Royal Central School of Speech and Drama
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The Theatre of Photography/Le Théâtre de la Photographie
No full textNous prenons comme point de départ l’opposition du titre : ce texte, sous forme de dialogue/duologue, est également une rencontre entre la photographie et le théâtre, un point de vue privilégié permettant l’interrogation et même l’effondrement de certaines grilles conceptuelles. Dans le domaine du théâtre, on parle souvent d’artifice, authenticité, vraisemblance, et « liveness ». Le théâtre, à partir de la conceptualisation du naturalisme à la fin du dix-neuvième siècle et jusqu’aux défis de la performance au vingtième, semble lutter contre les médias (malgré l’éclecticisme de son propre dispositif représentationnel technologique), cherchant parfois à se situer en dehors d’eux. D’autre part, les études photographiques soulignent souvent la possibilité ou l’impossibilité de la véracité photographique, les sincérités ou tromperies des photographies, d’où la « performance » semble parfois proposer une issue… Ce dialogue se contente d’éclairer certains croisements au Théâtre de la Photographie, afin d’envisager de futurs dialogues entre les médias et les disciplines.
Taking as a starting point the opposition of our title: this text, in the form of a duologue, is also a meeting between photography and theatre, a vantage point from which certain conceptual frameworks can be challenged and even collapsed. In the domain of theatre, one hears often of artifice, authenticity, likeness and liveness. Theatre, from the conceptualisation of naturalism in the nineteenth century to the challenges posed by performance art in the twentieth century, struggles with media (despite the eclecticism of its own technological apparatus), sometimes seeking distance from them. Photography studies, meanwhile, has often emphasised the possibility or impossibility of veracity, the truthfulness or deceptiveness of photographs, with performance seemingly offering one escape route… This duologue seeks only to cast light on certain crossings inside the theatre of photography, envisaging future dialogues between media and across disciplines
The Sea is Not a Highway: Performing Maritime Histories in the Not-Quite-Global-City
No full textIn 1972, Singapore’s then Foreign Minister Sinnathamby Rajaratnam used (and likely coined) the term “global city” to describe the Southeast Asian city-state. “The sea is all highway,” he announced in the same speech. Rajaratnam’s metaphor reveals both the importance of the sea to the making of a global city, and the ways in which the very discourse of globality would seek to deny the sea’s materiality. In 1996, then Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri described Lebanon as the “Singapore of the Middle East,” evoking the global city as the model for a postwar, regenerated nation. This essay takes up the seemingly unlikely juxtaposition of Singapore and Lebanon, examining the related conditions and concerns for performance practice in these two coastal, postcolonial and multi-ethnic nations at opposite extremes of the Asian continent. I argue that their intimate relationships with the sea mean that Lebanon and Singapore are both not-quite and more-than “global cities.” The performed representations of the sea discussed in this essay pinpoint this discrepancy. Focusing on Singaporean playwright Kuo Pao Kun’s Descendants of the Eunuch Admiral (1995) and Lebanese artist Karine Wehbé’s Tabarja Beach project (2008-2018), I explore the ways in which stagings of the sea make possible a specific critique of late capitalist discourses of globalization, by insisting upon material, embodied histories of maritime dwelling and travel. In these pieces, the sea is ambiguously remembered, powerfully affective and semantically unstable: emphatically, it is not a highway
Dance Touring and Embodied Data: Some Approaches to Katherine Dunham’s Movement on the Move
No full textThis article represents the first stage of a larger research project that considers the kinds of questions and problems that make the analysis and visualization of data meaningful for the study of dance in a historical context. We pursue this work through the exemplary case study of mid-century African American choreographer Katherine Dunham and the global legacy of her international touring. In this short piece, we focus on a dataset we manually curated to document Dunham’s location nearly every day for the four years between January 1st, 1950 and December 31st, 1953. We use this daily itinerary to consider patterns of her travel and their implications, engaging with dance both as a mode of thinking about archives of moving bodies, and as an object of historical study
Pitch and Gender in Voice Training: New Methodological
