THEATER ARTISTS BETWEEN THE CITY AND THE NON-CITY: THE SPRING OF WITHDRAWALS AND RETURNS
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.55877/cc.vol21.273Keywords:
city, non-city, theater, theatrical place and space, creativity psychology, withdrawalAbstract
In the West, theater has always been strongly associated with city culture and urbanization processes. By combining the methods and insights of the arts and psychology, the article aims to explore the impact of the city and non-city environments on the work of theater artists, to find out what happens when a creator withdraws from a usual city environment. Qualitative approach – case study analysis – is applied in this research by interviewing two theater artists. The research identified four meta-themes: move back and forth, together and separately, change of perspective, create a new universe. Analysis of the aforementioned themes revealed that withdrawal from the city, as from the usual creative space, is useful and productive for the theater artists, but becomes meaningful only when the latter come back to the city. The metaphor of the spring is suitable for describing this process: creativity is most stimulated by dynamics of withdrawals and returns, which determines the change of perspectives and, at the same time, creative states, rather than withdrawal from the city itself. Withdrawal provides impulses for new universes to emerge: both in the aesthetic plane of creation and in the psychological plane.
Downloads
References
Amabile, T. M. (2018). Creativity in Context: Update to the Social Psychology of Creativity. London and New York: Routledge.
Barba, E. (1996). Theatre. Solitude, Craft, Revolt. Aberystwyth: Black Mountain Press, 1996.
Bettencourt, L. M., Lobo, J., Helbing, D., Kühnert, C., West, G. B. (2007). Growth, innovation, scaling, and the pace of life in cities. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, No. 17: 7301–7306.
Bettencourt, L. M. A., Lobo, J., West, G. B. (2008). Why are large cities faster? Universal scaling and self-similarity in urban organization and dynamics. The European Physical Journal B, 63(3), 285–293.
Bornstein, M. (1979). The Pace of Life: Revisited. International Journal of Psychology 14, issue 1–4 (1979): 83–90.
Cheng, C.-Y., Sanchez-Burks, J., Lee, F. (2008) Connecting the Dots Within: Creative Performance and Identity Integration, Psychological Science, 19(11), pp. 1178–1184
Deleuze, G., Guattari, F. (2004). A Thousand Plateaus. London and New York: Continuum.
Gadamer, H. G. (1987). The Relevance of the Beautiful and Other Essays. Cambridge University Press, 1987.
Garner Jr. S. (2002). Urban Landscapes, Theatrical Encounters: Staging the City. Land / Scape / Theater, MI: University of Michigan Press.
Harvie, J. (2009). Theatre & The City. London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Jones, B. F. (2009). The Burden of Knowledge and the “Death of the Renaissance Man”: Is Innovation Getting Harder? The Review of Economic Studies, 76(1), 283–317.
Klivis, E. (2008). Perrašomos vietos: topografija, identitetas ir politika šiuolaikiniame Lietuvos teatre. Art History & Criticism / Meno istorija ir kritika 4: 171–184.
Mullaney, S. (1995). The Place of the Stage. License, Play, and Power in Renaissance England. MI: University of Michigan Press.
Nordin-Bates, S. M. (2012). Performance Psychology in the Performing Arts. Oxford Handbook of Sport and Performance Psychology.
Runco, M. A. (2014). Creativity. Theories and Themes: Research, Development, and Practice. Second Edition. Academic Press.
Sawyer, K. R. (2012). Explaining Creativity. The Science of Human Innovation. Second Edition. Oxford University Press.
Smith, R. K., Newman, G. E. (2014). When multiple creators are worse than one: The bias toward single authors in the evaluation of art. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 8(3), 303–310.
Thomson, P., Jaque, S. V. (2017). Creativity and the Performing Artist. Behind the Mask. Academic Press.
Uzzi, B., Spiro, J. (2005). Collaboration and Creativity: The Small World Problem1. American Journal of Sociology, 111, 447 - 504.
Yin, R. K. (2017). Case Study Research and Applications. Design and Methods. Sixth Edition. SAGE Publications.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2022 Culture Crossroads
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
