Showing papers by "Royal Central School of Speech and Drama published in 2018"
TL;DR: In this article, the authors explore how concepts related to affect theory might offer ways in which practice might respond to the contemporary context of a post-normal and "post-truth" world.
Abstract: This article moves on from the ‘turn to affect’ in applied theatre to explore further how concepts related to affect theory might offer ways in which practice might respond to the contemporary context of a ‘post-normal’ and ‘post-truth’ world. Acknowledging the influence of transdisciplinary discourses on gender, race, disability, space, place, performance philosophy and neuro-psycho-biology, it explores how applied theatre-making might be conceptualised as a ‘space of potentiality’. The terms ‘space’ and ‘potentiality’ are surveyed as relational, contingent, and indeterminate, allowing for an understanding of practice that embraces fluidity, and difference, and resists pre-defined assumptions. Specifically, it draws on my practice of collaborative theatre-making with people in recovery from addiction to re-frame the issue of change within a more fluid appreciation of affect as a process of bodily inter-relation. It, therefore, discusses theatre-making as an affective ecology that generates an ‘al...
10 citations
TL;DR: Miriam Haughton as discussed by the authors examines the silencing or shadowing of female experiences of trauma and abuse within public discourse and highlights the importance of women's voices in public discourse.
Abstract: Miriam Haughton’s new study Staging Trauma: Bodies in Shadow effectively interrogates the silencing or ‘shadowing’ of female experiences of trauma and abuse within public discourse and highlights t...
9 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explored the methodologies of talking with actors about the preparation and enactment of a role, of o... and explored the modes of seeing and ways of working in contemporary Spanish theatre.
Abstract: This article deals with modes of seeing and ways of working in contemporary Spanish theatre. It explores the methodologies of talking with actors about the preparation and enactment of a role, of o...
8 citations
TL;DR: The authors proposed a radical paradigm shift for actor training and voice training using heuristic practice-based research findings, and highlighted how progressive education meth-up the training process for actors and voice-trains.
Abstract: This article proposes a radical paradigm shift for actor training and voice training. Using heuristic practice-based research findings, the article highlights how progressive education meth...
8 citations
TL;DR: Crossing Bridges as mentioned in this paper is a project that brings together 15 sex-trafficked and homeless young people and 15 award winning Broadway artists to create theatre together, with the goal of bringing them together in a safe environment.
Abstract: This paper examines a New York-based project, Crossing Bridges, that brings together 15 sex-trafficked and homeless young people and 15 award winning Broadway artists to create theatre together. Th...
5 citations
TL;DR: One widely accepted narrative in Singapore concerns access and reads thus: education is the main vehicle for upward income mobility as discussed by the authors, and students are sorted into Normal and Express programmes through t...
Abstract: One widely accepted narrative in Singapore concerns access and reads thus: education is the main vehicle for upward income mobility. Students are sorted into Normal and Express programmes through t...
4 citations
06 Apr 2018
TL;DR: Lee Strasberg (1901-1982) is a divisive figure whose method of acting is often misunderstood as mentioned in this paper, and few people really know what it is or how it works, or what is its true relationship to the Stan...
Abstract: Lee Strasberg (1901–1982) is a divisive figure whose method of acting is often misunderstood. Few people really know what it is or how it works, or what is its true relationship to the Stan...
3 citations
TL;DR: The authors explored some recent representations of migrants and migration in British Theatre, specifically: Zinnie Harris' How To Hold Your Breath (Royal Court, 2015), Isango Ensemble's A Man of Good Hope (Young Vic, 2016), and Zodwa Nyoni's Nine Lives (Oron Mor/West Yorkshire Playhouse, 2014).
Abstract: This article explores some recent representations of migrants and migration in British Theatre, specifically: Zinnie Harris' How To Hold Your Breath (Royal Court, 2015), Isango Ensemble's A Man of Good Hope (Young Vic, 2016), and Zodwa Nyoni's Nine Lives (Oron Mor/West Yorkshire Playhouse, 2014). It applies Tim Ingold's critique of 'containment' and Julia Kristeva's idea of the 'abject' and 'deject' to critique representations of displacement and migrant experience that implicitly privilege a white, western perspective and position migrants as others as against an assumed normality of identity considered as a consequence of containment within borders. The article goes on to ask how theatre may represent the condition of nationlessness, and offers Nyoni's Nine Lives as an example of how performance may enable identity to be reframed not as the experience of containment within borders (of self and nation), but as a consequence of movement across them.
3 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explore how musical theatre pedagogy might begin to dismantle modes of practice that perpetuate exclusion and a dualistic, gendered perspective, drawing on their experience of directing postgraduate musical theatre students at Mountview in a production of Pippin (1972).
Abstract: This article explores how musical theatre pedagogy might begin to dismantle modes of practice that perpetuate exclusion and a dualistic, gendered perspective. I draw on my experience of directing postgraduate musical theatre students at Mountview in a production of Pippin (1972). Casting a trans man as Pippin – in many respects an archetypal male hero role – set in motion a process of queering and subverting norms. However, casting is only one element of creating an inclusive practice: in this work, I developed a hybrid approach that honoured students’ identities and experiences and took a critical, political view of the material being presented. My approach brings together Elin Diamond’s feminist theoretical framing of Brecht with queer concepts including heteronormativity and chrononormativity, which are then applied to David Barnett’s practical explanation of a Brechtian process. I argue that feminist and queer approaches can work together to meaningfully critique hegemonic forces influencing musical theatre training and production processes.
