Massey Documents by Type
Permanent URI for this communityhttps://mro.massey.ac.nz/handle/10179/294
Browse
3 results
Search Results
Item "Inbetweeners" : dialogic strategies and practices for writing Arab migration through intercultural theatre : a dissertation presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Creative Writing at Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand(Massey University, 2022) Al-Maani, Ammar Sultan AbdullahThis thesis deploys both critical and creative methodologies to address the research question ‘How can playwriting contribute to an understanding of intercultural experiences, identities, and differences between the Middle East and the West?’ When I began this research journey, as a Jordanian-born Muslim playwright now living in Aotearoa New Zealand, I wanted to write a ‘great Arab theatre’ to capture the potentials and positive outcomes of the immigration experiences of Middle Easterners and Muslims and their transnational movements, re-settlements, and inbetweenness, as well as acknowledge the suffering of a region that has been subjected to generations of colonial trauma and is little understood and deeply stereotyped by the West. I wanted to creatively investigate the ways in which migration, and now a global pandemic that has rewritten our understanding of borders, have both fractured and expanded my viewpoints on myself, my culture, and my birthplace. As I explored scholarly models of trauma, I discovered that they, too, have been characterised by colonial thinking and often deploy limited cultural stereotypes as metaphors to explain and address trauma. None of these models fit my experiences. There are uniquely Arab models of storytelling and performance but, looking at many of the key playwrights from the region showed a deep interweaving of Western playwriting traditions in their work as well. Again, these Western-influenced elements seemed to me in part useful yet ultimately inadequate containers to hold my experiences or grasp the wider backdrop of my region’s complex and contested histories. My goal became to find new, expanded, theatrical forms to initiate a dialogue between concepts of diasporic identity, trauma, conflict, and colonial history in the context of the Middle East and its relationships with its Others - including through the specific trajectory of my own journey and how my subjectivity has been shattered and reformed by multiple transnational relocations. I found it helpful to draw on scholarship about intercultural theatre, but I also developed new models of structure and characterisation that depart from and explicitly reject Western models in novel ways, to try to capture the uniqueness of ‘inbetweenness’ that is symptomatic of my region, myself, and my culture. Linear temporality, fixed characterisation, discrete scene plotting, causal action sequences, character hierarchies, and monolingual, unequivocally purposeful dialogue are all rejected in my playwriting, in favour of forms that I found, through the experiment of writing, better reflected the exploded and shapeshifting terms of identity and experience that I know to be true for myself and many others who have, like me, spanned their lives across continents, cultures, languages, religions, traditions, and histories, then ended up finding it difficult to know what is real. In my playwriting, I wanted to recreate that hybridity of both peaceful and contentious cross-cultural exchange and so I developed a kaleidoscopic metaphor to express a blend of different elements that change perpetually and move disorientingly, yet emerge anew, creatively and beautifully. Deploying my kaleidoscopic model of playwriting both thematically and structurally, I wrote a script that conveyed at least some partial sense of what it might mean to be ‘Arab’ in today’s world, and especially, what it might feel like to be ‘Arab’ in Aotearoa. The research was conducted, and the thesis is submitted, in the discipline of creative writing. It is the playwriting itself that constitutes the research experiment, along with the exegetic material that observes and analyses the act of creation including the aesthetic techniques, sources, and motivations. The thesis thus begins with four critical chapters that set out the background to and rationale for the creative work, then concludes with “Aragoze”, a trilogy of plays that embodies the aims of the research to contribute through both its form and its content to an understanding of intercultural experiences and identities situated in between the Middle East and the West.Item What political and theatrical considerations are required to write a play inspired by Elizabeth Colenso and the Victorian suffragists in order to show the conflicts of emancipation for 21st century women in positions of power : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Creative Writing in English at Massey University, Manawatu, New Zealand(Massey University, 2018) Bushell, LynnleaI am intrigued with the question of whether 21st century liberated women who have broken the glass ceiling are able to sustain positions of power within current social and political contexts. In planning this thesis there were two objectives. Firstly, I wanted to see whether I could write a New Zealand play that showed some aspects of the cost of emancipation through the social and political powers enacted upon both 19th century and 21st century women and create a narrative that would be relatable for a contemporary audience. Secondly, I wanted to reflect on the research and writing process. Stand in Her Shoes has employed both literary and historical research. To be able to write with any understanding of the social and political factors which affected 19th century suffragists and 21st century women in power I have drawn research from books, scholarly articles, photographs, internet databases and the National Library. My thesis essay provides an analysis and overview of my findings. My thesis reports the artistic and dramatic choices made as I shaped my findings Stand in Her Shoes into a theatrical play. I focussed briefly on two seminal plays during my literary research Top Girls by Caryl Churchill, and Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage and her Children. I have chosen these two plays to see how they might inform the construction of my female protagonists as well as to enhance my thematic around gender politics. This thesis also provides an overview of the strengths and weaknesses in the play script provided by participants at the first play reading workshop 9 February 2018 at Greytown Little Theatre, South Wairarapa, New Zealand. Finally, I critically reflect on the overall process of writing the play.Item Staging Chinese Kiwi voices : Chinese representations in New Zealand theatre : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in English at Massey University, Albany, New Zealand(Massey University, 2019) Lam, Cynthia Hiu YingThis thesis explores how Chinese Kiwi theatre makers challenge hegemonic discourses regarding representations of Chinese people in theatre. Up until 1996, narratives and representations of Chinese people in mainstream New Zealand media have been muted, objectified, or confined to fixed stereotypes. In this study, I demonstrate how four contemporary Chinese Kiwi theatre artists have (re)negotiated, reclaimed, and rewritten the subjectivity and narratives of Chinese people in New Zealand. This will be examined within the postcolonial and binational framework that is specific to Aotearoa. Through the examination of specific theatrical works by Lynda Chanwai-Earle, Renee Liang, Mei-Lin Te Puea Hansen, and Alice Canton, I demonstrate how they have challenged hegemonic discourses and Pākehā-narrated histories regarding the Chinese. Their works cover the lives of the early Chinese mining community (referred to as the ‘old Chinese’), to more contemporary representations (the ‘new Chinese’) that involve different sub-sets within the community. The relationship and tensions between Māori, Chinese and Pākehā will be analysed throughout. The subjectivity of Chinese women will also be reclaimed by debunking the stereotype of the ‘Oriental woman’ through matrilineal narratives and autobiography. Finally, the transformative and reconciliatory impact of their works will be examined and dissected. In this thesis, I argue that the work of the Chinese Kiwi artists I explore gestures to the need to negotiate the Chinese place, or ‘non-place’, within the dominant hegemonic narrative. I argue that these artists make strong claims through their work for the bicultural framework that privileges the Māori-Pākehā dialogue to be expanded to include the Chinese voice. I conclude that the Chinese Kiwi theatre artists have propelled the once muted Chinese voice from the margins, and have begun to carve a space into the dominant New Zealand narrative.