such as Ibsen and Chekhov on Japanese theatre.

Shingeki

The __________ was established to award and recognize women who write for the English-language theatre.

Susan Smith Blackburn Prize

__________ was established in Canada by Tyrone Guthrie and continues to produce Shakespearean classics as well as musicals and contemporary works.

The Stratford Shakespeare Festival

What events have led to a greater cross-fertilization between Chinese traditions and Western drama?

The death of leader Mao Zedong the opening up of China to the West in the late 1970s.

Among the most notable feminist playwrights working in the American theatre today are

Theresa Rebeck Carson Kreitzer Sarah Ruhl Paula Vogel

Which English playwright is known for his dramas that emphasize wordplay and intellectual concerns?

Tom Stoppard

True or false: Dramatists who happen to be members of an underrepresented group or specific gender group may prefer not to be identified solely, or even primarily, on that basis

True

Playwright __________ challenged Soviet Union authorities through his plays; he was imprisoned and his plays banned only to be elevated to president of the Czech Republic after the fall of the Soviet Union.

Václav Havel

Recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986, Nigerian playwright ____________ wrote Death and the King's Horseman.

Wole Soyinka

Luis Valdéz wrote short agitprop pieces called depicting the lives of farmworkers in California.

actos

Native American indigenous communal celebrations had theatrical elements but no real ____________ as we would consider in Western theatre traditions.

audience

Generally speaking, contemporary theatre in Western Europe can be divided into three categories:

avant-garde modern classic

African theatre artists of the twentieth century used traditional forms of performance such as music, song, and dance to:

critique totalitarian regimes in newly independent African nation reflect anticolonial struggles

Contemporary African theatre and society are divided into which groups?

english french port arab

True or false: It is a good practice to identify a writer in only one category such as being a feminist writer or being a lesbian writer rather than acknowledge overlap in their work.

false

An alternative to commercial theatre in London, __________ theatre is often in the postmodern tradition and also fuses high art with popular art.

fringe

The goal for documentary drama is to convince audiences that they're watching unfold in front of them.

history

While early Israeli drama dealt with the the establishment of the state, more recent dramatic works by writers such as Hanoch Levin have explored:

hypocrisy and self-delusion in Israeli society

Native American theatre is also known as theatre, and is written by and for Native Americans.

indigenous

Most Native American plays today are primarily __________.

interested in contemporary problems or aspirations

As referenced in the textbook, an excellent example of the increasing influence of global theatre are the many __________.

international theatre festivals

What are the directions in which feminist theatre has developed:

it has attempted to gain recognition for women writers both past and present it has contributed to the active development of women writers and productions beginning in the 1960s

It is important in discussing __________ points of view in theatre that artists differ in how they wish to be identified with their membership in underrepresented groups or specific gender groups.

multicultural

In looking at theatre groups and artists, there is often __________ between identities and groups that should be acknowledged and considered before trying to strictly categorize a playwright.

overlap

Wole Soyinka

poet, novelist as well as playwright and Nobel Prize recipient in literature, he wrote Death and the King's Horseman, and Play of Giants

Today, theatre in the Arab world is greatly affected by the of the region.

politics

Three important points to be kept in mind when engaging with global theatre are to:

recognize that the development of global exchanges in communications, ideas, commerce, and the arts have influenced modern theatre know that non-European theatres were influenced by the development of modern theatre in the West understand that theatre has a long and rich history in many cultures reaching back more than 2,000 years

In Africa, in pre-Columbian Latin America, and in the Indigenous cultures of North America, there are rich traditions of and ceremonies that had theatrical elements like costumes, songs and dances, and impersonations of people, animals, and divinities.

rituals or ritual

Although the Islamic religion has strong prohibitions against theatre, the tradition of storytelling and folklore often found expression using __________ prior to the rise of Islamic fundamentalism and totalitarianism.

shadow puppets

The single most pivotal moment for theatre in Eastern Europe and Russia in the second half of the twentieth century was

the fall of the Soviet Union.

Native Americans did not have a theatrical tradition, rather

they had spiritual and social traditions that had theatrical elements observers were considered participants in the event rather than being a passive audience

Still active and vital today, nō, bunraku, and kabuki represent this branch of theatre in Japan.

traditional theatre

Contemporary playwrights like Basil Kreimendehl, Taylor Mac, and MJ Kaufman explore the __________ experience.

transgender