JOURNAL OF DERAMATIC ARTS AND MUSIC
Year:2020 | Volume:10 | Issue:19|Papers Count:8

The 16th-century Italian composer, politician, Dramatist, and writer, Niccolo Machiavelli, elaborates on various types of kingdoms and means of guarding them in his famous treatise, The Prince. He provides the contemporary monarch, Lorenzo De’ Medici, with advice on how to conserve his power and sovereignty. The influence of Machiavelli on the literature, especially dramatic literature and theatrical performances of the Elizabethan Era is examined in the preface of the present article. The significance of Machiavelli’ s opinions in the Elizabethan literature, theoretical foundations, and elaboration of important concepts in his political reflections such as Virtu, Fortuna, Armi, and Militia are examined in the theoretical studies. Consequently, the dialogues, relations, motivations, and interactive functions of the three royalties of the play, i. e. Hamlet, Claudius, and Fortinbras, who are of the regal ancestry (they are king or princes) are extracted, compared and contrasted to those in the Prince. This comparative analysis supports the notion of identicality of the characters’ acts and Machiavelli’ s teachings and advice. Relying on the abovementioned terms and concepts in the Prince, the present study attempts to provide further examples of similarities between the words and demeanor of the three royal characters in Hamlet and the aforesaid concepts, and thus to deliver a respond to the issue regarding William Shakespeare’ s being influenced by Machiavelli’ s The Prince in the characterization of the three regal figures.

This essay is an attempt to study the contemporary “ Open Theater” in America from a sociological point of view. Open Theater stages experimental performances in which society and the idea of being together or communality are radically challenged and questioned. Inclination toward being together is the main formulation behind the formation of identity in these plays. This essay studies Open Theater’ s conception of together-ness from the perspective of Jean-Luc Nancy’ s theories of the “ communal” and “ interruption. ” These plays view society as the product of communal impulses that reduce identity to passivity to become similar. Identity is the product of fictions imposed by power that withdraw differences and install similarities in the subjects. However, there are some situations in the performances in which the audience encounter activities and sensations that are totally unknown and unseen. These not-yet-experienced moments break the predetermined identity caused by media and popular culture and create new horizons for perception and interaction between the audience and the stage. As a result, this type of theater creates a dualism between the common and the uncommon shared and divided. This subverted binary can be considered as Open Theater’ s iconoclastic stance toward postmodern identity and politics. Now the ideas of commonality and communality become the target of scrutiny as they undergo momentary pause on the set. Open Theater, without the conventional politicization of the experimental theater in the 1960s and 70s, challenges identity formation in the American society dominated by media and capitalism. The scenography in Open Theater, along with character delineation, sets forth the process of communality and the pause in this process. Now the ideas of commonality and communality become the target of scrutiny as they undergo momentary pause on the set. The characters’ presence is thus split between being communal or conformist (as in the case of following TV ads), and divided or nonconformist (as in the case of resisting the media codes of behavior and personality). The crucial point to bear in mind is that both of these features occur simultaneously during the performances, and there is no sharp contrast or dividing line between them. Thus, postmodern identity as depicted and performed in Open Theater is an unending struggle and dialectic between the fantasy of being communal and reality of being divided and selfdivided. The reality and unreality of props and dolls brought on the set force the actors to react to their presence in anti-naturalistic gestures that pertain to the impossibility of making a firm decision between congruent and contingent. Contingency is created by the insertion and implantation of scenes in which the audience experience deep shocks via gestures and sounds that are far beyond the everyday and the previously-known. This is how this type of theater achieves radicalization of the idea of society and being social because the audience and the characters undergo coincidence of sociality and a-sociality. Open Theater is the arena for experiencing dualism in perception and identity to come up with new politics of theater without conventional social forms and rules.

Postcolonial study is one of the new research areas regarding countries of the Third World. It is also a critical view of the set of theoretical approaches that analyze the colonial discourse by focusing on the consequences of postcolonialism. Understanding the general viewpoint of postcolonialism requires surveying and comparing artistic and literal works which will yield cognition and knowledge. In this article, postcolonial analysis has been investigated in Milan Kundera’ s first play called The Owner of the Keys. The Owner of the Keys was written in 1961 and depicted the situation at World War II. In this paper, postcolonial components are studied in this novel.

