Witness/N14: it began with an eighteenth-century map Witness/N14 began with the discovery of an e... more Witness/N14: it began with an eighteenth-century map Witness/N14 began with the discovery of an eighteenth-century map. In 2005, Sarah Harper, the Artistic Director of Friches Théâtre Urbain, a professional street theatre company located on Rue de Toqueville in the seventeenth arrondissement in Paris, began to research the nineteenthcentury industrial space in which the company has been housed since the late 1990s. L'Avant-Rue, as it is called, is an evocative space with skylights in the roof several meters above the concrete floor, dates carved into the beams, and brick remains of what could have been a kiln, but its history is obscured by contradictory memories and imagined stories. An old map, drawn by Nicolas de Fer in 1705, revealed that the building is located on the ancient axis between Paris and Rouen, linking the two cities for over one thousand years. Part of the axis follows the ancient Julius Caesar Causeway, and centuries later when France created the route nationale system, a large part of this route became the N14, a one hundred and seventeen kilometre road passing through the banlieues of Paris, farmland, woods, towns and small cities. It was one of the major connectors between Paris and the north until it was replaced by the motorway. In the early years of the twenty-first century, although its presence is evident, the Route d'Asnières/N14 is fragmented, with some sections of the old road disappearing under fields and others falling into disrepair in the banlieues. The discovery of the map aroused Harper's curiosity in the N14's stories and memories and inspired her to discover its traces, its layers of history and legends and its contemporary identity. While the project began as a place on a map, it gradually evolved into what Massey calls S.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this p... more The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
On Thursday, 4 May 2006, surprised Londoners discovered a large smoking wooden rocket embedded in... more On Thursday, 4 May 2006, surprised Londoners discovered a large smoking wooden rocket embedded into the broken tarmac of Waterloo Place at the end of Regent Street. A small group of people gathered to investigate or take photographs, but many others just glanced and hurried by. This rather low-key and unadvertised event heralded the start of the large-scale durational performance of The Sultan’s Elephant,1 created by Royal de Luxe, one of France’s most famous and oldest street theatre companies, founded in 1979 by Jean Luc Courcoult who remains the director. The spectacle was originally commissioned by and performed in Nantes and Amiens in 2005 in honour of the centenary of the death of Jules Verne, and it was brought to London in 2006 by Nicky Webb and Helen Marriage of Artichoke.2
Performing Democracy
"Performing Democracy" explores aspects of a developing form of performance that works ... more "Performing Democracy" explores aspects of a developing form of performance that works to change social conditions for marginalized groups or to preserve the traditions and cohesion of the community. The book combines critical analysis with field reports on specific projects and productions to explore the issues that confront community-based performance. The range of topics is impressive, and includes performances in North America, Australia, the Middle East, Bosnia, Taiwan, Korea, England, and the Netherlands. Many articles include production photos.The book's first section focuses on how performance can contribute to the definition, creation, and preservation of community. Next, contributors address issues of authority within the production of community-based performance. A final section considers community-based performance's efforts to encourage individuals to feel empowered in everyday life and in their relation to government.The range of performance genres covered includes community history plays, agitprop, forum theater workshops, puppetry, avant-garde plays, dance, and oral epics. The projects involve many different kinds of communities, including the inner city, youth, seniors, ethnic groups, activists, gays and lesbians, immigrants, and prison inmates.Susan Chandler Haedicke is Professor of English, George Washington University. Tobin Nellhaus is an independent scholar.
Arts Advocacy Roundtable
Theatre Topics, 2001
Abstract: Records discussion of an arts advocacy roundtable began at the August 2000 meeting of t... more Abstract: Records discussion of an arts advocacy roundtable began at the August 2000 meeting of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education and continued online. Explains how theatre departments have found themselves defending their very existence in the ...
Kumhi's May (review)
Theatre Journal, 1997
Dramaturgy in American Theater: A Source Book (review)
Theatre Journal, 1998
Book Review: Woman's Theatrical Space, and: Theatre and Feminist Aesthetics
What in France is today known as theatre de rue (street theatre) exploded on to the urban stage i... more What in France is today known as theatre de rue (street theatre) exploded on to the urban stage in the 1970s. Although adapted from centuriesold techniques, its immediate aesthetico-political heritage is found in the same anti-establishment impulses that inspired Guy Debord and the Situationists in the 1950s and 1960s, and which led to the student/ worker uprisings in May 1968. 'Last May, speech was taken the way, in 1789, the Bastille was taken. The stronghold that was assailed is a knowledge held by the dispensers of culture,' wrote Michel de Certeau in October following the May riots (1998: 11). He argued that while the political regime withstood the assault of 'May '68', the protesters 'created a network of symbols by taking the signs of a society in order to invert their meaning' (ibid.: 7). In this way, they produced what de Certeau calls 'symbolic sites' where seemingly impossible images or events 'modified the tacitly "received" code that separates the possible from the impossible, the licit from the illicit' (ibid.: 8). The dominant discourses-political, social and aesthetic-were thus transformed. It is easy to see the truth of his claim in the burgeoning street theatre movement in France in the 1970s. Pioneering companies, like Royal de Luxe, Ilotopie, Generik Vapeur, Transe Express, Oposito and DeIices Dada (to name but a few), abandoned traditional theatre buildings for the freedom and populist appeal of the street, offered their shows to the public for free, and insisted on a revolutionary aesthetic of innovation and provocation. These radical French artists launched artistic interventions into the actual life of the city and thereby affected the public's understanding of social life by challenging the demarcation between the fiction of the theatre and reality of the street. Their productions created 'symbolic sites' that turned aesthetic expectations and sociopolitical assumptions upside down, thus offering an alternative social 162 C. Finburgh et al. (eds.
A note on versions: The version presented here may differ from the published version or, version ... more A note on versions: The version presented here may differ from the published version or, version of record, if you wish to cite this item you are advised to consult the publisher's version. Please see the 'permanent WRAP URL' above for details on accessing the published version and note that access may require a subscription.
Uploads
Papers by Susan Haedicke