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This text represents clinical experience by using psychotherapeutical method psychodrama in a day-treatment program for patients with schizophrenic disorder and also individual therapeutic settings in social institution for women with mental disorder. There are examined basic statement from group psychotherapy in institutions, structuring the therapeutic frame and preparing of group process. The psychodramatical method is represented in the wealth of opportunities in work with psychotic patients by procedures of doubling, work in a mirror, taking a role, role reverse and group interaction in role vignettes. Special accent is psychodramatic perspective of “surplus reality”. The presentation represents pilot use of psychodrama in work with schizophrenic patients and challenges in the further development of this type of supporting and psychotherapeutic practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

P. Louvre 7733v is the only source to attest a comedy by Diphilus entitled Paralyomenos and fr. 59 K.-A. from this play. This article ventures a cautious interrogation of the available—albeit limited and thus unexplored—evidence, with the purpose of extracting as much material as possible that could shed light on this play's dramatic circumstances. It is argued that the present participle in the title is suggestive of a possibly critical situation (discharge from military service or physical disability) occurring within the course or shortly before the opening of the plot. Given parallel dramatic situations, it could reasonably be inferred that the title-character's peculiar position may have got him involved in circumstances producing comic effect. Moreover, the restoration of fr. 59 proposed in this article may provide clues to a dramatic crisis. Overall, a close reading of the evidence in conjunction with comic practice could give scope for mapping the material concerning Diphilus' Paralyomenos onto the dramatic contexts of fourth-century comedy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Psychodrama, sociometry, and group psychotherapy is an action-oriented form of therapy through which individuals (protagonists) act out scenes with support from a group facilitator (director) and group members (auxiliary). A traditional psychodrama group has three distinct stages: warm-up, action, and sharing. Psychodrama uses dramatic action to explore the concerns, hopes, and dreams of individuals and groups. The following narrative is a fictional depiction based on a composite of experiences that the authors have had. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers how the novel Soul Tourists (2005) by the British writer Bernardine Evaristo and the series Project Diaspora: a Journey through Time (2014) by the Senegalese photographer Omar Victor Diop critically intervene in and contribute to ongoing conversations about how ‘Europe’ is conceptualized. By adapting historical narratives and by playing with genre conventions, Evaristo and Diop shed light on historical perspectives and interpretations of Europe that have remained obscured. Most important with regard to the European public sphere, Soul Tourists and Project Diaspora adapt the category of ‘European heritage’. Artistically re-narrating the stories of Black people in Europe, Evaristo and Diop establish geographical and historical dialogues between Europe, Africa and the African Diaspora that re-write European heritage and that deconstruct the prevailing narrative of Europe as White. While their works could be said to ‘Africanize’ the categories of ‘European heritage’ and ‘Europe’, ‘Afro(euro)pean heritage’ and ‘Afroeurope’ are not the end-goal. Rather, by adapting categories that many Europeans continue to conceive as universals, Evaristo and Diop reveal received understandings of these categories as racialized particulars. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BackgroundMethodsResultsConclusionThis study evaluated an ethnotheatrical performance about infertility to bring awareness to the health condition and its impact on friendships.After each performance (N = 2), attendees participated in a talkback session to express thoughts and ask questions about the production; then, they completed a survey describing their overall experience. Analyses included descriptive statistics for Likert questions and a thematic analysis for open-ended responses.Eighty-six percent of attendees found the performance informative about the challenges infertility imposes on everyday life, and more than 60% gained new information and advice on how to talk about infertility. The thematic analysis revealed three themes: learn about the complexities of infertility experiences, develop empathy towards individuals with infertility, and respond appropriately to individuals coping with infertility.The performance offered a safe environment for attendees to learn, understand, and process infertility’s complex nature. Creating awareness influenced participants’ perceptions and communicative behaviors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through a critical media discourse analysis of boys’ love (BL) dramas in Japan, this study analyses how cultural works on same-sex romance have been publicised and perceived in the Japanese society. Text was collected from comments from the production team and actors on the official websites of productions, introductions, commentaries, and interviews in the media, and comments from fans on the official websites. Norman Fairclough’s (2003) three-dimensional model was used to examine how discourse practice is contextualised in relation to the wider society and culture. This study shows that the BL category is stigmatised as something to be overcome, and the discourse of “going beyond” is used favourably, making the underlying homophobia and misogyny unquestionable. The study criticises the potential for “universalisation” beyond “transcending” BL and gender, emphasising the importance of the commonality and universal messages as human beings, while bleaching out the unique aspects of experience due to gender and/or sexual orientation. It is essential to critically examine the sociocultural implications of the production and consumption of BL drama, focusing on whether it fosters positive change in society, rather than altering the genre to conform to a notion of “universal love” to appeal to a wider audience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the tension often experienced in “Arts for Peace” programmes between the desire meaningfully to evaluate a creative process and the need to account to funders for the delivery of pre-determined expected outcomes that makes no allowance for discoveries made as the project unfolds. Taking the EU-funded Theatre and Peace-building Academy programme (2018–2020) as its case-study, it reflects on the efficacy of the arts to engage with a wide range of people at a deep level, helping them to challenge their assumptions and presuppositions and to begin to see things in new ways and from opposing perspectives. In particular, it invites a re-examination of some of the assumptions that typically frame peacebuilding activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the multifaceted use of the interjection "hem" in Shakespearean plays, exploring its various meanings and contexts. Topics include its origins in Roman comedy as a versatile expression of emotion like surprise, joy, or anger, and its adaptation in early modern English drama to signal various emotional and communicative nuances, from signaling sexual intent in street culture to conveying subtle emotional shifts on stage.

