Re-Activating the Repertoire, 1660-1830

重新激活曲目，1660-1830

• 批准号: AH/W006057/1
• 负责人: David Taylor
• 金额: $ 3.54万
• 依托单位: University of Oxford
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2022 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=AH%2FW006057%2F1
• 关键词: Re; Activating; Repertoire; 1660; 1830

The theatrical repertoire from the 1660s to the 1830s provides insights into the deep histories of race, gender, sexuality, ability, nation, and capital that have shaped - and continue to shape - our culture and world. These plays know things that we need to know about how and why our modern world came into being. Yet this repertoire has largely been forgotten by commercial theatre companies in Britain and North America. Only a handful of plays from the period are regularly staged professionally, and among audiences and theatre makers the prevailing view remains that "Restoration drama" is about lavish costumes and witty exchanges. Moreover, drama schools are now dropping the period's drama from their curricula, partly due to understandable concerns that they are ideologically problematic.Our international research network - "Re-Activating the Repertoire, 1660-1830" - recognizes that this situation can only be addressed through genuine and sustained collaboration between scholars and theatre makers. This collaboration will be mutually transformative. Researchers will share with directors and performers their knowledge of both the political and cultutal contexts of these plays and also the histories of movement and gesture that are crucial to an understanding of their intricate stagecraft. Our project will work with practitioners to find depth and resonance in 18th-century plays just as they are accustomed to doing with Shakespearean plays such as The Taming of the Shrew and Othello. At the same time, this process will enable researchers to learn from practitioners. Academic studies of this repertoire continue largely to read scripts in isolation from performance. This is understandable: unlike scholars working on Shakespearean or modern theatre, we rarely have an opportunity to see professional productions of the plays we research and teach. Working with directors and actors will immeasurably enrich our scholarly understanding of the period's theatre. The conservative performance tradition, which sees these plays as "comedies of manners", has in many ways cut us off from the vital socio-cultural knowledge they hold. Our emphasis on the histories of movement, language, and ideology is intended to enable professional theatre makers to engage with these plays in more experimental ways and, above all, to take them seriously as a body of drama that possesses conceptual and theatrical sophistication, and which necessarily involves exploration of our social and cultural landscape today. In turn, this will allow scholars to learn through performance; it will radically transform what we as researchers know about these plays - and how we engage with them. Our network's workshops and peformances will focus on process; they will test multiple ways of staging scenes and interpreting characters, and also recognize that failures often reveal more than successes. To explore how these plays work in embodied, spatial terms will enable researchers to address questions about relationships and interactions on stage; about how plays use gesture and movement as modes of political commentary; about what "character" is in these plays; and about how silence as much as dialogue invites audiences' emotional and intellectual responses. Equally, and most excitingly, the rehearsal and performance will generate questions about the practical dynamics and the deeper thinking of these plays that scholars haven't yet thought to ask. The aim of our network is ultimately to transform how both researchers and practitioners work with and think about plays from 1660-1830.

从 1660 年代到 1830 年代的戏剧剧目让我们深入了解种族、性别、性取向、能力、国家和资本的深刻历史，这些历史已经塑造并将继续塑造我们的文化和世界。这些戏剧知道我们需要知道的关于现代世界如何以及为何形成的事情。然而，英国和北美的商业剧院公司基本上已经忘记了这个剧目。这一时期的戏剧只有极少数定期专业上演，观众和戏剧制作人普遍认为“光复戏剧”是关于华丽的服装和诙谐的交流。此外，戏剧学校现在正在从课程中删除这一时期的戏剧，部分原因是担心这些戏剧在意识形态上存在问题，这是可以理解的。我们的国际研究网络——“重新激活剧目，1660-1830”——认识到这种情况只能通过学者和戏剧制作者之间真正和持续的合作来解决。这种合作将是相互变革的。研究人员将与导演和表演者分享他们对这些戏剧的政治和文化背景的了解，以及对于理解其复杂的舞台艺术至关重要的动作和手势的历史。我们的项目将与从业者合作，在 18 世纪的戏剧中寻找深度和共鸣，就像他们习惯于莎士比亚戏剧（如《驯悍记》和《奥赛罗》）所做的那样。同时，这个过程将使研究人员能够向从业者学习。对这一剧目的学术研究主要是在脱离表演的情况下阅读剧本。这是可以理解的：与研究莎士比亚或现代戏剧的学者不同，我们很少有机会看到我们研究和教授的戏剧的专业制作。与导演和演员的合作将极大地丰富我们对这一时期戏剧的学术理解。保守的表演传统将这些戏剧视为“礼仪喜剧”，在许多方面使我们与它们所拥有的重要社会文化知识隔绝。我们对运动、语言和意识形态的历史的重视是为了让专业的戏剧制作者能够以更具实验性的方式参与这些戏剧，最重要的是，将它们作为一个具有概念和戏剧复杂性的戏剧体系来认真对待，这必然涉及对我们当今社会和文化景观的探索。反过来，这将使学者能够通过表演来学习；它将从根本上改变我们作为研究人员对这些戏剧的了解以及我们与它们互动的方式。我们网络的研讨会和表演将重点关注流程；他们将测试多种布置场景和诠释角色的方式，并认识到失败往往比成功更能揭示出更多的东西。探索这些戏剧如何在具体、空间方面发挥作用，将使研究人员能够解决有关舞台上的关系和互动的问题；关于戏剧如何使用手势和动作作为政治评论的方式；关于这些戏剧中的“人物”是什么；以及沉默和对话如何引起观众的情感和智力反应。同样，最令人兴奋的是，排练和表演将产生有关这些戏剧的实际动态和更深入思考的问题，而学者们还没有想到要问这些问题。我们网络的最终目标是改变研究人员和从业者处理和思考 1660 年至 1830 年戏剧的方式。