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Showing papers by "Royal Central School of Speech and Drama published in 2017"


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The main objective of as discussed by the authors is to demonstrate how the ideological imbalances underpinning the concepts of artistic knowledge and research in higher education have contributed to this territorialization, in a milieu of overmanagement, these imbalance often go unquestioned largely because of the university's everdecreasing role in interrogating the agenda set by others who stand to benefit from it.
Abstract: Artistic research has in recent years concerned itself with the nature of practice and how this may be framed as research. These debates may have blinded us to a more fundamental concern: territorial claims to the research space made by other forces. Competition for access to material and human resources, funds, space, and infrastructural support, among others, drive debates about the academic status of performance within higher education. The main objective of this article is to demonstrate how the ideological imbalances underpinning the concepts of artistic knowledge and research in Higher Education have contributed to this territorialization. In a milieu of overmanagement, these imbalances often go unquestioned largely because of the university’s ever-decreasing role in interrogating the agenda set by others who stand to benefit from it.

17 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A critical history of the science/humanities divide is provided, exposing prejudices and practices that often impede productive interdisciplinary relationships between Cognitive Science and Performance, and suggestions forward towards a more productive middle field allowing for the possibility of new knowledge.
Abstract: Although Embodied Cognition and Performance Practice could be said to have in common that they live in the fields of hermeneutics and epistemology concurrently, and with this are interested in perception, knowledge, experience and agency without privileging any of them or presuming a linear or status relationship among them --there still remains a divisive disciplinary gulf. This paper provides a critical history of the science/humanities divide, exposing prejudices and practices that often impede productive interdisciplinary relationships between Cognitive Science and Performance, and offers suggestions forward towards a more productive middle field allowing for the possibility of new knowledges.

13 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the role of the teacher as witness to the impact of a participatory theatre project with vulnerable young people is discussed. But the focus of this article is not on the impact on the young people themselves, but on the teacher's role as a witness.
Abstract: This article details key findings from a longitudinal study conducted in collaboration with Kids Company, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). The focus of this article is the role of the ‘teacher as witness’ to the impact of a participatory theatre project with vulnerable young people. This research argues that the opportunities afforded by challenging pre-emptive constructs of vulnerable youth held by a teacher, can enable changes that take place within a workshop, which can often remain temporary and confined to the space and time of a project, to transition back into the wider school environment. Drawing upon the concept of witnessing discussed by Felman, and Laub [1992. Testimony: Crisis of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History. Abingdon: Routledge], Rymaszewska [2006. Reaching the Vulnerable Child: Therapy with Traumatized Children. London: Jessica Kingsley], Gerhardt [2004. Why Love Matters: How Affection Shapes a Baby's Brain. East Sussex: Routledge] a...

11 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A 10-year long series of annual short-term interventions with young people living in Dharavi (India) that has led to a number of public theatre events is described in this article.
Abstract: This article examines a 10-year long series of annual short-term interventions with young people living in Dharavi (India) that has led to a number of public theatre events. The partnership offers a unique training experience to students from the UK in theatre facilitation, and a regular opportunity to participate in theatre for young people in Dharavi. It brings together students from The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama (University of London), working collaboratively with an Indian theatre practitioner, an NGO based in Mumbai, and young people who live in Dharavi. In the article, I explore the role theatre plays in the precarious lives of those who live in Dharavi, and the potential of this on-going partnership to develop a theatre of change in a community and site affected by extreme poverty. Focusing on the longevity of this applied theatre project and drawing on the writing of Paul Ricoeur on utopia, I argue that this on-going exchange can be understood both as a form of cultural inva...

8 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors investigate the resonances of Orton's work for contemporary queer audiences and propose a reading strategy that does not twist it to fit a "neat" reading, in part because such readings tend to smooth out the more difficult elements of the work.
Abstract: This paper investigates the resonances of Orton’s work for contemporary queer audiences. By presenting potential reasons for the rise and fall in popularity and visibility of Orton’s work for queer and gay audiences through the 1980s and 1990s, this paper looks to the queer context in which Joe Orton’s work developed in order to explore the queer social history into which it fits. This sense of queer history is linked to contemporary notions of queer theorising about temporalities and queer dramaturgy, which offers potentially novel ways of engaging with Orton’s work queerly without twisting it to fit a ‘neat’ reading, in part because such readings tend to ‘smooth out’ the more difficult elements of the work. In particular, the paper explores the theatrical form of farce, often articulated as conservative, in relation to queer positions, which are quite the opposite. In so doing, the paper, by way of queer temporalities and work on queer dramaturgies, sketches out a reading strategy that does not ...

7 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
06 Apr 2017-Leonardo
TL;DR: In this article, a performance practice is proposed where abject body parts and abject technologies are connected to challenge the techno-ideology of technological progress, where digital devices act as mere signifiers for abstract notions of connectivity, well being and innovation.
Abstract: Building on anthropologist Mary Douglas’s writing on the ritual function of dirt, this article presents a strategy in digital performance art that engages with electronic waste (e-waste). It is suggested that planned obsolescence in electronics is of a particular nature that facilitates the representation of consumer technologies within the logic of a “symbolic order of technological progress,” where digital devices act as mere signifiers for abstract notions of connectivity, well-being and innovation. Conceptualizing discarded electronic devices as abject technology that is positioned outside this symbolic structure, a performance practice is proposed where abject body parts and abject technologies are connected to challenge this techno-ideology.