This study aims to reveal the effect of dramatic treatment elements and their ability to attract audiences to historical dramas. The study employed a quantitative approach as descriptive research, by the collection of quantifiable data for statistical analysis using SPSS. The study conducted multiple linear regression analyses to identify the effects of variables on the attractiveness of historical drama. The study concluded that the combined effect of content, dramatic structure, accuracy of information, educational level, and watching the drama factors on the attractiveness of historical drama to viewers is 61.1%. This means that the attractiveness of the dramatic work is influenced by the following factors: content 34.8%, dramatic structure 19.7%, accuracy of information 23.4%, educational level 8.7%, and watching drama 8.7%. Therefore, increase in interest in these elements leads to heightened attractiveness of the dramatic work, consequently encouraging viewers to continue watching the drama. This article makes a valuable academic contribution by providing scientific insights that aid in understanding the appeal of certain series and movies to audiences, as well as identifying weaknesses in attracting viewers to other works. Furthermore, it offers guidance to producers and scriptwriters in enhancing the overall performance of their dramas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper experiments with the use of literary analysis for the interpretation of participants' writing. The dataset comprises 56 'Reports' in response to a 2019 Mass Observation Directive. Mass Observation is a British archive. Its aim is to record everyday life through correspondents' responses to thrice-yearly Directives. The paper contributes to lyrical sociology with its development of 'textural' analysis. The 2019 Directive asked volunteers to submit reports on what was on their mantelpieces and also about their treasured objects. I found this writing highly allusive of two literary works: Tom Stoppard's play Arcadia, and the 'Catalogue of Ships' in Homer's ancient Greek epic poem, the Iliad. This led me not only to review the earlier reports but also to consider how literature can enrich the interpretation of participants' writing. In conclusion, I argue that following up allusive 'hunches' can result in fruitful literary analysis, as a 'textural' approach to sociological method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars of performance and ecology have recently argued that Western drama has ecological consequences and that those consequences have historically been primarily destructive. This article identifies an emerging subgenre of contemporary drama – the ecodystopia – and analyzes two representative examples in order to develop a darker ecodramaturgy. Building on Theresa J. May's ecodramaturgical framework, a darker ecodramaturgy forces readers and spectators of drama to confront difficult questions about the role of humanity as a species. A dark ecodramaturgical analysis of ecodystopian drama reveals how the plays push up against the conventions of naturalist/realist dramatic forms. In doing so, the plays identify the elements of Western drama that have historically presented humanity as the cosmic protagonist, and they break down those elements so they can be reassembled anew. This article argues that the seeds of large-scale ecological awareness lie within those reassembled dramatic forms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some of the very first theatre productions following the Russian Revolution of 1917 were built around Christian imagery and dramatic forms, a surprising choice given that atheism was a key tenet of the new Soviet nation. The first Soviet play, Vladimir Mayakovsky's Mystery Bouffe, is modelled after the medieval mystery play and depicts workers coming to revolutionary consciousness after encountering a Christ-like figure. Subsequently, several of the earliest Soviet mass spectacles, a vibrant form of state-sponsored propaganda, also drew comparisons to mystery plays. This article examines the interdependence of theatricality and spirituality in these early Soviet mysteries (approx. 1918–21), referencing the context of church practice, the mystery play genre, and Russian symbolism's earlier fascination with the mystery play. I argue that these Soviet variants on this medieval dramatic form struggle self-consciously with the ironies and the possibilities of borrowing from the mystery in the newly Soviet theatre. Their triumphant messages about socialism and the revolution are nuanced by the essentially religious nature of the genre even as they attempt to replace mystery with theatrical spectacle to create a new model of theatre. By revealing spiritual dimensions of socialist avant-garde aesthetics, these Soviet mysteries can enrich our understanding of both the place of religion in modernism and the consistency of modernist values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Manchadikkari is a region in central Kerala occupied primarily by Dalit Christian communities. The majority of the people in the area are agricultural daily wage workers who have been economically and culturally marginalized. Caste discrimination and exploitation mark their past and present. The people in Manchadikkari articulate powerful anti-caste politics through their creative cultural productions like songs, stories, and plays that take shape in their community groups. The remembrance and reiteration of caste experiences in these community groups keep alive the history of caste exploitation and transmit these memories to the next generation. This paper analyses the play Azhakante Kutil ('Azhakan's Hut'), authored by Thankamma Titus from Manchadikkari in 2021 and performed by a group of women who are members of the community group 'Sanjeevani.' This study considers the processes of conceptualization, production, and performance of the play to show how these processes embody anti-caste politics. The play dwells on the community's caste history to show that caste is not an anachronism of the feudal era but actively determines the present cultural and material conditions. When contextualized in the community, the play exists as a moving narrative of the community's cultural activism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Total Control (2019–2024) is a political drama that follows the story of Rachel Griffiths as the prime minister of so-called Australia and Deborah Mailman as her political rival. Available on demand on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) iView, Total Control was initially called "Black Bitch" to draw attention to the historical racial slur but was forced to change its title due to a social media storm. Total Control demonstrates striking parallels with the treatment of real-life Indigenous women in politics. This article looks at the role of social media as a platform that provides a way for Indigenous women to engage in public politics. It discusses these technologies as providing settlers with the means to publicly malign Indigenous women. It draws from research on the use and abuse of social media in relation to Indigenous users and is underscored by the blurred boundary between fiction and non-fiction Indigenous realities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pelopidarum secunda is an understudied anonymous English adaptation of Seneca's Agamemnon and Sophocles' Electra. The play is preserved only in manuscript and was probably performed at Winchester College around 1590. Through a combination of Marvin Carlson's notions of 'ghosting' and of the 'site of memory' with a neo‐historicist approach, the article offers a close analysis of this neglected school play from an intertextual, performative, and extratextual perspective. The analysis shows that the play is haunted by memories of its classical sources and of other performance contexts, including the church, and contains potential allusions to contemporary royal figures. In so doing, I argue that Pelopidarum secunda showcases the role of classical models in the history of Elizabethan revenge tragedy. By conjuring up memorable sources—Sophocles and Seneca—and events—past performances and executions—the unknown playwright(s) had the ambition to make Pelopidarum secunda equally memorable. Although this attempt has evidently failed given the obscurity into which the play has fallen so far, Pelopidarum secunda deserves a place in the archival memory of classical reception as well as further scholarly attention within early modern English drama studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hans Urs von Balthasar's teaching on the beatific vision has been drawing scholarly attention. By building upon the works of Thomas Dalzell, Aidan Nichols, and Anne Carpenter, I advance the discussion by demonstrating that the dramatic and artistic-poetic grounding of Balthasar's theo-drama shapes the way he understands the beatific vision. In his later work, Balthasar transposes the Catholic understanding of the beatific vision according to the art form and logic of drama. Specifically, using the notions of the visio immediata Dei and the visio mortis, he transposes the meaning of the beatific vision such that the divine essence is understood as a union of love in conversation with the Thomistic perspective of an immediate knowledge of God. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research explores how a process drama workshop on cyberbullying can be carried out in digital space with adults, aiming to understand participants’ perspectives on cyberbullying and the workshop itself using online tools. During the research, process drama was used as a participatory research method. Participants from various cities in Türkiye created a dramatic fiction collectively and performed improvisations on cyberbullying. They evaluated the process drama workshop, and various drama strategies, and Web 2.0 tools employed during the workshop. They discussed how process drama can help in understanding cyberbullying issues, and they proposed various solutions to address the problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses my practice work The Mental Abuse Matters VR Project; a live action narrative drama and Virtual Reality experience where the user is an embodied victim, experiencing an episode of emotional abuse in a domestic setting. Immersive sound is used to replicate emotions in the body such as shame, dread, anxiety, humiliation and panic in the user and to represent inner thoughts, memories and states of dissociation, with the goal of moving beyond language towards a visceral narrative. This is a prototype intervention that aims to be used as an empathy training tool for frontline Health and Social Care and Justice sector staff to improve trauma care, and potentially a therapeutic VR experience for victims and perpetrators of mental abuse. The article aims to discuss the development, creative practice and planned dissemination of this pilot VR experience, evaluating it in the context of traditional study methods and existing health and social care interventions in VR. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From September 1914 to January 1915, the Empire Theatre in London staged what was billed as a patriotic ballet called Europe. In addition to its lengthy run in the capital, a second version of the show toured the country, appearing at theatres in Manchester, Newcastle, Glasgow, Sheffield, Liverpool, Bradford, Nottingham and Portsmouth. The show received unanimous praise in both national and regional newspapers. However, despite its reach, popularity and impact, Europe has been mostly forgotten. Since it was a dance-based performance, no script was submitted to the Lord Chamberlain’s office. Although the piece did include music, it produced no hit songs captured on gramophone records or sheet music. Moreover, once the reality of the First World War began to hit home, the manner in which the show trivialised and glorified the conflict quickly fell out of step with public opinion. Therefore, when Europe’s run ended, it was permanently shelved and assigned to the passing of time. Nevertheless, the show left an archival imprint scattered through newspapers, theatre programmes, magazines and autobiographies. The following article draws these fragments together to form a blueprint of this hitherto discarded piece of popular culture. This reconstruction reveals a strikingly complex and rich piece of theatre, both in terms of its technical construction and how cultural conventions were adapted to turn the war into