As the irruption of the consciousness of border-crossings into our present cultural analyses evinces the escalated shifting of global human geography, articulations of "nomads" as "fluid," "flexible," or "liberatory" subjects have proliferated in our humanistic studies. 2 Joining the important debates resulting from such articulations, 3 this essay revisits the problem of border-crossing by examining its figurations in contemporary women authors' dramatic works. Specifically, through a reading of such figurations by Ama Ata Aidoo and Caryl Churchill, this essay sets up a critical encounter between a Ghanaian woman much ignored and an English woman much embraced in Euro-American feminist theatre studies. This juxtaposition has its linguistic and temporal justification: both Aidoo and Churchill write in English, and both are part and parcel of the cultural openings made possible by the disintegration of the British Empire in the post-World War II sea change, as Aidoo is among the prominent black writers redefining a radically transforming post-British Sub-Saharan Africa, and Churchill is among the leading English authors remaking the public scenes of the turbulent western metropolis. The focus of this essay, however, is on their distinct stagings of female figures moving across the fermenting horizons and organizing [End Page 245] boundaries of "intertwined modern world histories," 4 thereby bringing forth resonations in those otherwise separate movements. 5
The global live entertainment industry has gradually entered the period of digital and cloud-based transformation, with the emergence of “online theatre” and “cloud theatre”. However, while traditional theatre is looking for a new way out, the corresponding aesthetic development lags behind. Therefore, it is urgent to explore new aesthetics of online theatre that is compatible with the new media. Virtual reality technology has changed people’s perception of images, and virtual space can give audience not only an immersive experience, but also a stronger sense of presence than traditional theatres. After summarizing the unique theatrical space and aesthetic features in traditional theatre art, this paper contends that a combination of the “field” effect in traditional theatre with the concept of “synthesis” in virtual image can be used to explore a new paradigm of theatre aesthetics with new media and technology.
卡里尔·丘吉尔是当代英国剧坛最重要的剧作家之一。她虽以女性主义戏剧成名，但女性主义戏剧只是她创作的一部分。以往的研究往往将《食鸟》《毒药人生》《地底精灵》等作品视为丘吉尔女性主义创作的回响。实际上作家在其中通过“超人”和“非人”形象的运用，抽空了人物的现实指向性，已是离开了女性主义，转而呈现文明世界对“人”之本性的全方位压抑。向外改造社会的激情在她的作品中渐渐淡去，取而代之的是一种向内对“人”之存在本身的迷茫和探索，这使她的创作进入了新的境地。这种不见容于“文明世界”的痛苦甚至难以通过被充分规训的语言来表达。因此，极致的暴力和阿尔托式的非理性形式与身体语言成为剧作家此时反复使用的元素。
19世纪末20世纪初的外国剧作家们因戏剧形式上的探索和转向而备受关注。这一时期恰好与第二次科技革命重合，其间一个容易被忽视的特征是：世纪之交的戏剧体现了科技飞跃的成果。自然主义剧作家们尊重并自觉遵循生物学家的研究成果；而象征主义剧作家关注科技引起的感知变化，并将认知的边界引向神秘主义。当代戏剧同样处于科技变革的时代，科技与艺术的亲密关系不言而喻。
Many folk training and performing organizations of Yueju appeared in Sheng County and the surrounding villages around the 1980s. They came into being against the background of China’s urbanization and the nationalization of Xiqu troupes, and they gradually disappeared with the reform of cultural systems. The folk troupes of Yueju in the new era inherited the tradition of women’s troupes of the Republican period and the sister troupes of the 1960s, and later developed into community troupes and private-owned troupes. As a link connecting the preceding and the following, they played an important role in the history of folk Yueju in New China. The training troupes embody the cultural subjectivity of rural people in Sheng County. By holding training classes, hiring coaches, organizing trainings, and giving performances, they internalized the national will of reviving Xiqu into a collective consciousness of “going out” from the countryside, took the initiative to connect artistic policy with folk practice of Xiqu, pulled together the existing resources of Xiqu in the countryside, created an active mode of rural cultures, and delivered nutrients and vitality to Yueju from the bottom up.