5 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this collection of chapters, the four branches of radical cognitive sciencedialogue with performance, with particular focus on post-cognitivist approaches to understanding the embodied mind-in-society; deemphasising the computational and representational metaphors; and embracing new conceptualisations grounded on the dynamic interactions of 'brain, body and world'.
Abstract: In this collection of chapters, the four branches of radical cognitive science—embodied, embedded, enactive and ecological—dialogue with performance, with particular focus on post-cognitivist approaches to understanding the embodied mind-in-society; deemphasising the computational and representational metaphors; and embracing new conceptualisations grounded on the dynamic interactions of 'brain, body and world'. In our collection, radical cognitive science reaches out to areas of scholarship also explored in the fields of performance practice and training as we facilitate a new inter- and transdisciplinary discourse in which to jointly share and explore common reactions of embodied approaches to the lived mind.

4 citations


Book
16 Jun 2017
TL;DR: Fisher as mentioned in this paper proposes a new reading of theatre's relation to the public sphere, drawing out - for the first time - a full genealogy of the governmental discourse on the theatre, allowing a better understanding of the complex interplay between theatre, politics, economics and government.
Abstract: This book begins with a simple observation - that just as the theatre resurfaced during the late Renaissance, so too government as we understand it today also began to appear. Their mutually entwining history was to have a profound influence on the development of the modern British stage. This volume proposes a new reading of theatre's relation to the public sphere. Employing a series of historical case studies drawn from the London theatre, Tony Fisher shows why the stage was of such great concern to government by offering close readings of well-known religious, moral, political, economic and legal disputes over the role, purpose and function of the stage in the 'well-ordered society'. In framing these disputes in relation to what Michel Foucault called the emerging 'art of government', this book draws out - for the first time - a full genealogy of the governmental 'discourse on the theatre'. * Proposes a new reading of well-known controversies over the social history of the stage, allowing a better understanding of the complex interplay between theatre, politics, economics and government * Presents a theoretical as well as historical methodology, using the tools of 'discourse analysis' and concept of 'governmentality' developed by Michel Foucault * Offers a critical, systematic and historically-grounded reappraisal of the 'anti-theatrical prejudice' proposed by Jonah Barish, revealing that prejudice targeted 'common' tastes generally, rather than theatre as such Read more at http://www.cambridge.org/gb/academic/subjects/arts-theatre-culture/british-theatre/theatre-and-governance-britain-15001900-democracy-disorder-and-state#XoM5tTH0phQJIeTi.99

4 citations


Book ChapterDOI
01 Jan 2017
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explore the capacity of voice in theatre and explore Gatz by Elevator Repair Service, an eight-hour long production of F Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby staged in a drab basement office in downtown New York.
Abstract: As an aural phenomenon and a form of sound, voice does many things beyond carrying linguistic meaning. To explore the capacity of voice in theatre this chapter focuses on Gatz by Elevator Repair Service, an eight-hour long production of F Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby staged in a drab basement office in downtown New York. The visual world of the book springs from its interior as it is read aloud in its entirety, no other words are added. Though Fitzgerald’s text forms the script, it is the performer’s voice that calls all aspects of this production into play. Drawing on the theories of Mladen Dolar’s ‘object voice’, this chapter asks what is a performed voice and what can it bring forth and do in theatre—how does it perform, as a thing in and of itself? And where does the voice go, who is it for? This chapter also considers its destination—the ear of another—because the relation between voice and ear is particularly potent in sonic-led theatre practices; it has political potential which can be harnessed by their re-staging.

2 citations



Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The key principles are to treat the participant as co-creator of knowledge, and the theoretical underpinning is via the related theories of emotional intelligence.

Journal ArticleDOI
10 Mar 2017
TL;DR: This paper explores Stanislavski’s overall aim for the actor: “experiencing” or “remaining alive” on stage, which is recognized by many practitioners as a common goal.
Abstract: The Stanislavski “system” is rarely taught as a system, rather it is broken up into fragments. This paper explores Stanislavski’s overall aim for the actor: “experiencing” or “remaining alive” on stage, which is recognized by many practitioners as a common goal. It identifies the misconception among practitioners, that by learning fragments, the actor is learning the “system.” The pedagogy of Stanislavski is often embedded in the teacher or trainer – even if they are unaware of it.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors used news reports of witness evidence at the inquest of the deaths of Orton and Halliwell to examine the relationship between the early Orton industry and the concept of anniversary.
Abstract: Commemoration of the anniversary of the deaths of Joe Orton and Kenneth Halliwell brings centre-stage an event which has caused difficulties for those writing about Orton. These difficulties mainly originate in John Lahr’s biography, which used the deaths as a frame for viewing Orton’s life and work. This essay attempts to think afresh about those deaths by drawing on texts that pre-date the biography, namely the news reports of witness evidence at the inquest. These texts have very different tone and detail from the biography but get lost under the memory- and archive-management which characterises the early Orton industry. In following where the news reports lead us, the essay takes the opportunity to ask questions about the concept of anniversary.

