Event overview
The Performance Research Forum hosts a range of events, talks and presentations by established and early-career researchers and practitioners in theatre and performance.
John Wallace: 'In Search of George Tabori’s Legacy: The Holocaust, Theatre and the Therapeutic Joke'
Abstract:
‘Is one allowed to laugh?’
With its provocative title – and its sub-title ‘Farce’ – George Tabori’s play, Mein Kampf (which opened at the Akademietheater, Vienna on 6 May 1987) was a huge success and is regularly revived to this day. However, as Anat Feinberg observes, “I have often been asked by perplexed and uneasy spectators of Mein Kampf: ‘Is one allowed to laugh?’” The moral anxiety that is at the heart of the question is particularly relevant to and for Tabori who lost over two-thirds of his family to the Nazi death camps, including his father. Tabori was true to his word, though, when he commented that ‘I take jokes very seriously… Every good joke has a catastrophe as its content. And the punchline is always a surprise.’
In this presentation, I wish to explore how Tabori’s commitment to humour is expressive of his ethical commitments, manifested in this dramaturgy of ‘catastrophe’.
Speaker Bio:
John Wallace is a postgraduate in Theatre and Performance at Goldsmiths who is writing a PhD on George Tabori (1914-2007). He has been invited to join the panels for Talkback sessions after performances of Tabori’s My Mother’s Courage in New York (2023) and Los Angeles (2024).
Image: Marcella Ruiz Cruz/BURG. Reproduced by kind permission of the Burgtheater.
Marcel Heuperman as Hitler in the production of Mein Kampf that opened in 2021 season at the Burgtheater, Vienna, directed by Itay Tiran.
Shuyu Liu: 'Expanding the National Theatre’s Regional Influence: The Role of NTLive and Celebrity Casting'
Abstract:
This paper explores how the National Theatre collaborates with regional venues to become an institution that truly represents the nation and how NTLive projects help introduce regional venues to the rest of the UK and the world. It takes the play The Madness of George III (1991) (2018), written by Alan Bennett, as a case study. The paper focuses on why it is important for the NT to collaborate with regional theatres under Rufus Norris’s directorship. It analyses how NT aims to increase its influence and attract a wide range of audiences outside the South Bank over the decades. This paper also stresses that the celebrity casting with Hawthorne and Gatiss helped the production’s regional influence.
Speaker Bio:
Shuyu Liu is a PhD candidate at University of Nottingham. Her research specialises in digital and broadcast theatre and explores the institutional change of broadcast theatre productions within both subsidised and commercial venues and how broadcast theatre engages with audiences and adapts the way of directing and designing. Her other research interests include the narrative and dramaturgy of Austro-German history musicals. Her previous training includes an MA in Writing for Stage and Broadcast Media at Central School of Speech and Drama and an MA in Theatre-Making at University of York..
Image: Manuel Harlan
Dates & times
| Date | Time | Add to calendar |
|---|---|---|
| 11 Mar 2025 | 6:00pm - 8:00pm |
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