How does the act of performance speak to the concept of commemoration? How and why does commemorative theatre operate as a conceptual, historical and political site from which to interrogate ideas of nationalism and nationhood? This volume explores how theatre and performance create a stage for acts of commemoration, considering crises of hate, nationalism and migration, as well as political, racial and religious bigotry. It features case studies drawn from across Europe, the Middle East, Asia, Africa and Latin America.
The book’s four parts each explore commemoration through a different theoretical lens and present a new set of dramaturgies for research and study. While Section 1 offers a critical survey of 20th- and 21st-century discourses, Section 2 uncovers the commemorative practices underpinning contemporary dramaturgy and applies these practices to plays and performance pieces. These include works by Martin Lynch, Frank McGuinness, Sanja Mitrovic, Theater RAST, Les SlovaKs Dance Collective, Estela Golovchenko, Wajdi Mouawad, Áine Stapleton, CoisCéim, ANU Productions, Aubrey Sekhabi, and Indian and African dance practices. The final sections investigate how individual and collective memory and performances of commemoration can become tools for propaganda and political agendas.
Acknowledgements
Foreword
Introduction
1. Theatre, Performance and Commemoration
Alinne Fernandes (Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brazil), Miriam Haughton (NUI Galway, Ireland), Pieter Verstraete (University of Groningen, the Netherlands)
Section 1 – Commemorative Practices: Performing the Contradictions of our Present
2. Unruly Remembering: Great War Anti-heroes and National Narratives in Northern Ireland
Tom Maguire (Ulster University, UK)
3. My Revolution is Better than Yours: Remembrance, Commemoration and Counter-memory of May 68
Karel Vanhaesebrouck (Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium) and Jorges Palinhos (Playwright, Dramaturg and Researcher, Portugal)
4. Dancing the Emigratory Experience: Challenging the Boundaries of (Imagined) Communities and (Invented) Traditions
Christel Stalpaert (Ghent University, Belgium)
5. Representations of Transition, Memory and Crisis on Stage in Punto y Coma (Ready or Not) by Uruguayan Dramatist Estela Golovchenko
Sophie Stevens (University of East Anglia, UK)
Section 2 – Disruptive Lessons: Thinking Through the Affects of Memory
6. Know Thy Enemy: Wajdi Mouawad on History, Memory and Reconciliation at La Colline
Yana Meerzon (University of Ottowa, Canada)
7. From Difficult Pasts to Present Resonance: Performances of Memory and Commemorative Gestures in Contemporary Vienna
Vicky Angelaki (Mid Sweden University, Sweden)
8. Dancing Impossible Histories: Commemoration, Memory and Trauma in Screendance
Aoife McGrath (Queen's University Belfast, UK)
Section 3: Challenging the Nation/the State: Performing Affective Critiques
9. Performing/Mourning Marikana as Affective Critique of a Nation in Crisis
Miki Flockemann (University of the Western Cape, South Africa)
10. Resonances of Mnemonic Community: Turkey’s Kurdish Question in European Opera
Pieter Verstraete (University of Groningen, the Netherlands)
11. Post-colonial Imaginations: Afro-Asian Dialogues in the Past and the Present
Bishnupriya Dutt (Jawaharlal Nehru University, India)
Index
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