In the wake of anthropocentric thinking of Descartes, humans and the artificial environment built by him or her and the way of dwelling his or her in that, causes generation challenges, discussions and leads to review the relationship between mankind and his or her environment. It seems that our new surrounding doesn’ t care about human’ s feelings, psychological or mental needs. It just focuses on functional matters. As a result, human is becoming more unfamiliar with the contemporary architecture, also we got lost in the world and we missed the meaning of space and being-in-the world. We lost sensory meanings related to the world: the ground, the sky, the air, and the world. Architecture is fairly implicated in this loss. On the whole human and the world surrounding him, divided into two separate components, highlighting the optic phase of the contemporary environment, the separation becomes more obvious. Lots of phenomenologists like Heidegger and Husserl tried to eliminate this gap and redefine the relationship between mankind and his environment instead of facing them against each other. Heidegger with his phenomenology method and following him Christian Norberg-Schulz are the main leaders of this review and focus on the unity of mankind and his world. This research has a qualitative approach. With the philosophical framework of phenomenology and the help of the research model abstracted from theoretical foundations, it tries to understand Identity and indicators of it in enhancing the perception of the environment. For this purpose and with the aim of the research model abstracted from the theoretical foundations, indicators of identity have been examined in three important and related movies: Through the Olive Trees, Where Is the Friend’ s Home? and Life and Nothing More. Results of this review show us that Essential elements in feeling genius Loci and identity in Kiarostami’ s cinema are: selecting naturalistic and rural spaces, using distinguished symbols of Iranian culture and architecture (symbolization), long shots that show arranged orientation and combination architecture and nature and showing routine everyday activities which maintain the relationship between human and place.

Focusing on dominant discourses in every era suggests rejecting other conversations. Trails of deep violence can be found on this occasion. The discourse, as Michel Foucault seeks, examines the set of dominant criteria and values in each period and subsequently attends the principle and values that are rejected and neglected by the power structure in that period. However, those values still exist. This concept of denial is a concept of violence, which uses many power structures in discursive forms to confirm some and reject the others. Regarding the process of meaning transfer in cinema, it seems that the cinema as a structure of power has also been able to integrate the subject based on concepts and features such as assembly, fetishism, gaze, and apparatus characteristics and give it a special sense of identity. Cinema has directed the viewer’ s viewpoint towards a particular ideology by introducing its idea as a reality dominating a certain discourse and eliminating other conversations. Denying the Subjectivation right of the subject and thus denying the right to produce meaning by the spectator in the cinema means giving him a particular ideology and preventing the perception of the meaning by the spectator himself. When comparing the two films Apocalypse Now (1979) and Taxi Driver (1976) of the United States in the 1970s, using a comparative, descriptive and analytical method and collecting information based on library studies in addition to expressing the similarity of the type of discourses, occurrences and their effects of violence by the ruling ideology, the distinction between the use of the feature of cinematic apparatuses has also been pointed out. In this regard, the concept of violence from the perspective of Michel Foucault was first addressed in the Book of “ Discipline and punish” : It deals with the birth of the prison and refers to the difference in the two forms of violence, especially physical violence. It then describes how the concept of violence in the history of cinema and Eisenstein’ s montage theory and the idea of a cinematic apparatus as the main tool of film violence that identifies the viewer by hiding the process of meaning in the cinema. Discourses, socio-political protests, and civil movements of the 1970s have also been described. Finally, by comparative analysis of the two films, Taxi Driver and the Apocalypse Now, the similarity of the racist discourse in both films and the following violence is expressed. Then it is explained how the occurrence of the subject’ s violence on itself, as well as the existence of sacred and religious discussions in both films, has been considered as propositions for fixing the discourse of films and then examining the role of the image and cinema in both films. At the end of the comparison, it has been established that the cinematic apparatus can operate in two different ways. It can be more flexible to create illusion and incitement to reality using its violent nature and act in two different ways.