Book ChapterDOI
01 Jan 2017
TL;DR: In this article, the authors explore the auditory phenomenology and physiology of listening to immersive theatre in the dark, and explore how immersion, usually thought of as an all-encompassing experience, is created through directional sound and specific audience engagement.
Abstract: The listener is a central figure in theatre aurality, as part of an audience, and as a lone attender, often indulged in a private experience that is characterised by intimate technologies (either sporting some sort of headset or glued to a phone, but not necessarily in conversation). This chapter explores theatre from the perspective of the ear through analysis of the different types of auditory performance that are created by headphone theatre. The focus is on the theatre in the dark of Glen Neath and David Rosenberg, specifically Ring (2013), the auditory experience of binaural recording and the auralisation of the spaces and events that surround its audience. This is a form of immersive theatre which is deceptively guided through theatre sound. The intimate aurality of Ring makes the audience both the subject of and subject to this form of theatre. We seem to appear in this production against our will. However, exploring the auditory phenomenology and the physiology of listening to this form of theatre demonstrates how immersion, usually thought of as an all-encompassing experience, is created through directional sound and specific audience engagement. The acoustic spaces of theatre in the dark are redrawn through sound and they are generated through the auditory performance of our listening. This chapter will consider audience as an act and listening as generative.

Book ChapterDOI
01 Jan 2017
TL;DR: Theatre aurality is an exploration of sound in, of and as theatre; it explores emerging practices as well as a critical field as mentioned in this paper, and it explores the origins of aurality in theatre practice through the histories of sound and the emergence of technologies in contemporary theatre practice.
Abstract: Theatre aurality is an exploration of sound in, of and as theatre; it explores emerging practices as well as a critical field. Though it is a relatively new phenomenon—for example, in the form of headphone performances or theatre in the dark—theatre has a rich history of aurality which has been somewhat obscured from the discourses of theatre and performance. Therefore, this chapter explores the origins of aurality in theatre practice, through the histories of sound and the emergence of technologies in contemporary theatre practice. The new art of theatre sound in the twentieth century met with some resistance, it introduced technologies and processes that brought medial, material and aesthetic challenges which, in turn, raised questions about theatre’s ontology. These radical capacities of theatre sound are the substance of theatre aurality and they are found in contemporary theatre and performance practices that are characterised by some, if not all, of the following: aural intersubjectivity, sonic presence, lack of visual reference, sonic sensibility, non-visual spatiality, the corporeality and hapticity of audience, and the performance of sound.

Book ChapterDOI
01 Jan 2017
TL;DR: The extent of theatre aurality is explored in this article, which turns the ear towards those sounds which are chaotic, disorienting and loud: noise, and how this is manifested in sounds that exert power through amplitude, cacophony or disorder in ways that are designed to move meaning and shift our understanding.
Abstract: The extent of theatre aurality is explored in this chapter which turns the ear towards those sounds which are chaotic, disorienting and loud: noise. Through the theses of Michel Serres, noise is explored as an agitatory entity and how this is manifested in sounds that exert power—through amplitude, cacophony or disorder—in ways that are designed to move meaning and shift our understanding. This chapter asks in what ways can noise in theatre be reproduced? In response, the chapter focuses on: noise as an organising principle, in the theatre of Teatr ZAR; noise as a methodology, in the work by Chris Goode; and noise as a sonic entity in the practices of the contemporary sound designers Tom Gibbons, Scott Gibbons and Ben & Max Ringham. These different manifestations of noise are designed to make their presence felt; from the movements of their material presence to the performance of a collapse of structure, noise is sound designed to work on the listener—to demand something from audiences in ways that cannot be ignored. Its very presence is a politics of sound.

Book ChapterDOI
01 Jan 2017
TL;DR: In this article, the authors explore a form of theatre in the dark that harnesses the affective movement of sound, resonance and subjectivity, and demonstrate how sound in theatre can not only move us, but also allow us to move.
Abstract: Sound, resonance and subjectivity are the focus of this chapter, which explores a form of theatre in the dark that harnesses the affective movement of sound. Extant theatre, the UK’s leading company making work for and by the visually impaired, has undertaken research into theatre sound that can move its audience, literally, through an immersive performance experience. Using forms of technology which are in many ways the inverse of headphone theatre, they equip the body of the audience yet leave the ear open. Armed instead with haptic technology, Extant’s production Flatland is an exploration of how sound in all its sonorous, sensual and sensitising potential can form the audience experience; how it not only moves us, but can allow us to move. Drawing on Jean-Luc Nancy’s seminal thesis of listening and his theories of touch, hapticity and syncope, this chapter demonstrates how sound in theatre generates a form of resonance, a movement within listening that also brings forth a sense of self, as well as the other selves that may be sensed. This analysis suggests an understanding of audience as a form of corps sonore that is formed through sonority, how our engagement in sound brings us into intersubjectivity through the audience experience.