Perceptions And Understanding Of Self And Others, By Laura Wade And ' Crouch, Touch, Pause,

Many, if not all, plays are written to evoke thoughts from people in the audience. Through their scripts, authors deliver messages about their opinions on various issues ranging from gender roles to class ranks. These messages are developed to provoke thoughts and questions from people who experience performances. In the play Rome Sweet Rome, the Q Brothers Collective use both new and old theatrical techniques to make parallels between the Roman and United States governments by addressing issues involving women’s roles in society, class rank, and homosexuality. The play uses methods both similar and different to other classic plays to deliver a message that is relatable to issues in today’s world. This message is enhanced through the use of acting styles, set design, costumes, music, and lighting.

Society cannot describe or expound upon the significance of the identity of gender of oneself because the question has no finite and/or absolute answer due to the ever-changing variables in common ideology and thinking. The variables just mentioned are in correspondence to the time and amount of influence outside opinions have on oneself and his/her opinion about the matter. The fact remains that the subjective views of one’s personal beliefs equates to nothing in the presence of contravening, biased thinking of the society. People often tend to follow. It is the nature of our species to follow, for general acceptance among peers is the true catalyst of all decisions. In modern society, many new perspectives have been introduced such as gay and lesbian relations, or the belief in one’s gender to be opposite of their physical appearance. “In examining how female eroticism begins to assume discursive shape and currency on the early modern stage, I argue here that Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night offers an overlooked opportunity to witness the dynamics by which a language of female-female desire emerges from the materials of conventional heteroerotic discourses already in circulation,” (Ake 375). The truth lies solely with the person who ponders the question. This is what many literary works attempt to convey, yet few stand prevalent. Shakespeare creates the lucid, romantic comedy Twelfth Night in order to convey the lack of certitude in gender identity of the self, while

Today many forms of societies exist. A society is a group of people that exist together in some form of community. All over the world at the present time many different societies exist. Nearly all societies contain systems of government, justice forming or authoritative powers to lead and shape its members. In western cultures around the world such as here in Australia systems on democracy are set up. These systems match the ideologies and social

Identity and Feminism: Themes such as Gender identity are illustrated in Shakespeare’s plays through the use of costuming and role playing. In texts like “Twelfth Night”, Shakespeare uses a female character named Viola who is the noblewoman disguised as a boy named Cesario, this creates a comedic gender exchange situation where the role reversal goes wrong and leads to mistaken

The works of William Shakespeare have long been used as a sources for areas of gender studies. Gender and sexuality are two notable themes in Shakespeare’s plays that are generally either used as tools of manipulation, forms of propaganda, and sometimes a mixture of both, depending on the genre of the play. These plays tend to reflect the social situation of the women who live through the Elizabethan Age. During the Renaissance, social construct of gender and sexuality norms are a part of society just as they are today. The assignment of gender roles in society reflects a gender hierarchy. While his works explore and often support the social constructs of femininity, “he is also a writer who questions, challenges, and modifies those representations” (Gerlach, et al).

While some of the play is quite literally bottoms up, Untitled Feminist Show does not hold to typical a bottom-up model of community work which feminists are known for (Hyde 2005). Theatrical performances by nature are public spaces, and use the public sphere as its arena to communicate stories and messages to a greater community. Young Jean Lee uses theater in a unique way

While writing and narrative (poetic or otherwise) were considered as means of survival, theatre remains outside the circle of literary survivalism. Indeed, according to Anne Ubersfield, “performance is a perishable thing.” (xxii) It is usually considered as an event that is bound by the present. The belief in the historicity of the theatrical event still dominates the critical approaches to theatre. Many contemporary critics maintain that on the stage, “drama takes place and takes time too.” (Worthen xi) They believe that it is “an historical event.” (Styan 6) that is limited in terms of space and duration. It cannot last beyond the performative moment.

Abstract: The thematic concern of appearance and reality is dealt with at various levels in Macbeth. This paper is an exploration of how the conventional ideas of gender and sexuality are subverted in this play. The paper would also seek to explore how the paradigmatic shift in the conventional gender identity creates a sense of queerness. Our attempt is to interrogate the play from an alternative perspective to bring out the ‘non-meaning’ that is contained within the play. While doing so, we would also try and raise questions regarding the ways in which bodies generally function; and, whether such minute subtleties lead to an alternative platform where the ideas of gender and sexuality can be explored in a larger context.