entertainment. In its three short scenes, Europe featured national personifications inspired by political cartoons, virtuosic dances associated with European nations, a scenario lifted from a 40-year-old pamphlet on the Franco-Prussian War, and a giant decoupage map of Europe from which melodramatic villains, heroes and damsels in distress appeared. Through these tropes, archetypes and devices, Europe presented a story of the First World War to the masses, including who started it, what had happened so far and how it would end. The ballet also introduced the audience to a conception of Europe that simultaneously confirmed Great Britain’s dominant position within the continental community while underlining the country’s moral responsibility to defend the liberty of the nations within it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates three key moments from a sequence of learning facilitated within a Singapore preschool. Delivered as part of a wider study aimed at identifying the value of dramatic pedagogies for developing young children's global competence, the learning sequence was facilitated by the researcher—an experienced early childhood drama educator. The learning experiences were designed to be responsive to the children's interests and ideas, with an emphasis on ensuring their active participation and agency. Analysis of the data was supported using the 2018 Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development Global Competence Framework and the Elements of Drama model. Despite limitations such as the small sample size, the findings suggest that for these children, dramatic pedagogies were effective in providing opportunities for engagement with the complex ideas associated with global competence and sustainable development. However, analysis also reveals that in order to be effective, careful management of the elements of drama is required. The article concludes by outlining implications for educators and public policy‐makers interested in identifying pedagogies suitable for developing young children's global competence and supporting their awareness of the importance of sustainable development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on a collaboration between advocacy organisation, Sweltering Cities, artists and researchers who developed a multi-site research project that provided South West Sydney residents an opportunity to engage in drama and poetry workshops that gave voice to their lived experience of rising surface temperatures, as well as their desire for environmental protection and climate action. The research featured in this paper contributes to previous research that finds aesthetic modes of engagement to be powerful with regard to ecological awareness, capable of being a positive motivator of small shifts in thinking which are a precursor to climate action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we examine the fraught task of doing drama-based work on the climate crisis with youth in schools at a time of increasing climate fatalism. We focus on what a virtual, speculative fiction writing and performance workshop achieved with students in Coventry, Kaohsiung and Bogotá by inviting them to rewrite the futures of local environments. We harness the concepts of agency, memory, desire, repair and care as part of a deeply situated yet expansive aesthetics in which youth can imagine more hopeful futures in their worlds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following a two-part 2022 publication which argues that portions of biblical literature may be written in the style of Classical Greek theatre plays, this paper seeks to demonstrate that 1 and 2 Samuel consistently adhere to the distinctive three-actor rule of Greek tragedy. The number of countable speaking actors present in any given scene from 1 or 2 Samuel never appears to exceed three actors at a time, provided that (1) only speaking actors are included in the tally, (2) group speech is treated as that of a single actor, and (3) scenes are parsed into episodes following regular criteria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present essay examines a sample of satirical prints and broadsides illustrating the main stages of the Queen Caroline affair (QCA). It claims that caricaturists and satirists used the vocabularies of melodrama and farce to transform a divorce scandal into an innovative political and cultural intervention in the public sphere. These popular literary and sub-literary traditions interwove the personal and the political elements of the case and created an innovative political language within a new print culture. This new print culture combined elements of 'high' and 'low' literature and culture thereby challenging cultural hegemony. Against the backdrop of the political protest that followed the end of the Wars in 1815, the satirical representation of the QCA questioned cultural stratification and gloried exploiting 'unrespectability' towards those in power. It was the triumph of laughter. Albeit for a brief period, this type of popular print culture undermined the political and cultural hegemony of the ruling class and became the most innovative attempt to build a more inclusive public sphere in the early nineteenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Shakespeare Beyond the Green World: Drama and Ecopolitics in Jacobean Britain" by Todd Andrew Borlik is a study that explores Shakespeare's engagement with the environmental politics of early Stuart Britain. The book argues that Shakespeare's plays warn against environmental mismanagement and 'eco-hubris' through cautionary tales. It examines the exploitation of the environment under James VI and I, and how Shakespeare's plays reflect the environmental challenges of his time. The study covers ten of Shakespeare's Jacobean plays and analyzes their connections to Stuart environmental politics. Overall, the book offers a compelling environmental history of the early seventeenth century. [Extracted from the article]