No full textThe gendering of pitch. In this short essay, I lay out a number of practice-led insights about the gendered perception of the materiality of pitch. The research sits within a wider body of work that applies both feminist and gender theory to voice practice. Theories about the ways in which ‘individuality and the resonances of our gestures are carried in the vocalic bodies we emanate’ are particularly relevant to this discussion about perceptions of difference (Bonenfant 2010, p. 77)
Imagining the Seamless Cyborg: Computer System Sounds as Embodying Technologies
No full textThis chapter investigates the designed sounds of operating systems (OSs), particularly those of Apple and Microsoft computers and devices, from a cultural critical perspective arguing that such sounds are cybernetic prostheses enhancing our capabilities. In a chapter that takes in conceptions of the cyborg (which are overshadowed by the cyborg’s roots in the military industrial complex) to the subversion and use of OS sounds for creative purposes, Ploeger discusses the use and subsequent development of such sounds—from early mainframe computers’ inherent noises to the designed sounds of today’s computing devices—and shows how they underpin the imagining of computers as extensions of the human body. Ultimately, the recent design of OS sounds serves to propagate pre-existing ideological concepts of the cyborg as evinced by our now technologically prosthetisized bodies
'Very Much Alive and Kicking': The Actresses' Franchise League From 1914-1928
No full textStage women, 1900–50 explores the many ways in which women conceptualised, constructed and participated in networks of professional practice in the theatre and performance industries between 1900 and 1950. A timely volume full of original research, the book explores women’s complex negotiations of their agency over both their labour and public representation, and their use of personal and professional networks to sustain their careers. Including a series of case studies that explore a range of well-known and lesser-known women working in theatre, film and popular performance of the period. The volume is divided into two connected parts. ‘Female theatre workers in the social and theatrical realm’ looks at the relationship between women’s work – on- and offstage – and autobiography, activism, technique, touring, education and the law. Part II, ‘Women and popular performance’, focuses on the careers of individual artists, once household names, including Lily Brayton, Ellen Terry, radio star Mabel Constanduros, and Oscar-winning film star Margaret Rutherford. Overall, the book provides new and vibrant cultural histories of women’s work in the theatre and performance industries of the period
Beyond Failure: New Essays on the Cultural History of Failure in Theatre and Performance
No full textIn setting foot on stage, every performer risks the possiblity of failure. Indeed, the very performance of any human action is inextricable from its potential not to succeed. This inherent potential has become a key critical trope in contemporary theatre, performance studies, and scholarship around visual cultures. Beyond Failure explores what it means for our understanding not just of theatrical practice but of human social and cultural activity more broadly.
The essays in this volume tackle contemporary debates around the theory and poetics of failure, suggesting that in the absence of success can be found a defiance and hopefulness that points to new ways of knowing and being in the world.
Beyond Failure offers a unique and engaging approach for students and practitioners interested not only in the impact of failure on the stage, but what it means for wider social and cultural debates
Black Rock: Routes Through Scenographic Translation, from Mountain Climbing to Performance
No full textThis article traces the developments of Black Rock, an immersive multimedia performance inspired by Johnny Dawes infamous 1986 first absent of Indian Face (E9 6c). Black Rock, developed as part of Performing Mountains an AHRC research project led by Jonathan Pitches, aimed to question: to what extent can the experience of mountain climbing be translated to an audience on the ground? In order to unpack this complex embodied pursuit, I present my findings through five routes; Personal Mountains, The Gesture of a Line Language and Movement, Crafting Atmosphere and Breath. The routes present a holistic approach to practice research that combine first hand site-based research, historical research, performance theory, collaborator and audience insights and my own reflective insights as the lead artist. I conclude by exploring how the act of scenographic translation can be seen as a supplement to the original source material