As the human species continues to evolve intellectually, so does the idea of what a society is. Today a society is more than just the people you are related to or community you live in and work. A society can have any number of definitions being both inclusive and exclusive. In general, a person can be identified by their overall associations to others.

In modern age, society finally accepts homosexuality,other sexual orientations, and gender identity became a more acceptable concept.However, even though it became acceptable once again in the twenty first century. Literature throughout the ages depicted different sexual orientation and gender identification. The play Twelfth Night made produced by William Shakespeare discusses the topics of sexuality during the early 17th century. The articles Gender Trouble in ‘Twelfth Night by Casey Charles agrees that the main central theme of this play is associated with gender identification and sexuality. However,the article “Rings and Things” in Twelfth Night:Gift Exchange, Debt and the Early Modern Matrimonial Economy by Stephanie Chamberlain examines the play having more to do with economically obligations that was occurring during that time instead of sexuality orientation. Due the different claims of the two authors, it makes the reader question what is this play by Shakespeare identifying as its central idea of focus. Is it about sexuality and how society might be disgusted by some individuals or the economically and materialistic problems that society faces?

In fact, when Shakespeare wrote his plays, they were intended to be played by all-male companies, which, on a certain level, makes it reasonable for casting choices to go back to that root. Hurren also lined out “boys playing girls (especially boys playing girls who are pretending to be boys) adds an extra dimension of eroticism to the proceeding; and further, that this effect is just what Shakespeare, whose own sexual propensities are commonly assumed to have been somewhat ambiguous, was aiming at” — a theory brought up by one of Jan Kott’s essays, “Shakespeare’s Bitter Arcadia.” The relationship between actors’ gender representation, which had somehow shifted, and the audience, who had also changed and learned to appreciate different/new culture in and outside of the theatre, is fascinating. Every time a major alteration was made, theatre makers were targeting different subjects or it was influenced by contemporaneous social changes: both when women were first represented on stage by female actors and when all-male cast stands for queers in theatre opposing to a stage dominated by male actors only for social normality. Nonetheless, each time a revolutionary casting choice manufactured, whether it was the director’s choice to tweak audience’s sexuality or not, it takes time for theatre-goers to recognize the message. In this case, Royal National Theatre’s production of As You Like It (1967) proffered the four female roles played not by boys, but by “men whose ages ranged from 27 to 37.”(KH) Seeing male actors having fun in wigs and mini skirts, audience crowded the theatre for, what was believed to be, a kinky and erotic experience. Notwithstanding the great response, Clifford Williams, the director of the production, confessed that that he was aiming for a completely opposite

We are in a new era of theatre. As the times change, the technology grows, and people grow more and more educated, theatre is evolving. Modern critics suggest that playwrights Tennessee Williams and Eugene O’Neill were the last great American playwrights, but that isn’t true. For their period, century, and time, they tackled the social issues between man and woman, and between the races and the classes. However, there are many great playwrights of this century, addressing those same issues. The stances are different now or more developed because people grew more as a whole.

Issues concerning alternative sexualities and gender identity register contrast within both the Trevor Nunn film adaptation of Twelfth Night, the Globe Production portrayed in the Bulman article, as well as the written play itself. The Trevor Nunn film interpretation of the play was set with a conventional cast; in which the roles of Olivia and Viola were played by female actors.

Gender identity and its roles in 17th and 19th century England were regarded as rigid fact — definite and unyielding. The adherence to these social protocols was of utmost importance. Masculinity was viewed as being dominant, assertive, and bold, whereas femininity involved beauty, obedience, and chastity. The theatre became a method of challenging this rigid social concept. Both William Shakespeare’s As You Like It and Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest explore these public values through their characters. Wilde and Shakespeare’s use of gender reversals satirize the traditions of social order, marriage, and gender responsibilities at the time, thereby revealing that gender is not absolute.

There are different fundamental themes that take preference over other in contemporary social theory these themes consist of relationship between society and self, nature of social life, possibility, and role of social transformation, structure of social institutions and themes such as class, gender, and race. Contemporary social theory is given importance due to the fact that helps in evaluating the societal features easily. In this paper, the three different contexts that contribute in the development of contemporary social theory are discussed and explained in detail. These aspects include historical, social, and cultural context that is relevant to the development of contemporary social theory.