2 citations
01 Jan 2018
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that listening to audio-drama is fundamentally a bodily experience, and the conception of the theatre of the mind arises from the confines of the medium of radio, rather than the sonic nature of audio.
Abstract: This chapter draws from phenomenology to argue that podcasts provide the opportunity for audio-dramaturgy to instigate a radical break with the limits placed on it by radio technology. It questions prevalent theoretical characterisations of audio-drama as the theatre of the mind, understood intellectually and deliberatively, rather than immanently, due to the evanescent, amorphous nature of sound. Instead, the chapter draws from Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of perception to posit that listening to audio-drama is fundamentally a bodily experience, and the conception of the theatre of the mind arises from the confines of the medium of radio, rather than the sonic nature of audio-drama. Podcasts, it concludes, allow for a move away from conventional radio practices and toward more sonorous and bodily forms of audio-dramaturgy.
2 citations
Book•
19 Mar 2018TL;DR: Composing for Voice: Exploring Voice, Language and Music, Second Edition, elucidates how language and music function together from the perspectives of composers, singers and actors, providing an understanding of the complex functions of the voice pedagogically, musicologically and dramatically.
Abstract: Composing for Voice: Exploring Voice, Language and Music, Second Edition, elucidates how language and music function together from the perspectives of composers, singers and actors, providing an understanding of the complex functions of the voice pedagogically, musicologically and dramatically. Composing for Voice examines the voice across a wide range of musical genres (including pop, jazz, folk, classical, opera and the musical) and explores the fusion of language and music that is unique to song. This second edition is enlarged to attract a wider readership amongst all music and theatre professionals and educators, whilst also engaging an international audience with the introduction of new co-author Maria Huesca.
New to the second edition:
A review of the history of singing
An overview of the development of melisma
A chapter designed to help performers understand each other, as singers and actors often receive disparate educations
Case studies and qualitative research around song, lyric and meaning
A discussion of the synthetic voice
An introduction to the concept of embodied composition
Interviews with composers and singers
Summaries of various vocal styles, including bel canto, the lyric voice, the belt voice, the rap voice, the dramatic voice, the virtuoso voice, the folk voice, the crooner, the live voice and the actor’s voice
A website with many of the links and performances of music discussed, as well as related workshops and seminars: www.composingforvoice.com
Composing for Voice: Exploring Voice, Language and Music, Second Edition, articulates possibilities for the practical exploration of language, music and voice by composers, singers and actors
01 Jan 2018
TL;DR: The authors analyse the approach to adaptation that Goold and Power developed through their work on a free adaptation of Christopher's Dr Faustus, which combined Marlowe's original text with a contemporary narrative featuring the visual artists the Chapman Brothers and their controversial rectification of a set of Goya's Disasters of War etchings for their 2003 series Insult to Injury.
Abstract: In this chapter I intend to analyse the approach to adaptation that Goold and Power developed through their work on a free adaptation of Christopher’s Dr. Faustus, which combined Marlowe’s original text with a contemporary narrative featuring the visual artists the Chapman Brothers and their controversial rectification of a set of Goya’s Disasters of War etchings for their 2003 series Insult to Injury.
30 Aug 2018
TL;DR: In this article, a performance by the Greek theatre collective, Blitz Theatre, Late Night, is described as constituting a theatrical response to current political crises in Europe, where a "theatre of the impasse" seeks to bear witness to the experience of impasse.
Abstract: This essay describes a performance by the Greek theatre collective, Blitz Theatre – Late Night – as constituting a theatrical response to current political crises in Europe What I call a ‘theatre of the impasse’ seeks to bear witness to the experience of impasse, where impasse and crisis must be fundamentally distinguished Impasse is revealed where crisis admits of no decision adequate to the situation; and, correspondingly, where theatre loses faith in the power of decision to resolve its conflicts I situate these claims with reference to Carl Schmitt’s and Walter Benjamin’s dispute over political theology, arguing that a theatre of the impasse might be thought as an ‘allegorical’ theatre in Benjamin’s terms Blitz Theatre’s Late Night reveals, thereby, the concealed truth of the impasse: a founding human sociality experienced as world immanence In doing so doing, I argue, this theatre frustrates every hope for the kind of political theology of the stage envisaged by Schmitt I read the performance, instead, as an elegy to Nancy’s inoperative community, at the centre of which are the figure of lovers, bound to, yet unable to take possession of, one another Staging impasse, Late Night allegorises the fragile human community, exposed in its fundamental precarity
01 Apr 2018
TL;DR: In this article, the authors explore the relationship that some twentieth-century Western plays about HIV and AIDS have to contemporary performance and explore the way in which contemporary twenty-first century low-brow, popular performance work inculcates the politics of remembering and dealing with HIV as both an historical moment and an ongoing challenge.
Abstract: This essay explores the relationship that some twentieth-century Western plays about HIV and AIDS have to contemporary performance. The discussion looks to specific histories of performance to connect and augment current ideas about forgetting HIV and AIDS in queer performance. By describing, examining and providing a particular reading of an act by Bourgeoisie, a drag performer, in a nightclub in London, the essay explores the way in which contemporary twenty-first century low-brow, popular performance work inculcates the politics of remembering and dealing with HIV and AIDS as both an historical moment and an ongoing challenge.