In the present research, referencing Evolutionists like Gilles Deleuze and Style analysts like David Bordwell, an overall picture of modernist cinema as art cinema is drawn to define its formal characteristics. iModern Art Cinema creates its genres and conventions, so based on Andras Balint Kovacs’ s book, four different styles (Minimalist Styles, Naturalist styles, Ornamental and Theatrical styles) and seven main genres of art cinema (Melodrama, Investigation, Wandering/Travel, The Mental Journey, Closed-Situation Drama, Satire/Genre Parody and The Film Essay) are defined. This theoretical framework plays a critical role in guiding the following analysis and discussion of four case studies of the Iranian Art Cinema, made during 1965-1978: Brick and Mirror (1965), Siavash in Persepolis (1967), Still life (1973) and Requiem (1977). Iranian Art Cinema, which was shaped by various factors such as government patronage and its nationwide agencies as official spectacle, cine clubs, festivals, movie press, in opposition to the mainstream cinema, etc. grew gradually to reflect intelligentsia’ s concerns. The research is based on the Descriptive and Analytical approach and deals with two main concerns: the necessity of revision in the category of “ New Iranian Cinema” and the stylistic and generic configurations of the Iranian Art Cinema. Findings show the insufficiency of the critics-made categories like “ Iranian New Wave Cinema” to include the case studies in this research and generally similar films. Such categories are too incongruous and tend to overlook the basic components of modern films in favor of popular, social, and realistic cinema, which is more compatible with critics’ taste. These findings invite revision of current categories of Iranian cinema. This requires a systematic methodology that takes stylistic and generic issues into account. All case studies reveal various dimensions of styles and genres in the Iranian Art Cinema. Generally, all four styles are traceable in these films. Of seven modern genres, three genres are applied in the case studies: Melodrama, Close Drama Situation, and mental journey. The alienation, lack of real relationship between man and his environment, lack of fundamental human values in pre-revolution Iran, and general attention to the human condition is rampant in three films. In one case study (Siavash in Persepolis), Ornamental and Theatrical styles and The Mental Journey genre are used to create a kind of coexistent times of mythology and the contemporary world. These case studies inclusively prove the efficiency of Evolutionist and stylists’ ideas for the Iranian Art Cinema. More important is the inclusion of these films under the modern art cinema styles and genres. These films deal with modern man and his relation to the contemporary world to represent a specific way of thought and reality. The case studies not only show the characteristics of Deleuze’ s notion of Time-Image and Bodwell’ s formal elements in modern cinema, but also the encounters of the main principles of modern art and cultural traditions like Iran.

Method and how to provide and state music (external and actualized manifestation of mental materials and assets plus personal inventions and tendencies) is called method or style. Study and familiarity of musicians with technical structures and elements of different schools and methods will cause increasing and varying executive techniques set for musicians and reviving past heritage. These are considered as a part of today’ s activities of musicians. Based on documentary works in a 100– years juncture, a general division can be achieved about Ney musicians of Iranian music. Works of Ney musicians can be divided into three clear eras: the Qajar, the Pahlavi, and the Islamic Revolution era. In these ares, two musicians are considered as the most significant ones, Nayeb Asadollah Esfahani and Hassan Kassai who provided two different styles and methods in Ney playing. According to the opinion and quotation of masters and acquaintances with music, Hassan Kassai is one of the geniuses and most capable musicians in one hundred years. Today, all Ney musicians are indebted to him, whether for his direct or indirect mastering. Kassai made a new method in Ney playing. But what are stylistic specifications of Kassai’ s playing? To answer this question, it has been tried to use all existing sources like left audios and visual works, both formal and private release and also, oral and written opinions of some music masters in this regard. Bass voice in musicians before Kassai is soft bass but bass sound in Kassai’ s playing is strong and has much volume. Kassai music is subject of Isfahan song school. He has provided three different narrations of Iranian music row. Most of his sentences have been run as songs and are based on poem syllables that he had in mind. Using elongated notes in sentences, no compression and opening figure and sentence motifs, attention and using silence between music sentences in playing have extended and spread theme or melody in different forms. He has tried to make sense and feeling of Gushehes, pieces, and cheerfulness in playing. He has extremely noted to comply with dynamics and make cases of musical pieces. His performed sentences have disconnected and connected notes, stressed on high and low melody, trail, and battery. He has used broken arpeges and accords. In performances, sometimes he has had modulation and referred to other modes. Four plectrums with Ney have been performed by Kassai for the first time. By using different lengths of Ney, he has participated in orchestras and choirs more than before, composing many pieces like City and Hope Caravan.

Looking at the period of Iranian Islamic arts, Seljuk can be found as one of the most Brilliant Art periods among different areas. In this period, artists from any Artistic Fields who have dealt with layout and painting started contacting with each other and sometimes were paying attention to themes of common layout and paintings. They used them to make artwork of their own and to develop and create new offerings. Among some of the highly functioning themes in layout and painting format, there is still a significant number of remaining artworks that contain images of and Musical instruments such as Oud. This group of motifs has many similarities and harmonies with description used in music lessons related to the same period or periods before and after including: Safi al-Din al-Urmawi’ s and Treatise of Hasan Kaashi‘ s Kenzo al-Tahf, can be considered in Musicology and construction of musical instruments. In this research 7 out of 40 images with the theme of musical instruments and painted musicians on Clay and metalwork related to the Seljuk period have been mentioned. Their features have been briefly matched with the suggested information of mentioned Treatises. The executive behavior, hand position of the musician and the description of the instrument construction are studied in this article.