In this study, we reflect on our work with 10‐ and 11‐year‐olds in an inner London primary school developing a multimodal school play that integrated digital animation into a more conventionally structured Year 6 production. We are media literacy, drama and cultural studies researchers and teachers, arguing for more inclusive, holistic and multimodal schooled literacy practices. We explore roles and opportunities for enactment that the multimodal school play offers, while looking at pupil empowerment through the mobilisation of pupils' existing capabilities and sensitivities. We present a case study that employs semi‐structured interviews and observations from which we construct visual and analytic narratives with a focus on participants' practices and responses. Raymond Williams's 'structure of feeling' and 'Resources of Hope' help us make sense of our data. In particular, we note the emergence of new roles through literacy practices that incorporate the tools and artefacts of animation. We highlight the affective dimension and inclusive nature of emergent literacy practices that integrate interactive drama and meaning‐making with digital media and look at how these practices have the potential to disrupt entrenched classroom hierarchies and tackle inequalities, particularly for children who are disenfranchised by schooling and traditional school literacy practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bernard Shaw's The Devil's Disciple utilizes the tropes of Victorian melodrama to set up a comedic plot in which a married woman is tempted to commit adultery, leaving her respectable husband for the seemingly satanic Dick Dudgeon. The play has echoes of the first play Shaw ever wrote about as a critic for the Saturday Review, Sydney Grundy's Slaves of the Ring. While Grundy's play melodramatically questions the legitimacy of marriages arranged for reasons other than love, Shaw's comically subverts marriage itself, implying that Dudgeon could be the heroine's true husband, while her legal marriage might be a lie. Identity becomes destabilized, as one person transforms into another's role as easily as exchanging coats. This opens up a new world of possibilities that Shaw imagines for individuals freed from the tyranny of convention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper documents the visioning, crafting, and writing of an ethnodrama – a type of embodied writing that takes the form of a research-based play script – about one unusual experience within an aged care organization: what might happen when technology, specifically virtual reality, is implemented into this unique organizational setting? As well as reflecting on the artistic and scientific value of research-based theatre, the script of one of the monologue plays, After Aleppo, is shared. Play scripts are a uniquely creative form of embodied writing, helping people see, imagine, and better understand the experiences of others, with ethnodrama the translation and adaption of research into a written script. As well as generating empathy, this research-based theatre provides a novel form of knowledge translation to engage and educate the public and those working in aged care organizations, a diverse workforce dealing with issues of care relationships, ageing, technology, and death. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the Israeli Educational Television series Shenayim oḥazin, which aired in 1984–85 and was meant to aid the instruction of Talmud in junior high school. This article approaches the series from a dramaturgical and performative viewpoint and analyzes how its creators dramatized and staged the Talmud—both its content and its form—and thereby captured, channeled, and adapted some of the performative features intrinsic to the Talmud. It argues that, while the Talmud and the televisual medium may seem fundamentally opposed, the dramaturgical and spatial choices that were made as the Talmud was conceived for broadcasting purposes accentuate rather than attenuate some of the Talmud's unique discursive traits. The article begins with a general overview of the show's plotline and premise, explaining the different modes of dramatization employed in the show as it engages with talmudic content. It then discusses how the show spatializes the sugya—that it maps the different layers or components of talmudic texts unto different physical spaces, while also allowing those spaces to infiltrate each other. The third part of the article offers a close reading of one episode of the show, which thematizes performativity and theatricality in the study of Talmud in a uniquely overt way. By way of conclusion, we discuss Shenayim oḥazin as presenting a productive tension between two kinds of drama, "a drama of ideas" and "a drama of actions," thereby reflecting a similar tension within the talmudic texts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes Edward Young's nuanced employment of Islam and appropriation of the Qur'an, first translated into English as The Alcoran of Mahomet in 1649, to attack allegorically the Tories' aspirations to support James Francis Edward Stuart (1701–1766), who was nicknamed "the Old Pretender" by the Whigs and James III by the Tories, to restore Catholicism/Islam into Hanoverian England. Edward Young's The Revenge (1721), which adapts Shakespeare's Othello (1604), dramatizes the Moor Zanga, who is of royal Moorish descent and the captive of the Spanish general Don Alonzo, performing Jihad on himself in revenge for the slaughter of his father king and nation by Alonzo/George I. The character of the Muslim Zanga embodies two levels of materialization and refashioning from the Whigs' perspective: Firstly, he connotes George I's Turkish servants, Mahomet and Mustapha, who signify the Hanoverian king's power and dominance over the Turks. Secondly, he draws a parallel to the Old Pretender's and the Tories' rebellions of 1715 and 1719 within a Jihadist and Qur'anic framework, serving as a political allegory of the Tories' attempts to dethrone George I. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current Chinese martial arts have at least three major values or functions – combat, health, and art. However, the combative value has been weakened while its healthy and aesthetic values have been strengthened in mass culture. With the development of digital technology, the media for disseminating visual cultural products have been broadened to film and television, advertising, performing arts, photography, video games, and so on. The inherent aesthetic quality of Chinese martial arts has been fully explored, reshaping the performativity of stage wushu in kung fu dance drama and wushu performance troupe with Shaolin Kung Fu as its core. This paper investigates the historical origin, present representation, and cultural connotation of stage wushu in accordance with performance theories and media culture theories and concludes that stage wushu is a type of hyper-real martial arts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the immediate wake of the Russian Revolution, Pavlovian reflex conditioning was rapidly elevated to a universal materialist model for understanding and manipulating human behavior, including the production and reception of art. This article explores the little-known history of the "reflexology of art," a movement that applied physiological concepts and techniques to drama, cinema, and literature with the aim of molding atomized individual subjectivities into a corporeal collective. This movement—which involved figures like Vsevolod Meyerhold, Sergei Eisenstein, and Sergei Tret'iakov—formed part of the highly politicized dialogue between science, politics and the arts in the 1920s. By reconstructing the critical discourse around the reflexology of art within the cultural production of the early Soviet state, the article sheds light on the contradictory impulses animating an avant-garde caught between deterministic visions of social engineering and the subversive passions of revolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates rules of marriage in the plays of King Lear, The Way of The World, Lady Windermere’s Fan, and The Browning Version. Analysis is devoted to thirteen dialogues comprising seven dialogues whose illumination reveals principles of marital sustainability in addition to six dialogues whose scrutiny shows causes of marital disruption. Thus, an overall frame of healthy marriage can be drawn based on the adoption of the principles and the obviation of the causes. The analytical, descriptive and comparative methods are applied. The researcher has found that couples intending marriage should apprehend that virtue transcends wealth and authority, courtship encompasses a rational and passionate formula, matchmaking foundations should tackle worries expected after marriage. A married couple should understand that martial sustainability is based on preservation of morality, celebration of sincerity, firm faithfulness, tolerance, and concealment of marital disruption. Marital sustainability could be also endangered due to hatred and boredom, recurrent reprimand, false appetite and fading lust, thirst for sexual gratification, undervaluation of a partner, superficial dutifulness, and spoiling a partner’s moments of happiness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

James Joyce's "Circe" episode in Ulysses, by way of its closet drama form, raises questions at the center of ongoing debates on reading practice and method. Joyce uses the closet drama genre, whose name and tradition call attention to depth and concealment, to examine the relationship between surfaces and depths. Instances of free indirect discourse and interior monologue within the "Circe" episode's stage directions renegotiate reader receptivity and accessibility. Ultimately, "Circe" is not only a consideration of surfaces and depths but also the relationship between action and contemplation. Honoring the closet drama's historical function as pedagogical and philosophical apparatus, "Circe" is an opportunity to evaluate the relationship between theory and practice in literary studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Art-based interventions, such as classroom drama workshops (CDWs), increasingly form part of a collection of mental health-promoting activities introduced in school settings. While research points to the potential benefits of CDWs for the mental well-being of refugee and migrant adolescents, the mechanisms to such improvement are less understood. In this article we respond to the need for qualitative evidence of how CDW interventions affect refugee and migrant adolescents' experience. The study draws on eight focus group discussions (FGDs) with 41 adolescents, four semi-structured interviews with teachers and a school coordinator, and written documents from two drama therapists. Our thematic analysis revealed that the CDWs were found to foster trust and improve social relations in the classroom—key facets of bonding social capital. Several processes were described as being linked to these changes. Participants spoke about how the CDWs were facilitated in an emancipatory and safe manner, creating social spaces where the adolescents could have fun together, share, and bear witness to each other's stories, as well as experiencing a sense of agency. In some cases, however, activities in the CDWs crossed the learners' psychological boundaries, which led to withdrawal and a loss of trust. We conclude that whilst CDWs have the potential to facilitate bonding social capital amongst refugee and migrant adolescents and their teachers, this potential hinges on how the CDWs are facilitated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The biblical motif of the remnant appears in prophetic oracles of restoration to address problems of theodicy in covenant religion. This essay argues that the category of trace in the work of Jacques Derrida and other modern thinkers provides a conceptual model for the biblical remnant and that theories of the trace belong to biblical tradition. The remnant and the trace share dynamics of past and future, presence and absence, with respect to history, language, and texts. By examining the remnant motif in Micah and other books of the Hebrew Bible together with the category of trace in modern thought, the essay identifies an approach to time in biblical prophets distinct from historical, sacred, or messianic time. And by examining "trace" in the work of Derrida and others, the essay also demonstrates the biblical inheritance of modern theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study aimed to know the most prominent values in the drama of Islamic history, which the Conquest of Al-Andalus series focused on. It is a descriptive study in which the survey method was used to analyze the content of a deliberate sample of 33 episodes of the Conquest of Andalus series. The results of the study concluded that the three basic frameworks that the Conquest of Andalus series focused on, and made them more prominent, and repetitive in content are; The frameworks of military values in Islam, the frameworks of the values of advocacy and jihad, and the frameworks of the human values of Islam. The results indicated that the five most prominent Islamic values on which the Fatah Al-Andalus series focused are; The value of justice and fairness, the value of achieving victory, the value of advocacy, the value of steadfastness and patience, the value of fulfilling the covenant, that the drama of Islamic history had a positive role in promoting Islamic values in society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night, four members of the Tyrone family make some choices about their careers and family life. It is apparent that the adverse outcomes of Tyrones' respective decisions that they have reached hold sway and torment the rest of their lives. Although James Tyrone, the head of the family, announces his credo as keeping his family together and healthy, his two sons Jamie and Edmund and his wife Mary suffer from different types of addiction, from not being able to position themselves in a respectable environment and to develop healthy relationships. The play takes place on a single day, starting from 8.30 in the morning to midnight, which is quite parallel with the descending mood of the characters and events. Each of these characters' tragedies can be traced not only in their seemingly conscious choices but in their collective unconscious which can be anatomized with some Lacanian conceptual backcloths. This paper forms its basis on discovering the ulterior motives of the characters' actions and the way they speak language by scrutinizing their unconscious, which reveals itself in a structure of language in Lacanian outlook. Thus, this study aims to create a hermeneutical frame by laying the underlying reasons for why the Tyrone family suffer, which can be traced in how these family members fail to identify themselves with the symbolic father which is a functional metaphor for rules and regulations in the society and by highlighting what kind of master signifiers the Tyrone family keep using to substitute the Name-of-the-Father. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article mobilizes Jesus Martín Barbero's magnum opus, Communication, Culture, and Hegemony, towards a better understanding of the contemporary global success of Turkish television drama, known as dizi, in Latin America, the land of the once-mighty telenovela. Hilighting Martín-Barbero's centrality to my own intellectual project on the transnational connection and transcultural resonances between the Middle East and Latin America, I draw on preliminary fieldwork in Argentina and Mexico, where Turkish dizi have been hits, to revisit Martín-Barbero's pivotal conceptualization of mediaciones and accounts for forces of global media competition, aesthetic mimicry, and the fundamental problematic of South-to-South relations that got a new lease on life with the success of dizi in Latin America. Ultimately, I probe Martín-Barbero's "precious anachronism" to elaborate a notion of "coiled temporality" that emerges between different geocultural zones through the consumption of narrative television fiction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay attends to the formal atmospherics of early modern drama—the ways in which the felt, affective conditions of playing could help to make one play seem like or unlike others. Specifically, it traces the development and function of a distinctive formal pattern used in the multisensory representation of battle. Commotion (literally, "continuous or recurring motion") is punctuated in these plays by moments of stillness, which are signaled through the language of breath and breathing: characters, players, and playgoers "pause" and "take breath" together. Turning to the early histories and to Shakespeare's collaboratively written Henry VI plays in particular, this essay argues that this structuring pattern of commotion and stillness, noise and quiet, shapes the plays of the first tetralogy in ways that help to organize attention and underscore the experience of dramatic time. [A.D] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Creative drama is a contemporary teaching method based on the principle of learning by doing and experiencing. Thereby participants benefit from various techniques based on their own life experiences. Through dramatization based on group dynamics, creative drama activities contribute to the individual's self-knowledge, awareness and empathy, teamwork, communication and collaboration skills. This study aims to understand the effects of creative drama on social and professional skills and on organizational culture, which is becoming increasingly important today. This study is based on qualitative research in which an open-ended questionnaire was used for data collection. The data obtained from 11 employees who voluntarily participated in the creative drama workshops organized for the staff of Acıbadem Mehmet Ali Aydınlar University was analyzed with the content analysis technique. All the participants except one attended a drama activity for the first time. Overall, the analysis shows the potential of creative drama activities to contribute positively to the corporate culture by strengthening internal communication. Since there are almost no studies investigating the effects of adult drama on corporate culture, the study reveals both academic and sectoral benefits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses three books that contribute to the scholarship on Shakespeare's texts. The first book, "Ghosts, Holes, Rips and Scrapes: Shakespeare in 1619" by Zachary Lesser, uses advanced technology to examine perplexing quartos and revises our understanding of them. The second book, "Shakespeare's Syndicate: The First Folio, its Publishers, and the Early Modern Book Trade" by Ben Higgins, analyzes the stationers listed in the colophon of Shakespeare's First Folio. The third book, "Shakespeare and Lost Plays: Reimagining Drama in Early Modern England" by David McInnis, explores the significance of lost plays and their integration into the discussion of early modern theatre. These books offer new insights into Shakespeare's texts and methods of approaching them. [Extracted from the article]

