Journal of Fine Arts: Performing Arts and Music
Year:2024 | Volume:29 | Issue:3|Papers Count:6

Directors can utilize different ways of developing ideas through overlapping arts and ideas in order to improve performance methods. Ideas are developed based on the play (or the narrative), the puppet, and the atmosphere. According to ideation-based atmosphere, this research explores the ways of developing ideas grounded on surrealistic paintings by Rene Magritte. The question is whether it would possible to create puppet theatre through the atmosphere of paintings. This paper explains the characteristics of the surrealism movement and surrealistic paintings as well as five elements containing dreaminess, fiction, fantasy, exaggeration and satire; and the semantic characteristics of puppet theatre such as fantasy, symbolism, enlargement and lessening or simplification. Subsequently a typology of  three developing the ideation-based methods for puppet theatre will be examined. After introducing the characteristics of Magritte's paintings and declaring their overlap with the characteristics of puppet theatre, three works of Magritte are idealized according to the mentioned properties. Developing ideas in accordance with the atmosphere in addition to its interdisciplinary nature, will present more interpretative options for making puppet theatre. Paintings of Rene Magritte with its surrealistic atmospheres and the surrealistic compositions could help the process of puppet theatre creation. Puppet theatre artists need a text, a puppet or an atmosphere and Rene Magritte's works help from this perspective. For example,  places have an important role is creating and showing the narrative. Rene Magritte created special places through his painting. The works chosen for this research are Golconda (1953), Personal Values (1952) and Portrait of Stephy Langui (1961). The Golconda portrays many men with black overcoats and hats. They are hanging in front of classic buildings. These men are the same. Some of the art historians have argued that this painting reveals Rene Magritte' mind about bourgeoisie, feminism, or capitalism. The Personal Values shows an odd bedroom which contains oversized objects such as a very big comb, a very big glass, and a very big soap. These objects are close to a little bed and a normal closet. The walls of this bedroom show some white clouds on the blue sky. The Portrait of Stephy Langui shows two little men by a calm sea and a very big and beautiful and young woman's head who is looking at the two. There is a giant stone in the corner of this painting. This is an unconventional portrait. This research reveals that this artistic technique will be possible through the art of painting art, especially the surrealistic. There are similarities between the characteristics of surrealistic paintings and puppet theatre. The companionship of reality and imagination is a characteristic that the art of painting and the art of puppet theater both have in common. So puppet theatre artists can use surrealistic paintings for developing ideas and puppet theatre creation.

The harrowing memories of lynching as a method of historical implementation of terror and violence imposed on generations of Afro-Americans have been portrayed in numerous dramatic works. Lynching is generally referred to as a quasi-ritual and extra-legal act of punishment and retribution, which has been exercised throughout history as a method of intimidation. What should be accentuated is the far-reaching impact of such an atrocity on its victim's mentality and identity. Collective trauma and agonizingly invisible memories of humiliation, exploitation, racial discrimination, physical assault and sexual abuse experienced by black people resonate in dramatic renderings of many black playwrights. This article investigates the long-term impact of lynching and racial atrocities on the black collective psyche and the mechanisms through which one can articulate traumatized memories and experiences. By examining black people's traumatic encounter with savagery and coercion, this research explores its ensuing psychic impact on the black community. For this purpose, Angelina Weld Grimke's Rachel (written in 1916 and published in 1920) and Adam and Adrienne Kennedy's Sleep Deprivation Chamber (1996) are analysed in order to trace the footprints of ubiquitous racism and its jarringly traumatic impact on the black psyche. The horrendous account of police atrocity, the 'modern day lynching', against Teddy Alexander, a black youngster, and its subsequent repercussions in the private and public lives of his black family finds its way in the fragmented pieces of memory and repetitious moments of nightmare. Psychological and emotional effects of lynching resembling permanent burns inscribed both on black bodies and black minds are reflected in Rachel's traumatized mind colliding with many rising conflicts in a white supremacist society that eventually leads to her total abandonment of sexual life and motherhood. Theories of Christina Wald, which rely heavily on the psychological and psychoanalytical aspects of dramatic works, will be employed. By explaining and defining "Trauma Drama", Wald has striven to discover and analyse the hidden traces of racial violence on the soul and psyche of the victim's personality and its conspicuous impact on the quality of life and decision making in the real world. This study also explicates the psychological effects of racially motivated hatred and hostility toward black people and illustrates how the characters of the aforementioned plays face racist assault and agonizingly atrocious behaviour from the white supremacist society through expressing their lived experiences derived from trauma and post-traumatic aftermath of the racist incident in the form of linguistic mechanisms. What the authors of this article, by providing concrete examples, is to depict how the characters of the aforementioned selected plays attempt to assert their traumatized personality through remembering first-hand accounts of racially motivated attacks and strive to elicit empathy and understanding from both people surrounding them and the audience.

