-
Fragments of a Self: embodiments, (re)enactments, and re-encounters with memory
Ellen Kaplan
Chapter abstract:
Our stories tell us who we are. The sense of self acquires temporary coherence through the stories we tell ourselves and others. This chapter considers the self-shaping work of story, looking at acting and writing processes as they contribute to the construction of self. Self-narrative, in its many iterations - memoir, autobiography, life writing - allows us to script an identity which shifts, transforms, dissolves, and reconstitutes itself over time and across circumstances. Actors and writers cannibalize memory to nourish their creative work. Traumatic memory, though unreliable and often inaccessible, may return unbidden to offer a pathway to exploration, revelation, and exposure of the ever-shifting self. The self is singular, but not single. It is unique and persistent, but not stable. We remember, re-member, and mis-remember the past to construct a provisional, always changing indisputably unique, self. We crave unity, but our memories are fractured, selective. When does memory become a story?
Book abstract:
This insightful book explores the impact of traumatic experiences on the constitution of narrative identity. Editors Edmundo Balsemão Pires, Cláudio Alexandre S. Carvalho, and Joana Ricarte bring together multidisciplinary experts to examine the epistemic and ethical-political value of narrative memory, demonstrating its significance in forming essential aspects of the self and collective identity.
-
Theatre Responds to Social Trauma: Chasing the Demons
Ellen Kaplan
This book is a collection of chapters by playwrights, directors, devisers, scholars, and educators whose praxis involves representing, theorizing, and performing social trauma.
Chapters explore how psychic catastrophes and ruptures are often embedded in social systems of oppression and forged in zones of conflict within and across national borders. Through multiple lenses and diverse approaches, the authors examine the connections between collective trauma, social identity, and personal struggle. We look at the generational transmission of trauma, socially induced pathologies, and societal re-inscriptions of trauma, from mass incarceration to war-induced psychoses, from gendered violence through racist practices. Collective trauma may shape, protect, and preserve group identity, promoting a sense of cohesion and meaning, even as it shakes individuals through pain. Engaging with communities under significant stress through artistic practice offers a path towards reconstructing the meaning(s) of social trauma, making sense of the past, understanding the present, and re-visioning the future.
The chapters combine theoretical and practical work, exploring the conceptual foundations and the artists’ processes as they interrogate the intersections of personal grief and communal mourning, through drama, poetry, and embodied performance. Source: Publisher
-
Fragmented Communities, Anxious Identities
Ellen Kaplan
Book abstract:
The return of Jews to their ancestral land can be seen as an act of imagination. A new country, citizenship, language, and institutions needed to be imagined in order to be created. The arts, too, have contributed to this act of envisioning and shaping the Jewish state. By examining artistic representations of Israel, Imagined Israel(s): Representations of the Jewish State in the Arts explores the ways in which the Israel imagined abroad and the one conjured within the country intersect, offering a space for the co-existence of sociopolitical, cultural, and ideological differences and tensions. Source: Publisher
-
From Stage to Page: Theater and Story as Literary Practices
Ellen Kaplan
Book abstract: This book presents multiple innovative literacy approaches promoting self-leadership and agency, aspiring to transformation and hope for individuals and communities by showcasing practical field experiences (qualitative research, quantitative research, case studies, etc) supported by a theoretical framework"-- Provided by publisher.
-
Real Clothes, Real Lives : 200 Years of What Women Wore
Kiki Smith
An unprecedented look at women’s everyday clothes—from Sylvia Plath’s Girl Scout uniform to psychedelic microminis, modern suits, and fast-food workers’ uniforms—this fascinating volume shows how American women from every background have lived, worked, and dressed for 200 years. Groundbreaking in its focus on the everyday clothing of ordinary American women—a subject neglected in most fashion histories—Real Clothes, Real Lives highlights over 300 garments and accessories from the Smith College Historic Clothing Collection. This unique survey honors countless lives, tracing through the lens of dress how women’s roles have changed over the decades. Each piece holds colorful stories about the woman who wore it, the one who made or bought it, and her context in place and time. Whether homemade or ready-made, many of the garments are modest and inexpensive. Some are one-of-a-kind pieces; others are examples of clever making-do, which seems particularly relevant today; and most reflect the popular styles of their era. Among the many extraordinary examples are a rare World War I uniform worn by an American woman working behind enemy lines and a 1970s go-go dancer’s costume. Exceptional photography and rich archival visuals accompany the highly readable texts, which offer a wealth of historical and social analysis of a side of fashion and feminism rarely considered. Source: Publisher
-
A Cry Without an Echo: Consciousness, Creativity, and Healing Work of the Arts
Ellen Kaplan
Book abstract: Performing Psychologies offers new perspectives on arts and health, focussing on the different ways in which performance interacting with psychology can enhance understanding of the mind. The book challenges stereotypes of disability, madness and creativity, addressing a range of conditions (autism, dementia and schizophrenia) and performance practices including staged productions and applied work in custodial, health and community settings. Featuring case studies ranging from Hamlet to The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, the pioneering work of companies such as Spare Tyre and Ridiculusmus, and embracing dance and music as well as theatre and drama, the volume offers new perspectives on the dynamic interactions between performance, psychology and states of mind. I... Source: Publisher
-
Images of Mental Illness Text and Performance
Ellen Kaplan and Sarah J. Rudolph
Theoretical inquiry into the representation of mental illness on stage has not kept pace with theatre scholarship relating to images of marginalized populations as presented on stage, nor with developments in current thinking about mental disease. This collection examines the dynamics of characterization and the problematics of representation within the context of new trends in pharmacology and reconfigured definitions of mental disease, at a time when unprecedented attention is being given to the complex realities of living with mental disorders. Source: Publisher
Printing is not supported at the primary Gallery Thumbnail page. Please first navigate to a specific Image before printing.