Practices of online censorship around boys' love (danmei) in mainland China have exhibited continuous change, with varying media targets and nominal justifications. This article explores dynamic transformations in the strategies employed by authorities, media platforms, and danmei creators throughout different time periods. Based on the authors' archival research, the censorship of danmei can be classified into three distinct stages: the years 2004 to 2015, 2016 to 2020, and 2021 to the present. These periods are distinguished by the primary danmei media form that authorities most often target for censorship. We argue that China's digital censorship apparatus has given rise to an unrelenting and intensifying suppression of danmei content, which is further bolstered by the sustained promotion of a media discourse that fosters a culture of disdain for danmei, and hence, has limited spaces for the expansion of danmei fandom and its practitioners' creativity. Moreover, we suggest that there is a continuous and combative interplay between danmei culture and censorship, wherein creative practices become highly responsive to government regulations and vice versa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Knowingly re-circulated misinformation online is a widespread phenomenon that is increasingly met with suspicion or even condemnation in spite of the sharer's intent. The article recasts misinformation sharing into cultural play practice questioning this sensibility. Drawing on Huizinga's concept of play and the Lacanian notion of belief-through-other, it claims that fascination with fakes owes not simply to misrepresentation of reality but the symbolic truth it conveys in staging its distortion. Satirical conspiracy theories such as SwitzerlandIsFake solicit commentary on media effects in simulating reality without mistaking them for facts. This and similar media sub-genres exploit context collapse prone online environments and thereby challenge clear-cut distinctions between misinformation and satire, truth-claims and mere entertainment of illusions. A closer comparative analysis of SwitzerlandIsFake with cases of irony used as a coverup for outrageous or conspiratorial rhetoric prominent on 4chan imageboard sites lends an insight into the demise of play communities who increasingly adopt faithful attitude to conspiratorial or ideological beliefs. Conversely, the sacredness of play that bonds communities and thereby anticipates trust calls for a shift in perspective from moral condemnation to acculturation regarding deeper causes of the post-truth condition, such as general distrust and cynicism, which cannot be eradicated by debunking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present article focuses on the tension arising from Pavel Katenin's aesthetic and literary vision for the reception of Antiquity in Russian mythological drama: his avid support of Classical purism and his denunciation of dramatists, for whom ancient myths served merely as a resource of historical parallels, is challenging to reconcile with the revolutionary conception of his play Andromache. The paper argues that Katenin regarded antiquity as an idealized universe from which numerous motifs could be drawn for inspiration. Semantic and structural means employed in the tragedy are analyzed as shedding light on the extent of Katenin's transformation of the ancient myth to reflect the ideology of his time. The paper suggests that Classical antiquity served as a "mask," allowing contemporary Decembrist circles to apply ancient models and situational resolutions to their own political crises. The dramatist's conflation of masked political ideology with extreme innovation and intricate intertextual allusion is put forward as a cause of the brevity of the stage life that Katenin's Andromache was allowed in St. Petersburg's Bolshoi Theater. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this article is to investigate the reasons behind the origins of the ideal American society and its embodiment in the television series The West Wing. To this end, the factors that led to the success of the series will be explored, at the precise moment when the public’s viewing habits began to change, as they started demanding more complex and ambiguous dramatic characters. In this context, the article examines the way in which Aaron Sorkin, the creator of the series, approached the writing of the episodes, avoiding overly naive idealism without renouncing the aim of building bridges with the foundations of the American past. The study analyses the most important plots of the first four seasons and their links to the society that emerged in the New World. Despite the problems inherent in such an undertaking, the conclusions show how Sorkin’s dramatic skills managed to dramatize idealism in order to bring the series closer to 21st century audiences, avoiding the cynicism that was starting to take hold in society at that moment, yet at the same time adapting the conflicts of the plot to the level of complexity required by the audience. Moreover, the prestige of the series has outlived the years in which it was produced, as it is still viewed today, at a time when the innocent point of view has decisively disappeared. Among the findings of the study, one interesting fact is that the fictional president, Josiah Bartlet, was given the name of a senator who actually signed the Declaration of Independence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the potential for engaging 7 and 8-year-old school pupils in performative literature interpretation through process drama. Inspired by new materialism and affect theory, we focus on how literature interpretations come into being in dramatic fiction, and on how these becoming interpretations merge with the classroom. The study explores interpretive spaces as entangled worlds in mutual engagement of pupils, teachers, and researchers in interpretation through process drama. The study establishes a theoretical framework in pointing out ways in which process drama performances contribute to engage the youngest school pupils in literature interpretation and present social problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]