Narratology is a field of study that focuses on the examination and analysis of the structure and components of narrative. Gérard Genette is widely recognized as one of the most influential theorists in this subject due to his structural investigation of the element of time. He assigns three levels to narrative discourse: voice, tense, and mode. Genette studied the differences between story time and narrative time. Hence, in order to gain an understanding of the structure of time in the narrative, Genette analyzes the three elements of order, duration, and frequency. This allows for the specification of different types of flashback and flashforward narratives, anachrony, and types of time accelerations that result in different rhythms in the dramatic narrative. Dramatists have been studying the narrative structure since Aristotle's Poetics, and they can use the examination of its elements as a practical benchmark. Theorists who specialize in narrative and dramatic works, like Fludernik, Rimmon-Kenan, and Chatman have developed Genette’s ideas on fictional and dramatic narration. The comparative of one of the narrative elements, such as time, in the texts of two Persian-language playwrights makes the classical pattern of drama and its use in Iranian plays, as well as its comparison with the traditional and narrating pattern of this play, to be researched. The present research uses analytical-descriptive method of written sources and books to compare the structure of time in the dramatic narratives of two prominent Iranian dramatists, Bahram Beizai and Akbar Radi, with a look at the plays Afra and Khanomche va Mahtabi. This research attempts to explain how, in contrast to one another, Beizai and Radi brought the temporal structure of the narrative into the field of writing, and how they used it dramatically. The purpose of this research is to study the narrative time in the dramatic texts of two Iranian dramatists from structural aspects, relying on Gérard Genette's opinions. The findings of this article emphasize how flashbacks and anachrony have had a substantial impact on the play’s narrative flow and temporal structure. Additionally, temporal duration and frequency have also been involved. This anachronism has caused both texts to find a format close to the Iranian dramatic tradition in terms of the connection between the events and other narrative elements such as characters, theme, plot, etc., which is more significant in Afra in terms of the narrative style. However, the dramatic and conversational elements of Khanomche va Mahtabi are more closely associated with the temporal fractures in the narrative structure. Through the use of dramatic devices like sound or the removal of dialogue, as well as story techniques like the use of a narrator and narrating the past story in the present tense, both authors have attempted to employ other modes of narrative time. The timeline diagram of events in both plays includes discrete forward lines with flashbacks occurring during time breaks, as well as the direct course of those dialogues that review the present time.

The collision of opera with Iranian musical culture can be considered one of the most important points of intersection between Western and Iranian culture, which took place under the influence of certain political and social developments in Iran. After the Persian Constitutional Revolution, Iran was affected by political, social and cultural changes. Countless changes were made to help Iran's entry into the modern world, in which elites and intellectuals played a significant role. They insisted on bringing the modern form of theatre to the culture of Iran. This is how operetta first entered Iran under the influence of immigrants from northern European countries. The first operettas of the constitutional era were created under the influence of the Caucasian operettas. During several decades of activity in the field of operetta production in Iran, and with the provision of academic education in the field of Western singing in the music conservatory, conditions were created for the production of the first operas in Iran. The coexistence of music and drama was praised by Iranians from the very beginning and prompted many playwrights to create operettas. Since the first operettas in Iran were created with hints of Iranian music and culture, some experts did not consider it correct to use the word operetta for these performances. This essay, based on the theory of glocalization and relying on the descriptive-analytical method based on library documents, has listed some of the effects of Western operas and operettas on the post-constitutional operettas, with the study of three operettas, namely Rastakhiz'e Shahriaran'e Iran, Parichehr and Parizad and finally Elahe. These operetta artists included musical profiles other than Iranian music in their works by using descriptions under the title of "European song and ballet" and using "Western Instruments" and "the songs close to Caucasian and Turkish music", and tried to step closer to the Western operettas. In such a situation, the juxtaposition of Western operetta and Iranian musical culture had effects on each other, which were examined in the article in three stages: exposure, cultural influence, and acculturation. At first, Iranians had a cultural exposure with Western opera by hearing, reading and seeing it. Using the name "operetta" and influences from Western music and song, they advanced to the stage of cultural influence. And since the presence of operetta in Iran did not pose any threat to Iranian music, Iranians did not take a step towards acculturation. As for the results of this article, we can mention the process of producing a kind of glocalized operetta in Iran. Iranians took the title of operetta as one of the successful globalized examples. They combined this globalized musical show with Iranian classical music and singing. Sometimes they used humorous stories appropriate to the society of that time and sometimes they used epic myths and stories from Iranian classical poetry and created a new type of operetta in Iran. It was under these conditions that the glocal type of Persian operettas was born, influenced by the global type of Western operettas.

