Robert Cohen - Theatre, Brief Version-McGraw-Hill Education (2016)

Theatre 279
Martha Clarke’s The Garden of Earthly Delights, based on a painting
(from about 1503) by Hieronymus Bosch, was a seminal creation in
American dance-theatre in 1984. Shown here is Clarke’s re-creation
of the work in 2008 in the same theatre (the off-Broadway Minneta
Lane) where it sparked even greater public enthusiasm than at its
premiere. © Sara Krulwich/The New York Times/Redux
A PHYSICAL THEATRE
As theatre changes, the way we talk about theatre
changes as well. These days, a look at “theatre” listings
often includes events that previous generations
would consider more dance, or simply physical movement.
But physical theatre presents a valid new form
that blurs the lines of what we consider drama to be.
Physical theatre productions tend to consist almost
entirely of expressive movement, dance, music, and
lighting. Many companies enjoy enormous popularity
in commercial as well as more experimental theatre
communities.
The major crossover moment for this form
occurred in the early 1990s when Luke Cresswell, a
The live theatre is now a global art, with plays, actors, and theatre
companies increasingly touring around the world. This centuries-old
kabuki dance masterpiece, Kaidan Chibusa no Enoki, (or The Ghost
Tale of the Wet Nurse Tree) was updated and in part modernized
by Japan’s Heisei Nakamura-za company—which has also toured
to Berlin, Boston, Washington, and Sibiu, Romania; the production
opened the 2014 Lincoln Center Festival at New York’s Rose Theatre.
Shown here is the company’s master, Nakamura Kankuro, displaying
the classic cross-eyed mie—a frozen moment in kabuki which
provokes wild cheers from the Japanese audience. Yet the company
employs contemporary tropes as well, at times running down the
aisles making English language asides to their American audiences,
and tapping messages onto their smartphones. As with most foreignlanguage
stage productions that tour the world, projected subtitles or
supertitles are provided for local audiences. © Stephanie Berger
percussionist and composer, and Steve McNichols,
an actor and writer, created Stomp, a story-less and
purely percussive performance piece. Stomp proved a
great success in both London and New York and has
run ever since in those cities and many others around
the world. The production employs an assortment of