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This book examines the relationship between wartime conflict and theatre practices. Bringing together a diverse collection of essays in one volume, it offers both a geographically and historically wide view of the subject, taking examples from Britain, Australia and America to the Middle East, Korea and China, and spanning the fifth century BCE to the present day. It explores the ways in which theatre practices have been manipulated for use in political and military propaganda, such as the employment of scenographers to work on camouflage and the application of acting methods in espionage training. It also maps the change in relationships between performers and audiences as a result of conflict, and the emergence of new forms of patronage during wartime theatre-going, boosting morale at periods when social structures and identity were being destabilized.
List of contents
Introduction: Victor Emeljanow; Theatrical Engagements in times of war: an introduction.- 1. Will Shüler; The Greek tragic chorus and its training for war: movement, music, and harmony in theatrical and military performance.- 2. Fraser Stevens; Cultural Camouflage: Acting Identities in World War 2 espionage.- 3. Greer Crawley; The Scenographer as Camoufleur Propaganda Strategies.- 4. Cariad Astles; Puppetry and the Spanish Civil War.- 5. Yuh-Jhung Hwang; Theatrical Propaganda and an Imagined West during the Korean War.- 6. Gabriella Calchi-Novati; The Biopolitics of ISIS' Iconoclastic Propaganda.- 7. Mayhill C. Fowler; Guns, Money and the Muse: New Patronage in the Russian Civil War, 1919-1922.- 8. Lu Miao and Wei Feng; Manipulating Beijing Opera: criminality and prosperity during Civil War in China c.1930.- 9. Anselm Heinrich; Patronising the National Stage: subsidies and control in wartime Britain.- 10. Veronica Kelly: 'Make do and mend': civilian and military audiences in Australian popular entertainment during the Pacific War of 1943-45.
About the author
Victor Emeljanow is Emeritus Professor in the School of Creative Industries at the University of Newcastle, Australia, and General Editor of the e-journal
Popular Entertainment Studies. He has published widely on subjects including the reception of Chekhov in Britain, the career of Theodore Kommisarjevsky, Beerbohm Tree's engagement with Ibsen on the West End, Victorian popular dramatists, and prisoner-of-war entertainments during the First and Second World Wars.
Summary
This book examines the relationship between wartime conflict and theatre practices. Bringing together a diverse collection of essays in one volume, it offers both a geographically and historically wide view of the subject, taking examples from Britain, Australia and America to the Middle East, Korea and China, and spanning the fifth century BCE to the present day. It explores the ways in which theatre practices have been manipulated for use in political and military propaganda, such as the employment of scenographers to work on camouflage and the application of acting methods in espionage training. It also maps the change in relationships between performers and audiences as a result of conflict, and the emergence of new forms of patronage during wartime theatre-going, boosting morale at periods when social structures and identity were being destabilized.