This research analyzes the concept of death in the animation production of Coco by Lee Unkrich. According to Martin Heidegger’s perspective of being, death and time, the characters of this work correspond to this viewpoint.The problem of the upcoming research is how to analyze the dimensions of the animated characters of Coco (Lee Unkrich, 2017) with Miguel as the center, according to Martin Heidegger's discussion and concepts about the types of death. The research questions are as follows. Which one of the types of death and fear of it in Heidegger's being and time is more consistent with the viewpoint of this animation towards death? What components does this animation add to the dimensions of Heidegger's death? What topics about death and what aspects of the characters do they reveal in this animation? To answer these questions in the research, relying on library sources and analytical-applied method, types of death, finding the present corresponding to them from Heidegger's point of view are studied and the selected characters of animation are analyzed in such a way that the form and content of types of death in Coco are conformity with Heidegger's opinions should be determined.The results of the study of Heidegger's types of physical death and existential death in Coco indicate that most of the characters entered the world of the dead due to physical death. The characters (Hector, Delacruz, and Imelda) entered the world of the dead mostly due to physical death (demise). In the world of the living, apart from Miguel who temporarily faces existential anxiety and existential death, we do not face deep existential death. Therefore, physical death is considered more in this animation. It seems that in the celebration of the dead, the Mexicans show that death should not be feared and the death of awareness is the recommended way. Not being afraid of physical death and welcoming it is a kind of conscious death, despite the fact that they know they are going to die, they do not sacrifice their lives for this event, but they hold a celebration of the dead every year so that no one has any fear of eternal forgetting and knows the value of time. Although Heidegger did not discuss the fate of Dasein in the world after death in existence and time, and only talked about the ways of living death in this world and the types of fear, but in this animation, by showing the world of the dead, its quality and ways to deal with deep physical death, by resorting to pictures and remembering it every year and by holding a celebration, depicts the world of the dead and the communication bridges of the living with them, as well as the ways to fight against the real death of humans. It also shows the dead living in the world of the dead after physical death. Finally, through some characters, it promises that one can live better with awareness of death and one can try ways to deal with the fear of death in special ways. 

The term local genre may not be an established term for all people who study cinema and film critics, because genre is defined as a global category and is less attributed to a specific region or nation. However, this research considers it possible to use the term local genre with the following simple definition; local genres are subgenres or hybrid genres with features that are less common elsewhere. In many cases, by repeating some special features in works of a subgenre or hybrid genre in the films of a nation or region, and of course the presence of a significant number of works in that genre, these subgenres or hybrid genres will become local genres. For example, all local genres in Japanese cinema like Kaiju or Yakuza films are sub-genres or hybrid genres: Kaiju genre is a combination of features of two genres, science-fiction and horror, and Yakuza film is one of the sub-genres of crime genre.Studying a wide range of local genres including the Martial Arts in Hong Kong, Spaghetti Western in Italy, Masala in India, Heimatfilm in Germany, Anime in Japan and Filmfarsi in Iran, proves that despite the diversity of generic elements in local genres, there is a consistent trend in the development of these genres which seems to be an influence of the national or cultural identity of that genre's region. With the temporary salience of national identity with factors such as war, colonialism, cultural domination and other elements that emphasize the concepts of "self" and "other", filmmakers are drawn to  cultural heritage and are using it to represent a national identity in the content and structure of films, which in turn, has led to the formation of genres that have distinct characteristics compared to the dominant cinematic genres. The expression of national concerns in terms that can be understood by the general public has made these films extremely popular among audiences of that region, and over time, these genres have gained their audience inside and outside that particular geographical area, thus facilitating the development of a "national cinema".Filmmakers around the world can produce films that include their identity and culture by relying on the achievements of native genres inside and outside their country. The use of genre to express contemporary national concerns, along with examining the unique features of expression in classical literary and artistic works of each country, can play an important role in eliminating the common demarcation of popular and artistic cinema, and result in an increase in the social role of any particular genre.In this article, the main features of local genres and their differences are compared with the dominant genres of Hollywood cinema, reflecting upon the competitive nature of this genre in regards to  the dominance of Hollywood cinema. The role of national identity in the formation of this genre will be analyzed, and finally, the influence of classical arts on the content, structure, style and iconography of this genre will be further explained.