The hanging man: death, indeterminacy and the event

This article discusses approaches to the interpretation and analysis an event that is poised between reality and performance. It focuses upon a real event witnessed by the author while driving out of Los Angeles, USA. A body hanging on a rope from a bridge some 25/30 feet above the freeway held up the traffic. The status of the body was unclear. Was it the corpse of a dead human being or a stuffed dummy, a simulation of a death? Was it is tragic accident or suicide or was it a stunt, a protest or a performance? Whether a real body or not, it was an event: it drew an audience, it took place in a defined public space bound by time and it disrupted everyday normality and the familiar. The article debates how approaches to performance can engage with a shocking event, such as the Hanging Man, and the frameworks of interpretation that can be brought to bear on it. The analysis takes account of the function of memory in reconstructing the event, and the paradigms of cultural knowledge that offered themselves as parallels, comparators or distinctions against which the experience could be measured, such as the incidents of self-immolation related to demonstrations against the Vietnam War, the protest by the Irish Hunger Strikers and the visual impact of Anthony Gormley’s 2007 work, 'Event Horizon'. Theoretical frameworks deriving from analytical approaches to performance, media representation and ethical dilemmas are evaluated as means to assimilate an indeterminate and challenging event, and the notion of what an ‘event’ may be is itself addressed

The experience of immediacy: emotion and enlistment in fact-based theatre

This article discusses emotion as a strategy of political agency in post-Thatcherite documentary theatre. The 1990s saw a renaissance in theatre writing based in directness and immediacy but based in two quite different forms of drama, In-Yer-Face theatre and fact-based drama. There are clear distinctions between these forms: the new brutalist writing was aggressively provocative; documentary theatre engaged the audience by revealing an urgent truth. Both claimed a kind of realism that confronted actuality, be that of situation or experience, through forms of theatre that cultivated emotional engagement. In-Yer-Face theatre used emotional shock to penetrate the numb cynicism that its creators perceived. Documentary theatre used observation and the cultivation of sympathy to enlist its audience in a shared understanding of what was hidden, not understood or not noticed. The article analyses the functioning of emotional enlistment to engage the audience politically in two examples of documentary theatre, Black Watch and Guantanam

Rail link a huge economic boost

KUANTAN: The economic impact of the East Coast Rail Link (ECRL) is huge and critics who say it is not feasible are wrong

UMP Splash Run 2016 kumpul RM10,000

KUANTAN- Sebanyak RM10,000 berjaya dikumpul sempena larian amal Universiti Malaysia Pahang (UMP) Splash Run 2016 anjuran Jabatan Hal Ehwal Pelajar dan Alumni (JHEPA) yang diadakan di UMP kampus Gambang di sini, Sabtu lalu

MyGift UMP dilancar di ibu negara hari ini

Kuantan- Program MyGift yang diperkenalkan Universiti Malaysia Pahang (UMP) sebagai inisiatif saluran sumbangan endowmen universiti Malaysia Pahang sebagai inisiatif endowmen universiti berkenaan bagi tujuan tajaan pelajaran dan penyediaan kemudahan prasarana kepada penuntut akan dilancarkan di ibu negara, esok

3,600 graduan dipilih ikuti program PKLI-ECRL

Kuantan: Seramai 3,600 lulusan ijazah sarjana muda, diploma dan sijil kemahiran dalam bidang kejuruteraan awam, mekanikal dan elektrik akan dipilih mengikuti Program Latihan Kemahiran Industri Laluan Rel Pantai Timur (PLKI-ECRL)

Simple Toroidal Vertex Algebras and Their Irreducible Modules

In this paper, we continue the study on toroidal vertex algebras initiated in \cite{LTW}, to study concrete toroidal vertex algebras associated to toroidal Lie algebra $L_{r}(\hat{\frak{g}})=\hat{\frak{g}}\otimes L_r$, where $\hat{\frak{g}}$ is an untwisted affine Lie algebra and $L_r=$\mathbb{C}[t_{1}^{\pm 1},\ldots,t_{r}^{\pm 1}]$. We first construct an$(r+1)$-toroidal vertex algebra$V(T,0)$and show that the category of restricted$L_{r}(\hat{\frak{g}})$-modules is canonically isomorphic to that of$V(T,0)$-modules.Let$c$denote the standard central element of$\hat{\frak{g}}$and set$S_c=U(L_r(\mathbb{C}c))$. We furthermore study a distinguished subalgebra of$V(T,0)$, denoted by$V(S_c,0)$. We show that (graded) simple quotient toroidal vertex algebras of$V(S_c,0)$are parametrized by a$\mathbb{Z}^r$-graded ring homomorphism$\psi:S_c\rightarrow L_r$such that Im$\psi$is a$\mathbb{Z}^r$-graded simple$S_c$-module. Denote by$L(\psi,0}$the simple$(r+1)$-toroidal vertex algebra of$V(S_c,0)$associated to$\psi$. We determine for which$\psi$,$L(\psi,0)$is an integrable$L_{r}(\hat{\frak{g}})$-module and we then classify irreducible$L(\psi,0)$-modules for such a$\psi$. For our need, we also obtain various general results.Comment: 50 page

Voice, body and the transmission of the real in documentary theatre

This article analyses how listening is used to develop performances in Alecky Blythe’s verbatim theatre. Listening includes Blythe’s use of recorded oral interviews for devising performances, and also the actors’ creation of performance by precisely imitating an interviewee’s voice. The article focuses on listening, speaking and embodiment in London Road, Blythe’s recent musical play at London’s National Theatre, which adopted and modified theatre strategies used in her other plays, especially The Girlfriend Experience and Do We look Like Refugees. The article draws on interviews with performers and with Blythe herself, in its critical analysis of how voice legitimates claims to authenticity in performance. The work on Blythe is contextualised by brief comparative analyses. One is Clio Barnard’s film The Arbor, a ‘quasi-documentary’ on the playwright, Andrea Dunbar which makes use of an oral script to which the actors lip-sync. The other comparator is the Wooster Group’s Poor Theater, which attempts to recreate Grotowski's Akropolis via vocal impersonation. The article argues that voice in London Road both claims and defers authenticity and authority, inasmuch as voice signifies presence and embodied identity but the reworking of speech into song signals the absence of the real. The translation of voice into written surtitles works similarly in Do We Look Like Refugees. Blythe’s theatre, Barnard’s film and The Wooster Group’s performances are a useful framework for addressing questions of voice and identity, and authenticity and replication in documentary theatre. The article concludes by placing Blythe’s oral texts amid current debates around theatre’s textual practices

Ramai alumni UMP jadi sukarelawan

Kuantan - Walaupun sudah menamatkan pengajian di universiti, namun perasaan untuk menjadi sebahagian daripada warga kampus masih menebal