Taking as its focus the ‘actor-creator’s’ process in devising practices, this study explores the ... more Taking as its focus the ‘actor-creator’s’ process in devising practices, this study explores the notion of the ‘poetic body’ developed by French theatre pedagogue Jacques Lecoq (1921 - 1999) and the writings of French philosopher Gaston Bachelard (1884 - 1962) on the ‘poetics of imagination.’ The overarching aim is to originate a new ‘embodied poetics’ whereby the sensate, feeling body actively explores correspondences with the ‘material elements’ of earth, air, fire and water. These are experienced as ‘poeticising substances’ – catalysts and conductors for an embodied imagination. More specifically, this thesis asks the following question: What new understandings can a relational encounter between Lecoq’s pedagogy and Bachelard’s ‘poetic imagining’ reveal about the ’poetic body’ and how might these new understandings originate a devising process? I combine three solo practical projects with accompanying written analysis, to first interrogate the working methods I have inherited as ...
use of the prima donna as a site for literary experimentation (stream-of-consciousness) in his 18... more use of the prima donna as a site for literary experimentation (stream-of-consciousness) in his 1898 novel Evelyn Innes. Turning to the lyric stage, Helen Greenwald examines the unusual stillness of Mimì’s consumptive death in Puccini’s La bohème, and Gurminder Kaur Bhogal considers the excessive ornamentation of Lakmé’s singing in Delibe’s opera as signalling sacred legend rather than instability and otherness. The final section, ‘Cultures of Celebrity’, features a series of case studies of individual singers who together exemplify some of the themes presented in the first two sections. The authors examine details of everyday biography and elucidate the ephemeral concept of ‘celebrity’ through: the (variously) artistic and voyeuristic pleasures afforded by Angelina Catalani’s ‘attitudes with a shawl’ (Rachel Cowgill); the mutability of the ‘diva’ concept in the contrasting performances of Ellen Terry and Elise Craven (Tracy C. Davis); the soprano Emma Carelli’s career as an impresario in Rome (Susan Rutherford); the ways in which Alma Gluck unsettled the categories of ‘high’ and ‘popular’ art and exposed perceptions of ‘colour’ and ‘class’ in early twentieth-century America (Susan C. Cook); the centrality of vocal performance beyond the theatre in early nineteenth-century Britain through the example of Clara Butt (Sophie Fuller); and the impact of commercial recordings on public appreciation of singers such as Amelita Galli-Curci (Alexandra Wilson). The essays offer a rich variety of approaches to the prima donna, and the quality of scholarship and writing is high. Together they reveal the contradictory views of the prima donna in different times and places, the ideologies of gender that shaped perception, and the challenges these singers presented to traditional male/female power dynamics. The volume’s focus is on Italy, France and Britain – and to a lesser extent Germany and America – and it is to be hoped that the essays will encourage further such research, following these and other prima donnas around the globe.
Taking as its focus the ‘actor-creator’s’ process in devising practices, this study explores the ... more Taking as its focus the ‘actor-creator’s’ process in devising practices, this study explores the notion of the ‘poetic body’ developed by French theatre pedagogue Jacques Lecoq (1921 - 1999) and the writings of French philosopher Gaston Bachelard (1884 - 1962) on the ‘poetics of imagination.’ The overarching aim is to originate a new ‘embodied poetics’ whereby the sensate, feeling body actively explores correspondences with the ‘material elements’ of earth, air, fire and water. These are experienced as ‘poeticising substances’ – catalysts and conductors for an embodied imagination. More specifically, this thesis asks the following question: What new understandings can a relational encounter between Lecoq’s pedagogy and Bachelard’s ‘poetic imagining’ reveal about the ’poetic body’ and how might these new understandings originate a devising process? I combine three solo practical projects with accompanying written analysis, to first interrogate the working methods I have inherited as ...
use of the prima donna as a site for literary experimentation (stream-of-consciousness) in his 18... more use of the prima donna as a site for literary experimentation (stream-of-consciousness) in his 1898 novel Evelyn Innes. Turning to the lyric stage, Helen Greenwald examines the unusual stillness of Mimì’s consumptive death in Puccini’s La bohème, and Gurminder Kaur Bhogal considers the excessive ornamentation of Lakmé’s singing in Delibe’s opera as signalling sacred legend rather than instability and otherness. The final section, ‘Cultures of Celebrity’, features a series of case studies of individual singers who together exemplify some of the themes presented in the first two sections. The authors examine details of everyday biography and elucidate the ephemeral concept of ‘celebrity’ through: the (variously) artistic and voyeuristic pleasures afforded by Angelina Catalani’s ‘attitudes with a shawl’ (Rachel Cowgill); the mutability of the ‘diva’ concept in the contrasting performances of Ellen Terry and Elise Craven (Tracy C. Davis); the soprano Emma Carelli’s career as an impresario in Rome (Susan Rutherford); the ways in which Alma Gluck unsettled the categories of ‘high’ and ‘popular’ art and exposed perceptions of ‘colour’ and ‘class’ in early twentieth-century America (Susan C. Cook); the centrality of vocal performance beyond the theatre in early nineteenth-century Britain through the example of Clara Butt (Sophie Fuller); and the impact of commercial recordings on public appreciation of singers such as Amelita Galli-Curci (Alexandra Wilson). The essays offer a rich variety of approaches to the prima donna, and the quality of scholarship and writing is high. Together they reveal the contradictory views of the prima donna in different times and places, the ideologies of gender that shaped perception, and the challenges these singers presented to traditional male/female power dynamics. The volume’s focus is on Italy, France and Britain – and to a lesser extent Germany and America – and it is to be hoped that the essays will encourage further such research, following these and other prima donnas around the globe.
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Papers by Ellie Nixon