Final Exam Study Sheet

For the exam, you will be asked to write three short essays. The essays questions will be chosen from among the following questions 19 questions – so study them all! In class, there will be one quick short answer test with  10-15  questions in addition to the essays. You should spend about 10-15 minutes on the single sheet short answer test and that will leave you about 20-25 minutes for each short essay. Exam books will be passed out for you to write in. You are allowed one 8x10 page with handwriting on one side only to accompany you to class. No computers or cell phones are allowed. The 2018 exam will be proctored by Mysia Anderson. 

1. In Theatre Anthropology, Eugenio Barba searches for universals of performance. What does he find? Craft a brief essay describing some of the universals Barba enumerates. A phrase Barba uses to describe performances are daily and extra-daily. Please give an example of each in your essay. What constitutes daily and what would make a daily performance extra daily?

2. The god Siva has eight aspects, enumerated at the start of Sakuntala. Following  the Barbara Stoller Miller reading, be able to discuss the role of shifting aspects in Sakuntala. Relate this question to the Indian concept of "maya" (illusion). How is theatre well-suited to a worldview that considers life an illusion?

3. In your estimation, in Sakuntala, what is the antelope? Can it be said to be the audience (considering the first pages of the play)? If so, how might that be related to rasa? 

4. Identify and analyze one difference between Kutiyattam and Kathakali that strikes you as important. Or, locate and identify the most striking difference between the practice Kathakali and any tradition in which you have been trained. What strikes you as important about that difference (which is to ask: what difference do you imagine that difference would make in performance)?

 5. Discuss the place of the sensuous in The Bacchae relative to the place of the sensuous in Sakuntala. Is the general approach to “the body” and its pleasures differently articulated in these two plays? How? Give specific examples to support your argument. If you have time, can you relate this difference to Plato and Aristotle on the one hand and the Natyasastra on the other?

6. In her book Yoruban Ritual, Margaret Drewal sees improvisation as key to African dance-drama forms. Improvisation, she writes, is “transformational.” Why does she link improvisation to revision, and why does she see revision as the heart of African aesthetic sensibility? 

7. When Yoruban people say that they perform ritual “just like” their ancestors did in the past, how might this have misled Western anthropologists? What does Drewal mean when she writes that “Yoruban ritual is more modern than modernism itself”? 

8. What is a “dilemma tale” and how does such a tale prompt audience participation? How might participation in a dilemma tale be related to other aspects of Yoruban ritual performance, such as non-bicameral performance, or improvisatory action, or call and response?

9. Egungun costumes are made from layers of cloth. What are some ways that that cloth signifies in performance? Now that you have studied Egungun in more depth, return to Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horseman and consider the scene in which Pilkings and Jane are dancing the tango in Egungun. How would knowing about Egungun change reception of the scene (or not)? 

10. For Ngugi Wa Thiongo, is any "empty space" ever really empty? Why or why not? Tie your points specifically to his text "Enactments of Power: The Politics of Performance Space." 

11. Craft an essay that, having consulted all of the readings during the several classes on African aesthetic form, names what you have learned may be central elements in African and African diasporic traditions.  
 
12. Be able to discuss the development of theater in Rome relative to the Roman Empire. Write a short essay that touches on at least three of the four questions in the paragraph that follows. Roman performance is often described as variety theatre. Why? What are some reasons that spectacle should be such a lavish and important form in Rome? How did the physical architecture and placement of the theater change from Greek design to Roman design and what significance did those changes have, especially in terms of vision and the relation between the play and everyday life? What was the place of the gods in Roman theatre and how was this different from Greece? 

13. What is the importance of silence in Odai Johnson's reading of Roman Comedy? How does he relate this to the curse tablets? What is the most significant aspect of Johnson's essay for you? 

14. Is “ambivalence” fundamental in theatre and performance in any way?  Use at least two of the following essays to discuss how ambivalence operates in performance: Carolyn Dean on Inca Corpus Christi, Mikhail Bahktin on the carnivalesque, Odai Johnson on Roman comedy, Clifford Geertz on the Balinese cockfight, David Kerr or Margaret Thompson Drewal on African Theatre. How might we see ambivalence working in two or more of the practices discussed by these essays? 

15. The following three questions are versions of one question, so select only one on exam: 

15a.  Briefly describe the reason why medieval European theatre is associated with the church, then describe more fully the process and reasons why drama moved outside of the church in the 13th century. Why did Pope Urban IV come up with the idea of “Corpus Christi” and how was it carried out? How was it important to the development of theater?

15b.  The interpretation of the Eucharist by St. Gregory (a Pope) was that when the bread and wine were united in the Mass, the living Christ became present in person. How might beliefs about transubstantiation as well as the rising importance of priests relative to medieval debates about Christ’s humanity or divinity be considered important both to the Church’s negative attitude toward “mimes” and “histriones” (actors) and toward its eventual employment of theater both inside the sanctuary and out?

15c. Discuss the image of “The Martyrdom of Apollonia” (see image at the end of study sheet). As discussed in class, what are some possible interpretations of the man with the long stick and book? What does his presence suggest about medieval audiences and the line between “stage” and “house”? Are there other examples you can draw from the medieval period that suggest a blurry or less than solid line between theater and “reality”? 

16.  By the 13th century, church theater had moved well beyond simple liturgical tropes to include flying machinery, enacted deviltry, and grand spectacle. Still, “spectating” and “enacting” the drama in church was different from what we consider theater today. How was it different? Given this, compare and contrast European medieval theatre practice (chose liturgical drama or cycle plays or dramas in rounds or carnival revelry) with any other period(s) and place(s) we have studied during this semester or with a practice with which you are intimate today.

17. What kind of lineage can be drawn from the Triumphal Arch and the scenae frons in Rome to the “triumph” as described in Carolyn Dean’s Inka Bodies and the Body of Christ? Can you relate the triumphal arch in any way to the proscenium arch of many contemporary theatres? What are some implications of this, as you see it? (There is no right answer as to implications, I am just curious as to your thoughts about this). 

18. What is the paradox of the colonizer as described by Carolyn Dean, and what role does theatre and/or performance play in that paradox? Can you relate this to Shakespeare’s The Tempest in any way? 

19. Compare and contrast the role of vision(s) in Black Elk Speaks to the role of vision(s) in Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Feel free to draw on any materials across the semester, or, if you feel you have enough material, just leave it at Shakespeare and Black Elk.  But, if you care to,  you might expand the question of vision to include, for example,  the “seeing” scene in  The Bacchae or the place of vision in the capturing of the antelope in the opening of Sakuntala.  Though you don’t have to take the essay this far, the broader question is: Do differing approaches to vision and other senses suggest that the ways in which we perform our worlds in fact manifest very different worlds in which we perform?  

The Martyrdom of St. Appolonia image: